Of all of the Czech grindcore bands that I've been listening to over the past decade, the most well known would probably be !T.O.O.H.! , also known as Total Obliteration Of Humanity. These weirdos released an album years ago called Pod Vladou Bice that was an instant hit around here, a brutally heavy, seriously tweaked grindcore album that stood out from the rest of the Czech grind scene with their skilled chops, complex songwriting and a tendency to throw a bunch of different styles (psych, jazz, pop punk, etc) into their vicious techgrind blender. That album (released on the obscure but very cool mutoid-grind label Plazzma) managed to reach a decent amount of ears outside of the Czech underground, and in 2005 the band reached a wider audience with the release of their album Order And Punishment on the short-lived Earache subsidiary Elitist, where they were labelmates with fellow metal mutants Ephel Duath. Heavier and less zany than their previous disc, this album nevertheless pushed T.O.O.H.'s zonked deathgrind into further realms of progginess, infusing the chunky, complex heaviness with trace elements of jazz fusion and neo-classical melody, and topping it all off with their nutty shrieking vocals that have always kind of reminded me of Macabre. The songs on this album are subversively catchy for a deathgrind band, and by all rights this should have been a huge hit in the extreme metal scene. Which it probably would have become, if it hadn't been for the acrimonious split between Elitist and Earache a mere few months after it was released, which effectively buried the album. This definitely needs to be heard by anyone into wonky, tech-head deathgrind though. Imagine early Athiest on whippits and a serious Zappa obsession, and loaded with insane fusiony soloing, jazzy basslines, n' spastic crunchy death metal riffage. I love Czech grind almost across the board - anytime I hear a death/grind band from this corner of Europe, it sounds like they are out of their minds - but T.O.O.H. were probably the most coherent and skilled band to come out of this scene so far. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Abu-Hassan
Sample : Analyza Zahnedy (Analysis of the Shitstain)
Sample : Konec Kontinentalniho Kontejneru (Conclusion of the Continental ...)

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Consume IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Another denizen of the strange, impossible-to-pin-down electro/goth scene surrounding the Disaro label that has been tagged as "witch house", //TENSE//, like many of the bands that we've heard from this label (Modern Witch, Fostercare, The Present Moment) beams a skewed vision of 80s synth pop through a cracked and distorted lens marked with occult sigils. In this case, it's a dark brooding take on the EBM vibes of Front Line Assembly and Twitch-era Ministry that we hear creeping out of the Houston duo on Consume, their killer new EP of crepuscular industrial synthpop that stands out from much of the weirder, more fractured stuff on the label. This disc fixes our urge for some classic sounding dark industrial synth hookage quite nicely, and the cold, sterile production sounds like something Adrian Sherwood would have cooked up. The vocals are delivered in a weird affected British accent over pounding drum machines, deep synth bass and sinister keyboards, blasting out orchestral walls of sound, or crawling back into the throbbing malevolence of "TV Teach Me". There's a warped robotic EBM delirium that infects "Cash In (Night Version)", and the killer booming industrial breakbeat and space-funk keyboards on "Wasted Flesh" even remind us of Tackhead a little. "End Crawl" layers dreamlike sheets of synthesizer chaos and pulsating electronic darkness over a spare kick drum beat, and gets into seriously warped and nightmarish territory, which carries into that last couple of tracks ("Versus Man", "Between The Strike"). The disc delivers eight tracks of this mysterious nocturnal throb, great stuff for fans of classic EBM-tinged industrial rock who are down for a strange, occult-influenced take on the sound. Limited to one hundred hand-numbered copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : Between The Strike
Sample : TV Teach Me
Sample : Wasted Flesh

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10LEC6 (pronounced "dis-lec-six") and their nocturnal Parisian disco punk first surfaced on a self-released 7" in 2005, which has been re-released on disc and 12" by Troubleman. Formed by a couple of French art school kids infatuated with post-punk and hardcore and the original drummer of Daft Punk, 10LEC6 use wiry bass guitar lines, martial drums, found sounds, and percussion to create their jumpy, hyper dance punk jams. I really dug the variety of percussive instruments used here, congos, bongos, shakers and more all rattling away, and the tribal rhythms that these instruments create sort of makes the band sound like a mutation of 1979 art punk a la Crass and Slits and anarchos DIRT mixed with Bow Wow Wow's bouncy new wave and shot through with brief blasts of primitive hardcore thrash. Plus, singer Emi's killer lead vocals eerily recall Eve Libertine of Crass, further turning this EP into a weird timewarp. Join Us! sports some fuckin' creepy artwork that recreates the original 7" layout. This CD re-issue is released as a limited edition of 1,000 copies.

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Join Us! IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

The 12" vinyl version of Parisian dance-punkers debut EP.
10LEC6 (pronounced "dis-lec-six") and their nocturnal Parisian disco punk first surfaced on a self-released 7" in 2005, which has been re-released on disc and 12" by Troubleman. Formed by a couple of French art school kids infatuated with post-punk and hardcore and the original drummer of Daft Punk, 10LEC6 use wiry bass guitar lines, martial drums, found sounds, and percussion to create their jumpy, hyper dance punk jams. I really dug the variety of percussive instruments used here, congos, bongos, shakers and more all rattling away, and the tribal rhythms that these instruments create sort of makes the band sound like a mutation of 1979 art punk a la Crass and Slits and anarchos DIRT mixed with Bow Wow Wow's bouncy new wave and shot through with brief blasts of primitive hardcore thrash. Plus, singer Emi's killer lead vocals eerily recall Eve Libertine of Crass, further turning this EP into a weird timewarp. Join Us! sports some fuckin' creepy artwork that recreates the original 7" layout. This CD re-issue is released as a limited edition of 1,000 copies.

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The Spanish Hardcore scene hasn't exactly been known for ferocious extreme HC outfits; in the late 90's, there was All Ill, an obscure outfit that released one hell of a neck-snapping album that injected a ton of meth energy into an in-the-red, Infest style blast whiteout. And then there was 12 Audillos, whose OTT thrash/blast/noise is some of the most pulverizing post-powerviolence ever. The band's sole CD release, issued here in the States via respected thrashcore imprint Six Weeks, crashes over you with a mega-crushing, cyclonic blastcore storm of ultra distorted whiteout riffs played at 1,000 miles per hour, tornado blastbeats, and a singer who sounds like he's struggling to narrate these tales of despair through a throatful of broken glass and gasoline. Total mach 10 aggression that melts together the most rabid elements of West Coast powerviolence, classic 80's Hardcore vitriol, and neurotic destruction; imagine a murderous hybrid of Siege, Infest, Neurosis' apocalyptic buildups, Rorschach, and the mangled Tuetonic metalcore of bands like Systral, Acme, and Morser, splicing turbulent freakouts of controlled thrash chaos with slow, eerie interludes and hyperspeed meltdowns that turn into pure noise cataclysm. This disc collects their hard-to-find self released EP with 2 unreleased songs, and also includes enhanced CD-ROM features with live footage of an explosive 12 Aullidos show. Awesome, twisted, crazed destructo-core!

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Now available in a limited edition 180 gram vinyl release, limited to 500 copies and packaged with an MP3 download card/code for the entire album.
The early 16 albums have been long overdue for reissue. With the demise of their longtime label Theologian/Pessimiser Records earlier this past decade, most of the 16 catalog became increasingly hard to track down, and their Bacteria Sour releases were even more rare and sought after. Now with a new album Bridges To Burn out on new label Relapse, a reissue campaign is underway to make these albums available once again, remastered and with all new album layouts, starting with their most crucial discs, 1993's Curves That Kick and 1996's Drop Out. Both of these discs are absolutely essential for anyone into the grinding, stop-and-go sludge rock of 16, and either one is a perfect starting point for anybody that's not yet familiar with their brand of sledgehammer heaviness.
Originally released on Pushead's Bacteria Sour label, Curves That Kick was the band's debut album, a crushing twelve-song beating that introduced their extremely pissed-off, negative, groove-heavy metallic rock to the underground. With a sound that essentially combined the punishing heaviness of the Melvins with gnarled hardcore punk and the bludgeoning percussive riffs of Strap It On-era Helmet, the LA band made a name for themselves pretty quickly within the extreme hardcore/grind/metal scene in southern California, aided in part by their connection to Pushead and his boutique label. Their minimalist stop-and-go attack is mixed with bursts of thrashy speed on tracks like "Nova" and the very Black Flag-ish "Sedatives", but most of Curves That Kick smashes you over the head with relentless, discordantly noisy riffs played in a crushing mechanical 4/4 groove. Sludgy, brutal and metallic, 16 were also skilled in writing fucking AWESOME riffs, and this album (along with Drop Out) is loaded with 'em, massive catchy riffs that are impossible to resist, any of these songs could have been huge hitys with the alt-metal crowd in the early 90's. To this day, 16 were one of the few bands to find the perfect middle ground between the nihilistic sludge of bands like Buzzoven and Eyehategod, and the aggressive noise rock of the Amphetamine Reptile label.
Track Samples:
Sample : Curves That Kick
Sample : Resin

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Zoloft Smile IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

It always baffles me to think that 16 never became a huge band. I mean, these guys were the ultimate in picking up where Helmet left off after Meantime, a perfect marriage of bonecrushing stop-and-go riffage and primal youth angst and hige hooks, all filtered through the burliness of the West Coast extreme hardcore scene of the early 90's and endorsed by Pushead, for chrissakes. I dunno, maybe it was the seething negativity and lurid tales of retribution that scared people off, or maybe it was the band's commitment to increasingly intensify their rage over the course of five albums. Sadly, 16 called it a day right after releasing this fucking monster of an album in 2003, after slogging it out for over a decade in the underground. But at least they left us with one of the heaviest albums in their discog, eleven sludge-loaded tales of urban decay, domestic despair, revenge and hatred and abject misery. Terminally negative downer tirades, distorto hammer riffs, machinelike rhythmic propulsion, like pre-Betty Helmet conspiring with Eyehategod to drain you of your will, with tastefully applied spacey effects and stoopidly crushing grooves laying waste to everything. Freaking awesome album, right up there with their classic Drop Out and Blaze Of Incompetance. Recommended.

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Right around the same time that Relapse signed the recently reformed 16 and announced that the band would be putting out a brand new album, there was a unsurprising burst of interest in these Southern Cali nihilists from within the extreme metal scene that had newcomers to 16's sound checking out their past releases. The last album that 16 released, Zoloft Smile, went out of print pretty soon thereafter. It's still out of print here in the US, but I just found some copies of the German release of the album through one of our suppliers and grabbed a bunch for the C-Blast shop. I know that a bunch of our customers have been looking for a copy of this crushing 2003 album, so here's your chance at last.
Here's the original listing for the At A Loss release of Zoloft Smile: It always baffles me to think that 16 never became a huge band. I mean, these guys were the ultimate in picking up where Helmet left off after Meantime, a perfect marriage of bonecrushing stop-and-go riffage and primal youth angst and hige hooks, all filtered through the burliness of the West Coast extreme hardcore scene of the early 90's and endorsed by Pushead, for chrissakes. I dunno, maybe it was the seething negativity and lurid tales of retribution that scared people off, or maybe it was the band's commitment to increasingly intensify their rage over the course of five albums. Sadly, 16 called it a day right after releasing this fucking monster of an album in 2003, after slogging it out for over a decade in the underground. But at least they left us with one of the heaviest albums in their discog, eleven sludge-loaded tales of urban decay, domestic despair, revenge and hatred and abject misery. Terminally negative downer tirades, distorto hammer riffs, machinelike rhythmic propulsion, like pre-Betty Helmet conspiring with Eyehategod to drain you of your will, with tastefully applied spacey effects and stoopidly crushing grooves laying waste to everything. Freaking awesome album, right up there with their classic Drop Out and Blaze Of Incompetance. Recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Born To Lose
Sample : Damone
Sample : You're Not My Real Dad

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The early 16 albums have been long overdue for reissue. With the demise of their longtime label Theologian/Pessimiser Records earlier this past decade, most of the 16 catalog became increasingly hard to track down, and their Bacteria Sour releases were even rarer and more sought after. Now with a new album Bridges To Burn out on new label Relapse, a reissue campaign is underway to make these albums available once again, re-mastered and with all new album layouts, starting with their most crucial discs, 1993's Curves That Kick and 1996's Drop Out. Both of these discs are absolutely essential for anyone into the grinding, stop-and-go sludge rock of 16, and either one is a perfect starting point for anybody that's not yet familiar with their brand of sledgehammer heaviness.
Ask a fan what their favorite 16 album is, and most likely they'll say Drop Out. The second album from the LA sludge metallers arguably remains their strongest work, with some of the catchiest, most crushing riffs and songs that the band ever wrote. Their sound and delivery was pretty fucking aggro on Curves The Kick, but this time around, things were way more pissed and negative, pent-up frustration and disillusionment with life that explodes across the ten songs in a murderous rage, strapped down to monstrous bass-driven grooves and crushing stop/start riffing. Their stripped-down, discordant mix of early Helmet, Melvins sludge and violent hardcore is sharpened to a lethal edge here, opening with the brutal chug of "Trigger Happy", then moves through seething sludge ("Pumpfake"), noisy syncopated post-hardcore ("Tocohara"), churning stop-on-a-dime sludge rock ("Sniper"), and minute-long hardcore thrash ferocity that borders on power violence ("Fucked For Life"). Everything is way darker than their debut, uglier, the lyrics steeped in themes of betrayal, self-loathing and despair, but the songs are also laced with subtle guitar and vocal effects that add a newfound psychedelic feel to 16's down tuned throb. Highly recommended - this is the album to start with if you want to get in 16!
Track Samples:
Sample : Pumpfake
Sample : Trigger Happy

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The early 16 albums have been long overdue for reissue. With the demise of their longtime label Theologian/Pessimiser Records earlier this past decade, most of the 16 catalog became increasingly hard to track down, and their Bacteria Sour releases were even more rare and sought after. Now with a new album Bridges To Burn out on new label Relapse, a reissue campaign is underway to make these albums available once again, remastered and with all new album layouts, starting with their most crucial discs, 1993's Curves That Kick and 1996's Drop Out. Both of these discs are absolutely essential for anyone into the grinding, stop-and-go sludge rock of 16, and either one is a perfect starting point for anybody that's not yet familiar with their brand of sledgehammer heaviness.
Originally released on Pushead's Bacteria Sour label, Curves That Kick was the band's debut album, a crushing twelve-song beating that introduced their extremely pissed-off, negative, groove-heavy metallic rock to the underground. With a sound that essentially combined the punishing heaviness of the Melvins with gnarled hardcore punk and the bludgeoning percussive riffs of Strap It On-era Helmet, the LA band made a name for themselves pretty quickly within the extreme hardcore/grind/metal scene in southern California, aided in part by their connection to Pushead and his boutique label. Their minimalist stop-and-go attack is mixed with bursts of thrashy speed on tracks like "Nova" and the very Black Flag-ish "Sedatives", but most of Curves That Kick smashes you over the head with relentless, discordantly noisy riffs played in a crushing mechanical 4/4 groove. Sludgy, brutal and metallic, 16 were also skilled in writing fucking AWESOME riffs, and this album (along with Drop Out) is loaded with 'em, massive catchy riffs that are impossible to resist, any of these songs could have been huge hitys with the alt-metal crowd in the early 90's. To this day, 16 were one of the few bands to find the perfect middle ground between the nihilistic sludge of bands like Buzzoven and Eyehategod, and the aggressive noise rock of the Amphetamine Reptile label.
Track Samples:
Sample : Curves That Kick
Sample : Resin

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A new dose of extreme nihilistic sludge from 16! After a long hiatus (its been more than five years since their last album), the mighty 16 are back and totally on fire with their first new album for Relapse, Bridges To Burn, and from the first bludgeoning chords of "Throw In The Towel" it's clear that time sure hasn't softened any of their bitterness or murderous scorn. The SoCal sludge metallers deliver twelve new tracks of raging stop/start bass-heavy metallic noise rock that picks up where their last album (2002's Zoloft Smile) left off, matching catchy, vertebrae-wrecking hooks to simple, pummeling sludgy riffage and MASSIVE rhythmic chug (attributable to drummer Jason Corley, who was at one point played in C-Blast faves Fistula), fusing together the low-slung rumble of Melvins, the staccato riffing of Helmet, the angular swagger and churn of Jesus Lizard, and the occasional whiskey-soaked Eyehategod-esque swamp groove, combined with those furiously misanthropic and nihilistic lyrics and attitude that has always made this band one of the most pissed off outfits in the US metal underground. If there's anything that distinguishes Bridges To Burn from the previous albums, it's the fucking huge production that this album has, making it their heaviest album, in my opinion. The metallic side of their sound is heavier than ever too, with songs like "Skin And Bones" and "So Broken Down" dropping chunky thrash metal chug into the monstrous mid-tempo groove, and "Me & My Shadow" pounds away at a swampy Sabbathoid dirge that builds into a massive down tuned mechanical stomp that's one of the band's more doomed moments. Absolutely killer artwork from Orion Landau, too. Bridges is as crushingly cathartic as anything in 16's long and storied catalog.
Track Samples:
Sample : Permanent Good One
Sample : Throw in the Towel

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Curves That Kick IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Although a remastered and repackaged new version of Curves That Kick was reissued earlier this year on Relapse Records, I couldn't pass up grabbing these stray copies of the original Bacteria Sour Cd when one of our suppliers dug some up during one of their warehouse cleanings. The Bacteria Sour disc has been out of print for ages, and while the Relapse reissue does boast a much better (and heavier) mastering job, the new version doesn't have the original Pushead album artwork, presumably due to licensing/rights issues. Which makes this original release of interest to Pushead collectors and 16 uber-fanatics. We have a very, very limited number of these Bacteria Sour discs in stock, less than six, and we'll most likely never have these available in the shop again.
Originally released on Pushead's Bacteria Sour label, Curves That Kick was the band's debut album, a crushing twelve-song beating that introduced their extremely pissed-off, negative, groove-heavy metallic rock to the underground. With a sound that essentially combined the punishing heaviness of the Melvins with gnarled hardcore punk and the bludgeoning percussive riffs of Strap It On-era Helmet, the LA band made a name for themselves pretty quickly within the extreme hardcore/grind/metal scene in southern California, aided in part by their connection to Pushead and his boutique label. Their minimalist stop-and-go attack is mixed with bursts of thrashy speed on tracks like "Nova" and the very Black Flag-ish "Sedatives", but most of Curves That Kick smashes you over the head with relentless, discordantly noisy riffs played in a crushing mechanical 4/4 groove. Sludgy, brutal and metallic, 16 were also skilled in writing fucking AWESOME riffs, and this album (along with Drop Out) is loaded with 'em, massive catchy riffs that are impossible to resist, any of these songs could have been huge hitys with the alt-metal crowd in the early 90's. To this day, 16 were one of the few bands to find the perfect middle ground between the nihilistic sludge of bands like Buzzoven and Eyehategod, and the aggressive noise rock of the Amphetamine Reptile label.
Track Samples:
Sample : Chum
Sample : Resin

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Along with the handful of copies of the original out-of-print Curves That Kick cd on Bacteria Sour that we just obtained through one of our suppliers while they were cleaning out their warehouse, we also picked up an unearthed stack of the likewise long out-of-print Tocohara 7" that 16 released on Bacteria Sour in 1994. This extremely hard to find 7" Ep features two songs from the Cali sludge rockers, the title track "Tocohara" and their pummeling, percussive downer anthem "16". Both of these songs later appeared in re-recorded versions on the legendary Drop Out album, but here sound a little quicker, a little more punchy, each one a lunging attack of sludgy concussive hardcore aggro and grooving low-end battery, which I've described in the past as a perfect combination of the Melvins's detuned lumber and the stop-and-go percussive aggression of early Helmet. A killer set of early 16 jams that come in a full color sleeve designed by Bacteria Sour label boss Pushead. On black vinyl.

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Now available on limited edition 180 gram vinyl!
The early 16 albums have been long overdue for reissue. With the demise of their longtime label Theologian/Pessimiser Records earlier this past decade, most of the 16 catalog became increasingly hard to track down, and their Bacteria Sour releases were even rarer and more sought after. Now with a new album Bridges To Burn out on new label Relapse, a reissue campaign is underway to make these albums available once again, re-mastered and with all new album layouts, starting with their most crucial discs, 1993's Curves That Kick and 1996's Drop Out. Both of these discs are absolutely essential for anyone into the grinding, stop-and-go sludge rock of 16, and either one is a perfect starting point for anybody that's not yet familiar with their brand of sledgehammer heaviness.
Ask a fan what their favorite 16 album is, and most likely they'll say Drop Out. The second album from the LA sludge metallers arguably remains their strongest work, with some of the catchiest, most crushing riffs and songs that the band ever wrote. Their sound and delivery was pretty fucking aggro on Curves The Kick, but this time around, things were way more pissed and negative, pent-up frustration and disillusionment with life that explodes across the ten songs in a murderous rage, strapped down to monstrous bass-driven grooves and crushing stop/start riffing. Their stripped-down, discordant mix of early Helmet, Melvins sludge and violent hardcore is sharpened to a lethal edge here, opening with the brutal chug of "Trigger Happy", then moves through seething sludge ("Pumpfake"), noisy syncopated post-hardcore ("Tocohara"), churning stop-on-a-dime sludge rock ("Sniper"), and minute-long hardcore thrash ferocity that borders on power violence ("Fucked For Life"). Everything is way darker than their debut, uglier, the lyrics steeped in themes of betrayal, self-loathing and despair, but the songs are also laced with subtle guitar and vocal effects that add a newfound psychedelic feel to 16's down tuned throb. Highly recommended - this is the album to start with if you want to get in 16!
Track Samples:
Sample : Pumpfake
Sample : Trigger Happy

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Bury Me Deep is the first new release that I've heard from 16 Bitch Pile-Up since the band relocated to San Francisco from Ohio and pared their numbers down to the current power trio lineup of Sarah Bernat, Sarah Cathers, and Shannon Walter. Right off the bat, my eyes are glued to the awesome package for Bury Me Deep, which was designed by Damion Romero. The album design looks like a ultra-trashy splatter video cover straight off of the video store shelf circa 1988, with bold purple electric neon lettering and the tag line "...the beaches were covered in blood...and so were the bitches!" roaring across the album cover. If you've got a love (as I do) for that breed of straight-to-video grime from the 80's, you'll love this cover...it's one of the more imaginative "noise" covers I've seen lately. Digging inside, the booklet folds open into a poster with several photos of the girls, sprawled out and posed dead on som litter-covered beach and covered in gross gore, the killer photography courtesy of David Lim of Tralphaz. Killer nasty imagery that totally sets the mood for the hour of heavy terror drone-noise contained on the disc. Bury Me Deep plays like a single extended piece chopped up into chapters, like the film-scores of several mindless exploitation videos melted down into a pool of psychedelid gloopy melted tonal drift and layered action, moving through passages of splatter movie soundtrack, scraping textured noise, thickened vocal syrup, and deep, heavy drones submerged in creepfest samples. Limited edition of 1,000.

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Originally released on the Pathological label run by Kevin Martin (The Bug, Ice, God, Techno Animal) in the 1990s, 16-17 and their album Gyatso was probably the closest in spirit to Martin's own band God - fierce, heavy jazz-core that wrapped the total energy and primal howl of free-jazz around a crushing industrial/rock backbone. These Swiss improv jazzcore legends were masters at creating tension between the free, chaotic voices of shrill, screeching saxophones and sliced n' diced samples, and the staccato drumming of Knut Remond and monstrous, circular basslines, which on Gyatso were supplied by Godflesh's G.C. Green. I recently listed the Savage Land double CD re-release of 16-17's crucial early albums from the 1980's that had been released through Early Recordings, and while those albums were amazing blats of extreme hardcore jazzpunk, this 1994 disc is the heaviest stuff that the band has ever done, with the thick, full production the band had always needed. Holy shit, is this intense. Each track generally revolves around a single central rhythmic grind made up of a crushing sludgy bassline and a brutal martial drumbeat, jagged and angular, which is then pounded into the ground through relentless hypnotic repetition while Alex Buess shoots fire out of his skull via sax and bass clarinet and guitarist Markus Kneubuhler splatters electronic motes and stabs of distorted guitar above it all. Kevin Martin himself engineered the album, and he even contributes some dub-style effects and echoes to the mix. Might just be the heaviest jazz I've ever heard, a pummeling, trance-inducing matchup between John Zorn's Painkiller and Godflesh and Brotzmann's Machine Gun Sessions . Totally crushing. The whole album batters you with track after track of sick, punishing hypno-jazzcore, and there are a couple of additional noise-soaked deconstructions/remixes that have been included at the end of the album to complete the assault. Digitally remastered by Weasel Walter from the Flying Luttenbachers.This crucial reissue is essential for anyone into extreme free-jazz and bands like Alboth, Last Exit, Painkiller, Flying Luttenbachers, etc., and comes with a thick booklet that contains detailed new liner notes by Jason Pettigrew (Alternative Press) that draw from interviews with the band that discuss the history of 16-17, and cool new artwork. Highly recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Attack-Impulse
Sample : Flamethrower
Sample : Intravenous

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Back in stock!
Early Recordings is a two-CD set from the legendary Swiss avant- rock/deathjazz group 16-17, whose early releases have been out of print for eons and have been nigh-impossible to land one's mitts on. Savage Land came to the rescue bigtime though, pairing up the band's 1986 16-17 and 1989 When All Else Fails albums, and also adding on the mega rare Hardkore & Buffbunker cassette that 16-17 put out in 1984 on the Vision label, and had Weasel Walter from The Flying Luttenbachers remaster everything.
So what's 16-17 all about? BLAZING HARDCORE JAZZ VIOLENCE. As soon as you hit "play" on 16-17, the entire geneology of the past 25 years of hardcore skronk becomes immediately clear. The band was first formed in Basel, Switzerland in 1983 by Markus Kneubuhler (electronics, guitar), Nicolas Knut Redmond (drums) and Alex Buess (saxophone), and they employed Buess' saxophone in a rock band format to play a kind of "jazz" that was utterly unlike anything else at the time, a super harsh and chaotic hardcore No Wave attack that was equal parts Borbetomagus powerskronk, thugged out neanderthal krautrock, and incendiary hardcore with industrial/noise undercurrents. They predated the whole John Zorn/Painkiller/Last Exit hardcore jazz scene by at least a couple of years, and you can hear the impact that 16-17 had on everyone from Flying Luttenbachers and God to Alboth! and Painkiller. Buess' sax is the centerpiece of 16-17's violent churn, a neverending screaming stream of squonking, screeching blurt, sometimes sounding like actual jazz lines, but largely slicing through the air like a chain of razorblades, backed up by the PCP-fueled motorik beats and grungy riffage being slammed out on Kneubuhler's self-built guitars. For years 16-17 was known to only a few in the underground, despite bonding with Swans, whom they supported on a couple of tours, and even working with Alec Empire's Digital Hardcore label on an Ep that the label released in 1998. Now we know, and these early, crucial recordings are finally available to be heard, an essential piece of the extreme music puzzle. This stuff still holds up in a big way, an utterly crushing assault of vicious freejazz hypnocore harshnoise destruction. Mega recommended. The anthology consists of two CDs packaged in jewel cases, and contained in a printed cardboard slipcase.
Track Samples:
Sample : BROWBEATEN BEAT
Sample : 16-17-Early Recordings
Sample : 16-17-Early Recordings
Sample : 16-17-Early Recordings

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This happens to be a different lineup of the Pittsburgh weirdo-wavers The 1985 than the one that featured John Roman from Microwaves on drums; this is regardless a highly enjoyable platter of energetic, zonked no-wave/post punk that sounds like it was vomited out of some back alley behind the Rhode Island School Of Design. The three songs on here are, for the most part, much more Public Image Ltd. than Arab On Radar, but fans of skronky, abrasive dance punk will probably still dig this in a big way. "The Long Weekend" is just so damn catchy with it's pounding motorik disco beat and wailing guitars coming together with Joe Vernet's yowling vocals, it sounds a bit like a noisy P.I.L./krautrock hybrid and it works great. And "Latin Watches" brings a mutant 80's dancefloor vibe to a spazzy assault that rolls off of these grooves like a sugarshocked combo of Chinese Stars and the VSS. The b-side is the corker, however, a sidelong track called "(Even) More" that in any sane worl d would have been a top 10 noise pop/no wave/dancepunk hit. This jam is unbelievably catchy, and marries a simple but crunchy guitar riff and retro synthoid electronics over a wonderfully inhuman electronic drumbeat while soft warbly vocals coo melodically and feedback and other noisy buzzing swirls around. Super dreamy and hooky, with a droning melody that'll be stuck in yer skull for at least a day or two.

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Before Microwaves, before Zombi, there was The 1985, a heavy, skronky noise rock band from Pittsburgh that was around from 1996 to 2000. The band released two LPs while they were around, one of which was 1999's Nerve Eighty, a burly bit of nervous aggro that weilds a loud, angular attack that's a bit heavier than much of what was coming out of the noise punk scene around that time. Along with their tourmates in Arab On Radar, The 1985 were originators of that blend of twitchy, distorted guitars and the dancey rhythms of experimental punk outfits Crass, Gang Of Four and Public Image, Ltd., but these guys were the heavier of the bunch, their guitars bashing out some great rusted-out riffage and grating electroshock feedback while the rhythm section would dig in with heavy grooves that anchored their chaotic, sexually charged freakouts. Kinda has a Jesus Lizard/Big Black feel to it at times. We just picked up some copies of this disc from John Roman from Microwaves, who had previously played drums in The 1985, and you can hear where Microwaves took the herky-jerky noise of his former band and added a serious dose of metallic skullburn to create the thrashy no wave of the 'Waves. Pretty crucial noise rock for fans of Microwaves, Arab On Radar, and Skin Graft noise punk.
Track Samples:
Sample : cosmo with children
Sample : she works weekends
Sample : warning shot

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A sort of an apocalyptic industrial soundtrack project, 20.SV is one Lebanese electronic composer Osman Arabi, who has released a number of cassettes on various deep-underground noise labels around the globe over the past few years as well as collaborating with black noise technicians Stallagh. This is the first 20.SV release on disc, though, and it's a gripping five-part suite of menacing ambient designs that channel visions of post-industrial/post-nuclear horror through grim power electronics frequencies and grueling low-end distortion drones, all of which succeed in evoking images of dead cities and an atmosphere poisoned by radiation, and toxic winds screaming across the charred landscape of a nuclear holocaust. Electronic sinewaves are warped into emulating the sounds of computer-guided bombs being dropped on cities, and grinding mechanical textures are unleashed into bulldozing loops that crush their way across the withered landscape. Acid Vomit Human Genocide is ultra bleak, extremely imaginative heavy drone/industrial/abstraction, equal parts Sutcliffe Jugend and Gruntsplatter and post-apocalyptic film soundtrack, with whooshing electronic phasing swooping down over dark heavy ambient drones and weird alien feedback frequencies manipulated into terrifying FX. An amazing album of horrific industrial drone visions that will haunt you. Packaged in a full color wallet sleeve.

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It's not all that often that we're presented with extreme music from the Middle East, but when we are, it's almost always an intense experience. This black-industrial project is the brainchild of Lebanese artist Osman Arabi, whose last CD (the excellent Acid Vomit Human Genocide) really impressed me when we first discovered it a couple of months ago. That album contained a series of harsh, hellish post-apocalyptic visions, mixing nightmarish synth ambience, tightly controlled feedback loops, and heavy duty low-frequency drone into radioactive dronescapes. Heavy and unsettling, it's easy to see why blacknoise terrorizers Stalagggh chose to collaborate with 20.SV on remixes of their recordings. With this new disc, 20.SV returns with a single 30+ minute track titled ""Insects"" that continues to map out those bleak, hypnotic landscapes of industrial wreckage and threatening alien frequencies, and conjures slow-drifting clouds of shrill feedback tones and shimmering metallic buzz that swirl over ominous minor-key synthesizer doom and distorted low-frequency throb. The track ebbs and flows across it's half hour expanse, and the feedback textures and waves of distortion are carefully sculpted into a strange environment that reminds me of Bastard Noise gone dark-ambient drone. From the excellent, eerie wasp photography in the package design, to the intricately assembled sound design, it's as if 20.SV was trying to create an ambient-blacknoise soundtrack to a nature program documenting malevolent insect life on some distant planet. Packaged in a full color wallet sleeve.

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20.SV has been releasing these grim aural prophecies for a couple of years, and Apocalyptic Desert is the third disc in the series, following Acid Vomit Human Genocide and Insects (both of which we also have in stock). It's the product of Lebanese experimental noise artist Xardas, who is also behind the ritualistic black industrial of Seeker, one of his other projects that we carry here at C-Blast. Where Seeker is heavy and bleak and drenched in black ambience, 20.SV is pure chaos, an assault of over the top harsh industrial noise that evokes visions of a blasted and ruined Earth poisoned by radioactivity and festering with the rotting refuse of humanity. All of these discs are challenging and extreme even by noise standards, and this one doesn't slack. One drawn out twenty-eight minute track of hideous low-end grind, decayed radio signals drifting over ultra-distorted guitar noise, overdriven synths and harsh, corrosive noise, distorted subsonic rumbles, electrical pulses and generator hum rising off of charged machinery, menacing midrange drones, and vicious bursts of high-end feedback and digital filth, occasionally revealing snippets of looped guitar melody rotting in the hulking mass of evil electronic scum that 20.SV strafes his apocalyptic wasteland with. Yikes. Gutteral, bestial vocals emerge as well, totally inhuman and sounding like the puking grunts and leprous vocalizations of some gamma-blasted hellspawn. It's like old Ramleh on steroids with psychotic goregrind vocals squirting out of the radioactive noise - terrifying, intensely grating stuff. Along the lines of projects like Navicon Torture Technoligies and Messiah Complex, but even more caustic. Comes in a full color wallet sleeve.
Track Samples:
Sample : Apocalyptic Desert

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This is a recent 3-song EP disc from Japan's finest executors of TERRORIZER/NAUSEA -influenced grindcore thrash, manned by former members of MELT BANANA, CROW, and a host of other Japanese thrash faves. These tunes are freaking FAST but shift away from the ultragrind DISCORDANCE AXIS worship of their previous releases...on this EP, 324 incorporates some heavy fucking crustcore velocity with cool melodic undertones (sort of like TRAGEDY), while still launching into those insane grindcore blasts. One of the best Japanese grind acts out there.

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Boutoku No Taiyo IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

We picked up a stack of the hard-to-find HG Fact release of 324's Boutoku No Taiyo LP direct from the band's Japanese label, HG Fact at a really cheap price; what we weren't aware of though was that these records all suffer from varying degrees of shelf wear, which we want to make very clear to anyone thinking about picking up this record. The vinyl is all in mint, unplayed condition, but the jackets for these records all have a visible amount of wear along the top half of the cover - not so bad that the artwork is messed up or anything, but enough is there that the jackets are basically "used" quality. That said, this is a crucial dose of crushing, vaguely arty Japanese grindcore, and we're offering these up SUPER CHEAP...we've only got 20 copies of the vinyl and will not be getting these back in stock!
The crucial 2000 mini-album from one of Japan's heaviest grindcore trios. Featuring former members of Melt Banana, Satanic Hell Slaughter, and Crow, 324 dropped this 14 song, 24 minute blast of primal blast energy at the turn of the century, and it remains one of the band's most crushing statements...noisy, controlled, HEAVY grindcore with an early Napalm Death/Earache Records vibe, ferocious and punk as fuck while having these really developed lyrical and thematic ideas happening alongside some amazing hooks and inventive riffing. Every song here is a skullcrusher, blasting out ultra catchy downtuned riffs over D-beat drumming and whirlwind blastbeats, deep, monstrous vocals, grooving sludgy breaks, and a general apocalyptic vibe, like a Japanese answer to the crusty grind of Terrorizer and Disassociate. There aren't that many bands that manage to be this artful and unrelentingly brutal and catchy at the same time, and it's not that surprising that Discordance Axis were BIG advocates for these guys while they were still around, going so far as to release this slab of grind genius on vinyl in the US via DA singer Jon Chang's Studio Grey imprint, and tour with 324 in Japan. Definitely something you should check out if you're into the more cerebral grind of bands like Pig Destroyer, Discordance Axis, Napalm Death, and Disassociate.

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324: our favorite Japanese grind band going right now, with their noisy, apocalyptic rush of metallic, ultraheavy grindpunk and dark vibes. Seriously awesome heaviness that's just as great as Napalm Death's best, and easily the most ferocious grind band to emerge from Japan since Die! You Bastard. Rebelgrind is the second full length from these Tokyo denizens after 10 years of crushing heads, and it delivers everything these cats excel at, moving between endtime hardcore that reminds us of Integrity and Tragedy, brutal and raw grind straight outta the Earache school of blast-thought, anthemic rock riffs transmitted at bone powdering density, and immense throat destruction that serves as a megaphone of nihilistic visions. Quality. 14 songs in half an hour. Dressed in weirdly esoteric artwork. Pretty crucial for fans of Napalm Death, Disassociate, Discordance Axis, Pig Destroyer, and any insane fast and crushing heaviness!

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Boutoku No Taiyo IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

The crucial 2000 mini-album from one of Japan's heaviest grindcore trios. Featuring former members of Melt Banana, Satanic Hell Slaughter, and Crow, 324 dropped this 14 song, 24 minute blast of primal blast energy at the turn of the century, and it remains one of the band's most crushing statements...noisy, controlled, HEAVY grindcore with an early Napalm Death/Earache Records vibe, ferocious and punk as fuck while having these really developed lyrical and thematic ideas happening alongside some amazing hooks and inventive riffing. Every song here is a skullcrusher, blasting out ultra catchy downtuned riffs over D-beat drumming and whirlwind blastbeats, deep, monstrous vocals, grooving sludgy breaks, and a general apocalyptic vibe, like a Japanese answer to the crusty grind of Terrorizer and Disassociate. There aren't that many bands that manage to be this artful and unrelentingly brutal and catchy at the same time, and it's not that surprising that Discordance Axis were BIG advocates for these guys while they were still around, going so far as to release this slab of grind genius on vinyl via DA singer Jon Chang's Studio Grey imprint, and tour with 324 in Japan. Definitely something you should check out if you're into the more cerebral grind of bands like Pig Destroyer, Discordance Axis, Napalm Death, and Disassociate.

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At long last, we've got the 324 back catalog on Japanese label HG Fact back in stock. Due to the crazy upward rise of the yen, these titles are more expensive now than the last time that we had them in stock, and it also looks like we're one of the only U.S. shops that have these on the shelves right now.
This is a recent 3-song EP disc from Japan's finest executors of TERRORIZER/NAUSEA -influenced grindcore thrash, manned by former members of MELT BANANA, CROW, and a host of other Japanese thrash faves. These tunes are freaking FAST but shift away from the ultragrind DISCORDANCE AXIS worship of their previous releases...on this EP, 324 incorporates some heavy fucking crustcore velocity with cool melodic undertones (sort of like TRAGEDY), while still launching into those insane grindcore blasts. One of the best Japanese grind acts out there.
Track Samples:
Sample : boutokunotaiyo
Sample : kage wo samayou

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At long last, we've got the 324 back catalog on Japanese label HG Fact back in stock. Due to the crazy upward rise of the yen, these titles are more expensive now than the last time that we had them in stock, and it also looks like we're one of the only U.S. shops that have these on the shelves right now.
The crucial 2000 mini-album from one of Japan's heaviest grindcore trios. Featuring former members of Melt Banana, Satanic Hell Slaughter, and Crow, 324 dropped this 14 song, 24 minute blast of primal blast energy at the turn of the century, and it remains one of the band's most crushing statements...noisy, controlled, HEAVY grindcore with an early Napalm Death/Earache Records vibe, ferocious and punk as fuck while having these really developed lyrical and thematic ideas happening alongside some amazing hooks and inventive riffing. Every song here is a skullcrusher, blasting out ultra catchy downtuned riffs over D-beat drumming and whirlwind blastbeats, deep, monstrous vocals, grooving sludgy breaks, and a general apocalyptic vibe, like a Japanese answer to the crusty grind of Terrorizer and Disassociate. There aren't that many bands that manage to be this artful and unrelentingly brutal and catchy at the same time, and it's not that surprising that Discordance Axis were BIG advocates for these guys while they were still around, going so far as to release this slab of grind genius on vinyl via DA singer Jon Chang's Studio Grey imprint, and tour with 324 in Japan. Definitely something you should check out if you're into the more cerebral grind of bands like Pig Destroyer, Discordance Axis, Napalm Death, and Disassociate.
Track Samples:
Sample : Broken Clock
Sample : Glenghost
Sample : Silence Before Silver Screen

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More unique, electronic/post-rock/avant pop from our current favorite Italian label, Small Voices. This debut full length from Italian trio 3EEM (comprised of saxophonist Fabrizio Bazzoni, guitarist Danilo Corgnati, and electronics tweaker Valerio Zucca Paul (aka Abstract Q) combines infectious avant-dub, spacey trip-hop beats, airy guitar drones a la Labradford , and circular krautrock with alternating melodic tenor sax lines and manic, nervous free blowing. The end result is totally hypnotic, like bits and pieces of a 60's spy film on endless repeat mashed up with electronic noise and static white-outs, trumpet solos, and Middle Eastern melodies. Pretty killer stuff, especially the album closer, "24 Apes", which clocks in at 24 minutes of loopy, jazzy, noisy bliss, like Fennesz and Scorn jamming with Massive Attack and Mogwai. An excellent hybrid of avant-jazz and post rock.

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The anxiously awaited new full length from LA's 400 BLOWS. Ignore the hype: these guys offer up a potent brand of stripped down, minimalist, mathy punk sludge, equal parts modern LA punk, Wire, and Eyehategod, all rapid sideways drumming, perforating atonal guitar, and singer Skot's sneering nasal assault. This new shit is way catchier than previous releases; a bunch of songs on Angel's Trumpets... almost sound like sing-songy schoolyard taunts, but with crushing axe riffage,obviously. A bruising follow up to Black Rainbow.

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A long awaited followup to The Telestic Disfracture from 2001 (has it really been that long?), the Boston drum n' guitar duo 5ive are back with a seven-song monolith of psychedelic riff metal that presents some of their most beautiful and earth-moving music yet. Hesperus surrounds itself in the misty atmosphere of the coastal environs of Gloucester, Massachusetts, from the evocative photos of the Gloucester waterfront that cover the album's digipack, to the song titles "Kettle Cove", "Big Sea", and album opener "Gulls", and taking it's titular inspiration from the classic macabre poem "The Wreck Of The Hesperus" from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The album kicks in with a searing machine drone as rumbling guitar distortion looms into view, and then erupts into thunderous drumming and massive riffing of "Gull", huge droning riffage and melodic guitar lines screaming through a wall of dense fuzzbox grit - and sounding more like a heavier, more hypnotic drone-rock version of Kyuss than I ever remember them sounding like before. From there, 5ive move into the vaguely arabesque swirl of "Big Sea", swirling drones and restrained rolling drums underpinning a series of gigantic repetitive riffs and proggy changeups. The rest of the album follows the same path, the two musicians crafting mighty riff/percussion raveups that go from quietly subdued valleys of simmering post-rock to explosive stoner-metal trances, and despite the hypnotic quality of the riffs and the absence of vocals, the ride is consistently engaging as Charlie Harrold thunders his way through constantly evolving rhtyhms and guitarist Ben Carr pairs his fuzzslab riffing with multilayered melodies and tons of drugtrip FX boxes. These guys were always one of my favorite instrumental bands, emitting a sonic power that totally belies their two- piece status. All of their releases are pretty essential if yer into this kind of hypnotic heavy rock, so check this out if the music of Kyuss, Loop, Pelican, Old Man Gloom, Earth and Tarantula Hawk all share shelf space in yer music collection. The CD is packaged in a high-gloss digipack with a big foldout 11" x 17" poster.
Track Samples:
Sample : Big Sea
Sample : 5IVE-Hesperus

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Versus, 5ive's follow up to last year's rad split 12" with Kid 606, is actually just a digital reformatting of the 2 songs that made up the 5ive side ("Reso-I" and "Soma"), with the addition of two excellent remixes from Justin Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh/Final) that bookend the 5ive tracks. The 5ive originals are mighty instrumental jams, possessed of the same dusty, Morricone-esque spirit as Earth's last two albums that cranking the distortion up when the duo kick into crushing dirge metal mode. The band's seemingly spare guitar/drums two-piece setup is pretty much forgotten by the time they launch into the first devestating riff. The album opens with "Soma Stage 1", the first part of Broadrick's remix, a spacey dirge that has that signature Jesu/bliss feel to it. That's followed by "Reso-I", a heavy and hypnotic slab of western-tinged post-rock with repetitive jangly guitar figures and rolling drums that builds into a massive meditative riff that rolls along on a huge droning groove. The second song, "Soma", is a devestatingly heavy sludge/math/post-rock avalanche that focuses on a wonderfully ominous central riff that builds in intensity until it crumbles into an effects-heavy spaceout. Broadrick's "Soma (Stage 2)" remix wraps Versus up with an eight minute heavy blissout that's worth picking up the disc for on it's own, a beautiful epic riff repeated over and over as continuous layers of backwards swirling keyboards and feedback are added, very Jesu/Mogwai like. Very cool!

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Another richly-textured distortion storm from RRR by someone called 666 Volt Battery Noise. I wasn't able to track down any information on this project anywhere, which sucks as I really enjoyed the turbulent brain-flattening this hour long disc laid on me. The four tracks on here are LONG, ranging from 9-23 minutes, and each one is a dense ocean of swarming, squiggling, fried-out distortion and feedback tones in the vein of The Rita, Cherry Point, and Knurl, with what sound to me like vocals run through a mile-long chain of distortion pedals. Now, maybe it's only because I've been listening to so much of this type of stuff lately that it's fucking with my inner ear, but 666 Volt's wash of noise feels a little, uh, softer, more hypnotic than what The Rita and Cherry Point are doing; listening to this disc makes me feel like someone has tossed my head into a concrete mixer filled with steel wool pads and set it to spin, a ""soft"" but abrasive blast of white noise enveloping your senses, the sound of billions of pixelated insects swarming in and around your skull, your third eye opening to reveal an eternity of buried riffs and melodies. Like I said, it's probably just me; this is some heavy duty distortion wipeout aktion. Packaged in a xerox-damaged wallet sleeve in the archetypal PURE/RRR steez.
Track Samples:
Sample : 666 VOLT BATTERY NOISE-Audio Super-Predator

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Another richly-textured distortion storm from RRR by someone called 666 Volt Battery Noise. I wasn't able to track down any information on this project anywhere, which sucks as I really enjoyed the turbulent brain-flattening this hour long disc laid on me. The four tracks on here are LONG, ranging from 9-23 minutes, and each one is a dense ocean of swarming, squiggling, fried-out distortion and feedback tones in the vein of The Rita, Cherry Point, and Knurl, with what sound to me like vocals run through a mile-long chain of distortion pedals. Now, maybe it's only because I've been listening to so much of this type of stuff lately that it's fucking with my inner ear, but 666 Volt's wash of noise feels a little, uh, softer, more hypnotic than what The Rita and Cherry Point are doing; listening to this disc makes me feel like someone has tossed my head into a concrete mixer filled with steel wool pads and set it to spin, a "soft" but abrasive blast of white noise enveloping your senses, the sound of billions of pixelated insects swarming in and around your skull, your third eye opening to reveal an eternity of buried riffs and melodies. Like I said, it's probably just me; this is some heavy duty distortion wipeout aktion. Packaged in a xerox-damaged wallet sleeve in the archetypal PURE/RRR steez.

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split IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

I'm amazed I was able to get this in stock - this incredibly hard to find 3" CD was released as a joint venture between Bizarre Leprous Productions and Merciless Core Records, two labels from the Czech Republic whom I've never had any luck with getting stuff from in the past, let alone a 3" CD released back in the late 90's that features two of the sickest improv-grind outfits of all time! Yeah, this disc is a must-have for fans of extreme grind/noisecore/noise, with one long track each from the Czech freegrind band PTAO and legendary teutonic destroyers 7 Minutes Of Nausea. PTAO starts it off with their untitled ten-and-a-half minutes of total blasting carnage, a demonic grindscape of echo-chamber grindcore, freeform punk slop, samples of orchestral Mozart pieces, and blast after blast of ripping formless death metal set to puree. This stuff is fucking awesome, and any fan of weirdo grindcore or noisecore who hasn't heard PTAO is going to crap themselves once they hear these maniacs.
Anybody that's already a fan of "noisecore" is undoubtedly familiar with 7 Minutes Of Nausea (or 7MON, as they are frequently abbreviated). Along with Anal Cunt, Meatshits, and Fear Of God, these guys were not only one of the more well known noisecore bands, but also one of the weirdest. Their contribution to this split is "Feedbackselfdeath", and like the PTAO material, it's one long track made up of a bunch of microsecond outbursts, but their stuff is even less musical and more bizarre than the PTAO side...it's tough to get across how fucked this actually sounds, and how psychotic it sounds: the whole track is a series of rumbling subsonic noise that might be a group of bass drums being tossed down an elevator shaft, over which the band layers harsh, sudden blasts of distorted guitar riffing that is blurred into pure noise, and creepy Gregorian monk chants. Each "song" is over in a matter of seconds, with those creeped out monk chants filling the space in between blasts. The vocals that are splattered over this fucked-up soundscape totally take the cake, though...switching between brutal gutteral grunts, deranged muttering and Infest-esque roaring, Mick from 7 Minutes Of Nausea delivers some of the craziest vocal sounds I've ever heard. The guy sounds like he's literally schizophrenic. If you're looking for some really way-out grind or intensely heavy free-noise stuff, this disc is right up yer alley. Comes in a 3" fold-out sleeve.

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Forced Boat IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Talk about a troubled release...this 7"" from Chicago comedy grinders 7000 Dying Rats was recorded back in 2002 but due to an assortment of pressing plant problems, many of which stemmed from the band's ""appropriation"" of various pop culture flotsam, this EP was delayed for years, and finally saw the light of day in 2006. It's kinda weird hearing 7000 Dying Rats back in action all of a sudden, with this ""lost"" EP finally coming out, the new Season In Hell album that just showed up, and the band being featured in a recent article on ""comedy grind"" in Decibel magazine. I thought their last album, Sound Of No Hands Clapping, was genius, a bizarro cut-n-paste freakout somewhere in between the Butthole Surfers, Anal Cunt, Naked City, and Lawnmower Deth, so all of this new Rats action is more than welcome.
The Forced Boat 7"" is a kind of hodgepodge of 7000 Dying Rats insanity, a collage of brutal grinding blurr, funereal violins, tape montages, with the EP's centerpieces consisting of a manic, drunken cover of 'Any Way You Want It', and a meth'd up rendition of Sabbath's 'Paranoid', the first half of which is delivered with distorted megaphone vocals and crunchy guitars, but then the second half is played on acoustic guitars and banjos. This is a very weird, very goofy EP that's not necessarly the best introduction to the Rats delirious assault (I'd direct the curious to check out either Season In Hell or Sounds Of No Hands Clapping first), but if you're already into these guys, the 10 minutes or so of ridiculousness on this platter is pretty zonked. Released in a a limited edition pressing of 440 copies on clear pink colored vinyl, in a full color sleeve with do-it-yourself 7"" center labels sporting the faces of Don Knotts and Steven Segal and an insert sheet describing the full saga of the EP's release.

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Chicago's 7000 Dying Rats return after five years of silence with a new full length of their self-styled ""comedy grind"" heaviness, loaded with 28 tracks of grindcore/goofball skit/genre-fucking weirdness that's so full of in-jokes that I gave up trying to keep up, and just let their insane, Naked City-style approach sweep me along in a wave of weirdness. If the album cover depicting a bat-winged Indian god farting bats out of it's ass in Hell doesn't clue you in to the brilliance of Season In Hell, you'll get the picture by song three. When these guys play it heavy, it's crushing, like with the ridiculously Slayerized deathcore of second song ""Altar Of Goat Skulls"", which takes a sudden left turn into cheesy Nightmare On Elm Street style synthesizers and samples from some obscure occult horror movie. Or the plodding Frostian sludge of ""Bigfoot Destroy"". I noticed that the metal songs and sections have a similiar sludgy thrash sound as Lair Of The Minotaur, due in no small part to Lair guitarists Steve Rathbone and Donald James Barraca both playing in 7000 Dying Rats. Weasel Walter from Flying Luttenbachers plays drums as well, along with a constantly shifting lineup that reads like a who's who of the Chicago underground. And of course there are all of the goofy bits in between the heavier stuff, like tons of awesomely cheesy 80's style keyboard interludes, atonal violin scraping, terminally dumb white-boy hip-hop, the heartfelt ballad ""Your Studied Indifference is Duly Noted"", the glammy cock rocker ""Rock n Roll Weapon"" that coulda been an Eagles Of Death Metal b-side. 7000 Dying Rats also turn Sabbath's ""Paranoid"" into a tripped-out techno/bluegrass meltdown, and present us with ""Hellcatcher"", a retarded medley of satanic bass-noise and live recordings of drunken covers of Journey's ""Any Way You Want It"" and Judas Priest's ""Living After Midnight"". “Ballad of Chico” is a hilarious, epic space-prog freakout. And Scott Kelley from Neurosis appears on ""A Real Kneeslapper"", a weird ambient-drone track with Kelley telling a story that I'm still not getting. The whole album is confusing like that, blenderizing off-the-cuff silliness, metal parody, bits of stage and studio banter, and genuine grind/death devestation.

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After a long while, this classic piece of retarded genius is back in stock! 7000 Dying Rats have been appearing on the radar a bit over the past year with that killer new album on He Who Corrupts and a 7" that came out on Scenester Credentials, but it was their second album from 2001 that the Chicago comedy grinders released on Tumult that first put them on the map. The band's lineup featured a who's-who of the then-current Chicago metal/noise underground, including Weasel Walter of the Flying Luttenbachers/Hatewave/Lake Of Dracula on drums and Steve Rathbone from Lair Of The Minotaur, and they deliver an often confusional but tightly executed collage of extreme grind, fucked up comedy bits and hilariously stoopid sampling, and some more experimental, abstract shit. The humour tends towards weird in-jokes that probably only the members of 7000 Dying Rats actually "get", but that doesn't make this any less entertaining, especially if you dig it when genre-hopping grind is capable of getting this fucking absurd. "The Queen Of Vermin" opens the album with John Carpenter-esque synthesizers, orchestral samples, and a woman's voice announcing the coming rat apocalypse, and then rips into "This Close"'s crazed onslaught of raw, metallic grind and rippin' NWOBHM riffage. That segues into the retarded hard rock jam "Strippers On Ecstacy", completed with nut-grabbing falsetto crooning, and the even goofier medley of Beverley Hills 90210 samples and noisecore blast of "Rat's Ass (Judas Priestly)". The rest of the album continues on an increasingly ridiculous trajectory of brutal grind and full-blown noisecore spliced with synth pop, surprisingly adept funk jams, comedy skits on par with Neil Hamburger, lot's of 80's hair metal love, creepazoid Italian cannibal movie tributes, tape collage, and brain damaged hip-hop. It's easy to compare this to Mr. Bungle, but these guys are WAY more heavy and brutal, heavy on the grind and ass-rock, performed by terminal heshers completely wasted on cheap beer and dirtweed but still sentient enough to construct some seriously brainfucking cut-and-paste grind damage. Obviously, if you're a fan of bands like Anal Cunt, Mr. Bungle, Fuck...I'm Dead, and even the genre splicing of Naked City (though this shit is way more rough around the edges) and the whacked out death metal of Faxed Head, this'll be right up yer alley.

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Forced Boat IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Talk about a troubled release...this 7" from Chicago comedy grinders 7000 Dying Rats was recorded back in 2002 but due to an assortment of pressing plant problems, many of which stemmed from the band's "appropriation" of various pop culture flotsam, this EP was delayed for years, and finally saw the light of day in 2006. It's kinda weird hearing 7000 Dying Rats back in action all of a sudden, with this "lost" EP finally coming out, the new Season In Hell album that just showed up, and the band being featured in a recent article on "comedy grind" in Decibel magazine. I thought their last album, Sound Of No Hands Clapping, was genius, a bizarro cut-n-paste freakout somewhere in between the Butthole Surfers, Anal Cunt, Naked City, and Lawnmower Deth, so all of this new Rats action is more than welcome.
The Forced Boat 7" is a kind of hodgepodge of 7000 Dying Rats insanity, a collage of brutal grinding blurr, funereal violins, tape montages, with the EP's centerpieces consisting of a manic, drunken cover of 'Any Way You Want It', and a meth'd up rendition of Sabbath's 'Paranoid', the first half of which is delivered with distorted megaphone vocals and crunchy guitars, but then the second half is played on acoustic guitars and banjos. This is a very weird, very goofy EP that's not necessarly the best introduction to the Rats delirious assault (I'd direct the curious to check out either Season In Hell or Sounds Of No Hands Clapping first), but if you're already into these guys, the 10 minutes or so of ridiculousness on this platter is pretty zonked. Released in a a limited edition pressing of 440 copies on clear pink colored vinyl, in a full color sleeve with do-it-yourself 7" center labels sporting the faces of Don Knotts and Steven Segal and an insert sheet describing the full saga of the EP's release.

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Chicago's 7000 Dying Rats return after five years of silence with a new full length of their self-styled "comedy grind" heaviness, loaded with 28 tracks of grindcore/goofball skit/genre-fucking weirdness that's so full of in-jokes that I gave up trying to keep up, and just let their insane, Naked City-style approach sweep me along in a wave of weirdness. If the album cover depicting a bat-winged Indian god farting bats out of it's ass in Hell doesn't clue you in to the brilliance of Season In Hell, you'll get the picture by song three. When these guys play it heavy, it's crushing, like with the ridiculously Slayerized deathcore of second song "Altar Of Goat Skulls", which takes a sudden left turn into cheesy Nightmare On Elm Street style synthesizers and samples from some obscure occult horror movie. Or the plodding Frostian sludge of "Bigfoot Destroy". I noticed that the metal songs and sections have a similiar sludgy thrash sound as Lair Of The Minotaur, due in no small part to Lair guitarists Steve Rathbone and Donald James Barraca both playing in 7000 Dying Rats. Weasel Walter from Flying Luttenbachers plays drums as well, along with a constantly shifting lineup that reads like a who's who of the Chicago underground. And of course there are all of the goofy bits in between the heavier stuff, like tons of awesomely cheesy 80's style keyboard interludes, atonal violin scraping, terminally dumb white-boy hip-hop, the heartfelt ballad "Your Studied Indifference is Duly Noted", the glammy cock rocker "Rock n Roll Weapon" that coulda been an Eagles Of Death Metal b-side. 7000 Dying Rats also turn Sabbath's "Paranoid" into a tripped-out techno/bluegrass meltdown, and present us with "Hellcatcher", a retarded medley of satanic bass-noise and live recordings of drunken covers of Journey's "Any Way You Want It" and Judas Priest's "Living After Midnight". “Ballad of Chico” is a hilarious, epic space-prog freakout. And Scott Kelley from Neurosis appears on "A Real Kneeslapper", a weird ambient-drone track with Kelley telling a story that I'm still not getting. The whole album is confusing like that, blenderizing off-the-cuff silliness, metal parody, bits of stage and studio banter, and genuine grind/death devestation.

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This collaboration between A Crown Of Amaranth and Conversations About The Light came out about a year ago on the Italian label Eibon, but I accidently buried the copies that we got for Crucial Blast in a corner of the C-Blast warehouse, which were just discovered when we were moving everything into a larger location recently. I've been a fan of both of these projects individually for awhile now, releasing a CD-R from A Crown Of Amaranth through the Crucial Bliss series about 2 years ago that was an amazing collection of deep-space drone n' megaheavy metallic abstraction, and carrying multiple releases of intense ambient electronic doom and black drift from Conversations About The Light. So the idea of an album of music created by both artists working together sounded like it was going to be amazing. And it definitely is. The Clearing is a concept album, with each track corresponding to a chapter in a short story that is printed in the 12-page booklet, which follows a character named Espin and his slow, surreal descent into insanity. The music beings with "Power Outage Tapestries", a horrific blast of disembodied black metal guitars floating far off in the blackness behind drifiting minor key synth pulses and fearsome distorted roars, almost sounding like a more ambient Xasthur track. After this, the album makes it's way through a changing landscape populated by serene black ambience, field recordings of dogs barking, skittering electronic textures, solemn melodies being played on what sound like processed electric guitars, crushing stygian drone a la Lustmord or Gruntsplatter combined with the sounds of a shovel digging at earth, psychedelic noise and field recordings stitched together into nightmarish collages, serene post-rock melodies swimming in reverb and drifting lazily backwards, blasts of ghoulish feedback, John Carpenter-style synth pulses, monstrous synthetic industrial dirges, all ending in a flurry of chirping songbirds. It's a deeply unsettling, strangely beautiful slab of abstract blackness, similiar to the last two Vomit Orchestra discs that we listed in last week's update, combining harsh electronic noise, dark ambient, musique concrete, and blackened guitars into a worldess nightmare narrative.

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Whoa, this German band's 12" full length tore face off instantly with it's raging, chaotic amalgam of arty, chaotic hardcore and progressive jazz-grind. Featuring members of Calling Gina Clark and The Apoplexy Twist Orchestra, these guys deliver impossibly complex Dillnger Escape Plan-esque fretboard meltdown and convoluted song structures over a relentless, stuttering, dissonant assault of Per Koro style Teutonic hardcore and ferocious wall-of-noise grind that is broken up with passages of spacey, psychedelic jazz and shimmery drones. Imagine a fusion of jazz-grind masters Virulence, screamy modern hardcore like Off Minor, Saetia, and Forstella Ford, and the apocalyptic crush of Systral. This album is totally nuts, a mind-bending anarchic avant-hardcore/grind riot from the same label that brought us that kickass White Mice live CD-R and the Cousins Of Reggae LP. The vinyl is housed in a cool black/white/grey screenprinted jacket with glossy insert sleeve.

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This EP is the first new release from this German avant-grind that we've heard since that blazing LP that came out on Oh No No a couple of years ago. I've been hoping that I'd get to hear some more of their cacophonic, jazz-damaged blastcore, and while this disc is a total tease with only three songs and a mere twelve minutes of music, this stuff really kills. A Fine Boat, That Coffin impressed us before with their churning complex brand of art-damaged grindcore that seemed to combine that 90's fall-on-the-floor Gravity sound with raging grind and even some of that awesome Per Koro/Bremen sound, and these three jams continue in that vein, each song stiched from impossibly complex shredding, eerie samples, insanely technical song arrangements, high pitch shrieking vocals, monstrous slow-motion doom, and seething dissonant riffs that recall the ferocious sounds of bands like Acme and Morser. But those dark jazz parts that the band breaks off into every now and then are what make this really unique. The jazz stuff is an acquired taste, but if the idea of hearing a band that mixes together the tricky jazz-grind of Virulence with the armageddon blast of Systral sounds like a rad idea to you, then this band is what is you need. Dark, proggy, immensely heavy and chaotic, A Fine Boat The Coffin is primo weirdo grind, and this EP has been getting a ton of play around the Crucial Blast office. The disc has a killer visual presentation too, packaged in a full color jewel case and pressed onto a clear cd.
Track Samples:
Sample : Morse Zeichen
Sample : Zettel und Stift

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This killer new Midwestern avant-grindcore outfit debuts with this six song CD of paranoid, cerebral heaviness that is influenced and informed by the dystopian sci-fi works of writer Philip K. Dick. One not need be familiar with Dick's writing, however, to get your hooks dug into A Scanner Darkly's futurist grind/sludge/drone/noise, generated from a surprisingly dense guitar/drums/keyboards/vocals lineup, and rife with lethal post-Slayer thrash riffs, strangely catchy major-key doom rock breakdowns and alien sludge crawl like Black Mayonnaise doing some weird variation on mathy metalcore, squalls of sweet luscious feedback overdrive (these guys LOVE feedback) and squealing free-guitar/amp freakout, bright major-key futuristic fastcore meltdown, with the final looong track "Four Years, False memories" sounding akin to Earth and K.K. Null channeling the sounds of an intergalactic cruiser moving through deep space while a loop of Japanese singing spirals into out into the blackness. Haunting stuff. A Scanner Darkly moves between the spheres of intelli-grind populated by Pig Destroyer and Discordance Axis, monstrous ultra-drone a la Sunn and Earth, Nasum's blazing blastcrust, and a whopping spurt of Melvins worship. A thoroughly weird and wonderful neo-grind blast, we can't wait to hear more from these cats.

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Here's some screamy modern hardcore of the darkest variety. The A side is "Your Concrete Eyes", a dirgy, heavy sludgepunk blast with nasty ripped-throat shrieks and splattered in waves of feedback delay. Side B opens with "Cancer Is The Cure", an apocalyptic tantrum of blackened metalcore and crushing riffage ending in brutal noise spasm, and closes with the scratchy,crackling loops and awesomely messy grindthrash of "Step Off The Corpse Path", complete with a bass guitar breakdown that made me want to tear the walls down. Definitely one of the best hardcore EP's I've laid my mitts on in 2005, falling somewhere between modern metallic 'core and TRAGEDY/FROM ASHES RISE crust epics but with some vicious noise and feedback abuse added for good measure. Mastered by Jim Plotkin (OLD, KHANATE), and comes housed in a super nice silkscreened sleeve with neat ink interplay/graphics.

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Also available on limited edition colored vinyl, swirled red/black/clear wax, in a gorgeous heavy gatefold package that also includes a digital download card for the entire album.
Starting with their 2008 debut and the amazing split with Nadja Primitive North, A Storm Of Light have quickly risen above the rest in a sea of bands following in the footsteps of Neurosis. It helps when you have an actual member of Neurosis on board, and Josh Graham (also of Red Sparowes and Battle Of Mice) brings a very similar apocalyptic vibe to his new band, mixing together slow, leaden metallic heaviness and epic rock steeped in portentous atmosphere. The first album didn't bother hiding it's origins in the end-time sludge-metal of Neurosis, but Forgive Us Our Trespasses, the band's second full length, sees A Storm Of Light evolving their sound into something both doomier and more accessible, thanks in large part to Graham's powerful, emotive vocals. As with the previous releases, the prophetic ecological nightmares of industrial collapse and the almost suffocating sense of foreboding ride on massive waves of tectonic heaviness, but where the debut rose directly from the raw genetic matter of Neurosis with only a subtle extrapolation on that band's signature sound, A Storm Of Light sounds a little more symphonic this time around, with lush electronic textures accompanying the massive riffs, the prominent use of cello and violin on several tracks, and the presence of three female singers who have been brought in to contribute a mix of vocal styles. There's even a banjo that appears on the three "Law Of Nature" tracks that are spread across the album, which also features Lydia Lunch doing a spoken-word thing over the delicate twang and eerie ambience...creepy stuff. One of the other guest singers is Jarboe from Swans, who lends her ethereal voice to two different songs ("The Light In Their Eyes" and "Across The Wilderness"); Nerissa Campbell (who also appeared on Primitve North) sings on another three tracks (" Amber Waves Of Gray", "Arc Of Failure (Law Of Nature Pt 2)" and " Mindnight"). This array of female voices and the dark washes of orchestral strings (courtesy of Marika Hughes of Charming Hostess and Carla Kihlstedt of Charming Hostess/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) turn A Storm Of Light's massive slow-motion metal into majestic slabs of sound, their oceanic riffage and soaring vocals mixing with soundtrack-style synthesizers and strings and haunting ambience and ultimately sounding fairly different from Neurosis, spacey and cinematic and lush. Of course, Neurosis fans are going to love this, but these guys are definitely growing into their own sound. The disc is gorgeously packaged with a thick booklet and comes in a printed o-card, all of which have the same sort of digitally manipulated photo-collage artwork that appeared on their previous releases, a now signature visual aesthetic that depicts surreal ruined cityscapes and abandoned technology overrun by wildlife and geological upheaval.
Track Samples:
Sample : Alpha - Law Of Nature Part I
Sample : Amber Waves Of Gay
Sample : The Light In Their Eyes
Sample : Midnight

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In the great orbit that surrounds the bright burning creative nexus that is Neurosis, there have been a multitude of musical projects from the members that seem to reach out towards every possible corner of dark, underground sonics. Blood And Time, Tribes Of Neurot, Culper Ring, Harvestman, Red Sparowes, Battle Of Mice, and A Storm Of Light are all occasional projects or full-blown bands that members have branched out with, and out of all of these, A Storm Of Light is the heaviest, and the closest sonically to the massive tribal metal of Neurosis. This new band was formed by Josh Graham, the visual/video artist for Neurosis who has also worked with Battle Of Mice and Red Sparowes over the past few years (all of which are amazing bands, especially Battle Of Mice, whose debut album was one of my favorite albums of 2006 and contained an intensely personal soul excavation through the combined weight of metallic dirge, Julie Christmas' intoxicating vocals, and gripping ethereal rock), and he's joined by members of Tombs, Satanized, and most impressively, the mighty Vinnie Signorelli from Swans/Unsane/Foetus on drums. I'm a megafan of every band that Vinnie has been involved with, and it was his name that initially drew me to check out the debut from A Storm Of Light. I was a little surprised at first by how much this new band sounds like Neurosis themselves, all the way down to Graham's gravelly growl, lumbering minor-key riffs, and the brooding, apocalyptic dirges that drive most of the music on And We Wept The Black Ocean Within; in fact, you could put this on back to back with Neurosis' 2007 album Given To The Rising and stylistically, the two albums would flow together almost seamlessly. There are some special touches that A Storm Of Light apply to their take on this sound, like in "Vast And Endless" where the band lays down a crushing compressed Godflesh like rhythm that continues throughout the album. And the band creates dense layers of electronic noise and cinematic synthesizer ambience in each song that give this a spacier feel than the last Neurosis album. The songs are tied together by dark themes of oceanic destruction and drowning that fit the pressurized dirges, and several interludes appear in between the larger metallic tracks, brief flashes of ominous tidal drift and weeping piano melodies, swirling aquatic drones and symphonies of creaking ships that rumble in the darkness for an eternity. A companion piece to the Neurosis catalog, no doubt, but one with an almost orchestral feel that will fully satiate anyone jonesing for the next Neurosis album to appear.
Track Samples:
Sample : Black Ocean
Sample : Wast and Endless

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Also available as a beautiful heavyweight double LP gatefold, on limited edition colored vinyl!
In the great orbit that surrounds the bright burning creative nexus that is Neurosis, there have been a multitude of musical projects from the members that seem to reach out towards every possible corner of dark, underground sonics. Blood And Time, Tribes Of Neurot, Culper Ring, Harvestman, Red Sparowes, Battle Of Mice, and A Storm Of Light are all occasional projects or full-blown bands that members have branched out with, and out of all of these, A Storm Of Light is the heaviest, and the closest sonically to the massive tribal metal of Neurosis. This new band was formed by Josh Graham, the visual/video artist for Neurosis who has also worked with Battle Of Mice and Red Sparowes over the past few years (all of which are amazing bands, especially Battle Of Mice, whose debut album was one of my favorite albums of 2006 and contained an intensely personal soul excavation through the combined weight of metallic dirge, Julie Christmas' intoxicating vocals, and gripping ethereal rock), and he's joined by members of Tombs, Satanized, and most impressively, the mighty Vinnie Signorelli from Swans/Unsane/Foetus on drums. I'm a megafan of every band that Vinnie has been involved with, and it was his name that initially drew me to check out the debut from A Storm Of Light. I was a little surprised at first by how much this new band sounds like Neurosis themselves, all the way down to Graham's gravelly growl, lumbering minor-key riffs, and the brooding, apocalyptic dirges that drive most of the music on And We Wept The Black Ocean Within; in fact, you could put this on back to back with Neurosis' 2007 album Given To The Rising and stylistically, the two albums would flow together almost seamlessly. There are some special touches that A Storm Of Light apply to their take on this sound, like in "Vast And Endless" where the band lays down a crushing compressed Godflesh like rhythm that continues throughout the album. And the band creates dense layers of electronic noise and cinematic synthesizer ambience in each song that give this a spacier feel than the last Neurosis album. The songs are tied together by dark themes of oceanic destruction and drowning that fit the pressurized dirges, and several interludes appear in between the larger metallic tracks, brief flashes of ominous tidal drift and weeping piano melodies, swirling aquatic drones and symphonies of creaking ships that rumble in the darkness for an eternity. A companion piece to the Neurosis catalog, no doubt, but one with an almost orchestral feel that will fully satiate anyone jonesing for the next Neurosis album to appear.
Track Samples:
Sample : Black Ocean
Sample : Wast and Endless

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Starting with their 2008 debut and the amazing split with Nadja Primitive North, A Storm Of Light have quickly risen above the rest in a sea of bands following in the footsteps of Neurosis. It helps when you have an actual member of Neurosis on board, and Josh Graham (also of Red Sparowes and Battle Of Mice) brings a very similar apocalyptic vibe to his new band, mixing together slow, leaden metallic heaviness and epic rock steeped in portentous atmosphere. The first album didn't bother hiding it's origins in the end-time sludge-metal of Neurosis, but Forgive Us Our Trespasses, the band's second full length, sees A Storm Of Light evolving their sound into something both doomier and more accessible, thanks in large part to Graham's powerful, emotive vocals. As with the previous releases, the prophetic ecological nightmares of industrial collapse and the almost suffocating sense of foreboding ride on massive waves of tectonic heaviness, but where the debut rose directly from the raw genetic matter of Neurosis with only a subtle extrapolation on that band's signature sound, A Storm Of Light sounds a little more symphonic this time around, with lush electronic textures accompanying the massive riffs, the prominent use of cello and violin on several tracks, and the presence of three female singers who have been brought in to contribute a mix of vocal styles. There's even a banjo that appears on the three "Law Of Nature" tracks that are spread across the album, which also features Lydia Lunch doing a spoken-word thing over the delicate twang and eerie ambience...creepy stuff. One of the other guest singers is Jarboe from Swans, who lends her ethereal voice to two different songs ("The Light In Their Eyes" and "Across The Wilderness"); Nerissa Campbell (who also appeared on Primitve North) sings on another three tracks (" Amber Waves Of Gray", "Arc Of Failure (Law Of Nature Pt 2)" and " Mindnight"). This array of female voices and the dark washes of orchestral strings (courtesy of Marika Hughes of Charming Hostess and Carla Kihlstedt of Charming Hostess/Sleepytime Gorilla Museum) turn A Storm Of Light's massive slow-motion metal into majestic slabs of sound, their oceanic riffage and soaring vocals mixing with soundtrack-style synthesizers and strings and haunting ambience and ultimately sounding fairly different from Neurosis, spacey and cinematic and lush. Of course, Neurosis fans are going to love this, but these guys are definitely growing into their own sound. The disc is gorgeously packaged with a thick booklet and comes in a printed o-card, all of which have the same sort of digitally manipulated photo-collage artwork that appeared on their previous releases, a now signature visual aesthetic that depicts surreal ruined cityscapes and abandoned technology overrun by wildlife and geological upheaval.
Track Samples:
Sample : Alpha - Law Of Nature Part I
Sample : Amber Waves Of Gay
Sample : The Light In Their Eyes
Sample : Midnight

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The debut album from A Storm Of Light (reviewed and listed here at C-Blast a few months ago) was terrific, a killer slab of oceanic-themed Neurosis influenced tribal sludge that delivered both crushing metallic weight and a moody, Swans-esque feel, which makes since seeing as how the band features members of both of those bands. Now we've got this new record from A Storm Of Light, and it's shared with our favorite dreamsludge duo Nadja, with both bands teaming up for a colossal slab of dreamy, industrial-tinged ambient dirge-metal massiveness.
The first side consists of two tracks from A Storm Of Light, titled "Brother" and "Sister". "Brother" starts off, a dark brooding dirge of swirling keyboards and pounding drums, alternating sections of expansive low-end drift, dubby martial snares and deep, crooning male vocals trading off against a dreamy female voice against the bombastic choruses where the band erupts from the brooding Swans-like tension into massive Neurosis/Isis style heaviness. Guitars grind and rumble, the male vocals explode into furious roaring, the drums switch from the glacial industrial pummel to rolling waves of thunderous crush, building into a symphonic dirge that moves in oceanic swells of volume and power. The end of the song drifts off on waves of buzzing cosmic drone, then lurches into "Sister", where the band changes into a more angular, shambling dirge. The vocals are more strained and sinister sounding on this one, and the guitars are matched by an equally heavy layer of howling synthesizers and somber minor key piano, with synths everywhere sparking off whooshing space effects and trippy effects. The heaviness peels back a few minutes in, exposing a lengthy passage of soft guitar playing, distant tribal drums pounding way off behind veils of smoke and fog, the male vocals sounding much like the singer from the Church all of a sudden, the female singer becoming much more prominent as their two voices entertwine, the grinding guitars and rumbling drones finally surging back up to the surface and washing over the song, finishing it out in a crushing, super heavy metallic dirge thats intensely epic and dramatic.
On their side, Nadja follow up with a single massive track called "I Make From Your Eyes The Sun". It begins as a soft, hushed haze of dolorous guitar chords, minimal percussion and muted feedback droning in the background, the drums soft and brushed as a gorgeous piano line slowly enters in surrounded by all kinds of ethereal drones and barely-percerptible chimes and streaks of backwards guitar. It's soft and beautiful and immensely dreamy, and slowly grows into a cloudburst of ultra distorted heaviness signaled by a booming drumroll a couple of minutes in. Less grinding and industrial sounding as some of Nadja's recent stuff, here the guitars are wrapped in glorious gauzy fuzz, thick and syrupy, melting over the minimal mechanical drums, Aidan's dreamy vocals blurred and warped by the swirling waves of fuzz and hiss. A glacial, noise-drenched pop melody is drowned in the dense distortion and caustic buzz, and it starts to sound like a massively distorted Slowdive, all shoegazey and swirled with strange flute-like fluttering, but still extremely heavy, particularly when the riff becomes darker and doomier in the middle, turning into an almost Godflesh-like mecha-groove grinding through the airy feedback and swirling clouds of buzz. Towards the end, this crushing metallic riff is absorbed into a thick soup of blissed out synth, the whole sound boiling down into a smeared expanse of deconstructed rhythms and fractured drum machine pummel, guitars blossoming into formless layers of glorious orchestral drone, until the song finally fades out in a haze of backwards melody and murky buzz.
The third side features the last two tracks, both of which are remix/collaborations between the two bands. The first one has Nadja taking the A Storm Of Light song "Brother" and mutating it into something much closer to Nadja's sound, muting the crushing metallic guitars and pounding tribal rhythms into a tidal surge of low-end rumble and oceanic swells of feedback. At first it's all soft and eerie, the looped guitars washed in reverb and echo, swirling synthesizers, smears of backwards percussion and melody appearing across the blurred expanse of drone, then suddenly an utterly monstrous sludge riff drops in with zero warning, the dirge-metal crush made even heavier by Nadja's layering of additional feedback and synths and oppressive night-sky ambience, the riff and lumbering drums wound into an infinite loop, everything distorted and bathed in effects, and eventually the drums fade off, leaving just the massive swirl of distorted riffage and rumbling feedback floating through space. And on the last track, A Storm Of Light does the reverse, taking the Nadja song and reshaping it into something very different from the original. The riffs and beats are taken apart and restructured into something darker and more electronic sounding, the vocals way up front and much more prominent, the riff barely recognizeable as it's blurred into a creepy ambient buzz, the drums cut up into fragmented beats, all very industrial sounding; when the drums drop out towards the end, it turns into a seriously dark piece of gothic ambience as vocals and looping synth melody and noisy, pneumatic sounds drift skyward, contorting into a weird psychedelic coda at the very end.
And then there is the fourth side, which doesn't have any music; instead, it's an eye-popping laser etching that features an amazingly detailed piece of artwork cut into the vinyl, one of the coolest etchings that I've seen. Both records are pressed on a dark, gorgeous black/red vinyl coloration, and the whole thing is presented with one of the coolest vinyl packages that I've seen lately, which is no surprise seeing as how this came out on Robotic Empire. The heavy gatefold jacket features amazing full color artwork depicting a bizarre arctic fantasy world of polar bears and snow owls and ancient crumbling monuments, all resting beneath a vast black sky filled with aurora borealis and distant galaxies, and inside there's a full color lyric insert as well as a CD version of the album that contains all of the music. Seriously recommended!

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Now available on "Aurora Forge" (red/grey) colored vinyl.
The debut album from A Storm Of Light (reviewed and listed here at C-Blast a few months ago) was terrific, a killer slab of oceanic-themed Neurosis influenced tribal sludge that delivered both crushing metallic weight and a moody, Swans-esque feel, which makes since seeing as how the band features members of both of those bands. Now we've got this new record from A Storm Of Light, and it's shared with our favorite dreamsludge duo Nadja, with both bands teaming up for a colossal slab of dreamy, industrial-tinged ambient dirge-metal massiveness.
The first side consists of two tracks from A Storm Of Light, titled "Brother" and "Sister". "Brother" starts off, a dark brooding dirge of swirling keyboards and pounding drums, alternating sections of expansive low-end drift, dubby martial snares and deep, crooning male vocals trading off against a dreamy female voice against the bombastic choruses where the band erupts from the brooding Swans-like tension into massive Neurosis/Isis style heaviness. Guitars grind and rumble, the male vocals explode into furious roaring, the drums switch from the glacial industrial pummel to rolling waves of thunderous crush, building into a symphonic dirge that moves in oceanic swells of volume and power. The end of the song drifts off on waves of buzzing cosmic drone, then lurches into "Sister", where the band changes into a more angular, shambling dirge. The vocals are more strained and sinister sounding on this one, and the guitars are matched by an equally heavy layer of howling synthesizers and somber minor key piano, with synths everywhere sparking off whooshing space effects and trippy effects. The heaviness peels back a few minutes in, exposing a lengthy passage of soft guitar playing, distant tribal drums pounding way off behind veils of smoke and fog, the male vocals sounding much like the singer from the Church all of a sudden, the female singer becoming much more prominent as their two voices entertwine, the grinding guitars and rumbling drones finally surging back up to the surface and washing over the song, finishing it out in a crushing, super heavy metallic dirge thats intensely epic and dramatic.
On their side, Nadja follow up with a single massive track called "I Make From Your Eyes The Sun". It begins as a soft, hushed haze of dolorous guitar chords, minimal percussion and muted feedback droning in the background, the drums soft and brushed as a gorgeous piano line slowly enters in surrounded by all kinds of ethereal drones and barely-percerptible chimes and streaks of backwards guitar. It's soft and beautiful and immensely dreamy, and slowly grows into a cloudburst of ultra distorted heaviness signaled by a booming drumroll a couple of minutes in. Less grinding and industrial sounding as some of Nadja's recent stuff, here the guitars are wrapped in glorious gauzy fuzz, thick and syrupy, melting over the minimal mechanical drums, Aidan's dreamy vocals blurred and warped by the swirling waves of fuzz and hiss. A glacial, noise-drenched pop melody is drowned in the dense distortion and caustic buzz, and it starts to sound like a massively distorted Slowdive, all shoegazey and swirled with strange flute-like fluttering, but still extremely heavy, particularly when the riff becomes darker and doomier in the middle, turning into an almost Godflesh-like mecha-groove grinding through the airy feedback and swirling clouds of buzz. Towards the end, this crushing metallic riff is absorbed into a thick soup of blissed out synth, the whole sound boiling down into a smeared expanse of deconstructed rhythms and fractured drum machine pummel, guitars blossoming into formless layers of glorious orchestral drone, until the song finally fades out in a haze of backwards melody and murky buzz.
The third side features the last two tracks, both of which are remix/collaborations between the two bands. The first one has Nadja taking the A Storm Of Light song "Brother" and mutating it into something much closer to Nadja's sound, muting the crushing metallic guitars and pounding tribal rhythms into a tidal surge of low-end rumble and oceanic swells of feedback. At first it's all soft and eerie, the looped guitars washed in reverb and echo, swirling synthesizers, smears of backwards percussion and melody appearing across the blurred expanse of drone, then suddenly an utterly monstrous sludge riff drops in with zero warning, the dirge-metal crush made even heavier by Nadja's layering of additional feedback and synths and oppressive night-sky ambience, the riff and lumbering drums wound into an infinite loop, everything distorted and bathed in effects, and eventually the drums fade off, leaving just the massive swirl of distorted riffage and rumbling feedback floating through space. And on the last track, A Storm Of Light does the reverse, taking the Nadja song and reshaping it into something very different from the original. The riffs and beats are taken apart and restructured into something darker and more electronic sounding, the vocals way up front and much more prominent, the riff barely recognizeable as it's blurred into a creepy ambient buzz, the drums cut up into fragmented beats, all very industrial sounding; when the drums drop out towards the end, it turns into a seriously dark piece of gothic ambience as vocals and looping synth melody and noisy, pneumatic sounds drift skyward, contorting into a weird psychedelic coda at the very end.
And then there is the fourth side, which doesn't have any music; instead, it's an eye-popping laser etching that features an amazingly detailed piece of artwork cut into the vinyl, one of the coolest etchings that I've seen. Both records are pressed on a dark, gorgeous red/grey vinyl coloration, and the whole thing is presented with one of the coolest vinyl packages that I've seen lately, which is no surprise seeing as how this came out on Robotic Empire. The heavy gatefold jacket features amazing full color artwork depicting a bizarre arctic fantasy world of polar bears and snow owls and ancient crumbling monuments, all resting beneath a vast black sky filled with aurora borealis and distant galaxies, and inside there's a full color lyric insert as well as a CD version of the album that contains all of the music. Seriously recommended!

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Hail the Black Goat, once again. All of the stuff that the label has been putting out from this small, incestuous circle of blackdoom/industrial noise obsessed freaks has been consistently satisfying. The debut from A Taste For Decay comes out of that same grimy, necrotic dronecult and features one of the members from Welter In Thy Blood, another of the Black Goat affiliated groups, as well as a guest appearance from Alan Dubin (Gnaw/Khanate/OLD) who lends his demonic vocalizations to one of the longer tracks on the disc. The sound is less metallic and riff-based than the other bands on the label, but these six tracks of occult black ambience and abstract doom are still plenty heavy, blended together into a blackened, nightmare soundscape.
The first track is all filthy, rumbling drones carved out of distorted guitar and molten feedback, cutting through thick grinding industrial blackness that stretches out into infinity, endless oceanic waves of minimal low-end thrum, and disturbed by ominous creaking sounds, like hearing a rotting ship adrift on a stygian sunless sea and navigating towards the keening siren of feedback in the distance.
The next track is a Nurse With Wound-esque nightmare of random creepiness, starting off with weird, monstrous chuckling, clanking chains, scraped metal, a machine-like clang and whir in the background, a bleak sort of factory-drift that slowly reveals huge doom metal guitars approaching in the distance, and murderous whispers conspiring nearby in the shadows. Hypnotic loops of metallic drone and murky synths emerge over time, bells begin to toll ominously way off on the horizon, and it all builds slowly and incrementally into a hellish din of roaring noise and blackened ambience.
An acoustic guitar introduces the third track, the eerie strum drifting over buzzing machine noise and more of that bleak factory atmosphere that seems to pervade the entire album...more muted and subliminal than the previous tracks, this forms into a hushed industrial nightmare of droning strings and far off guitar buzz, which then lurches into the suffocating death industrial drone of the subsequent track.
The eleven minute "Approaching Fresh Throats" features Dubin's ghoulish vokill contributions over a slow-motion cacophony of buzzing bass tones, disembodied whispers stretching out across the abyss, a spacious ghoulish ambience full of deep-earth rumble and dank crypt ambience. The first half of this is seriously creepy and oppressive, but later it shifts into a more expansive soundscape of mysterious field recordings, the patter of rainfall, bells, metal striking metal, with those minimal bass swells continuing to rumble in the background.
The album closes with more eerie field recordings and found sounds, dark expansive ambience laced with the buzzing of black flies, a music box chiming a familiar childhood melody, wind chimes singing softly in the cold wind of an oncoming storm, and as this abstract ambience continues to unfold, a distant swarming buzz can be heard just over the horizon, and a soft metallic whir seeps in as the sound of children playing materializes in the background, the sound haunting at first, but growing more and more sinister as the track comes to a close...
Terrific nightmarish ambience that blends aspects of black ambient and CMI-style death industrial and abstract metallic drone into a hallucinatory smear of sound, echoing the ghastly formlessness of Abruptum, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and early Sunn in it's heavier moments, but mostly inhabiting a much more subtle realm of shadowy crypt-drift that's still pretty damn enthralling. The disc is limited to an edition of 1000 copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : Charred Remains
Sample : In The Wake Of A Dying Sun

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It's been awhile since we were last graced with new A) TORTURE MECHANISM stuff,with ATM pedla-basher Ryan Copeland and company taking recent detours into space-psyche territory with the Desensitized Robots project, but the wait for TORTURE MECHANISM output was well worth it...these three new tracks are pure psychedelic distortion drone|noise, setting forth wooshing black winds coarsing through deep, steel-plated cavern systems and across oceans teeming with tiny electronic lifeforms. Streams of tar-thick amplifier crunch ooze over a creeped out music-box melody, and loops of electronic distortion break apart and scatter in all directions. The third track, "Tears Of Glass", remains my favorite piece of music from Ryan ever, a radiant pool of crystalline, eternally-delayed guitars that stretches across infinity and swirls around a core of molten distortion, sounding like a lost track from MY BLOODY VALENTINE's Loveless featuring a guest performance from U2's The Edge circa-The Joshua Tree, and mixed by Merzbow. A breathtaking, all-too-short piece of supreme shoegaze drone. A varied but cohesive EP (clocking in at just over 14 minutes in length), with arcane artwork designed by Crucial Blast and packaged in a full color DVD case with painted disc.

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self-titled IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

After god knows how long, Baltimore psychedelic noise crew A) Torture Mechanism return with a new recording and a heavier, more freaked out sound that will no doubt surprise anyone that remembers their side of the Merzbow split CD from 1999. Stoner electronics wiz Ryan Copeland is still the driving force behind A)TM, joined here by Alex Strama from MT6 Records/Wire Orchestra on assorted instrumentation and substances, but this self-titled full length (almost an hour in length) is a far more diverse release than anything A) Torture Mechanism has done before. The duo takes the core elements of the snakey free improv and early industrial-meets-harsh-electronics sounds of their early releases and dive straight into a jet-black sea of heavy psychedelic noise and ambient industrial drug metal that often uncovers passages of immense, woozy beauty. An arsenal of instruments is used here, everything from synths, guitars, drums, bass, fender rhodes, acoustic guitars, trunpet, various percussion, miles of effects pedals, tone generators, etc., all incorporated into these thick walls of brain melting sludge and cosmic noise, and the sound here is sometimes inpenetrably dense. Some of these songs take on a sinister dronechug hue, sort of like Skullflower playing the blues before slipping into beastly grooves of Michigan-style noise rock with huge growling loops bearing down on you hungrily. There is also a noticeable shoegazer/space rock influence on some of these jams when the heavily processed and delayed guitars come into view , usually revolving around a downcast melody soaked in effects. There is a ton of massively distorted guitar on here, too, much of which is courtesy of Crucial Blast honcho Adam Wright, blasting out miles of roaring amp drone and worshipping at the altar of Broken Flag, along with some diseased, disembodied Iommi style riffing that crawls out from out of nowhere. The last half of the disc is the heaviest, when the band turns into a charred amalgam of Earth 2's drone metal, Wolf Eyes / Universal Indians style junk creep, and lo-fi Hawkwindian psychedelia. Fucking A. Comes in crusty xeroxed cardstock sleeve.

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Where did this French band come from? All I know aside from the fact the band hails from Metz, France and that their new self-titled album just came out on In The Red, is that these cats just jackhammered my fucking skull with one of the burliest legit noise rock albums of 2008. Ugh! No metallicisms anywhere on this, this self-titled debut is just pure skuzz-rock. A.H. Kraken heave up a brand of brutal, brain-damaged noise-soaked punk that bears comparisons to crucially greasy bands like Flipper, Pussy Galore (another great noise rock band that has been documented on In The Red), Drunks With Guns, Cherubs, and Brainbombs, while staking out their own sound. This record (and CD - this is one of those dual-format releases where you get a CD version that is included with the vinyl) features a stoned looking young femme on the cover sporting a Slipknot shirt and a rifle, and she appears to be locked, loaded, and ready to blow somebody's goddamn head off. The record features eleven songs that do nothing to eleviate any tension you might be feeling...this music is ugly as fuck, with atonal riffs played over and over again by two guitar players that do not sound like they are using any kind of standard tuning, a bassist that plunks out fat basslines that really don't much to do with whatever songs the rest of the band is playing, which actually gives some of these jams a weird, jazzy feel, and the drummer is the most rock solid part, bashing out simple but bludgeoning beats that firmly anchor the skronky, atonal tunes and busting out some clattery, clanging junkyard percussion that on a couple of songs turns into a Pussy Galore/No Wave type cacophony that is pretty sweet. The vocals are total slop, a male voice that screeches, wails, squeals, all in French of course. I have no idea what he's bugging out about, but with songs called "Kevin Costner Est Un Acteur Americain" and "Drop Sex", I'll let my imagination run wild, thank you very much. Yeah, if you love noise rock, Brainbombs, US Maple, Pussy Galore, Drunks With Guns, Flipper and similiarly brain damaged rock as much as I do, you'll love this record. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Axe vertical
Sample : Cette fille est a genoux
Sample : De Type caucasien

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In my eternal quest for total heaviness, I'm frequently brought back to the realm of the drone, that realm where tones and sounds are stretched out into infinity (or as close to infinity as an LP, CD, or cassette will permit...) and are transmuted into pure sound. And there surfaces some sublime sonic heaviness with those who craft the drone, from Phil Niblock's thick washes of minimalist throb all the way to the metallic sub-harmonic drift of Sunn O))), Black Boned Angel, and early Earth. It's in between these reference points that I often stumble across some of the coolest drone music out there, like as with this recent album from New Zealand's Anthony Milton. Some of you might know Milton from his Mrytu! project, which has released a couple of rad, ritualistic black-drone-sludge titles that we've been carrying. But Anthony Milton is probably more widely known for his exquisite drone compositions, which is the setting that we find him in with Orla. The story behind this album is this: Milton was given an Orla reed organ from a friend who picked it up at a garage sale, and after receiving some influence from Charlamagne Palestine's concepts of the religious quality of drone music, took it upon himself to experiment with the Orla organ as the predominant sound source. The result is this amazing album that the Finnish label Ikuisuus just released not too long ago, and it features five tracks of beautiful, entrancing drones that are accompanied only by the occasional recording of rain or other field recording. Each peice ranges from the sublime to the crushing - "As the Rain Comes Down" opens the disc with a radiant series of spiralling chord drones before moving into the subsonic tectonic rumbling and Sunroof-ish overtones of "Sky Voltage" and "Ribscraper", while the final track "Chamber Lull" features only a calm, drifting hum over which Milton plucks and bows away at the spring pegs of the organ keys. At it's loudest and heaviest, Orla achieves the ecstatic buzz of some of Sunn O))) and Earth's most abstract drifts, but actually comes closer to the blown out minimalist fuzzslabs of Growing and Growing side-project Total Life. A beautiful, mind erasing drone album, lavishly packaged in an 8-panel gatefold digipack printed in gold, black, and grey inks, with mysterious images of the organ's interior workings.
Track Samples:
Sample : Ribscraper
Sample : Sky Voltage

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Finland has given us plenty of fucked up black metal bands; Beherit, Impaled Nazarene, Clandestine Blaze, Wyrd, and Trollheim's Grott all spring to mind. It seems to me that the Finnish metal scene is a fertile environment for weird, punky blackness in particular, but while the debut album from Aanal Beehemoth straddles both the blasted catharsis of punk and the negation and atavism of black metal, Forest Paranoid is in it's own weird world, a freakish splooge of psychedelic necropunk that drips filth and junkie sweat from their reverb-soaked jams.
The whole album is whacked out, from the photos of members Deathly Fightor and Crazy Bomber in over-the-top corpse paint and their faces contorted into gruesome kabuki-like grimaces, smoking joints and shooting junk, to their band name (what the fuck does Aanal Beehemoth even mean?), but it's their music that is really frying my brain. A grotty sort of garage punk, fast and loose and catchy as hell, but filtered through utterly weirdo black metal with the vocals jammed through a bunch of trippy effects. Take a look at the influences that the band lists on their MySpace page - Hellhammer, early 80's Finnish punks Kaaos, the outsider garage rock of The Shaggs, Gism, Elvis, and Black Flag...that might give you an idea of what's festering on this album.
The album was recorded on a 4-track, and the raw production fits these damaged blackpunk anthems perfectly; it feels like yer hearing the band jamming at full force down in some slime-covered dungeon, grinding out their three minute buzzsaw anthems in abandon, slinging crazy acid-guitar solos, dreamy organ freakouts that sound like the band dragged a beat up old Hammond into the middle of their cave, mutant blasts of ghostly ambience and electronic effects, and best of all, surprising bits of pretty psychedelic melody and trippy guitar lines that show up in almost every song. Imagine if you took a primal 60's garage punk outfit like the Stooges, or the Sonics, or the MC5, ripped them out of their timeline and transported them to a snowy Scandanavian forest circa now, and left 'em to their own devices with only a crate of Kossu and copies of Darkthrone's Plaguewielder, GISM's Detestation and Celtic Frost's Morbid Angels to guide them through the void. It fits right in on Suffering Jesus alongside the psychedelic 70's rock/black metal of Tjolgtjar, but where Tjolgtjar is deadly serious with his weirdo occultic themes and wonky black-acid-metal, the tongues of the Aanal Beehemoth is firmly planted in it's collective cheek, as evidenced by songs like "From Aanal With Love" and "Loaded Head Empty Veins". Regardless, this freaking rocks.
Track Samples:
Sample : Nuclear Hell
Sample : Penetrator
Sample : Witch Hunt

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This is by far the weirdest thing we’ve heard from the up and coming Firedoom label (an offshoot of Finland’s Firebox Records). Aarni’s art-damaged, lo-fi avant-doom can only barely be described as “metal”, as these space cadets formulate a psychedelic and thoroughly weird doom/psych/folk mutation with ample amounts of acoustic instrumentals and ambient keyboards floating around a bizarre jazzy atmosphere that’s pretty much unlike anything I’ve ever heard, a bizarre brand of spacey n’ pastoral instrumental folk with lots of flute and other “woodsy” instruments, with weirdly delicate, shambling doom metal dirges and eerie soundscapes mixed in with a singer who sounds sort of like a narcoleptic Michael Gira. Imagine the folksy doom of Agalloch mixed with drug-addled synth ambience and the gloomy metal of Solstice and Amorphis. Or Skepticism meeting Deinonychus at a folk/prog festival. Or early My Dying Bride if they were a psych-folk/noise group with Doors-style hammond keyboards. Or Mr. Bungle’s LSD-addled, Lovecraft-obsessed little brother playing Sisters Of Mercy and Katatonia and Jethro Tull covers all at the same time while busting out ridiculous Joe Satriani-style power metal leads. It’s that fucked. There are also parts that remind me of Maudlin Of The Well, but this is far more lysergic than that outfit ever was. Bathos delivers nine tracks in 65 minutes, and the songs flow in and out of each other with little in the way of traditional rock structure, making this album more of a single organic piece of music that has been separated into chapters. Vocals, when they appear (the bulk of the album is instrumental) range from baritone chanting, clean crooning and strange robotic moaning, and occasional death roars or blackened rasps, and the lyrics are in various languages (Finnish of course, but also French, English, Latin, Swedish, and even ancient Egyptian! ), which further amplifies the dreamlike weirdness of the album. Despite all of these different elements being combined together, the arrangements and instrumentation are quite spare and efficient, a sort of futuristic, quasi-post-rock doomjazzfolk mutation….pretty otherworldly-sounding stuff. There’s additional bonus tracks from their 2001 demo that includes an off-the-wall cover of Slayer’s “Dead Skin Mask”. Weird stuff.

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Quite possibly the weirdest Finnish "doom" band ever, Aarni returns with their second album of bizarre space-cadet art metal; as always, Aarni's music is almost impossible to nail down. When we listed their last album Bathos a few years ago, I called them "art-damaged, lo-fi avant-doom", and that still holds true for the most part, except with this new album Aarni are rocking a much better production, it's heavier and more full sounding than before, and the band has moved even further away from what you would normally recognize as "doom metal".
Just looking at the album cover and going through the booklet for Tohcoth tells you that this is weird shit. The album cover is a freaked out collage of a cartoonish Lovecraftian octopoid monster wreaking havoc in a huge crowd of people while a tower hovers in midair nearby. The rest of the packaging has cartoon artwork of the band depicting them as weird Vedic multi-armed gods, keytar-playing Victorian dandies and, um, an old lady with hair curlers holding a rolling pin as she wafts out of a crock pot like some kind of genie? And despite listing a full band lineup in the booklet (with the "members" Comte de Saint-Germain, Doomintroll, and Mrs. Palm all included in the credits), I'm pretty sure that Aarni is really just a one-man band, the project of one Master Warjomaa, who also plays in the much less bizarre doom band Umbra Nihil. In Aarni though, Master Warjomaa plays all of the instruments and handles all of the vocals except for the majority of the drumming, and Tohcoth continues his fascination with stitching together old school deathdoom a la My Dying Bride or Paradise Lost with mutant jazz, demented 70's prog rock and krautrock with textured electronic noise and Aleister Crowley samples into a set of seriously fucking weird songs that are obsessed with H.P. Lovecraft and the Cthulhu Mythos. The heavier stuff sounds like a weird bedroom version of old school deathdoom, all plodding guitars and glacial tempos but played over a chintzy drum machine, with the infrequent deathgrunt belted out over top. But the doomy parts are only a small part of this album; the rest of Tohcoth includes some loosely played Pink Floyd -inspired rock with deep, uber-dramatic and Gothy baritone singing that reminds me of Michael Gira from Swans, trippy blackened prog-metal that is kind of like hearing Agalloch on peyote buttons, trumpets, speed metal riffs, clean folk guitars, Caribbean rhythms, lots of awesome 70's style Moog synths beamed straight off of Emerson Lake And Palmer's Brain Salad Surgery and Yes' Tales from Topographic Oceans...man, this whole album sounds like it might have started off as crushing Euro doom metal, but somehow fell into a timewarp and was zapped back to the early 70's where it was discovered by a bunch of shaggy haired prog rockers and rewritten/reshaped into an overblown, overindulgent Lovecraft-obsessed progressive rock epic, but then got zapped back to the present day with it's DNA all scrambled, and became this. It's pretty whacked out. Black Sabbath, Camel, Van Der Graaf Generator, King Crimson, Kayo Dot, Opeth, RObert Anton Wilson, Timothy Leary, Hakim Bey, H.P. Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Hermann Hesse, Philip K. Dick, Michael Moorcock, Salvidor Dali, David Lynch, Monty Pythons Flying Circus, David Cronenberg, Patrick McGoohan...."
Patrick McGoohan? The British character actor from the cult 60's series The Prisoner? What the hell. It's just one more strange non sequitur in an album that's freakin' filled with them. Aarni's brain-damaged, prog overloaded is pretty genius though. A wonky mix of epic 70's progressive rock, Skepticism, King Crimson, Agalloch, My Dying Bride, Hawkwind, Candlemass, folk metal, the dark electro-gloom-pop of Beyond Dawn, and Captain Beefheart? It's that weird. And awesome. Awesomely weird.
Track Samples:
Sample : Chapel Perilous
Sample : Iku-Turso
Sample : The Hieroglyph

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AATHMA   The Call Of Shiva   CD   (Odio Sonoro)    11.98

It's an interesting variation of monolithic, crawling, ultra-down tuned war-sludge that this Spanish trio offers up on their debut full length, put out by the doomanoids over at Odio Sonoro. The six songs on The Call Of Shiva deliver CRUSHING asphalt-coated riffs that are obviously influenced by the Matt Pike school of heaviosity, nothing too technical and exactly the kind of mega-doom heaviness that you'd expect from anything with the Odio Sonoro stamp of approval, just massive droning slabs of mega heavy sludge and pounding mid-paced drumming, the sound relentlessly crushing. I'm hearing some Crowbar influence in here, too, and the deep, gruff vocals definitely remind me of the NOLA sludge metallers. Where Aathma distinguish themselves is the shift in vocal styles that comes in on the first track; that opener is plodding, doom-laden crush, equal parts High On Fire and Crowbar, incredibly heavy and leaden, but then the song suddenly shifts gears about halfway in, the sludge turning into a droning melodic riff, and then the vocalist starts singing in this deep dramatic voice, sort of like those of recently deceased Type O Negative front man Pete Steele. This crushing goth-tinged sludge begins to get increasingly more melancholy as the riff grinds on, the sound becoming more distorted and blown, becoming a blast of raging distorted noise at the end of the track.
Those deep baritone Type O-esque vocals continue to add an unconventional dimension to Aathma's sound, which as the album progresses, begins to add in the moodier gothic parts of Neurosis and the heaviest riffs from Streetcleaner-era Godflesh and early Isis alongside the crushing war-sludge. Heavy stuff, with some of the standout tracks including the moodier goth-sludge of "Snowdream" and "The End of the Snake". And "Oaks" ranks as one the heaviest jams on here, sounding like the band has taken the main riff from Nirvana's "Negative Creep" and slowed it down to 1/10th speed and tuned it to C, and "Voice" opens with some ominous piano chords that lead into the brooding deep vocals and dark slowcore spaciousness, but then morphs into more of that HOF-esque sludge. Every track on here is a crusher, until you reach the closer "Shiva The Destroyer", which ends the disc with five minutes of abstract improv-drone, random heavy tribal drums and distant whispers and swirling dark ambience and eerie effects unfurling in a trance inducing dose of formless doomdrone heaviness.
Track Samples:
Sample : Oaks
Sample : Shiva the Destroyer
Sample : A Thousand Nail

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ABANDON   In Reality We Suffer   CD   (Thrash And Burn)    12.98

In Reality We Suffer IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

This awesome blast of downbeat, anguished, progressive mega-sludge was released back in 2004 and has been issued through several different labels, but I only recently found out about Abandon via the Finnish version of their unstoppable In Reality We Suffer. This is seriously heavy stuff...72 minutes of grueling ultra DOOM that flows like a black tar river, pure negativity combining the massiveness of Neurosis circa Through Silver In Blood with the raw as hell, vomitous dirge of Grief and occasionally shot through with these strange, clean, vaguely post-rock/lounge jazz guitar chords that hover between the band's rumbling sludge reverberations. Bleak dissonant chords clash over droning, gooey basslines and crushing caveman drumming; the band's two headed throat spits out contrasting shades of vocal horror over winding, labyrinthine riffs that creep at a glacial rate. This oozes bleak, pitch black sludge that's as heavy as fellow plate shifters Corrupted, Khanate, Warhorse, Old Man Gloom, Melvins, Godflesh, and Buried At Sea. In Reality We Suffer was released through Earache Records/Codebreaker in the UK and the Us, but this is the original Scandinavian version, packaged in a neat glossy digisleeve style wallet with an eight-page full color booklet stapled to the inside so the entire sleeve opens up like a small book, illustrated with hellish, hand drawn artwork. Released in an edition of 500.

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ABANDONED HEARTS CLUB   The Initial Confessions Of...   CD   (Init)    4.98

This Canadian band came out of nowhere a couple of years ago, dropped a handful of amazing, fucked-up grind/metal jams on us that combined ultra heaviness with wild electronic fuckery, made a small appearance on Hydra Head, subsequently got signed by Abacus Records, and then seemed to drop right back off of the face of the planet. What in the hell happened? These guys were pretty awesome, really. Featuring members of New Day Rising and Spread The Disease, their four song debut on Init came with supremely weird artwork from Jeremy Wabiszczewicz of Daughters/Monsters In Disguise design, and the tunes are a too-brief eruption of intelligent, adventurous grind that fell somewhere in between an even heavier Botch, the first Daughters EP gone space-prog, and a towering heap of sound generators spitting out trippy computer noise. And man, is this stuff HEAVY. The riffing is pretty whack, going from brutal metal chugging to slippery fretboard freakouts and full blown guitar noise, and the vocals sound alot like Spread The Disease, an awesome crusty rasp that sounds fucking insane. Crushing, spacey, blasting, psychedelic...these guys would have been HUGE if they hadn't broken up. Amazing stuff. We've got this EP on both CD and 7", and both are fantastic looking objects that Init went all-out for; the CD is a clear fan-disc job with a big brain screened onto the disc, and the 7" is an awesome looking three-color die-cut cover with screen printed artwork.
Track Samples:
Sample : The Abstraction of Form and Function
Sample : The Failure a Posteriori

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ABANDONED HEARTS CLUB   The Initial Confessions Of...   7" VINYL   (Init)    4.98

This Canadian band came out of nowhere a couple of years ago, dropped a handful of amazing, fucked-up grind/metal jams on us that combined ultra heaviness with wild electronic fuckery, made a small appearance on Hydra Head, subsequently got signed by Abacus Records, and then seemed to drop right back off of the face of the planet. What in the hell happened? These guys were pretty awesome, really. Featuring members of New Day Rising and Spread The Disease, their four song debut on Init came with supremely weird artwork from Jeremy Wabiszczewicz of Daughters/Monsters In Disguise design, and the tunes are a too-brief eruption of intelligent, adventurous grind that fell somewhere in between an even heavier Botch, the first Daughters EP gone space-prog, and a towering heap of sound generators spitting out trippy computer noise. And man, is this stuff HEAVY. The riffing is pretty whack, going from brutal metal chugging to slippery fretboard freakouts and full blown guitar noise, and the vocals sound alot like Spread The Disease, an awesome crusty rasp that sounds fucking insane. Crushing, spacey, blasting, psychedelic...these guys would have been HUGE if they hadn't broken up. Amazing stuff. We've got this EP on both CD and 7", and both are fantastic looking objects that Init went all-out for; the CD is a clear fan-disc job with a big brain screened onto the disc, and the 7" is an awesome looking three-color die-cut cover with screen printed artwork. Holy shit! We've got clear vinyl for this baby too, only 400 made!
Track Samples:
Sample : The Abstraction of Form and Function
Sample : The Failure a Posteriori

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ABANDONER + DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS   Choir Of Dead Whores   CDR   (Chrome Peeler)    7.98

A collaboration between the harsh blacknoise of Abandoner and the slicing feedback-driven power electronics of Dead By A Thousand Cuts, this CD-R contains six tracks of evil, ultra-murky skree that is actually comparable to an subtly satanic version of Matt Bower's Total, particularly on tracks like "Thunders N Lightnings" and "Lower Your Flag" with their dense clotted masses of rumbling amplifier noise and chaotic feedback. Death By A Thousand Cuts is a noise project that I had already been familiar with, mainly from their split CD with Cattle Decapitation's Travis Ryan that came out a few years ago (and which we still have in stock here), but this was the first that I had heard from the NYC based project Abandoner. It turns out that Abandoner is actually the "noise" solo project of Jay Newman, who all of you doom metal fans will probably recognize as the drummer for Unearthly Trance, and he's joined here by his Unearthly Trance bandmate Darren Verni who contributes some scathing, grisly vocals on a few of the tracks. Choir of Dead Whores is super negatory guitar/electronic noise, shifting between those aforementioned blasts of Total-style amplifier carnage to heavy static drones and whirring electronic sounds, and even has Verni reciting the poetry of Charles Baudelaire over the final two tracks "The Gladly Dead" and "The Litanies Of Satan", both of which are awesome black fogs of nightmarish droning black metal guitar noise, Prurient-style feedback, and confrontational verbal venom. The disc is spraypainted in black paint, and comes in a black slimline jewelcase with an acetate/xerox insert cover, limited to 100 copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : thelitaniesofsatan
Sample : toofragiletofuck

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ABDULLAH   Graveyard Poetry   CD   (Meteor City)    9.98

The grungy, Clevo-based doom/sludge/metal outfit Abdullah dropped their second album Graveyard Poetry a while back, and it's one of my favorite MeteorCity releases. On Graveyard Poetry, Abdullah continues to deliver their combination of crushing Sabbathy riffage and soulful, melodic vocals which have garnered some comparisons in the past to Dax Riggs (Acid Bath/Deadboy And The Elephant Men). The riffs and songs are much closer to true doom though, with dark, sludgy blues riffs that remind me of Saint Vitus, Trouble and Spirit Caravan, but then Abdullah throws some interesting elements that I didn't hear on their earlier releases, like some spacey Pink Floyd-esque guitar lines and haunting keyboards that appear every once in awhile, but the big difference here is the influence of (according to their European label) cult traditional heavy metal bands like New Wave Of British Heavy Metallers Diamond Head, Holocaust, and Tank, and cult San Fran old-schoolers Brocas Helm that has now crept into Abdullah's stoner metal on a handful of songs on the album ("Deprogrammed" especially!). On these songs, Abdullah veer from their dark brooding doomrock steez into killer mid-paced, almost thrashin' metal chuggery with killer dual-harmony guitars. I love the mixture of the NWOBHM sound and their grunge-rock influenced doomrock, and this album immediately stood out from the other stuff that was coming out on MeteorCity at the time.
Track Samples:
Sample : Black Helicopters

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ABDULLAH   self-titled   CD   (Meteor City)    9.98

Digging even further back into the crates of esteemed stoner rock imprint Meteorcity, I've pulled out this self titled debut from Ohio cult doom faves Abdullah for re-investigation. Christ knows that back in 2000 when this album originally came out, we had more than enough mediocre sub-Sabbath knockoffs sucking up oxygen in the heavy underground rock scene, but Abdullah managed to stand out from the sea of faceless, boring Sab/Kyuss clones with a dark soulful sound that drew just as many comparisons to the Northwest grunge rock as it did to early American doom metal. This self-titled disc merged crushing Vitus/Obsessed style riffage with trippy melodies, tons of airy acoustic guitars, wah-soaked psych solos, and some passages of primo St. Vitus style crawl in songs like "Earth's Answer" and "Proverbs In Hell". A lot of people have compared singer Jeff Shirilla to Layne Staley from Alice In Chains, which I do hear in some of the dramatic choruses, but much of his deep, heartfelt singing actually reminds me of a younger, more polished Wino. Like Solace, Abdullah are peddlin' a more rocking, accessible brand of doom rock, but that's not to say that this isn't heavy stuff. The slow doomy riffs are just balanced with an equal amount of uptempo Sabbathian hooks and laid-back, stoned acoustic playing. There's some cool retro-crunch on this album; fans of The Obsessed and Goatsnake should give 'em a listen.
Track Samples:
Sample : Awakening the Colossus
Sample : Earth's Answer

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ABE VIGODA   Sky Route/Star Roof   LP   (Not Not Fun)    11.98

Sky Route/Star Roof IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Abe Vigoda's vibrant, nervous no wave seizures find a vinyl home on this 12 song LP issued by the awesome noise punks at Not Not Fun. Their tape releases on Not Not Fun are all kickass, but we needed a full length! Full of spastic hooks and wavering noise guitar figures over a tempest of rolling drums, Sky Route / Star Roof takes the screwdriver-to-the-fretboard attack of old school Sonic Youth to a dirgey nocturnal pop feast for maximum spasm. The DNA here definitely glows similiar to Unwound, old Sonic Youth, and Wives, but the songs often have a noisy heaviosity that surprised us. Pretty killer, really. Comes packaged in a great silkscreened black jacket, and released in an edition of 300. Apparently this is already sold out at Not Not Fun, so move quick!

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ABIGAIL   Tribute To NME   7" VINYL   (Nuclear War Now! Productions)    5.98

One of my favorite contemporary Japanese black/thrash bands, Abigail has been kicking out their awesome blackened thrash hysteria since the early 90's with a wild, wonky mix of Venom and 80's garage thrash metal and that inherent weirdness that you usually expect to find in Japanese metal. Most of their stuff has been pretty hard to come by though, usually going out of print fairly quickly and/or being released on really small labels that can take some effort to track down, but a couple of Abigail's newer releases have popped up on the ultra-cult Nuclear War Now! label, making them a bit easier to stock here in the store. That's great news for those of us who are totally addicted to the raw, punky perverted speed metal and filthy sex obsessed lunacy that these cats (who include members of psych-metal gods Sigh and black thrashers Barbatos) traffic in, with albums like Forever Street Metal Bitch and Lust And Intercourse loaded with their scumbag thrashpunk and their deliberately ridiculous, adolescent Satanic sex fantasies of songs like "We're the Pussy Hunter" and "Teen Age Metal Fuck". Yikes!
This 7" EP from 2007 has Abigail hooking up with one of their 80's proto-thrash heroes, Brian Llapitan from cult American metallers NME, paying tribute to decased NME guitarist Kurt Struebing by covering a handful of their songs. Abigail has long cited the primitive black metal/thrash of NME as one of their key influences (along with the likes of Motorhead, Venom, and Bulldozer) on their own whacked-out pervo-thrash style, and on this four song EP the band tears through material off of NME's 1986 debut album Unholy Death, the first three tracks ("Black Knight", "Stormwarning / Blood & Souls" and "Lethal Dose") firmly in the Venom/Motorhead speed metal tradition, but the fourth track a peculiar cover of "Of Hell / Thunder Breaks Peace", which is improvised guitar noise, weird effects and demonic growling...pretty cool! The vocal duties are split across the two sides - Brian from NME handles the lead vocals on the first side, and Yasuyuki from Abigail does the b-side vocals. It's a blast. Comes in a B&W sleeve that's designed in the same style and layout as the original Unholy Death Lp jacket.

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ABIGAIL   Sweet Baby Metal Slut   LP   (Nuclear War Now! Productions)    18.98

Sweet Baby Metal Slut IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

One of my favorite contemporary Japanese black/thrash bands, Abigail has been kicking out their awesome blackened thrash hysteria since the early 90's with a wild, wonky mix of Venom and 80's garage thrash metal and that inherent weirdness that you usually expect to find in Japanese metal. Most of their stuff has been pretty hard to come by though, usually going out of print fairly quickly and/or being released on really small labels that can take some effort to track down, but a couple of Abigail's newer releases have popped up on the ultra-cult Nuclear War Now! label, making them a bit easier to stock here in the store. That's great news for those of us who are totally addicted to the raw, punky perverted speed metal and filthy sex obsessed lunacy that these cats (who include members of psych-metal gods Sigh and black thrashers Barbatos) traffic in, with albums like Forever Street Metal Bitch and Lust And Intercourse loaded with their scumbag thrashpunk and their deliberately ridiculous, adolescent Satanic sex fantasies of songs like "We're the Pussy Hunter" and "Teen Age Metal Fuck". Yikes!
Housed inside of a smutty high contrast album cover, Sweet Baby Metal Slut is the fourth and latest album from the devilthrash sex-fiends, loaded with ten tracks of day-glo Baphometic sex fantasies and thrashing Motorhead/Venom meets hardcore punk meets GG Allin scumfuck mayhem. And whoo-boy, does this album rip. Super catchy and infectious hook-laden thrash with those blackened muppet-squawking vocals from front man/bassist Yasuyuki Suzuki, one kickass riff after another, and tons of speed, the songs whipped into a pounding D-beat fury, songs about "sexual metal holocaust", a frenzy of fast and ragged fury flecked with drunken bits of 70's hard rock wankery, even slipping into some Southern rock tainted rawk on "Satanic Hell Slut". There's "Sweet Bloody Cunt" with it's ridiculously poppy main hook, and the pure simplistic psycho thrash of "Witching Hell" and "Metal Evil Metal" and "Wild Fire Metal Bitch"... Furiously thrashing metal at it's most savage and sex-crazed, with some of Abigail's catchiest tunes ever.
Nuclear War Now!'s vinyl release of Sweet Baby comes in a heavy gatefold package with sleazy hot pink artwork and includes a couple of inserts and a Nuclear War Now! Festival poster.

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ABIGAIL   Sweet Baby Metal Slut   CD   (Nuclear War Now! Productions)    10.98

Back in stock!
Now available on Cd, and just in time, as the vinyl release of this sicko blackened thrashpunk assault went out of print recently. The following is my review of the original vinyl release on Nuclear War Now; my lust for this album has remained unabated in the time since I jotted this down:
One of my favorite contemporary Japanese black/thrash bands, Abigail has been kicking out their awesome blackened thrash hysteria since the early 90's with a wild, wonky mix of Venom and 80's garage thrash metal and that inherent weirdness that you usually expect to find in Japanese metal. Most of their stuff has been pretty hard to come by though, usually going out of print fairly quickly and/or being released on really small labels that can take some effort to track down, but a couple of Abigail's newer releases have popped up on the ultra-cult Nuclear War Now! label, making them a bit easier to stock here in the store. That's great news for those of us who are totally addicted to the raw, punky perverted speed metal and filthy sex obsessed lunacy that these cats (who include members of psych-metal gods Sigh and black thrashers Barbatos) traffic in, with albums like Forever Street Metal Bitch and Lust And Intercourse loaded with their scumbag thrashpunk and their deliberately ridiculous, adolescent Satanic sex fantasies of songs like "We're the Pussy Hunter" and "Teen Age Metal Fuck". Yikes!
Housed inside of a smutty high contrast album cover, Sweet Baby Metal Slut is the fourth and latest album from the devilthrash sex-fiends, loaded with ten tracks of day-glo Baphometic sex fantasies and thrashing Motorhead/Venom meets hardcore punk meets GG Allin scumfuck mayhem. And whoo-boy, does this album rip. Super catchy and infectious hook-laden thrash with those blackened muppet-squawking vocals from front man/bassist Yasuyuki Suzuki, one kickass riff after another, and tons of speed, the songs whipped into a pounding D-beat fury, songs about "sexual metal holocaust", a frenzy of fast and ragged fury flecked with drunken bits of 70's hard rock wankery, even slipping into some Southern rock tainted rawk on "Satanic Hell Slut". There's "Sweet Bloody Cunt" with it's ridiculously poppy main hook, and the pure simplistic psycho thrash of "Witching Hell" and "Metal Evil Metal" and "Wild Fire Metal Bitch"... Furiously thrashing metal at it's most savage and sex-crazed, with some of Abigail's catchiest tunes ever.
An essential "sexual metal holocaust".
Track Samples:
Sample : Metal Evil Metal
Sample : Sexual metal Holocaust
Sample : Tokyo Pussy Girl

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ABIGOR   Fractal Possession   CD   (End All Life Productions)    15.98

As Abigor puts it, they play "play True Austrian Black Metal exclusively". Which apparently means black metal as played by intergalactic fucking reptoids. Seriously, Fractal Possession is one of the craziest black metal albums I've heard recently. The longrunning black metal clan returned in 2007 with this new album after close to half a decade of nada which included a brief breakup for a year or so, then reconvened with a whole new cast of characters. And if anything, the band blasted has blasted even deeper into the sci-fi metal territory that they were exploring on their previous album Satanized, and apparently alienating a bunch of their fans with their new evolved approach to 21st century black metal along the way. Me, I fucking love this album.
The first few albums from Abigor were entirely different from what we've got here, more in the vein of Nordic-influenced melodic black metal, buzzing and majestic but marked by extreme levels of aggression forged into a style of their own that made 'em pretty popular with fans of traditional black metal back in the 90's. When their 2001 album Satanized came around, though, Abigor's sound took off into a whole new direction, infusing their black metal with a cold, inhuman sheen and futuristic atmosphere and becoming an intensely complex and industrialized version of their previous epic blackened self. If you've heard that album and are a fan of the bizarre, sci-fi black metal that Abigor evolved into, then Fractal Possession definitely won't disappoint.
As soon as I pick up Fractal Possession, I find myself entering the confusional techno-hell of Abigor just by looking at this album - the CD version is packaged in a gorgeous hardback digibook, covered in abstract gold-tinted artwork and stylized inverted pentagrams, definitely staying true to their Satanic black metal roots in iconography alone, and the twelve-page booklet is filled with demonic woodcuts and surreal photos of urban decay and alien entities, beautifully printed in white, grey and metallic gold inks.
But once the album begins, yer immediately overwhelmed by Abigor's warped cosmic blackness. The disc opens with a glitchy intro of factory clang and skittering industrial beats and whirring drill sounds as a lone dissonant guitar figure appears, playing this jagged little melody over increasing layers of industrial machine sound, robotic engines clanking and bleeping, and ominous soundbites of dialogue, and then suddenly the band erupts into the sputtering black electro blast of "Project Shadow", a chopped up black hellscape of insanely squiggly guitars and shimmering harmonies, the guitar shredding all woven into these intricate clusters of spastic notes, ferocious blastbeats and croaked vocals racing throughout the insane stop/start arrangements. It's impossible to not think of Mick Barr from Orthrelm when you hear these guitars with the over-the-top shredding and flurries of angular notes (I'm not the first to hear it, as the Mick Barr/Orthrelm comparison has been made in a bunch of other reviews of this album). It's like hearing Mick playing over the industrial black metal of Dodheimsgard, but it's even more fucked up sounding than DHG already are. From there, the album moves through similiar angular black metal forms, fierce precision blastbeats and crushing percussive dirges meeting with soaring black melodies and those hypershred leads, each song turning into a complex tangle of mechanical rhythms and hellish alien melody. In between the blastbeats and shred eruptions, Abigor drop in all sorts of odd little segueways, like brief flashes of blackened kosmiche ambience, walls of orchestral guitar drone, discordant math-metal, epic Viking-esque clean vocals and drunken Gothy crooning, mutant Gorguts-esque no wave deathriffage, galloping traditional metal, or evocative acoustic guitar strum that appears before your eyes in an instant, then disappear just as quickly as Abigor fall back in with their choppy alien buzzsaw attack. This jarring, ultra-dynamic sound turned off alot of trad black metal fans when this album first came out, but in my opinion it's one of the best avant-black metal albums of the past ten years, surpassing even Dodheimsgard in their audacious sci-fi approach, intense and original and most definitely weird as fuck, but ultra heavy too, almost more like death metal than black metal much of the time as heavy as this is, but always cloaked in their own unique alien interplanetary futuristic blackness. Highly recommended!

Track Samples:
Sample : Cold Void Choir
Sample : Injection Satan
Sample : Project: Shadow

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ABIGOR   Fractal Possession   2 x LP   (End All Life Productions)    19.98

Also available as a double LP set on heavy vinyl, packaged in a full color heavy gatefold jacket with gold and black printed inner sleeves...and, of course, quite limited.
As Abigor puts it, they play "play True Austrian Black Metal exclusively". Which apparently means black metal as played by intergalactic fucking reptoids. Seriously, Fractal Possession is one of the craziest black metal albums I've heard recently. The longrunning black metal clan returned in 2007 with this new album after close to half a decade of nada which included a brief breakup for a year or so, then reconvened with a whole new cast of characters. And if anything, the band blasted has blasted even deeper into the sci-fi metal territory that they were exploring on their previous album Satanized, and apparently alienating a bunch of their fans with their new evolved approach to 21st century black metal along the way. Me, I fucking love this album.
The first few albums from Abigor were entirely different from what we've got here, more in the vein of Nordic-influenced melodic black metal, buzzing and majestic but marked by extreme levels of aggression forged into a style of their own that made 'em pretty popular with fans of traditional black metal back in the 90's. When their 2001 album Satanized came around, though, Abigor's sound took off into a whole new direction, infusing their black metal with a cold, inhuman sheen and futuristic atmosphere and becoming an intensely complex and industrialized version of their previous epic blackened self. If you've heard that album and are a fan of the bizarre, sci-fi black metal that Abigor evolved into, then Fractal Possession definitely won't disappoint.
As soon as I pick up Fractal Possession, I find myself entering the confusional techno-hell of Abigor just by looking at this album - the CD version is packaged in a gorgeous hardback digibook, covered in abstract gold-tinted artwork and stylized inverted pentagrams, definitely staying true to their Satanic black metal roots in iconography alone, and the twelve-page booklet is filled with demonic woodcuts and surreal photos of urban decay and alien entities, beautifully printed in white, grey and metallic gold inks.
But once the album begins, yer immediately overwhelmed by Abigor's warped cosmic blackness. The disc opens with a glitchy intro of factory clang and skittering industrial beats and whirring drill sounds as a lone dissonant guitar figure appears, playing this jagged little melody over increasing layers of industrial machine sound, robotic engines clanking and bleeping, and ominous soundbites of dialogue, and then suddenly the band erupts into the sputtering black electro blast of "Project Shadow", a chopped up black hellscape of insanely squiggly guitars and shimmering harmonies, the guitar shredding all woven into these intricate clusters of spastic notes, ferocious blastbeats and croaked vocals racing throughout the insane stop/start arrangements. It's impossible to not think of Mick Barr from Orthrelm when you hear these guitars with the over-the-top shredding and flurries of angular notes (I'm not the first to hear it, as the Mick Barr/Orthrelm comparison has been made in a bunch of other reviews of this album). It's like hearing Mick playing over the industrial black metal of Dodheimsgard, but it's even more fucked up sounding than DHG already are. From there, the album moves through similiar angular black metal forms, fierce precision blastbeats and crushing percussive dirges meeting with soaring black melodies and those hypershred leads, each song turning into a complex tangle of mechanical rhythms and hellish alien melody. In between the blastbeats and shred eruptions, Abigor drop in all sorts of odd little segueways, like brief flashes of blackened kosmiche ambience, walls of orchestral guitar drone, discordant math-metal, epic Viking-esque clean vocals and drunken Gothy crooning, mutant Gorguts-esque no wave deathriffage, galloping traditional metal, or evocative acoustic guitar strum that appears before your eyes in an instant, then disappear just as quickly as Abigor fall back in with their choppy alien buzzsaw attack. This jarring, ultra-dynamic sound turned off alot of trad black metal fans when this album first came out, but in my opinion it's one of the best avant-black metal albums of the past ten years, surpassing even Dodheimsgard in their audacious sci-fi approach, intense and original and most definitely weird as fuck, but ultra heavy too, almost more like death metal than black metal much of the time as heavy as this is, but always cloaked in their own unique alien interplanetary futuristic blackness. Highly recommended!

Track Samples:
Sample : Cold Void Choir
Sample : Injection Satan
Sample : Project: Shadow

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ABIGOR   Time Is The Sulphur In The Veins Of The Saint - An   CD DIGI-BOX   (End All Life Productions)    17.98

Track Samples:
Sample : Part I
Sample : Part II
Sample : Part II

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ABIKU   Set The Pace To Grueling And The Rations To Meage   2 x CDR   (MT6)    7.98

Set The Pace To Grueling And The Rations To Meage IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

From the goofy pixel artwork taken from that old 1980's computer game Oregon Trail that Abiku stuck on the CD sleeve for this double disc set, you'd never guess that the music on here is as brutal as it can sometimes end up being. The Baltimore based duo plays a kind of computer-generated noisecore/gabba/electropop hybrid with singer Jane Vincent screeching and singing over a blizzard of thumping four-on-the-floor speedcore beats, hyperspeed digigrind blastbeats, laser beams, and huge slabs of new agey ambient drone and damaged techno. That weirdo Baltimore/Wham City vibe is all over Abiku's tuneage, and some of this stuff even reminds me of Atom & His Package a little bit, but way weirder and totally immersed in noise and drum machine grind and fucked up techno and goth rock, art-damaged and industrial-tinged and quivering with a violent, exuberant energy. They're a part of the cool DIY warehouse dance punk scene that's been going on out in Baltimore lately, and although I haven't seen 'em yet, I bet they crush live. This CD-R set is actually a live collection from Abiku, the first disc contains a ton of MP3 files of live sets that the band recorded in basements and houses across the country when they toured the US in 2004, each show represented by a seperate folder designated by city, and there is close to nine hours of music collected here. Pretty massive, and the recoridngs are generally pretty decent, punchy and clear enough to give you a good idea of what it must have been like to be jammed in a crowded basement with the lights shut off while Jane goes psychotic over the jet engine roar of Abiku's laptop gabba-grind-goth-dancepop.
The second disc, though, is something different. There are a couple of live sets that are on here as well, but the last track, titled "Chaos Mix", is the centerpiece of this half of the set, an hour-plus track of all of the shows digitally collaged and layered together into a single massive brain liquifying soundscape. This track is nearly overwhelming. It's an ocean of swirling chaotic sound, like hearing one hundred different Napalm Death records and scratched up Suicide and La Düsseldorf albums all spinning simultaneously, melting into an endless whirlpool of molten electro-psychedelic goo.

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ABIKU   Novelty   CD   (MT6)    9.98

This Baltimore duo have been around for a couple of years, but are just now coming out with their first real full-length, released through Baltimore's finest imprint for all things noisy and bonkers, MT6. The first time that I heard these cats was when they played with Wildildlife in a basement in Baltimore a few years ago, where the duo of Jane and Josh blasted the entire block with their deafening brand of mutant synth-disco/no wave/gabber/grind weirdness. Both of 'em rock some massive keytar-like appliances, and stick to a fairly rigid formula: songs are generally one-to-two minute micro-bursts of ominous synthesizer chords and whooshing, sweeping electronic noises over jackhammer drum programming that's somewhere in between techno/disco throb, drum-machine blastbeat, or violent gabber, depending on the song, while Jane utters a hair-raising high pitched scream over it all, or croons in a narcoleptic speak/sing cadence. They've been compared to bands like The Locust and Genghis Tron because of their synth-based instrumentation, but those references are wholly inaccurate. This shit is difficult and definitely not pretty, and almost totally devoid of what I'd call hooks - what this does sound like is brutal digi-grind beats trading off against mutant techno throb while the vocals channel the sound of Lydia Lunch with 75,000 volts of electricity being rocketed straight into her spinal column, while cheapo 8-bit melodies, harsh industrial textures, icy robo-funk synth basslines and atmospheric ambience scuttle out of the thick backdrop of synths and samplers that Abiku employ. I can hear trace elements of old school industrial like Clock DVA, Severed Heads and Controlled Bleeding in here, but these industrial qualities are cranked to mach ten and almost totally obliterated by the relentless computerized blastbeats. I just caught them again as the opener for the Brutal Truth/Pig Destroyer show that went down at the Talking Head last week, where Abiku took the stage in what looked like silver Lamé robes and proceeded to totally polarize the audience with their screeching, industrial techno-disco-blast. They're definitely one of the most brutal bands to inhabit the Baltimore freakscene, that's for sure. As far as this disc is concerned, Novelty isn't an actual new album, but rather a collection of tracks from their Novelty demo from 2002 and some later demos that have been reworked and rerecorded, along with an additional enhanced section of the disc that contains all of their demo tracks and singles that were recorded between 2002 and 2005, all available as MP3s, and since most of that stuff is way out of print, this is the last place you'll find these early Abiku jams.
Track Samples:
Sample : Dance O Rama
Sample : March
Sample : New Day Rock
Sample : Padded

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ABISYEIKAH   Jiyuumo Kattemo Onajida Nandemo Iikara Yacchimae!   2 x CDR   (Dotsmart)    12.98

Jiyuumo Kattemo Onajida Nandemo Iikara Yacchimae! IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

We totally fell onto these guys by accident, discovering this handmade double-disc set after hooking up with Japanese noise label Dotsmart to grab some of their new JESUS OF NAZARETH CD. Self-described "bizarre hobby violent music group" ABISYEIKAH are an ultra enigmatic duo dealing in high-power psychedelic noisecore violence and insane/stoopid electronics/soundbite meltdowns. Jiyuumo Kattemo Onajida Nandemo Iikara Yacchimae! is a double CD-R set, with the first disc filled to the gills with 99 tracks of Japanese pop culture soundbite loops, stoned and stumbling casio-pop jams, hideous lo-fi noisecore with retarded vocals, like a FEAR OF GOD/ANAL CUNT hybrid fronted by Yamatsuka Eye, sliced with paint-peeling electronic noise and dance music...along with fucked up/drug damaged sludgy breakbeats and zonked techno, beyond-gutteral toilet-bowl-monster vocal psychedelia, beatboxing, squeaky electro-acoustic fuckery,childlike babbling, and loads more. Totally nuts. The second disc is even more abusive harsh noise mixed with mongoloid beats, chainsaw noisegrind eruptions, vomiting phone pranks, braindamaged rapping, and skull rupturing blast spread across 99 tracks. Insane shit, with nary a moments peace to be found in this 2 hour-plus scum marathon. The packaging is handmade and killer, a full color double-disc digisleeve gatefold thing with some crazed group pics.

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ABORYM   With No Human Intervention   CD   (Mercenary Musik)    11.98

Back in stock!
I haven't stocked this 2003 album from Aborym until now, but since their newest album Psychogrotesque recently came out and I've been listening to it constantly, I've been working on picking up whatever other Aborym titles are still in print for the shop. This was their third album following Kali-Yuga Bizarre and Fire Walk With Us!, both of which captured Aborym's ongoing evolution that began with their strange experiments in electronically-enhanced black metal in the mid 90s. By this point, their mix of satanic blackened techno and experimental shapeshifting black/death was fully formed, a brand of sleek futuristic BM terror that positioned Aborym alongside the likes of Mysticum, Anaal Nathrakh, Declaration Of War-era Mayhem and (especially) Dodheimsgard. Fronted by singer Attila Csihar's awesome demented vocalizations that range from throat singing, blackened shrieks, and chant like intonations, and powered by eerie samples and blasting industrial black metal, this is fearsome, violent music that repudiates the claims of commercialization that many BM purists levelled at bands like this who utilized electronic elements. Feel-good music, this ain't. And it's very much rooted in a classic black metal sound, machinelike blastbeat drumming performed with rigid precision, and dizzying arpeggio sweeps and classical-influenced soloing coating the sound with a brittle layer of ice, while bits of electronic ambience and effects are strewn throughout the ferocious mechanized black metal assaults. Like it states in the booklet, "Aborym plays alien-black-hard/industrial exclusively".
With No Human Intervention's opening title track is feral, mechanical black metal with a killer programmed blastbeat and blackened death riff that appears later in the song, shifting gears into galloping thrash and then revealing some minor techno elements that creep in, like programmed snare rushes and swells of orchestral electronic ambience. It still mostly sounds like an electronically enhanced classic black metal band, though. As the album goes on, the music mutates more and more as harsh, unexpected edits, caustic computer glitchery and synthetic ambience increasingly mixes with the warped, evil black blast and crushing slower death metal riffage. It's not till the fourth track "Humechanics-Virus" that Aborym finally starts to inject their bursts of drum n' bass and hardcore techno into the music; when this kicks in, the aggressive electronic beats come in blasts and blurts, pounding savage rhythms seething beneath catchy blackened melodic hooks and the hellish vocals. The track "Does Not Compute" stands out with looped machine noises, factory floor ambience and clanking rhythms opening the song, then turning into a jittery, hard-edged drum n' bass workout laced with electronic noises and a massive sinister bassline. The pure techno of "Cheronobyl Generation" is as close to actual dance music as Aborym gets here, but with it's scorched blackened shrieks and evil tone, it's hardly party music. The rest of the album is rife with more crazed electro-BM experimentation that ranges from weird Morbid Angel-like soloing and orgasmic female moans, harpsichord sections backed by pummeling industrial beats and hoovering techno synths, and stretches of creepy slasher movie soundtrack music. The album constantly shifts and changes shape, with an almost Mr Bungle-like tendency for wild stylistic leaps. "The Triumph" even features an emotional ballad-like breakdown with synths and a soaring guitar solo that sounds like something off of an 80s hair metal album, right before the band kicks into an equally soaring kosimiche hallucination that combines the sounds of agonized screaming and demented carnival music.
A strange and unpredictable album, Intervention is one of my favorite electro/black metal records and highly recommended to fans of bizarre, experimental, digitally-possessed BM and the likes of Dodheimsgard and Blacklodge. This US release on Mercenary Musik also features an enhanced CD-Rom portion of the disc that features a music video for the title track "With No Human Intervention".
Track Samples:
Sample : Chernobyl Generation
Sample : Does Not Compute
Sample : Faustian Spirit of the Earth
Sample : Humechanics-Virus

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ABORYM   Kali Yuga Bizarre   LP PICTURE DISC   (Scarlet)    23.98

Just found a few copies of this rather hard-to-find picture disc edition of Aborym's classic 1999 debut album, and it's a beaut, with full color artwork on both sides and a version of their song "Tantra Bizarre" that is exclusive to this release.
Not as off-the-hook bizarre as Dodheimsgard but much more electronically enhanced than bands like Mysticum or Thorns, Aborym would develop their mix of classic second wave Norwegian black metal and electronic music into a much more sophisticated sound on later albums during the early 00's. Kali Yuga Bizarre was still a fine blast of brain-frying electro-infected baroque blackness from this European collective, though. Kicking off with the icy majesty of "Wehrmacht Kali Ma", the disc makes its way through a shadowy labyrinth of frostbitten black buzz and odd carnival-esque melodies, diving suddenly into the synth-heavy black metal of "Horrenda Peccata Christi" that twists through spasms of frenetic drum n' bass and throbbing industrial metal, and slow doom-laden passages backed with soaring orchestral keyboards. The vocals are handled by both lead vocalist Yorga SM and legendary black metal frontman Attila Csihar, who both spew a litany of demonic croaks, Latin incantations, and draconian imperatives while the rest of the band claws their way through these ten tracks of hallucinatory industrial black metal. And that's heavy on the "hallucination"; haunted pipe organs rise out of the mist, industrial percussion rattles in the distance, and deep monk-like chanting drifts in the background, and there's the constant presence of 80's style horror movie keyboards throughout Kali Yuga, on tracks like "Hellraiser", the slow reverberating pace, heavy bass line and gloomy keys evokes the sound of 80's darkwave before the music decomposes into weird effect-laden nightmare ambience. The track "Roma Divina Urbs" flows out of that into the sound of booming kettledrums and medieval horns resembling something off of the Conan The Barbarian soundtrack, and then Aborym bursts into a blackened metal version of the same arrangement now laced with electronic harpsichord sounds and frenzied blast beats, with dramatic clean vocals appearing later in the song. This unpredictable lunatic vibe is all over this album.
On the flipside, "Tantra Bizarre" delivers one of the album's most majestic songs with Attila's bizarre moaning vokills, one killer melodic hook after another, and a wild mix of shredding guitar solos and some very strange shrieking sounds that dive-bomb throughout the whole track. "Come Thou Long Expected Jesus" is one of the album's most twisted tracks, a hellish mishmash of hardcore techno, Black Mass atmospherics, blackened tremolo riffing, distorted bass lines and synths, and blown-out break beats all wound together into a delirious funhouse nightmare. A maniacal voice rants in Italian while a church choir sings, and then the band rips into the ferocious blackthrash of "Metal Striken Terror Action". That's followed by the delirious gothic blackness of "The First Four Trumpets", which resembles something from Fields Of The Nephilim, down to the deep Carl McCoy-esque vocals. The final bonus track "Tantra Bizarre (Co30 Version)" takes certain elements of the original version and gloms it all back together into a frantic skittering hardcore techno jam, a massive bass line slithering among the distorted fast-paced break beats and swarming synth, blackened shrieks and bizarre gasping vocals swooping back and forth, foreshadowing the more drum n' bass infected direction the band would take on later albums like With No Human Intervention.
Released in a limited edition of 1,000 copies.

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ABRUPTUM   Evil Genius   CD   (Southern Lord)    14.98

Black metal psychonauts have been waiting eons for this: a fully authorized, impeccably assembled re-issue of the 1995 Evil Genius CD which compiled the earliest recordings from Swedish black metal group Abruptum. For the most part operated as a duo comprised of founding member It (a guy allegely so evil that he couldn't be given a human name) and Marduk member Evil, Abruptum hailed from Stockholm, Sweden, and worked to become "the essence of pure audio evil". Evil Genius was originally released in 1995 on Hellspawn Records, and the first edition received abit of notoriety when it was packaged with a razor blade and a sticker that instructed the listener to kill themselves. That shit, along with the persistent rumours over the years that It was a dwarf who tortured himself in the studio to achieve the anguished sounds found on their demos and albums, has formed some of the weirdest mythology around a black metal band that I've ever heard. Evil Genius includes the 1990 demo cassettes Hexum Galaem Zelog and The Satanist Tunes, as well as the Evil 7" EP from 1992, and the sounds on these early demos can barely be described as black metal, actually; the music is almost completely unstructered and improvised, barely ever picking up speed (although there are a couple of awesome blastbeat eruptions scattered around these tracks) and mostly lumbering along in a messy mid-tempo doom plod. It's all about atmosphere though, and Abruptum are masters of creating some of the blackest, most disturbing and diseased soundscapes you'll ever hear, a sludgy, murky pit of impossibly detuned proto-deathsludge riffs and stumbling blackdoom buzz, gothic synthesizers and tolling bells jumping in and out of the mix, insane anguished screams and monstrous grunts of Latin wordage appear at random, the drums plod along covered in black mud, totally drunken freeform guitar solo-noise splattered over all kinds of strange random creaks and noises, all drifting out of a subterranean basement-dungeon and drenched in reverb. A megalithic, mindbending descent into garbled psychedelic blackness. Listened to this for the first time in my living room with the lights out one night, and man, did it freak me the fuck out. This stateside remastered re-issue comes atcha from Southern Lord, and features all new artwork, brand new liner notes from It himself, and the track "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" from the Nordic Metal - A Tribute To Euronymous CD tacked on as a bonus track.

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ABRUPTUM   Evil Genius   LP   (Southern Lord)    14.98

Evil Genius IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

We now have this crucial piece of weird black metal history available on vinyl, with new artwork, in a black jacket with aweosome black gloss printing that has the Abruptum logo filling the album cover, and the back featuring that huge straightrazor and the track listing. The record comes in a really thick inner sleeve that has killer photos of Abruptum as well as the liner notes. Stunning!
Black metal psychonauts have been waiting eons for this: a fully authorized, impeccably assembled re-issue of the 1995 Evil Genius CD which compiled the earliest recordings from Swedish black metal group Abruptum. For the most part operated as a duo comprised of founding member It (a guy allegely so evil that he couldn't be given a human name) and Marduk member Evil, Abruptum hailed from Stockholm, Sweden, and worked to become "the essence of pure audio evil". Evil Genius was originally released in 1995 on Hellspawn Records, and the first edition received abit of notoriety when it was packaged with a razor blade and a sticker that instructed the listener to kill themselves. That shit, along with the persistent rumours over the years that It was a dwarf who tortured himself in the studio to achieve the anguished sounds found on their demos and albums, has formed some of the weirdest mythology around a black metal band that I've ever heard. Evil Genius includes the 1990 demo cassettes Hexum Galaem Zelog and The Satanist Tunes, as well as the Evil 7" EP from 1992, and the sounds on these early demos can barely be described as black metal, actually; the music is almost completely unstructered and improvised, barely ever picking up speed (although there are a couple of awesome blastbeat eruptions scattered around these tracks) and mostly lumbering along in a messy mid-tempo doom plod. It's all about atmosphere though, and Abruptum are masters of creating some of the blackest, most disturbing and diseased soundscapes you'll ever hear, a sludgy, murky pit of impossibly detuned proto-deathsludge riffs and stumbling blackdoom buzz, gothic synthesizers and tolling bells jumping in and out of the mix, insane anguished screams and monstrous grunts of Latin wordage appear at random, the drums plod along covered in black mud, totally drunken freeform guitar solo-noise splattered over all kinds of strange random creaks and noises, all drifting out of a subterranean basement-dungeon and drenched in reverb. A megalithic, mindbending descent into garbled psychedelic blackness. Listened to this for the first time in my living room with the lights out one night, and man, did it freak me the fuck out. This stateside remastered re-issue comes atcha from Southern Lord, and features all new artwork, brand new liner notes from It himself, and the track "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" from the Nordic Metal - A Tribute To Euronymous CD tacked on as a bonus track.

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ABRUPTUM   In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo,In Aeternum in Triumpho   CD   (Regain)    14.98

In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo,In Aeternum in Triumpho IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Now that several of their older titles on Regain are once again available to us, we have finally managed to get a bunch of Abruptum's import CDs in stock at Crucial Blast. I've been spending the last month getting reacquainted with these demented Swedish black metallers while working on writing up the reviews for these discs, and have basically fallen in love with 'em all over again. Out of all of the bands that made up the second wave of the Scandinavian black metal movement of the early 90's, there was none weirder than Abruptum. Their sound was a black pit of anguished screams and chaotic, mostly improvised ambient noise and mutated metal, and not surprisingly Abruptum were disliked by many black metal fans who came to their albums expecting something more, um, "structured".
Abruptum's second album In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo... was the band's second and also had the distinguished honor of being the final release to come out through Euronymous' Deathlike Silence label before his murder at the hands of Varg Vikernes. Released in 1994, the album consisted of another single epic track created by the duo of Evil and It, and is slightly more structured than the hellish cacophony of their debut Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectere Me . The diminutive It continues to deliver his tortured wailing and shrill shrieks over improvised drumming, mangled riffing that seems to unravel on itself, and a chaotic symphony of noises, evil orchestral strings, and black ambient textures, but the duo also begins to introduce other elements like crushing, droning riffs, 80's sounding synthesizers playing horror film score type passages, scraping violin strings, ponderous doom metal dirges, and samples of dripping water and other dungeony sounds. There are parts of this album where it starts to sound more like some sort of deranged industrial doom metal, lumbering and massive, though the music is just as improvised and seemingly disorganized as their previous work. These moments of tangible riffing and actual melodies and the drumming make this a heavier exercise in Abruptum's free-improv black metal as brief as those parts might be, and the combination of these parts and those awesomely cheesy 80's-horro keyboard sounds with It's blubbering, wailing, grunting, moaning and altogether anguished vocal performance makes this a delirious listen. As always, Abruptum evoke the hallucinatory hellish visions of Bosch and Grunewald through their utterly evil, trance-like improvisations and murky ambient goatworship. All of Abruptum's releases are essential for anyone into weird, fucked-up blackened "metal", but this album is one of their more epic sounding works and is a good place to start if you haven't yet experienced these weirdos yet. Recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo, In Aeternum in Triumpho Tenebrau

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ABRUPTUM   Casus Luciferi   CD   (Regain)    14.98

Now that several of their older titles on Regain are once again available to us, we have finally managed to get a bunch of Abruptum's import CDs in stock at Crucial Blast. I've been spending the last month getting reacquainted with these demented Swedish black metallers while working on writing up the reviews for these discs, and have basically fallen in love with 'em all over again. Out of all of the bands that made up the second wave of the Scandinavian black metal movement of the early 90's, there was none weirder than Abruptum. Their sound was a black pit of anguished screams and chaotic, mostly improvised ambient noise and mutated metal, and not surprisingly Abruptum were disliked by many black metal fans who came to their albums expecting something more, um, "structured".
The latest and last actual full length from Abruptum, the Swedish black metal duo who were easily the most fucked-up, far out band to come out of the original black metal movement, whose early albums were hour-long exercises in demented improvised "black metal", free-form noise, and the shrieks and wailing of the members engaged in self-torture. Over the top and pretty ridiculous, sure, but also totally EVIL sounding. I've been spending a lot of time with Abruptum lately as we finally added their albums that are still available and in print to our catalog (you'll find their In Umbra Malitiae Ambulabo, In Aeternum in Triumpho Tenebrau, De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet and Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me discs in stock this week as well), and their recordings still stand as some of the most bizarre stuff to ever get labeled as "black metal".
2004's Casus Luciferi is a much different album than their earlier ones, and is more like a Satanic version of Cold Meat style death industrial at times, although Abruptum's unique hellish ambience again puts this in it's own weird territory. It begins with the thumping and pounding of a muffled drumline, booming kettledrum rhythms heard from a distance that is joined by some seriously fucked up and mangled guitar playing, super distorted, super detuned riffage slithering and buzzing over weird whistling wind sounds. This eventually dissipates and a series of massive orchestral swells appear, like a symphony of strings and woodwinds surging into sustained drones for several minutes. The end of the track joins all of these elements, the martial drumming and deformed riffs and dark orchestral ambience melting together with shrieking demonic voices into a fog of blackened, droning murk.
"In Actu Oculi" is next, a churning mass of blown-out, ultra-distorted bass riffage so gnarly sounding that you can just barely make out the grinding riff buried underneath of the grit and filth. Over this floats haunting female chanting, tolling bells, waves of caustic white noise and crackling low-end rumble. "Ex Inferno Inferiori" starts off as a quiet murmur of throbbing bass frequencies that is gradually joined by more of that hellish, blown-out guitar noise, blasts of crumbling distorted heaviness sliding in pitch and creating a super heavy slab of ambient drone. Throughout this one, strange tinny noises and distant cicada swarms swirl across the background.
The final track "Gehennae Perpetuae Cruciatus" opens with a glacial industrial rhythm, massive thunderclaps of tympani-esque percussive blasts and harrowing violin strings scraping far off in the distance, with pregnant pauses of almost complete silence appearing every few minutes. In a way, this is the least abrasive piece of music on the disc, but it's also the scariest sounding, and could easily work as part of a horror film score.
The droning Industrial rhythms and dark ambience of this album sets it apart from the rest of the Abruptum catalog, and it's the most composed of any of their works. As always, the music here is a soundtrack to hellish visions of eternal suffering and demonic torture, a sonic counterpart to Bosch's images of Hell (and as a matter of fact, a closeup of part of one of Bosch's paintings is featured as the interior spread of the booklet for Casus Luciferi, depicting two demons in the act of sodomizing some poor bastard), but here Abruptum go for pure mood and atmosphere. Recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Casus Luciferi
Sample : Ex Inferno Inferiori
Sample : In Ictu Oculi

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ABRUPTUM   De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet   CD   (Regain)    10.98

De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Now that several of their older titles on Regain are once again available to us, we have finally managed to get a bunch of Abruptum's import CDs in stock at Crucial Blast. I've been spending the last month getting reacquainted with these demented Swedish black metallers while working on writing up the reviews for these discs, and have basically fallen in love with 'em all over again. Out of all of the bands that made up the second wave of the Scandinavian black metal movement of the early 90's, there was none weirder than Abruptum. Their sound was a black pit of anguished screams and chaotic, mostly improvised ambient noise and mutated metal, and not surprisingly Abruptum were disliked by many black metal fans who came to their albums expecting something more, um, "structured".
This EP from 2000 is one of Abruptum's last releases, a three song disc that features three very different sides of this infamous Swedish improv-black metal band. The disc opens with the most structured song that Abruptum has EVER released, "De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet" from 1991, which had previously appeared on the Nordic Metal - A Tribute To Euronymous compilation. It begins with vintage horror movie synths and synthetic vocal choirs playing this over-the-top cartoon Gothic intro, and then moves into a crushing blackened doom jam, plodding drums and boiling double-bass underscoring grinding slo-mo riffage while gutteral vocals roar over top. Kinda sounds like Thergothon with some maniac screaming random blather in Latin over it, at least until random Casio sounds, electronic tinkling and other weird bits enter the picture...and a backing chorus of "lalala"'s that pops up for a brief moment towards the end? Utterly fucked up, and genius. That one is one of my favorite Abruptum songs ever. The other two on the disc are just as crazed,. but each in a very different way. Where the first song is the most "accessible" and structured that Abruptum has ever released, the second track "Dödsapparaten" recorded in 2000 is without a doubt the most abrasive and harsh, over eight minutes of crushing blackened NOISE that begins with a clanging bell but which almost immediately explodes into an avalanche of lead pipes and sheet metal, exploding amplifiers and the screams of the demonically possessed. It sounds an awful lot like Merzbow, MSBR or Incapacitants or some other blazing wall-of-noise Japanese distortion wrecking machine, but infused with pure evil. Stalaggh is another comparison, and it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the guys behind Stalaggh were inspired to start their project after hearing this particular Abruptum track. And the third and final track "Massdöd" is a super brief (two and a half minutes) but ominous piece that combines a heavy, distorted synth squelch loop and marching troops into a hypnotic industrial jam that ends in a triumphant fanfare of anthemic orchestral music. As always, Abruptum succeed in creating an abstract, hellish atmosphere from both metallic and decidedly non-metallic sounds, and like all of their releases, this EP is essential to anyone into ultra-weird, improvised blackness.
Track Samples:
Sample : De Profundis Mors Vas Cousumet
Sample : Dobsapparaten
Sample : Massdod

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ABRUPTUM   Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me   CD   (Regain)    14.98

Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Now that several of their older titles on Regain are once again available to us, we have finally managed to get a bunch of Abruptum's import CDs in stock at Crucial Blast. I've been spending the last month getting reacquainted with these demented Swedish black metallers while working on writing up the reviews for these discs, and have basically fallen in love with 'em all over again. Out of all of the bands that made up the second wave of the Scandinavian black metal movement of the early 90's, there was none weirder than Abruptum. Their sound was a black pit of anguished screams and chaotic, mostly improvised ambient noise and mutated metal, and not surprisingly Abruptum were disliked by many black metal fans who came to their albums expecting something more, um, "structured".
Recently reissued by Regain, the Swedish black metal label run by one of the guys in Marduk, Abruptum's Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me is the first album from the notorious Swedish improv-black metallers Abruptum, and even still this is some of the most insane and psychotic sounding "black metal" ever recorded. Both this and Abruptum's In Umbra Malaitae Ambulabo in Aternum in Triumpho Tenebrarum were originally released by Euronymous on his Deathlike Silence label before his murder, all of which has been documented in the book Lords Of Chaos, but Abruptum have remained something of a footnote in the history of Scandinavian black metal. Their music was simply too bizarre for most black metal fans to parse, and their earlier material feels like it has more in common with free jazz than traditional black metal. On this first album, the duo of Evil and It conjured a hellish hallucinatory fog of tortured screams, rumbling black ambience, mangled guitar noise and abstract riffs that start off sounding like black metal riffs but quickly turn into something different, strange noises and clankling sounds, pummeling double bass drumming and freeform improvised percussion, and hysterical blackened shrieks run through all kinds of effects processors. And the production is weird, with tape dropouts and sudden spikes in volume where guitars or vocals suddenly become VERY loud appearing all over the single, hour long track (split into two halves on this CD). This is also where the whole legend started that involved the members of Abruptum torturing themselves in the studio, recording themselves as they whipped, cut, burned themselves and poured boiling water on each other - totally ridiculous, but you can't deny that Obscuritatem Advoco Amplectére Me is some of the most evil music ever, a sonic manifestation of the demonic horror that is envisioned in Bosch's Hell and Fall Of The Damned paintings. Anyone that digs the fucked up, free-form "black metal"/ blackened noise of bands like Emit and Stalaggh needs to hear Abruptum, since this is where it all began. Crucial.

Track Samples:
Sample : Part 1
Sample : Part 2

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ABSCESS   Dawn Of Inhumanity   CD   (Peaceville)    17.98

Although they never achieving the same level of legendary status as Chris Reifert's previous band Autopsy, Abscess were an amazingly weird and heavy outfit that has been cranking out a demented cross between barbaric death metal slime and psychedelic sludgepunk since the mid-90's, releasing a couple of crucial discs on Relapse before moving on to UK label Peaceville for their last few releases. I actually hadn't paid much attention to their last couple of releases since Peaceville titles had been hard for me to track down for a while, but their latest album Dawn Of Inhumanity caught my attention immediately once I heard some of the preview tracks and laid my eyes on Dennis Dread's spectacularly wonky album artwork, a wild looking vision of levitating cloaked cultists, occult symbolism, and demonic alien-eyeball beasts. If you’re a fan of the older Abscess stuff, you know what to expect here; the songs on Dawn are in the same vein as previous Abscess offerings, an offbeat mix of caveman death metal, hardcore punk, Sabbathy doom, and crazed acid-guitar freakouts that crawl and lurch through a dank cloud of sewer ambience, with weirdo riffing and Voivod-esque skronk appearing alongside their punky blasts of guttural down tuned crush and primitive thrash. Their sound is heavy enough for Autopsy fans, but Abscess are so much weirder, the songs often wandering into bizarre noise freak outs (such as “The Rotting Land”, where the guys from Darkthrone can be heard gibbering and grunting within a chaotic free-noise mess), fucked-up tribal psychedelic death murk, even layering acoustic guitars within an otherwise roaring blast of rocking mid-paced death metal, and Reifert's vocals wheeze and grunt through a myriad of delay and echo effects that gives all of this a bent, cough-syrup covered vibe. Along with Dread's killer album art, the booklet that comes with Dawn is also filled with additional artwork from Reifert himself, who creates nightmarish primitive visions of black and red demons that somewhat resembles Mike Diana's artwork. It stinks that this turned out to be the band's final album, as they announced that the band was being put to rest soon after the release of Dawn Of Inhumanity, but they left on a high note with one of the year's wackiest death metal albums that continues to blare out of my stereo on a regular basis. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Divine Architect of Disaster
Sample : Goddess of Filth and Plague

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ABSCESS   Damned And Mummified   CD   (Red Stream)    11.98

The 2004 album Damned And Mummified from Californian death metal mutants Abcess is back in stock after a period of unavailability, and it's an essential chapter in the career of this terminally weird side project from members of death metal legends Autopsy. The songs on Damned... are loaded with hideous doom-laden psychedelic death metal slime, at times reminiscent of Autopsy, but with weird gasping, snarling vocals that are run through an exorbitant amount of delay and other effects, lurching primitive death metal riffs find themselves reshaped into monstrously stoned Sabbathian grooves, insanely dissonant guitar solos and discordant almost Voivod-ian riffs, and lots of weird effects and noises. There are a number of tracks on here where Abscess get into their bulldozing sludgy hardcore punk modem, like "Swallow The Venom", "Tattoo Collector" and the bludgeoning title track, and there's an equal amount of crushing doom death and raging tribal drum freak outs strewn throughout this disc. It also has one of my favorite Abscess songs, "Twilight Bleeds", which has the band mixing together haunting doom-laden lead guitars and sludgy, lurching doom with a trippy mess of bizarre noises, maniacal gargles, bluesy soloing, and even some backing acoustic guitar and a couple of bursts of brutal hardcore that all adds up to one of their heaviest, catchiest tracks. They reached a pinnacle of glorious other-dimensional weirdness on their swan song Dawn Of Inhumanity, but this is still a killer disc from these death sludge freaks, and the music on Damned... continues to suggest to me what Celtic Frost could have sounded like if they had eaten a ton of mushrooms during their recording sessions. Anyone into offbeat death metal who isn't already a fan of Abscess should check them out ASAP. Oh, and the artwork on this disc is terrific; it's got a mix of bizarre drawings from Abscess front man Chris Reifert (which always have this weird Boiled Angel vibe) and illustrations from the masterful Dennis Dread on the cover.
Track Samples:
Sample : Inferno of Perverse Creation
Sample : Lust for the Grave
Sample : Twilight Bleeds

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ABSCESS / POPULATION REDUCTION   split   LP   (Tank Crimes)    14.98

It sucks that San Francisco weirdoes Abscess recently called it quits after almost two decades of delivering their quirky stoner death, but some new material has still oozed out in the wake of their exit, like this slammin' split LP with fellow Cali grinders Population Reduction. The Abscess side of this record serves up eight new tracks of their blistering acid death from these underground vets/Autopsy members, nothing quite as wonky as what I heard on their phenomenal final album Dawn of Inhumanity, but still plenty warped, songs like "Nausea Without End", "Bourbon, Blood and Butchery", "Volcanic Psychosis" and "Senseless Waste of Space" grinding out putrid blasts of sticky, sickly dissonant death metal slime, punky thrash, Sabbathy riffing and those weird forays into a kind of noxious stoner rock grooviness that has been one of their trademarks since the beginning, and there's a very strange detour into the Pepto-Bismol jingle that briefly appears at the end. Abscess fuse together an old school death metal assault with hardcore punk and a subliminal psych influences and it's a style all of their own that I'm definitely going to miss, but these songs make their passing much easier to bear.
Also comforting is the presence of their pals Population Reduction on the b-side, a two-piece band that makes a great showing here with seven songs of awesome thrash-infected grindcore that sounds to me like a perfect hybrid of late 80's Bay Area thrash metal and the monstrous cacophonic whirlwind of the early Earache roster. I've heard a bunch of other bands try to pull this sort of thing off before, but I don't think that anyone has mixed the two influences together as well as Population Reduction does here. Manic growling vokills rip through the speed-demon blastscapes of "Cannabis Holocaust" and "In with the Old, Out with the Cold", puking up the venomous tongue-in-cheek lyrics over arrangements that flow between ripping thrash metal and guttural atavistic death/grind, with the guitarists laying down a couple of shredding harmonized leads and some of the songs lurching through unpredictable stop-start seizures. One of the highlights of their side is "Cult Scam" which drops the most pit-inducing thrash riffs on the whole record into the middle of the song, and they wrap things up with a cover of "In Nephritic Blue" from Spanish death metallers Haemorrhage.
The record has Abscess's Chris Reifert doing the bizarre alien artwork featured on the jacket (I always love to see his stuff), and it's released in a limited edition of five hundred copies.

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ABSEMIA   Morbo Praxis   CD   (American Line)    9.98

There's something about gore-soaked South American death metal that really hits the spot. This new full length from Argentinian grinders Absemia features strong musicianship, while maintaining that fiercely raw and noisy edge that draws me to bands from this region of the world. Executing extremely brutal deathgrind that’s rough around the edges, with raw production values and a flair for ultra chaotic riffing and blastbeats, Absemia grind through 9 tracks of atonal, ugly, and clinical shred with guttural vocals and demented song structures that perfectly fit their Carcass-esque medical textbook song titles and splatter aesthetics. The leadwork and riffing on Morbopraxis toe the line between spastic chaos and atmospheric/disharmonic melody, and some great doomy slow passages pop up throughout the disc, breaking up what would otherwise be a nonstop noise gore tech blast fest. Packaging features typical South American psychosexual/autopsy themes, with splatterized, hand-rendered cover art. Features a CD-Rom enhanced video for Cronica Infeccion.

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ABSENTIA LUNAE   In Umbra Imperii Gloria   CD   (Sol Invictus)    11.98

More high quality black metal from Italy! Absentia Lunae hail from Trieste, Italy, to be precise, and this quartet spins an icy whirlwind of progressive black metal that's right at home with the generally avant-garde aesthetic behind the Sol Invictus label. If the band's intricately assembled blasts of dissonant blackness weren't cool enough, Absentia Lunae also stand out as one of the few black metal bands that I've heard that have a woman in their lineup, and a lady lead guitarist named Climaxia to boot! She might have one of the coolest black metal pseudonyms that I've ever seen, but Climaxia is also a shredding riffmistress, which I already knew from hearing her awesome solo project Melencolia Estatica (which we'll have available here at Crucial Blast shortly). In Umbra Imperii Gloria has previously been released on limited edition LP on Serpens Caput Productions in 2006, and the music is intensely epic, blazing fast and complex like Spite Extreme Wing but with twisted atonal riffs and dark post-rock elements showing up in unexpected places. Songs move seamlessly between raw, aggressive blasting with speedy tremelo riffs and waltzy melodic passages, and there are tons of amazing, moving melodies all over this album, even when the drummer is blasting at inhuman speeds, and the drummer keeps things interesting by throwing in odd jazzy percussive patterns (often matched by equally jazz-influenced basslines), sudden tempo changes and weird shifts in time signature, often slipping into strange off-time rhythms. Cool vocals too, usually delivered in a hateful throat-shredding rasp but sometimes shifting into dramatic, almost operatic singing. And always, there are Climaxia's guitars, razorblade-sharp and trebly, slicing through Absentia Lunae's discordant blackness with ominous arpeggios, abstract chords and heartrending melodic figures, creating all kinds of otherworldly textures and alien riffs that the rest of the band deftly navigates. The melodies are so catchy and moving on In Umbra that I sometimes forget just how dissonant and off-kilter rest of the music is, but it's far closer in tone and feel to mathy, avant-garde black metallers like Deathspell Omega, newer Enslaved and (especially) Ved Beuns Ende than the more traditional Italian black metal that I've been listening to. Awesome stuff, and I'm most definitely looking forward to hearing more from Climaxia and company!
Track Samples:
Sample : Died Story Manifesto
Sample : Mid Svmmer Spiritval Holocavst

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ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT   Ultrasonic Action   CD   (Charnel Music)    9.98

Punishing early-90's re-issue that collects the entire Ultrasonic LP and two tracks off of the Ultima Action LP from K.K. Null's pre-ZENI GEVA noise rock monster, originally released in the late 1980's and remastered onto one 68 minute disc. ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT's jams were recorded way back in 1986/1987 in Japan, and even after 20 years, this is still a SKULLCRUSHING series of death improv beatings. Consisting of a spare bass/drums/guitar trio (featuring drummer Seijiro Murayama, who was also the original drummer for Keiji Haino's Fushitsusha ), Ultrasonic Action delves into a combination of free improvised rock, caustic, feedback saturated punk slop, and plodding dirge that recalls early Swans, accompanied by primitive percussion and Null's terrifying death howls ...sort of an industrialized improv take on freeform sludge rock, but definitely much more fucked up than that delivered by Zeni Geva. Definitely paints a picture of what K.K. Null would go on to create with Zeni Geva and his other, later projects. Excellent, completely abrasive and ear shredding atonal rock destruction. Released on Zeni Geva's Nux Organization imprint.

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ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT   Absolute Magnitude   CD   (Blossoming Noise)    12.98

2008's Absolute Magnitude is the latest album from the reunited Japanese noise/improv/industrial/rock duo Absolut Null Punkt, which features drummer Seijiro Murayama (who used to play in Fushitsusha back in the late 80's) and KK Null (from Zeni Geva, natch) teaming up for another go-round of blistering freeform noise blat. Some of the older ANP albums like Ultrasonic Action treaded closer to a kind of industrial thud-rock similar to that of Zeni Geva and Swans, but the recent ANP albums have gotten progressively more abstract and noisy, and WAY more psychedelic. Which is ace by me. Absolute Magnitude doesn't really have anything that I'd describe as a riff, and the duo certainly don't come near the crushing angular noise-metal of Zeni Geva, but Null's guitars do get pretty damn extreme on this disc, spewing out thick jets of howling, bleeping, soaring effects-blasted guitar noise that sound more like the sort of stuff you'd hear on one of his solo albums, only here it's backed by the propulsive drumming of Murayama, whose rhythms often slip into a killer hypnotic throb that turns some of this stuff into a sort of super-abstract computer-battle krautrock. On the other hand, the second track explodes into full-on chaos, Murayama bashing and skittering crazed anti-rhythms and clanging industrial percussion that smashes headon into Null's distorted, mangled spaceship FX. Gets pretty heavy, in fact.
The first track starts off with a six minute splatterfest of pounding, tear-down-the-walls improv drumming, dense squalls of harsh industrial noise rushing in from opposing directions, and bits of jacked-up synth squiggle and raygun photon blasts zipping around all over the place; all of that electronic blat and Null's thoroughly mangled guitar skronk suggests the crazy spaceship chaos-scapes of his noisier solo stuff, but melded with a furious, almost free-jazz-style percussive assault. But when it hits the midway point, everything drops out except for a smattering of random bleating electronic noises, and then the band rebuilds the track slowly into a throbbing, pulsating sci-fi krautrock jam, the drums pulsating beneath robotic synths and streaking high-end effects, and it gets pretty dense and hypnotic as the band rides this noisy, psychedelic groove to the end.
But track two is way more abstract, a sprawling soundscape littered with busy tribal free-drumming that percolates in a haze of damaged synth noise, wheezy digital glitch, Null's weirdly processed guitar that he somehow manages to turn into a screaming sax-like bleat, stretches of spatial percussion and random sounds, and Moog-y synth arpeggios. And the third track essentially combines all of the elements that came before into a massive thirty minute jam that takes you from Nullsonic brand starship bleep to super-distorted industrial/free improv dirge to furious blasts of way-out guitar skronk and hammering drumbeats, wandering in and out of more of those wicked overdriven synth/drums workouts with wild looping prog-style arpeggios that circle around Murayama's treated drumming.
Comes in a full color digipack.
Track Samples:
Sample : Absolute Magnitude 1
Sample : Absolute Magnitude 2

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ABSTRACT SPIRIT   Liquid Dimensions Change   CD   (Solitude Productions)    9.98

If you go back and read the reviews that I've written over the past two years for albums on Solitude, Bad Mood Man, bands like Darkflight, Flegethon, etc., you'll notice that I've been hearing an awful lot of kosmiche and psych influences in these doom metal albums, as if there's this heavy undercurrent of space music and Tangerine Dream worship that has been seeping into the death/funeral/doom continuum. I might be imagining alot of this, and it's hard to follow up on my suspicions that we've got all of these deathdoom bands in Eastern Europe and Russia locked down in their basements with copies of Stratosfear, Dark Side Of The Moon and Stream from the Heavens endlessly spinning on their turntables since I can never find any interviews with most of these bands. There's definitely some big love for psychedelia going on in the deathdoom scene, though, and I'm constantly discovering cool, as-yet-unheard bands from this sector of the globe who are whipping out their synths en masse and pushing ultra-heavy doom deeper into the outer sectors.
Abstract Spirit's Liquid Dimensions Change is exactly this kind of album. The band is from Russia and has members of another cult funeral doom outfit called Comatose Vigil, and the music on here is first and foremost devestatingly heavy funeral doom, utterly punishing slow-motion riffs and plodding, ultra-heavy drumming, and impossibly deep vocals. Think Thergothon, Shape Of Despair, Skepticism, Evoken, Heirophant, Esoteric, Pantheist, etc.. The riffs are beyond heavy, the songs are epic monoliths of misery and horror that stretch up to fourteen minutes in length, and it feels like being suffocated beneath waves of crushing glacial death metal. That would be fine by itself, but Abstract Spirit make this even cooler by giving the songs a super atmospheric sheen, coating the lumbering, Cthulhian deathdoom with prominent church organs, horror soundtrack synths, symphonic strings, insanely majestic harmonies, choral voices, and yeah, some supremely trippy cosmic keyboards and psychedelic electronics that soar over the blackened dirgescapes. There are parts of Liquid Dimensions Change where the music turns into a massive infernal orchestra before being bulldozed by the monstrous doom riffs, and at other points the keyboards take on a gleaming, celestial gorgeousness that is total Tangerine Dream, whether the band realizes or not. And then there are also the weird appearances of jazz piano that show up in a couple of spots, which somehow just manages to imbue the music with an additional layer of unease. Fans of melodic funeral doom will love this, as well as anyone into the more psychedelic end of the death/funeral doom spectrum like Pantheist and Esoteric. Awesome!

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ABSU   self-titled   CD   (Candlelight)    13.98

Eight long years have gone by since the last time that we had a new album of "Mythological Occult Metal" from Texas thrashers Absu, the last one being 2001's amazing Tara, and there's been some shakeup in the ranks since then. The only remaining original member is drummer/vocalist Sir Proscriptor McGovern, who also plays in Mesopotamian blackthrashers Melechesh as well as the occultic ambient/prog projects Equimanthorn and Proscriptor), and he's put together a new Absu lineup in the wake of departing members Equitant and Shaftiel. No need to sweat though, because this new, revamped version of Absu is just as ripping and magick-obsessed a thrashathon as you'd hope. Simply titled Abu, this discharges thirteen tracks of esoteric blackened thrash that's equal parts mystic investigation and Teutonic speedmetal, like a methed out Kreator musing on serious spiritual/occult concepts and multi-part examinations of magickal theory like "Of the Dead Who Never Rest in Their Tombs Are the Attendance of Familiar Spirits Including: A.) Diversified Signs Inscribed B.) Our Earth of Black C.) Voor" . Wait, what? Yeah, Absu have always been a headier proposition than yer typical black metal junk, drawing their lyrical and visual inspiration from ancient Sumerian and Gaelic mythology and beyond, and backing it up with ferocious, complex thrash that continues to get quirkier with each new album. They aren't rehashing Tara - there's lots of slower, midpaced riffage, and some awesome Ash Ra-grade Mellotron and the occasional injection of siderial synthesizer - but that freaked-out Absu sound is still as fierce as ever. The riffs are ferocious and ripping, and laid out in strange sprawling arrangements, strewn with awesome psychotic soloing. Lots of unpredictable twists and turns and convoluted time signatures. And Proscriptor remains one of black metal's most proficient drummers, whipping up furious tempests of tumultuous percussive fills and choppy thrash, as well as coming up with most of Absu's arcane subject matter. So good to have a new album from these guys. There are some guest contributions from members of Melechesh, Enthroned, Zemial and Mayhem, and former member Equitant does make an appearance in a brief cameo. The band has morphed a bit, but this album is still a blazing slab of blackened thrash that I've been playing nonstop. The band is slated to appear at this year's Maryland Death Fest too, one of their first live shows in ages, so we are doubly stoked on this re-emergence of the mighty Absu!
Track Samples:
Sample : 13 Globes
Sample : Night Fire Canonization
Sample : …Of The Dead Who Never Rest In Their Tombs Are The Attendance Of Familiar Spirits…Including:
Sample : Those Of The Void Will Re-Enter

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ABSU   self-titled (DELUXE EDITION)   CD + DVD   (Candlelight)    14.98

Candlelight has released 2009's stunning comeback album from Texan black metal mystics Absu as a new limited edition cd/dvd set for collectors, with new artwork, new packaging (including a printed slipcase), and of most interest to Absu fans, a professionally produced DVD that was filmed in June of 2009 in Montreal, Quebec, which features a blistering set that includes a ton of material from the new album and a handful of classic earlier tracks.
Eight long years have gone by since the last time that we had a new album of "Mythological Occult Metal" from Texas thrashers Absu, the last one being 2001's amazing Tara, and there's been some shakeup in the ranks since then. The only remaining original member is drummer/vocalist Sir Proscriptor McGovern, who also plays in Mesopotamian blackthrashers Melechesh as well as the occultic ambient/prog projects Equimanthorn and Proscriptor), and he's put together a new Absu lineup in the wake of departing members Equitant and Shaftiel. No need to sweat though, because this new, revamped version of Absu is just as ripping and magick-obsessed a thrashathon as you'd hope. Simply titled Abu, this discharges thirteen tracks of esoteric blackened thrash that's equal parts mystic investigation and Teutonic speedmetal, like a methed out Kreator musing on serious spiritual/occult concepts and multi-part examinations of magickal theory like "Of the Dead Who Never Rest in Their Tombs Are the Attendance of Familiar Spirits Including: A.) Diversified Signs Inscribed B.) Our Earth of Black C.) Voor" . Wait, what? Yeah, Absu have always been a headier proposition than yer typical black metal junk, drawing their lyrical and visual inspiration from ancient Sumerian and Gaelic mythology and beyond, and backing it up with ferocious, complex thrash that continues to get quirkier with each new album. They aren't rehashing Tara - there's lots of slower, midpaced riffage, and some awesome Ash Ra-grade Mellotron and the occasional injection of siderial synthesizer - but that freaked-out Absu sound is still as fierce as ever. The riffs are ferocious and ripping, and laid out in strange sprawling arrangements, strewn with awesome psychotic soloing. Lots of unpredictable twists and turns and convoluted time signatures. And Proscriptor remains one of black metal's most proficient drummers, whipping up furious tempests of tumultuous percussive fills and choppy thrash, as well as coming up with most of Absu's arcane subject matter. So good to have a new album from these guys. There are some guest contributions from members of Melechesh, Enthroned, Zemial and Mayhem, and former member Equitant does make an appearance in a brief cameo. The band has morphed a bit, but this album is still a blazing slab of blackened thrash that I've been playing nonstop.
Track Samples:
Sample : 13 Globes
Sample : Night Fire Canonization
Sample : …Of The Dead Who Never Rest In Their Tombs Are The Attendance Of Familiar Spirits…Including:
Sample : Those Of The Void Will Re-Enter

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ABSU   self-titled   LP   (Back On Black)    28.98

self-titled IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Now available as a dope double Lp set on Back On Black, on 180 gran vinyl and packaged in a heavy full color gatefold package!
Eight long years have gone by since the last time that we had a new album of "Mythological Occult Metal" from Texas thrashers Absu, the last one being 2001's amazing Tara, and there's been some shakeup in the ranks since then. The only remaining original member is drummer/vocalist Sir Proscriptor McGovern, who also plays in Mesopotamian blackthrashers Melechesh as well as the occultic ambient/prog projects Equimanthorn and Proscriptor), and he's put together a new Absu lineup in the wake of departing members Equitant and Shaftiel. No need to sweat though, because this new, revamped version of Absu is just as ripping and magick-obsessed a thrashathon as you'd hope. Simply titled Abu, this discharges thirteen tracks of esoteric blackened thrash that's equal parts mystic investigation and Teutonic speedmetal, like a methed out Kreator musing on serious spiritual/occult concepts and multi-part examinations of magickal theory like "Of the Dead Who Never Rest in Their Tombs Are the Attendance of Familiar Spirits Including: A.) Diversified Signs Inscribed B.) Our Earth of Black C.) Voor" . Wait, what? Yeah, Absu have always been a headier proposition than yer typical black metal junk, drawing their lyrical and visual inspiration from ancient Sumerian and Gaelic mythology and beyond, and backing it up with ferocious, complex thrash that continues to get quirkier with each new album. They aren't rehashing Tara - there's lots of slower, midpaced riffage, and some awesome Ash Ra-grade Mellotron and the occasional injection of siderial synthesizer - but that freaked-out Absu sound is still as fierce as ever. The riffs are ferocious and ripping, and laid out in strange sprawling arrangements, strewn with awesome psychotic soloing. Lots of unpredictable twists and turns and convoluted time signatures. And Proscriptor remains one of black metal's most proficient drummers, whipping up furious tempests of tumultuous percussive fills and choppy thrash, as well as coming up with most of Absu's arcane subject matter. So good to have a new album from these guys. There are some guest contributions from members of Melechesh, Enthroned, Zemial and Mayhem, and former member Equitant does make an appearance in a brief cameo. The band has morphed a bit, but this album is still a blazing slab of blackened thrash that I've been playing nonstop.
Track Samples:
Sample : 13 Globes
Sample : Night Fire Canonization
Sample : …Of The Dead Who Never Rest In Their Tombs Are The Attendance Of Familiar Spirits…Including:
Sample : Those Of The Void Will Re-Enter

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ABYSMAL DARKENING   No Light Behind   CD   (Total Rust)    11.98

This Dutch band features former and current members of Planet AIDS, Bunkur and Funeral Goat and has been lurking around the underground doom scene since earlier this past decade - in fact, it took seven years before Abysmal Darkening finally got around to putting out their first full length, after releasing one demo back in 2004. The band's excruciatingly slow progress may well have been infected by the extreme sluggishness of their music, which centers around a mix of slow grinding doom metal cut from the greasy black cloth of classic 80's dirge merchants like Saint Vitus, The Obsessed and Pentagram; a heavy dose of feral old school Nordic black metal a la Darkthrone; and some dour downcast moves into depressive black metal that they manage to meld pretty well with the blackened doom. No Light Behind has the huge sauropod riffs and bleak outlook that I want to hear whenever anyone mines that older style of doom, but singer Kev delivers these snarling crusty vocals and deeper growls (which often turn into a killer Abbath-like sneer) that add a fierceness to Abysmal Darkening's music, which really takes off whenever they suddenly break out of the Sabbathian dirge into raw, messy black metal blasts and mid-paced Burzum-esque gallop. The first time that this occurs (on the opener "Behold The Gods"), it sounds odd and unexpected, but as the album goes on, this mix of atavistic doom and manic blast evolves into their signature sound, like a weird mix of Darkthrone and Vitus that's shot through with an extra dose of abjest misery and oppressive dread. The six originals are laced with mournful guitar leads and moments of depressed blackened majesty, but the closer, a cover of the classic Sisters of Mercy song "Marian", is killer finale. Abysmal Darkening turn the song (which was already plenty dark and ominous in its original form) into slow, grief-stricken blackened doom, with that memorable melancholic hook winding down in slow motion as the lyrics are gasped in a horrific charred croak. Very nice.
Track Samples:
Sample : ABYSMAL DARKENING-No Light Behind
Sample : ABYSMAL DARKENING-No Light Behind
Sample : ABYSMAL DARKENING-No Light Behind

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ACCEPT DEATH   self-titled   CD   (Retribute)    11.98

self-titled IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Hugely nasty and barbaric death sludge from former members of HEMDALE, Clevo SXE thugs DIE HARD, and FISTULA, from one of the few areas of the country that seems to be capable of consistently birthing high-caliber lava metal. Forming in 2005 from the void left by the almighty FISTULA, ACCEPT DEATH sort of picks up where FISTULA left off, taking the monstrously downtuned, sludgy hate punk of the excellent Idiopathic album and their phlegm spewing split disc with BURMESE and slowing the music down even more, and adding even more noxious vocals on exquisitely stoopid/negatively titled jams like "Punish The Retarded", "Kill Everyone", and "Skinning The Face For Relief". This self titled debut album sounds like EYEHATEGOD gone mentally unstable death metal, retardedly slow and diseased FROST riffs obscuring deceptively catchy hooks underneath the boils and scar tissue while axeman Scott Stearns voms majorly corroded and damaged acid-guitar and squealing feedback over sudden blasts of gnarly ultraheavy thrash. Former HEMDALE singer Matt Rositano's schizo vocals do a constant switch between fucking unhinged mental patient rants and some ridiculously gruff death grunts, and sometimes emits effective moaning chants, like on "A Slow Funeral For A Lifetime Of Suffering". Makita from LOCKWELD / APARTMENT 213 lends some additional fucked up vocal damage to "Wallowing In Filth". Awesomely acrid power death sludge hatred that intersects the goo of IRON MONKEY, COFFINS, EYEHATEGOD, NOOSEBOMB, FISTULA, etc., with face flattening, primitive OBITUARY / CELTIC FROST style heaviness.

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ACCEPT DEATH   self-titled (BLACK VINYL)   LP   (Hydro-Phonic)    18.98

Released in an extremely limited run of one hundred and fifty copies, the vinyl version of the debut album from these Ohio deathsludge thugs is presented in a nice minimal jacket that has the AD logo foil stamped in metallic silver on the cover, and is pressed on black vinyl.
Here's our review of the original cd release on Retribute: Hugely nasty and barbaric death sludge from former members of Hemdale, Clevo straightedge thugs Die Hard, and Fistula, from one of the few areas of the country that seems to be capable of consistently birthing this sort of high-caliber lava metal. Forming in 2005 from the void left by the almighty Fistula (prior to their reformation soon thereafter), Accept Death more or less of picks up where Fistula left off, taking the monstrously downtuned, sludgy hate punk of the excellent Idiopathic album and their phlegm spewing split disc with BURMESE and slowing the music down even more, and adding even more noxious vocals on exquisitely stoopid/negatively titled jams like "Punish The Retarded", "Kill Everyone", and "Skinning The Face For Relief". This self titled debut album sounds like Eyehategod gone mentally unstable death metal, retardedly slow and diseased Frost riffs obscuring deceptively catchy hooks underneath the boils and scar tissue while axeman Scott Stearns voms majorly corroded and damaged acid-guitar and squealing feedback over sudden blasts of gnarly ultraheavy thrash. Former HEMDALE singer Matt Rositano's schizo vocals do a constant switch between fucking unhinged mental patient rants and some ridiculously gruff death grunts, and sometimes emits effective moaning chants, like on "A Slow Funeral For A Lifetime Of Suffering". Makita from Lockweld / Apartment 213 lends some additional fucked up vocal damage to "Wallowing In Filth". Awesomely acrid power death sludge hatred that intersects the goo of Iron Monkey, Coffins, Eyehategod, Noosebomb, Fistula, etc., with face flattening, primitive Obituary/Celtic Frost style death-crush.

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ACCURST   Fragments Of A Nightmare   CD   (Coldflesh)    11.98

We didn't discover Accurst's 2004 album Fragments of a Nightmare on the Coldflesh imprint until recently while looking through the Red Stream catalog, which was the main distributor for this disc. We had seen the name mentioned in some blog entries, and one online posting in particular that listed Fragments as one of the "scariest" dark ambient albums ever helped guide us in the direction of this album. It turned out to not be the Lustmord style dark cavernous drift that we were more or less expecting, but instead a very weird, and indeed very creepy slab of lysergic black soundscapery, sounding like a mix of minimal horror movie score and black demonic drift blended with the isolationist ambient sounds.
The ten tracks on Fragments are set up as individual chapters of an interconnected whole, making up a single album-long piece, each chapter wandering through strange aural realms of gargling, inhuman moans and shrieks, deep and ominous swells of rumbling bass, the looped crackle of vinyl forming into a mesmeric hiss, distant gong-like reverberations that echo throughout vast underground passageways, strange verbal incantations rising out of fissures and cracks in the walls, and the appearance of some very dissonant violin sounds combined with booming tympani-like percussion and metallic scraping noises. Slow heartbeat-like pulses emerge from the shadows and are met with muted, looped percussive rhythm; and all sorts of weird, nerve-wracking effects and samples flit through Accurst's ghoulish deathdrift, which often makes this album sound like someone mixing up old experimental horror movie scores from the 70's with Cold Meat style death industrial. Some interesting melodic elements creep through this stuff, too; bits of evil xylophone and eerie minimal piano figures that are repeated over and over, and ghostly voices wail in the distant gloom, occasionally forming into deep chanting that sounds like the utterances of undead monks, or erupting into bizarre gargling growls. We keep thinking of recordings of the dead, EVP phenomenon, the sounds of tortured beings trapped between worlds, those crepuscular recordings accompanied by super minimal instrumentation, with a recording quality that makes this sound remarkably old and decayed. Some vague reference points that might give you an idea if this is your sort of nocturnal crypt-ambience or not include artists like Aghast, MZ412, Atrium Carceri and some of Abruptum's later, less black metal influenced work, but Accurst go for a much more surreal and cinematic sound that achieves a different form of psychological horror. Regardless, it's highly recommended for fans of all dark, abstract horror-ambience.
Track Samples:
Sample : Fragment 3
Sample : Fragment 5
Sample : Fragment 8

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ACID KING   III (BLACK VINYL)   LP   (Kreation)    14.98

Spaced out girl chants, fuzzbomb stoner doom riffage, lethargic stoned hypno-blues freakouts crawling in slow motion...hell yeah, it's the latest slab of psychedelic devil doom from San Francisco's Acid King, fronted by the terminally trippy sludge siren Lori S. III (available here on a recently issued vinyl LP edition from Kreation Records) is, as you mighta guessed, the third album from Acid King, after something like a six year abscence, and first came into being via CD in 2005 on Small Stone. This is also the last Acid King album to feature bassist Guy Pinhas, who many of you might remember from doom heavyweights The Obsessed and Goatsnake. On III, the band kicks out seven jams of monstrous, shambling Quaalude-doom laced with trash Satanism/biker goddess imagery, given a majorly bottom-heavy throb via Billy Anderson's weighty production. Lori's signature drone-moan, soaked in reverb, drifts over the songs as they wind through huge grooving slogs of plodding Sabbathian sludge and hypnotic, repetitious riffs, as occasional snatches of beautiful melody suddenly appear out of the fuzz of '2 Wheel Nation', 'Bad Vision', and 'On To Everafter'. Fucking awesome, it's like hearing Cherie Currie from The Runaways fronting the Goatsnake/Hawkwind Big Band after eating a tab or four. I love everything this band has done, and this latest slab is no exception; it's crucial to ya if yer into the smoke-wreathed, lysergic trance crush of Boris' more psychedelic moments, the FX overloaded sludge of Sons Of Otis, Ufomammut, early Electric Wizard, Dead Meadow, Sleep's Jerusalem, Om, etc. Leaves you wasted by the time the needle rises off the last groove. This LP edition comes in a full color jacket, on black vinyl.

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ACID KING   Busse Woods (BLACK VINYL)   LP   (Kreation)    15.98

Busse Woods (BLACK VINYL) IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

A long-awaited vinyl reissue of my favorite Acid King album, the dark and crushingly creepy (or is it creepily crushing?) Busse Woods, in a super limited run of 500 copies on black vinyl. Singer/guitarist Lori S. and her dope-doom juggernaut has always been one of my favorite stoner sludge outfits, dropping some of the heaviest trance riffing ever, but it's always been Lori's bewitching, spaced out moan that made me love Acid king, her druggy vocals just seem to float like plumes of ethereal bong smoke over the huge, bottom-heavy Sabbathian guitars and slow, sludgy tempos. Busse Woods was the bands second full length and originally came out in 1999 through Man's Ruin, but after that label folded at the turn of the decade the album was reissued by Small Stone with a couple of bonus tracks. This limited edition vinyl version only has the six tracks from the original release, but it's still an essential slab of ultra-heavy psychedelic sludge that anyone into bands like Warhorse, Om, Electric Wizard, Mammatus, Sleep, The Obsessed, and Sons Of Otis will adore. The album's named after a forest preserve outside of Chicago where Lori spent her formative teenage years blasting loud rock and selling drugs, and songs like "Electric Machine", "Silent Circle", "Drive Fast, Take Chances", and the title track all reek of weed, beat-up dubbed cassettes of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Hallow's Victim and teenage devil worship. Each of these songs might center around a single riff, maybe two, but they're the heaviest riffs ever, massive, bass-heavy grooves and downtuned fuzzbomb guitar uncoiling as ridiculously hypnotic riff mantras that seem to plod on forever, everything surrounded with an eerie autumnal chill. Beyond crushing. And I still think that Acid King are what Sleep would have sounded like if they had been fronted by Joan Jett.

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ACID KING   Busse Woods   LP PICTURE DISC   (Kreation)    16.98

Now available as a limited edition picture disc, released through Kreation on the tenth anniversary of the original release of this Cali stoner metal thunderblast.
A long-awaited vinyl reissue of my favorite Acid King album, the dark and crushingly creepy (or is it creepily crushing?) Busse Woods, in a limited run of 500 copies. Singer/guitarist Lori S. and her dope-doom juggernaut has always been one of my favorite stoner sludge outfits, dropping some of the heaviest trance riffing ever, but it's always been Lori's bewitching, spaced out moan that made me love Acid king, her druggy vocals just seem to float like plumes of ethereal bong smoke over the huge, bottom-heavy Sabbathian guitars and slow, sludgy tempos. Busse Woods was the bands second full length and originally came out in 1999 through Man's Ruin, but after that label folded at the turn of the decade the album was reissued by Small Stone with a couple of bonus tracks. This limited edition vinyl version only has the six tracks from the original release, but it's still an essential slab of ultra-heavy psychedelic sludge that anyone into bands like Warhorse, Om, Electric Wizard, Mammatus, Sleep, The Obsessed, and Sons Of Otis will adore. The album's named after a forest preserve outside of Chicago where Lori spent her formative teenage years blasting loud rock and selling drugs, and songs like "Electric Machine", "Silent Circle", "Drive Fast, Take Chances", and the title track all reek of weed, beat-up dubbed cassettes of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Hallow's Victim and teenage devil worship. Each of these songs might center around a single riff, maybe two, but they're the heaviest riffs ever, massive, bass-heavy grooves and downtuned fuzzbomb guitar uncoiling as ridiculously hypnotic riff mantras that seem to plod on forever, everything surrounded with an eerie autumnal chill. Beyond crushing. And I still think that Acid King are what Sleep would have sounded like if they had been fronted by Joan Jett.

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE   In C / In E   LP   (Eclipse -USA-)    14.98

In C / In E IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

A crucial blast from the planet-tripping hippie collective Acid Mothers Temple, amassed from classic minimalism and crushing galactic psych! This LP features a single lengthy track per side: In C sees Acid Mothers Temple mutating the legendary Terry Riley composition as a gorgeous beaming of crystalline cosmic krautrock jamming filled with spacey laser synths, shimmering feedback ragas doused in reverb and shuffling motorik rhythms, the collective turning the meditative drones of the key of C into a heavy, frenzied, beautiful blast of light extending endlessly. Totally gorgeous. On the other hand, In E kickstarts Acid Mothers Temple into total heavy mode, busting out an entire side of heavyweight psychedelic thrum freakout that begins with peals of oozing bagpipe-like synthesizer drones giving way to Makoto's frenetic open E chord strumming that drives a ferocious 2-note dirge-riff for over 16 minutes, over a powerful speedy rock beat and swarms of swooping banshee electronics. Makes me think of some creeped out, interdimensional krautrock mutation of Chatham's Die Donnergotter. Tight. Definitely one of my fave AMT sides, total speed hypnosis wipeout. This slab features the AMT lineup of Kawabata Makoto (electric guitars, violin, zuruna, sythesizer), Tsuyama Atsushi (monster bass), Higashi Hiroshi (electric guitar, synthesizer), Cotton Casino (voice), Ichiraku Yoshimitsu (drums), and Terukina Noriko (vibraphone, glockenspiel). Limited edition of 1000 copies on 180 gram vinyl and presented in a full color gatefold sleeve with Riley's score printed on the back cover .

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE   Mantra Of Love   CD   (Alien8)    15.98

Mantra Of Love IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

A two song studio full length from prolific Japanese cosmic-psych orbiters ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE. Features two extended tracks, opening with the half-hour long "La Le Lo", a lovely traditional Occitan piece somewhat similar to the band's La Novia release, based around the melodic vocals of Cotton Casino and Kawabata Makoto's dreamy, serpentine guitar and deep-space effects, closing in a wash of psych-guitar heroics and mellow bliss. It's followed by "Ambition dans le Miroir", an ACID MOTHERS original, engaging in a fifteen-minute medieval spacerock workout with Casino's gurgling, speaker-panning synth washes, a beautiful guitar melody, and some spacey electronics. Another excellent release from the masters. Packaged in a beautiful gatefold sleeve.

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ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE   Pataphysical Freak Out Mu !!   2 x LP   (Eclipse -USA-)    18.98

Pataphysical Freak Out Mu !! IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Freaking explosive double LP gatefold re-issue of the time-flattening 1999 album from mystical Japanese hippie squad Acid Mothers Temple, led by modern acid guitar master Kawabata Makoto. This was the first AMT reissue on Eclipse, preserving this massive heavy-psych freakout on nice, heavy HQ 180 gram vinyl in a beautiful heavy-duty gatefold sleeve with new artwork; not only are all of the tracks from the original CD release captured here, but "Blue Velvet Blues" has been restored to it's original 40 minute version, spanning sides C and D. The music? Otherworldly. This is one of AMT's earliest, darkest, most out-there and unearthly sounding albums. Across these four sides, Acid Mothers Temple conjures beautiful, monstrously heavy and damaged psychedelic rock via dreamy gauzy dronescapes and Hendrix-gone-nuclear shredfest, screaming feedback and amazingly destroyed solos melting down over a rhythm section that sounds like it's literally exploding; eruptive, crushing free-rock splatter; passages of blissed out, sweet acoustic folk with female singing soaked in reverb and cosmic electronic squiggles flying through the mist; extended 60's style acid jams with deranged guitar playing, sputtering drumming, and distant banshee vocals; underwater alien lounge music; and the breathtaking, tremelo-heavy slow-jam "Blue Velvet Blues" stretching out for over 30 minutes alongside weepy, dreamy theremin singing, fading out and then back into it's coda, swirling together into a huge, all-enveloping cloud of shimmery, miasmic drone that builds for close to half an hour. This is one of those albums that just sounds enormous, a single organic blast of magic that must be experienced from start to finish.

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ACID MOUTH   self-titled   CDR   (Outfall Channel)    5.00

We just busted open a new box of Outfall Channel releases and related stuff this week, which is always a cause for celebration - these Cincy mutants have been releasing some of my favorite bizarro noise/grind/scum tapes and cd-rs of the past year, like those killer discs and cassingles from the dayglo avant-noisecore troupe Hentai Lacerator, that rad-looking handcrafted cd-r box from Fields Of Blood (and the blackened free-murk-doom transmissions captured on the disc itself), Robe's charred and rusted black rumbling, and the jacked-up, freeform hardcore jazz improv destruction of Capital Hemorrhage, all of which have been packaged up in cool, hand assembled sleeves and cases covered in all kinds of strange, tactile materials. Awesome to look at and hold, and thoroughly mindscrambling to listen to. Outfall Channel might just be the coolest DIY hardcore noise label out there right now.
So I get extremely stoked whenever new stuff arrives here from those guys. This new batch of stuff includes a new 7" split with Hentai Lacerator and Gaybomb, the fucking terrific debut issue of the new zine Sacrifice, a killer new disc from Robe called Depth that delivers more of that mysterious artists black sonic goo, and this caustic slab of severe drug feedback and harsh electronic rhythms from Acid Mouth, which from what little I have been able to learn about the project, is another project from whoever is behind Robe. This self-titled CD-R moves from pulsating, fastpaced feedback manipulations to harshly distorted drum corps workouts, slipping some heavily narcotized vocal loops and reverb channel powerfucks in amongst the blasts of psychedelic amp squeal and pummeling rhythms rattling away behind a thick veil of white noise. It's a pretty damaging noise excursion somewhere in between old school Test Dept. and some of the nastier Broken Flag stuff like early Ramleh, with song's titled "Electronic Bukkake", "Cum On Glass", and "Fuck It Let's Huff" to outline Acid Mouth's depraved visions. Packaged in a cd wallet that is covered in some kind of thick paint gunk over bits and pieces of vaguely vaginal illustrations that altogether looks nicely twisted, with a silkscreened insert foldout inside.

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ACID WITCH   Midnight Mass   7" VINYL   (Hells Headbangers)    9.99

This 7" has been out of print for awhile, but I've dug some up from the depths of the Crucial Blast warehouse this week. Released with two different full color covers to totally infuriate collectors and Acid Witch obsessives, Midnight Mass / To Magic, Sex And Gore delivers two monstrous tracks of the band's awesome psychedelic sludgy death metal Walpurgisnacht. Each of these different versions features artwork for one of the two songs, and they look fuckin' killer; as a fanatic for creepy, old EC Comics style artwork, I had to pick up both of 'em.
On "Midnight Mass", the song begins with an Goblin-style keyboard intro combined with some sampled audio from an old witchcraft film (which I'm not able to place), and then it kicks into the crushing chugging doom death, monstrous slow motion Sabbathian deathsludge backed by those killer horror movie style keyboards and soaring psychedelic leads. The other track "To Magic, Sex And Gore" is equally crushing, a blast of groovy doomed death with a pulverizing classic Sab-riff slowed down to a bone crushing crawl and backed by keyboards straight out of a 70's Hammer film. Awesome!
Both versions are extremely limited, and will not be restocked when they sell out.

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ACID WITCH   To Magic, Sex And Gore   7" VINYL   (Hells Headbangers)    9.99

This 7" has been out of print for awhile, but I've dug some up from the depths of the Crucial Blast warehouse this week. Released with two different full color covers to totally infuriate collectors and Acid Witch obsessives, Midnight Mass / To Magic, Sex And Gore delivers two monstrous tracks of the band's awesome psychedelic sludgy death metal Walpurgisnacht. Each of these different versions features artwork for one of the two songs, and they look fuckin' killer; as a fanatic for creepy, old EC Comics style artwork, I had to pick up both of 'em.
On "Midnight Mass", the song begins with an Goblin-style keyboard intro combined with some sampled audio from an old witchcraft film (which I'm not able to place), and then it kicks into the crushing chugging doom death, monstrous slow motion Sabbathian deathsludge backed by those killer horror movie style keyboards and soaring psychedelic leads. The other track "To Magic, Sex And Gore" is equally crushing, a blast of groovy doomed death with a pulverizing classic Sab-riff slowed down to a bone crushing crawl and backed by keyboards straight out of a 70's Hammer film. Awesome!
Both versions are extremely limited, and will not be restocked when they sell out. ONLY ONE COPY LEFT OF THIS VERSION!!!!

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ACRIMONY / CHURCH OF MISERY   split   CD   (Game Two)    11.98

split IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Holy SHIT, are we happy to get this back in stock! Seeing as how this is one of THEE BEST Doom metal splits ever commited to aluminum, and we sold out of 'em the first time around before we could snag a copy for the Crucial Blast office CD rack, we had been hounding Game Two CEO Conan to repress this split featuring the final studio recordings from Welsh melodic/stoned Doom outfit ACRIMONY and blazing tracks from Japan's serial-killer obsessed Doomlords CHURCH OF MISERY. Conan finally got this thing back in print, and we highly recommend it to any fans of crushing DOOM. ACRIMONY's five tracks (never before released, and recorded in 1999) are awesome, melodic, insanely catchy stonerized post-Sabbath psychedelic riffchug anthems, with ultracool vocals from singer Dor and punishing, resin coated, slow as hell doom rock, with grooving asphalt riffs that easily challenge the likes of GOATSNAKE and ELECTRIC WIZARD for sludgy superiority. Awesome. Seriously awesome. CHURCH OF MISERY follow with four unreleased slammers, two of which ("Race With The Devil"- a GUN cover, and "Chilly Grave" )were written/recorded for an EP that ended up never being released, and two other crushers ("Cloud Bed" and "Kingdom Scum"), all of which were recorded in 1996. Monstrous, wah-wah abusing stoner-Doom from these guys, who never fail to flatten us with their fuzz soaked riffage and city-levelling tempos. Again, essential for fans of ultra heavy stoner Doom and gooey sludge metal.

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ACROSS TUNDRAS   Dark Songs Of The Prairie   CD   (Crucial Blast)    9.98

Dark Songs Of The Prairie, the first full-length album from Denver's ACROSS TUNDRAS, holds eight portraits of heavy majesty carved out of massive syrup riffage and spacious melodies. Every time I listen to this album, it makes me think of hearing some mysterious 70's country rock outfit thawed out and refitted with mighty amplification, sludgecore tempos, and shoegazey shimmer that conjures up visions of the wide open prairies and looming mountains of the band's home territory. As weighty as the melodic heaviness coming from the from the whole "post-metal" camp, i.e. Pelican, Mouth Of The Architect, Isis, etc., but coming from a different place altogether with their dreamlike vocals and forays into blasted country/folk, ACROSS TUNDRAS draw a tangential line from Neil Young to HUM to NEUROSIS, and unleash a powerful new statement of rustic, crushing Americana. Features former members of Sioux Falls, SD post-hardcore outfits SPIRIT OF VERSAILLES and EXAMINATION OF THE... This is one of the best "heavy metallic rock" albums I've ever heard!

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ACROSS TUNDRAS   Divides   CD   (Feeling Faint)    9.98

Killer four-song debut from Denver trio ACROSS TUNDRAS, made up of former members of Sioux Falls post-hardcore outfits SPIRIT OR VERSAILLES and EXAMINATION OF THE... Divides sculpts epic,windswept ballads out of huge syrupy melodic sludge riffs and heartfelt, gravelly singing, as spare, chiming guitars map out the snowcapped peaks and great expanses evoked by the band’s moniker. ACROSS TUNDRAS sort of touch on the modern metallic post-rock sound, a la Pelican,Isis,Neurosis, and Mouth Of The Architect, etc., but their minimalist-yet-majestic riffing and distinctly rustic, dusky hooks are more along the lines of GODFLESH jamming with Neil Young on Pentastar-era EARTH tunes. Beautiful and crushing. In any event, this is great shit, and Divides is hands-down one of our fave debut releases of 2005. Can’t wait to hear a full length from these guys! Great artwork from Paul Romano (MASTODON), too.

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ACROSS TUNDRAS   Full Moon Blizzard   CDR   (Self Released)    8.98

Released as a limited-run EP that the band was selling on their US tour back in September, Full Moon Blizzard has five new jams from Denver's country-sludge riders packaged in a hamdmade paper sleeve...we only got a couple of these off of the band when they came through Baltimore, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to restock it once these sell out. The disc opens with "Razorwire Blues", a drowsy rocker that 's pretty upbeat compared to their Dark Songs Of The Prairie stuff, but still has that Neil Young-gone-sludge metal vibe with distant howling vocals. "Thunderclap Stomp" has the thick sheen of reverb that enshrouded Dark Songs and sounds like it could've fit right onto that album; there's a killer hook here too, and some pretty aggressive metallic riffing before it slows down into a killer psychedelic zone-out for the last half of the song. "Oh, Bury Me Not..." is a thumping country-folk jam moving through a swirling fog of effects, heavy drumming, somber acoustic strum and layered vocals that are even more hazed out and stoned than usual for these guys. "Gallows Pole" follows, another slow motion countrified sludge jam, and the last track "Phantom Ride" marries a faintly distorted acoustic guitar and slow-galloping rhythms to a Harvest-esque melody. The three "louder" songs are basically demo versions of tunes that are slated to appear on Across Tundra's next full length, while the other two folk tunes are recordings that only appear on this disc. The recording is pretty raw, as everything was recorded live to tape and it's essentially an in-the-moment document of the band's new material captured through busted equipment and vintage amplifiers, but if you were into their Dark Songs album and the Divides EP, these jams definitely bring the heavy Tundra action. Eerie, druggy Western atmosphere from Denver's heaviest. The unmarked CD-R comes in a paper folder printed on an odd textured stock embossed with swirly patterns, along with a couple of insert/lyric sheets and an actual black bird feather.

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ACROSS TUNDRAS   Dark Songs Of The Prairie   LP   (Kreation)    14.98

Now available on heavy silver and black vinyl from Kreation.
Dark Songs Of The Prairie, the first full-length album from Denver's ACROSS TUNDRAS, holds eight portraits of heavy majesty carved out of massive syrup riffage and spacious melodies. Every time I listen to this album, it makes me think of hearing some mysterious 70's country rock outfit thawed out and refitted with mighty amplification, sludgecore tempos, and shoegazey shimmer that conjures up visions of the wide open prairies and looming mountains of the band's home territory. As weighty as the melodic heaviness coming from the from the whole "post-metal" camp, i.e. Pelican, Mouth Of The Architect, Isis, etc., but coming from a different place altogether with their dreamlike vocals and forays into blasted country/folk, ACROSS TUNDRAS draw a tangential line from Neil Young to HUM to NEUROSIS, and unleash a powerful new statement of rustic, crushing Americana. Features former members of Sioux Falls, SD post-hardcore outfits SPIRIT OF VERSAILLES and EXAMINATION OF THE... This is one of the best "heavy metallic rock" albums I've ever heard!

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ACT   XL   CD   (Amanita)    12.98

XL IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Powerful complex post-rock from France that offers an intricate blend of live-action drum&bass breakbeats,guitar noise and free jazz,heavy SCORN-like dub beats and swirling RAPOON-style drones as played by a post-industrial/fusion-metal outfit, using bowed strings,a variety of percussion kits,prepared guitar,computer feedback,saxophone,custom-built bass,and sampler. Quite heavy and bombastic at times, but also slipping into some total right-angle grooves and jazzy abstraction,and actually getting nice and dreamy when ACT falls into some processed sax blowing and scraping drones. Kinda reminds us of a thunderous mix of Tortoise and Young Gods and Kong. Eighteen songs in seventy-four minutes, totally rewarding, often beautiful music for fans of challenging post-rock.

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ACTUARY / BACTERIA CULT   split   7" VINYL   (Vomitcore Music)    8.50

I've been getting into Actuary quite a bit this year after hearing their sickening side of the split with Bastard Noise that came out a few months ago, along with their stuff that I just picked up on Love Earth Music. It comes out of a true-blue industrial music approach, but Actuary's music has this evil, sadistic energy to it that really reels me in. They make a good match for fellow Californians Bacteria Cult on this split 7", with both bands offering a single track of murderous electronic/industrial filth on a translucent blue slab of wax that is presented in a very nice-looking, kaleidoscopic full color sleeve.
Actuary's "The Self Defies The Soul" is a seething mass of nightmare death drone, possessed by recordings of an axe hacking through a torso and the accompanying shrieks of horror, and snatches of overheard conversation in desperate tones that are draped over a soul-charring synthesizer drone and feedback that scrapes against the edges of your nerves and time-stretched screams of extreme agony, all escalating into increasingly abrasive and harsh levels of crushing sun-blotting black distortion.
Offering an experience that is just as bleak, "Milgram's Participants" (which takes it's title and subject matter from controversial early 60s electro-shock experiments) from Bacteria Cult (featuring Chris Dodge from Spazz/Hellnation/Ancient Chinese Secret/East West Blast Test, Jay Howard from Circuit Wound / Wire Werewolves and Kevin Fetus from Fetus Eaters / Watch Me Burn) layers static-soaked voices over stretched and manipulated drum sounds, sheets of industrial hum and whirr, and slow-motion cymbal splashes, then introduces a crushing percussive loop that transforms the song into a malevolent factory dirge. Heavy stuff.

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ACTUARY / THE BLACK SCORPIO UNDERGROUND   Metamorphosis Of The Transgressor   CASSETTE   (Love Earth Music)    6.50

Here is some more crushing skull-shred from Actuary, who has been taking over my stereo lately after a bunch of their releases landed on my desk all at once. I've got their new split with Bacteria Cult elsewhere on this week’s list of new arrivals, and here we have another split, this one with Black Scorpio Underground, another Californian noise group that has been around awhile from what I can tell, but up till now I haven't come across any of their stuff. Each band takes over a side of this cassette and dish out a mix of abstract sounds both hallucinatory and violent.
Up first is Actuary with "Stricken Host Lies Down", a gleaming abyssal dronescape of flanged metallic pulses receding into darkness, surrounded by glitchy electronic noises and heavy use of delay, which seems to be a signature part of their sound. The side starts off quietly with an eerie, minimal field of dark drift, but it soon erupts into a chaos of modulated squelch and glitch and thick buzzing drones; the chanting of demonic monks appears, their low hymn buried under layers of increasingly violent noise. By the end of the track, Actuary whips up a raging storm of sonic skullshred that is on par with the junknoise orgies of K2.
On the other side, The Black Scorpio Underground go for a weirder, more ritualistic din with their two tracks. The first, "Genital Minotaur", is an unnerving cut-up of singing voices and the blathering of TV evangelists over a simple hypnotic drumbeat, joined by clanking chains and squealing guitar noise. On the second, "Immolation/Revelation", the band sets off a harrowing descent into the grinding machinery of an infernal steelworks surrounded by vague voices muttering almost out of earshot as titanic slabs of metal grind together in harmony. I really dug this, and will be keeping an eye out for more from this obscure outfit.

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ADERLATING   The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of   CDR   (Shadowgraph)    10.98

The Nectar Of Perversity Springs From The Well Of IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

If you've seen one of Gnaw Their Tongues's albums, it's easy to see the familiar traits when you look over the gatefold jacket that the disc comes in...there's that verbose album title, and songs with over-the-top occultic names like "Rope, Pig's Blood, Dead Flesh And Two Candles", "Cut Off My Penis In Praise Of Black Satan", "A Circle Drawn With Chalk On Wood", the murky artwork on the back cover that seems to show a cloaked figure standing before a nude woman with a couple of candles sticking out of her ass in some dank crypt-temple, the horrific cover art that has a screaming woman huddled in deep shadows, covered only by some kind of shroud, her eyes nothing but smudges of pure blackness...yep, the visuals and vibe make it pretty obvious that Aderlating is another project from Gnaw Their Tongues mainman Mories, and fans of GTT's pitch-black orchestral/industrial horror are going to love this too, even though Aderlating does indeed differ a bit from Mories's main band...
If anything, Aderlating is more stripped down and ambient than GTT, with wide expanses of swirling reverb and plodding industrial sounds and vast fields of Lustmordian cavedrift. The eight tracks move through passages of fearsome demonic ambience, blasts of caustic carrion wind and crushing death industrial rhythms, utterly massive subterranean drones, monstrous roaring and distant screams lost in a fog of hellish noise, huge grinding chunks of distorted doom riffage surfacing from out of the slime, deep satanic chants resounding from stygian depths, the sounds of wailing tortured voices welling up in bloodcurdling chorales, warped bits of melody and waves of rotted-out amp drone, washes of endless cymbal shimmer and pummeling martial percussion, hideous smears of abstract black metal guitar buried beneath dense layers of metallic clang and electronic detritus and diseased ambience...but where naw Their Tongues follows a similiar path by piling on immense orchestral strings and pounding tympani and building a suffocating wall of blackened symphonic chaos, Aderlating stretches that sound out into a more abstract and ambient expanse of formless industrial dread. At times, this sounds like a weird mix of classic Swedish death industrial, horror film soundtracks and free-jazz percussion. It has enough of that GTT DNA that Gnaw Their TOngues fans will definitely want to hear this, but it's definitely it's own beast. Totally great, and another excellent vision of infernal black horror from the master...limited to only 200 copies, packaged in a full color jacket.
Track Samples:
Sample : Doodstorm
Sample : Geest
Sample : Rope Pigs Blood Dead Flesh And Two Candles

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ADMIRAL BROWNING   Magic Elixer   CD   (Dancing Sasquatch Records And Medicine Company)    5.00

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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ADP   Grey   CASSETTE   (Self Released)    4.98

Grey IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Here's a pretty fuckin' bonkers demo of (brain)damaged outsider metal from Australia that came my way as part of a big box of stuff that we picked up from Starlight Temple Society. Starlight Temple Society seems to be a beacon for some really whacked out, low fi death n' black metal, and this four song tape is certainly ranking pretty high on my weirdometer... ADP is also about as obscure as a band can get, with no website or any information about them at all to be found online, and the jacket for the tape is totally devoid of info save for the track titles. The four songs on this tape are super low fi, fairly muddy, but also kinda huge sounding, as if ADP used an 8-track tape recorder inside of an empty church to record their demo. The first song is called "Genocide Diver" and it's a twisted bit of murky doom, slow reverb soaked riffs churning repeatedly over sloppy, straightforward drumming, weird atonal melodies contorting in the background, sickening wordless screams and brain-damaged chanting oozing across their raw dirge. Somewhat like what I would expect a demo tape from Esoteric or Disembowelment to sound like if either of those bands ended up getting too fucking stoned and just started to let the tape roll. "Carcinogenic" is even more shapeless, and sounds like it might be mostly improvised: the drummer plays a minimal beat while the guitars melt into a gooey pile of primitive doom riffing that just up and stops every few measures, no vocals, nuthin', and then the end of the track become all clipped and phased as the music begins to run backward. Weird. "I Drunk Your Bones" barrels in with raw punky riffing, drooling pub chanting and a midtempo beat that sounds like some weird Oi! version of Venom or something. And as if this tape couldn't get any weirder, we get the last track "Darkest Grey", which returns to the raw doom of the first two songs, but goes completely off the deep end with a mix of bizarre vocal styles, one of which is ridiculously nasally and affected, the other one a deep gutteral snot-gurgling roar that goes way beyond being incomprehensible, and even breaking down into fits of coughing. The nasally vocals remind me a little of The Wizar'd, that wacky Australian doom metal band that put out a CD on Rusty Axe, and come to think of it, ADP sound exactly like the kind of damaged, weirdo metal I'd expect to hear from that label. This jam gets more fucked up as it progresses, with weird jazzy basslines, high pitched falsetto chanting, endlessly repeating dirge riffs, and other strangeness.

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ADRIFT   Monolito   CD   (Alone -Spain-)    11.98

The European sludge offensive continues! Some of you might have caught these guys on the Waterloo compilation that came out a while back on Waterloo Records, but that was a good four years ago and through a series of label mishaps it's taken this long for their debut full length to make it's way over here, via the Spanish label Alone who picked the album up after the original label that released it bit the dust. Alone is a perfect home for this stuff, Adrift's complex sludge sitting comfortably next to other contempo arty/psych-warped tarpit-metal bands like Warachetype, Cuzo, El Paramo, and Orthodox. I thought their tracks on that comp were pretty cool, their slightly proggy take on Neurosis/Isis style sludge metal more interesting than a lot of this kind of stuff, and on Monolito they explore that sound further, adding a little more prog influence while keeping their riffs mired in asphalt crunch. The nine songs are more slightly more mathy and more angular than what you hear from your typical Neurosis disciples, and it seems like both Tool and King Crimson influences are at work here. Their sludge is heavy as hell though, massive down tuned riffs and lumbering tempos galore, layered with those math rock moments, angular basslines, drumming that weaves in and out of subtle time signature changes and punishing elephantine crush, the band sometimes slipping into a rocking Sabbathy groove or quick bursts of Dillenger / Killmen-esque math metal, or letting soaring space rock leads take flight, or drop into scummy, staggering swamp-doom. While these flourishes (which also include some eerie slide guitar sounds, some scathing black metal style shrieks, and druggy psychedelic effects) don't distance their music that far from the rest of the Neurosis/Isis influenced crowd, fans of this sort of crushing metallic math heaviness (a la Celeste, Minsk, Neila, Overmars, Kongh, General Lee, Battlefields, Cult Of Luna, Omega Massif, etc. ) are going to dig Adrift's slightly more oblique sludge battery.
Track Samples:
Sample : Falling Towers
Sample : Scar Thunder

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ADRIVA   Cold Sea Week   CD   (Abgurd)    9.98

Another sonic portrait of icy black drone from the Russian Abgurd label, Cold Sea Week is a new full length disc from the solo project Adriva aka Denis Shapovalov from the Russian city of Rostov-On-Don. He's also responsible for creating the grim industrial drones in the groups Sunchariot, Enmerkar, and Matter, and fans of the ominous ambience of that Sunchariot CD-R that we listed in the last Crucial Blast update in December will dig this at least as much. A three track disc, packaged in a simple full-color cardstock sleeve in a sealed mylar bag, the disc jacket featuring front and back paintings of cold, grey expanses of water beneath overcast skies, painted in a highly impressionistic style that fits with the heavy submerged dronescapes. Each lengthy track is a dense swirl of doomy minor key ambience and soft rumbling amplifier distortion, buried under leagues of looping percussion, rumbling synthesizer pulses, and deep bass tones. The sound is completely blurred, all of it's edges softened and smeared into a churning haunting hum. The last track is the most minimal, a shimmery subsonic ocean of amplifier hum turning over on itself in extreme slow motion, ghostly voices and soft focus melody emerging alongside the menacing far-off clangs of metal and feedback. Beautiful, dark drone works a la Troum, in another super limited run of only 100 copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : Track 1
Sample : Track 3

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AELTER   Dusk-Dawn / Follow You Beloved (2xCD / LP Bundle)   LP + CD   (Crucial Blast)    25.00

While we've got 'em, we're offering a package deal for both AELTER's new double disc set Dusk-Dawn/Follow You Beloved AND the limited-edition Lp version of AELTER's Follow You Beloved that was released on the Wolvserpent imprint; both can be had together for $25.00.
One of several side-projects to emerge from the Wolvserpent camp, Aelter is the solo effort of Wolvserpent guitarist Blake Green. With Aelter, Blake explores a similar realm of dark majestic sound to Wolvserpent, with his massive downtuned guitar roar and bleak minor key melodies being the common thread between the two projects. But where Wolvserpent blends this chugging Melvins-esque heaviness and haunting slowcore arpeggios with violins, pounding drums, and a propensity for extended hypno-dirges, Aelter dispenses with the drums almost completely and goes for a more cinematic approach using layered keyboards and gorgeous harmonized voices that reminds me of something you would have heard on Beggers Banquet or 4AD being fused to a malevolent black heaviness. Both of the Aelter albums were only released on vinyl in limited editions of a few hundred copies and are close to going out of print completely, but we have now gathered both Dusk Dawn and Follow You Beloved together in a double disc set.
The first Aelter record Dusk Dawn from 2009 from is now out of print on vinyl and featured two side-long tracks. The first half "Dusk" begins much like something you would hear from Wolvserpent, an eerie guitar figure slowly plucked over heavy, rumbling doom metal chords, the dark menacing sound slowly unfolding in a manner similar to newer Earth but with a much more sinister vibe. But then this gloomy dirge starts to transform into something that is not so much like Wolvserpent as lush gauzy synthesizers wash in alongside ethereal choral voices, the sound drifting and uncoiling without the propulsion of drums or any other percussion, just a cloudy black fog of doom-laden darkwave underscored with those heavy rumbling guitars. This sound is utterly gorgeous, like some strange mixture of Earth's bleak ambient heaviness and the dark ethereal downer pop of Clan Of Xymox or some similar darkwave outfit. The second track travels deeper into this lush shadowy ambience, the guitars dropping out for long stretches of time as gorgeous high-end drones and shimmering dream-pop keyboards. The vocals begin to appear way off in the distance, slowly fading inwards as the guitars again materialize with chugging downtuned crunch and somber minor key melodies unwinding overhead. And when the vocals build into a majestic multi-part harmony, this becomes incredibly beautiful, like some drifting dreampop epic descending into darkness, finally combining with a minimal piano melody at the end.
The second Aelter album Follow You Beloved (released on vinyl in 2011) grows even darker, much of the prettiness from the first album leeched out by the swelling blackness, but still rife with moments of fragile beauty. The drums are also more prominent here, making this the heavier of the two albums by far. The first side is "Beloved", which begins with a solemn organ line joined by equally funereal piano notes awash in lunar glow. It transforms into a desolate guitar instrumental, reverby guitar twang unfolding around delicate acoustic picking and washes of ethereal synth that almost has a Badalamenti tint to it; then the drums come in, heavy and plodding, just as the airy fragile layered vocals materialize and the sound appears as some kind of shadow-cast, doom laden slowcore. It's really gorgeous stuff, moving through passages where everything drops out and just a single electric guitar chimes in the darkness, a simple minor key figure repeated over and over, and spacey orchestral synths gradually drift in as a steady sinister bass pulse echoes through the darkness. Like the earlier work, this makes me think of drone metallers Earth crossed with swirling darkwave pop, heavy and ominous but shot through with gorgeous moody melody. The song finally returns to the dark lumbering heaviness as everything drops back in, sheets of delayed guitar and what sounds like a mandolin swirling around the treacly drums and that central melody that threads throughout the song, turning even heavier and blacker as massive distorted doom riffage slowly pours in and the music slows down, changing into a blackly majestic Western-tinged doom in it's last few minutes.
On the other side, "Follow You" takes us once more into eerie Badalamenti-like haze of sorrowful reverb guitar and haunting droning keys joined by deep bass notes and cello-like sounds, and then suddenly drops into doomed crush, slow ponderous drums and crushing glacial guitars continuing the main melody, distant ethereal vocals layered in eerie harmony behind the grim doom-laden heaviness, eventually flowing out into a mass of choral darkness later in the song when the music drops out and the vocals come to the fore. Later, it transforms back into the heavy droning funeral procession from before, the riff repeating over and over again, a droning, swirling processional dirge adorned with droning keyboards.
Track Samples:
Sample : dusk
Sample : Dawn

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AELTER   Aelter II: Follow You Beloved   LP   (Wolvserpent)    15.98

One of several side-projects to emerge from the Wolvserpent camp, Aelter is the solo effort of Wolvserpent guitarist Blake Green. With Aelter, Blake explores a similar realm of dark majestic sound to Wolvserpent, with his massive downtuned guitar roar and bleak minor key melodies being the common thread between the two projects. But where Wolvserpent blends this chugging Melvins-esque heaviness and haunting slowcore arpeggios with violins, pounding drums, and a propensity for extended hypno-dirges, Aelter dispenses with the drums almost completely and goes for a more cinematic approach using layered keyboards and gorgeous harmonized voices that reminds me of something you would have heard on Beggers Banquet or 4AD being fused to a malevolent black heaviness. Both of the Aelter albums were only released on vinyl in limited editions of a few hundred copies and are close to going out of print completely, but we've got a limited number of both records in stock.
The second Aelter album Follow You Beloved (released on vinyl in 2011) grows even darker, much of the prettiness from the first album leeched out by the swelling blackness, but still rife with moments of fragile beauty. The drums are also more prominent here, making this the heavier of the two albums by far. The first side is "Beloved", which begins with a solemn organ line joined by equally funereal piano notes awash in lunar glow. It transforms into a desolate guitar instrumental, reverby guitar twang unfolding around delicate acoustic picking and washes of ethereal synth that almost has a Badalamenti tint to it; then the drums come in, heavy and plodding, just as the airy fragile layered vocals materialize and the sound appears as some kind of shadow-cast, doom laden slowcore. It's really gorgeous stuff, moving through passages where everything drops out and just a single electric guitar chimes in the darkness, a simple minor key figure repeated over and over, and spacey orchestral synths gradually drift in as a steady sinister bass pulse echoes through the darkness. Like the earlier work, this makes me think of drone metallers Earth crossed with swirling darkwave pop, heavy and ominous but shot through with gorgeous moody melody. The song finally returns to the dark lumbering heaviness as everything drops back in, sheets of delayed guitar and what sounds like a mandolin swirling around the treacly drums and that central melody that threads throughout the song, turning even heavier and blacker as massive distorted doom riffage slowly pours in and the music slows down, changing into a blackly majestic Western-tinged doom in it's last few minutes.
On the other side, "Follow You" takes us once more into eerie Badalamenti-like haze of sorrowful reverb guitar and haunting droning keys joined by deep bass notes and cello-like sounds, and then suddenly drops into doomed crush, slow ponderous drums and crushing glacial guitars continuing the main melody, distant ethereal vocals layered in eerie harmony behind the grim doom-laden heaviness, eventually flowing out into a mass of choral darkness later in the song when the music drops out and the vocals come to the fore. Later, it transforms back into the heavy droning funeral procession from before, the riff repeating over and over again, a droning, swirling processional dirge adorned with droning keyboards.
Limited to a mere 85 copies, and packaged in a hand-screened, hand-numbered insert with a foldout poster insert.
Track Samples:
Sample : Beloved web sample
Sample : Follow You web sample

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AELTER   Dusk-Dawn   LP   (Wolvserpent)    22.98

Dusk-Dawn IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

One of several side-projects to emerge from the Wolvserpent camp, Aelter is the solo effort of Wolvserpent guitarist Blake Green. With Aelter, Blake explores a similar realm of dark majestic sound to Wolvserpent, with his massive downtuned guitar roar and bleak minor key melodies being the common thread between the two projects. But where Wolvserpent blends this chugging Melvins-esque heaviness and haunting slowcore arpeggios with violins, pounding drums, and a propensity for extended hypno-dirges, Aelter dispenses with the drums almost completely and goes for a more cinematic approach using layered keyboards and gorgeous harmonized voices that reminds me of something you would have heard on Beggers Banquet or 4AD being fused to a malevolent black heaviness.
Both of the Aelter albums were only released on vinyl in limited editions of a few hundred copies and are close to going out of print completely, but we have now gathered both Dusk Dawn and Follow You Beloved together in a double disc set.
The first Aelter record Dusk Dawn from 2009 from is now out of print on vinyl and featured two side-long tracks. The first half "Dusk" begins much like something you would hear from Wolvserpent, an eerie guitar figure slowly plucked over heavy, rumbling doom metal chords, the dark menacing sound slowly unfolding in a manner similar to newer Earth but with a much more sinister vibe. But then this gloomy dirge starts to transform into something that is not so much like Wolvserpent as lush gauzy synthesizers wash in alongside ethereal choral voices, the sound drifting and uncoiling without the propulsion of drums or any other percussion, just a cloudy black fog of doom-laden darkwave underscored with those heavy rumbling guitars. This sound is utterly gorgeous, like some strange mixture of Earth's bleak ambient heaviness and the dark ethereal downer pop of Clan Of Xymox or some similar darkwave outfit. The second track travels deeper into this lush shadowy ambience, the guitars dropping out for long stretches of time as gorgeous high-end drones and shimmering dream-pop keyboards. The vocals begin to appear way off in the distance, slowly fading inwards as the guitars again materialize with chugging downtuned crunch and somber minor key melodies unwinding overhead. And when the vocals build into a majestic multi-part harmony, this becomes incredibly beautiful, like some drifting dreampop epic descending into darkness, finally combining with a minimal piano melody at the end. Limited to three hundred hand-numbered copies, packaged in a silkscreened wraparound sleeve.
Track Samples:
Sample : dusk
Sample : Dawn

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AELTER   Dusk Dawn / Follow You Beloved   2 x CD   (Crucial Blast)    11.98

One of several side-projects to emerge from the Wolvserpent camp, Aelter is the solo effort of Wolvserpent guitarist Blake Green. With Aelter, Blake explores a similar realm of dark majestic sound to Wolvserpent, with his massive downtuned guitar roar and bleak minor key melodies being the common thread between the two projects. But where Wolvserpent blends this chugging Melvins-esque heaviness and haunting slowcore arpeggios with violins, pounding drums, and a propensity for extended hypno-dirges, Aelter dispenses with the drums almost completely and goes for a more cinematic approach using layered keyboards and gorgeous harmonized voices that reminds me of something you would have heard on Beggers Banquet or 4AD being fused to a malevolent black heaviness. Both of the Aelter albums were only released on vinyl in limited editions of a few hundred copies and are close to going out of print completely, but we have now gathered both Dusk Dawn and Follow You Beloved together in a double disc set.
The first Aelter record Dusk Dawn from 2009 from is now out of print on vinyl and featured two side-long tracks. The first half "Dusk" begins much like something you would hear from Wolvserpent, an eerie guitar figure slowly plucked over heavy, rumbling doom metal chords, the dark menacing sound slowly unfolding in a manner similar to newer Earth but with a much more sinister vibe. But then this gloomy dirge starts to transform into something that is not so much like Wolvserpent as lush gauzy synthesizers wash in alongside ethereal choral voices, the sound drifting and uncoiling without the propulsion of drums or any other percussion, just a cloudy black fog of doom-laden darkwave underscored with those heavy rumbling guitars. This sound is utterly gorgeous, like some strange mixture of Earth's bleak ambient heaviness and the dark ethereal downer pop of Clan Of Xymox or some similar darkwave outfit. The second track travels deeper into this lush shadowy ambience, the guitars dropping out for long stretches of time as gorgeous high-end drones and shimmering dream-pop keyboards. The vocals begin to appear way off in the distance, slowly fading inwards as the guitars again materialize with chugging downtuned crunch and somber minor key melodies unwinding overhead. And when the vocals build into a majestic multi-part harmony, this becomes incredibly beautiful, like some drifting dreampop epic descending into darkness, finally combining with a minimal piano melody at the end.
The second Aelter album Follow You Beloved (released on vinyl in 2011) grows even darker, much of the prettiness from the first album leeched out by the swelling blackness, but still rife with moments of fragile beauty. The drums are also more prominent here, making this the heavier of the two albums by far. The first side is "Beloved", which begins with a solemn organ line joined by equally funereal piano notes awash in lunar glow. It transforms into a desolate guitar instrumental, reverby guitar twang unfolding around delicate acoustic picking and washes of ethereal synth that almost has a Badalamenti tint to it; then the drums come in, heavy and plodding, just as the airy fragile layered vocals materialize and the sound appears as some kind of shadow-cast, doom laden slowcore. It's really gorgeous stuff, moving through passages where everything drops out and just a single electric guitar chimes in the darkness, a simple minor key figure repeated over and over, and spacey orchestral synths gradually drift in as a steady sinister bass pulse echoes through the darkness. Like the earlier work, this makes me think of drone metallers Earth crossed with swirling darkwave pop, heavy and ominous but shot through with gorgeous moody melody. The song finally returns to the dark lumbering heaviness as everything drops back in, sheets of delayed guitar and what sounds like a mandolin swirling around the treacly drums and that central melody that threads throughout the song, turning even heavier and blacker as massive distorted doom riffage slowly pours in and the music slows down, changing into a blackly majestic Western-tinged doom in it's last few minutes.
On the other side, "Follow You" takes us once more into eerie Badalamenti-like haze of sorrowful reverb guitar and haunting droning keys joined by deep bass notes and cello-like sounds, and then suddenly drops into doomed crush, slow ponderous drums and crushing glacial guitars continuing the main melody, distant ethereal vocals layered in eerie harmony behind the grim doom-laden heaviness, eventually flowing out into a mass of choral darkness later in the song when the music drops out and the vocals come to the fore. Later, it transforms back into the heavy droning funeral procession from before, the riff repeating over and over again, a droning, swirling processional dirge adorned with droning keyboards.
Track Samples:
Sample : Beloved
Sample : Dawn
Sample : Dusk
Sample : Follow You

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AEOGA   Coav   CD   (Aural Hypnox)    12.98

More stunning ambient/drone/drift from Finland courtesy of Aural Hypnox. AEOGO trafficks in spacey drift reminiscent of RAPOON and HEEMAN, with distant shuffling and cosmic muttering drones. This is the debut release from this project, yet these eight tracks expertly weaves a haunting atmosphere through spiralling guitar feedback and textured drones, primitive percussion and rhythms, creepy atonal vocal abstractions and distant underground choirs,and layers upon layers of cavernous thrum, balancing organic dark ambience with blackened ritual vibes. Highly recommended to fans of MAEROR TRI and TROUM. Comes packaged in a special octagon-shaped cardboard cover that includes a six-panel textured cardboard sleeve. Limited to 1000 copies.

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AEOGA   Zenith Beyond The Helix-Locus   CD   (Aural Hypnox)    12.98

Zenith Beyond The Helix-Locus IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

More excellent dark drone from ritual-ambient shamans Aeoga, whose scraping metals and shimmering feedback coalesce into some of the most beautiful and hallucinatory droneworks this side of Troum. But where Troum achieves great beauty and sublime submerged melodies, Aeoga's densely populated soundscapes utter the screams of amorphous unseen beasts in the abyss and majestic chorales of the undead. Even with every light on, Zenith Beyond The Helix-Locus is thoroughly unnerving. Filled with the distant hiss of cymbals, clattery echoes, dark heavy synthesizer hum, and heavily layered electronics, this is grim, shadowy twilight drone of the highest order...excellent. Whenever I listen to Aeoga, I feel like I'm deep underground, adrift in some forgotten Lovecraftian cavern system, surrounded by frightening sounds. Fans of Troum and Maeror Tri are highly advised to check out AEOGA, as well as enthusiasts of all things drone and cave-ambient. Like all Aural Hypnox releases, this is nicely packaged in a hand-assembled oversize gatefold sleeve. Limited to 1,000 copies.

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AER   Light Beyond The Universe   CDR   (Cold Current)    5.00

Strange alien cosmic throb comprises this CDR album from the obscure Italian project AER, which is a solo deal from someone named "L.A.". Couldn't find out anything else about this project, but the music speaks for itself - this is a heavy synth feast with gobs of dark, space-drifting buzz and shimmering astral ambience right out of the 1980's that stretches out across infinity, conjuring images of exploding stars and eldritch nebulae, of dead planets hanging in space and strange colors that are impossible for the human mind to fathom. The tracks are titled evocatively enough ("Oblivion", "Void Within", "Esoteric Emanations", "Asymmetric Chambers", "Under A Crimsonj Sky", etc), and AER creates an effective synth-prog atmosphere that soaks the music in an unearthly haze. Buzzing, synthetic drones and rumbling ambience move through the void and are surrounded by epic layered keyboard riffs and all sorts of little sonic events, spacey melodies appear and disappear, pulsating moody basslines stalk through the darkness, and various alien electronic sounds emerge through the murk. The classic space/kraut rock of Klaus Schulze and Tangerine Dream is obviously a component of AER's DNA, but there's also a bit of the epic and cinematic New Age of Vangelis and the rhythmic propulsion of some of Claudio Simonetti's post-Goblin 80's era soundtrack work in here as well. The music of Light Beyond The Universe is bathed in a black cosmic light that puts this in a similiar realm as that of Neptune Towers, the ambient space music project from Darkthrone's Fenriz, and fans of Fenriz's krauty black-hole descents are going to eat this up. Procyon-x and Zombi are also reference points; though AER isn't as proggy and rock-based as the latter nor as isolationist and minimal as the former, this is right up your alley if yer a fan of either of those projects. The disc comes in a small clamshell case with a sepia toned cover and a small insert card pasted to the interior of the case.

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AETHENOR   Betimes Black Cloudmasses   CD   (VHF)    14.98

The second album from the trio Aethenor, a band that features Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O)))/Khanate/KTL/Burning Witch), Daniel O'Sullivan (of Zeuhl-worshipping UK prog masters Guapo), and Vincent De Roguin (of Swiss prog/metal/post-rockers Shora). Aethenor follows up their VHF debut Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light with this new excursion into otherwordly drones, frenetic free-improv percussion, and ghoulish electro-acoustic sonic textures that sounds nothing like what you would expect based on their other bands. Divided into three ten-minute-plus pieces, Betimes Black Cloudmasses explores a similiar creaking world of dark-toned drones and clattering percussion as the first record, seemingly informed by David Jackman's Organum collaborations with Eddie Provost, all creepy dark drift and throbbing low-end, strange metal clanking sounds and haunted organs, super slow moving glacial ambience that sounds more like an abstract film score to an old horror movie than out-and-out dark ambient. The album also features contributions from percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, who add flurries of splattery, FMP-style free jazz drumming to Aethenor's dark soundworld. The first track opens with distant, whistling high-end drones slowly coming into view, as a repetitive electronic pulse begins to throb like a black heart beating in the middle of a cloud of softly bending feedback and eerie minor key melodies that sound like they are coming out of a tape machine being played backwards. As the track progresses, all kinds of little sonic particles enter into the sound field, from ghostly moaning vocal-like utterances to warbling fragments of pipe organ melodies, and then halfway through the hypnotic ambience is jarred by a scream, and heavy metal chains being dragged across some hard surface. Swells of doomy low-end rumble and spacious percussion rise and recede, surrounded by chimes and thunderous exhaled breaths. Towards the end of the track, dreamy keyboard melodies become more prominent. The second track is even bleaker, a super abstract industrial improv freakout with both of the guest percussionists unleashing a torrent of frenzied free jazz drumming over some sinister sounding electronic sinewave fluctuations, ringing bells, grisly keyboard tinkling, and blasts of torrential noise that rise to a fever pitch. Later though, those chiming bells begin to form into a heavenly choir of nocturnal tones that begins to sound like some fractured 70's krautrock like Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, even as the melodious tinkling is overcome by the rumbling, splattery drumming and clusters of insectile drone. Then the third and final track appears, with all of the preceding sounds stripped away leaving only sparse, random keyboard notes and the dueling free jazz drumming tumbling over each other in dense clots of smacking sticks, bubbling percussion and rushes of cymbal noise. A few minutes into it, the clatter and keys are joined by muttering, worldess vocals, a stream of gutteral babble and grunting (courtesy of Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg) which reminds me of some of Attila Csihar's expressive throat mumble. The rest of the track goes from fluttering high-pitched squeals of feedback that are manipulated into bird-like chirps, distant shadows of distorted guitar, sprinkles of abstract piano and synthesizer, surges of freeform percussion, and creaking wooden noises, and in the last few minutes evolves into an absolutely breathtaking wash of kosmiche bliss. A superbly creepy album. Packaged in a nice letterpress gatefold jacket with artwork from swiss designer Nicola Todeschini.

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AETHENOR   Betimes Black Cloudmasses   LP   (VHF)    14.98

Also available on LP!
The second album from the trio Aethenor, a band that features Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O)))/Khanate/KTL/Burning Witch), Daniel O'Sullivan (of Zeuhl-worshipping UK prog masters Guapo), and Vincent De Roguin (of Swiss prog/metal/post-rockers Shora). Aethenor follows up their VHF debut Deep In Ocean Sunk The Lamp Of Light with this new excursion into otherwordly drones, frenetic free-improv percussion, and ghoulish electro-acoustic sonic textures that sounds nothing like what you would expect based on their other bands. Divided into three ten-minute-plus pieces, Betimes Black Cloudmasses explores a similiar creaking world of dark-toned drones and clattering percussion as the first record, seemingly informed by David Jackman's Organum collaborations with Eddie Provost, all creepy dark drift and throbbing low-end, strange metal clanking sounds and haunted organs, super slow moving glacial ambience that sounds more like an abstract film score to an old horror movie than out-and-out dark ambient. The album also features contributions from percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, who add flurries of splattery, FMP-style free jazz drumming to Aethenor's dark soundworld. The first track opens with distant, whistling high-end drones slowly coming into view, as a repetitive electronic pulse begins to throb like a black heart beating in the middle of a cloud of softly bending feedback and eerie minor key melodies that sound like they are coming out of a tape machine being played backwards. As the track progresses, all kinds of little sonic particles enter into the sound field, from ghostly moaning vocal-like utterances to warbling fragments of pipe organ melodies, and then halfway through the hypnotic ambience is jarred by a scream, and heavy metal chains being dragged across some hard surface. Swells of doomy low-end rumble and spacious percussion rise and recede, surrounded by chimes and thunderous exhaled breaths. Towards the end of the track, dreamy keyboard melodies become more prominent. The second track is even bleaker, a super abstract industrial improv freakout with both of the guest percussionists unleashing a torrent of frenzied free jazz drumming over some sinister sounding electronic sinewave fluctuations, ringing bells, grisly keyboard tinkling, and blasts of torrential noise that rise to a fever pitch. Later though, those chiming bells begin to form into a heavenly choir of nocturnal tones that begins to sound like some fractured 70's krautrock like Klaus Schulze or Tangerine Dream, even as the melodious tinkling is overcome by the rumbling, splattery drumming and clusters of insectile drone. Then the third and final track appears, with all of the preceding sounds stripped away leaving only sparse, random keyboard notes and the dueling free jazz drumming tumbling over each other in dense clots of smacking sticks, bubbling percussion and rushes of cymbal noise. A few minutes into it, the clatter and keys are joined by muttering, worldess vocals, a stream of gutteral babble and grunting (courtesy of Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg) which reminds me of some of Attila Csihar's expressive throat mumble. The rest of the track goes from fluttering high-pitched squeals of feedback that are manipulated into bird-like chirps, distant shadows of distorted guitar, sprinkles of abstract piano and synthesizer, surges of freeform percussion, and creaking wooden noises, and in the last few minutes evolves into an absolutely breathtaking wash of kosmiche bliss. A superbly creepy album. Packaged in a nice letterpress jacket with artwork from swiss designer Nicola Todeschini.

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AETHENOR   Faking Gold & Murder   CD   (VHF)    13.98

Loved the last two Aethenor albums. The creepy, creaking industrial dronescapes that this all-star band of avant-rock artists have been crafting on their previous releases were dark, alien-sounding fields of organic ambience and strange percussive formations that didn't really sound like anything else that I could put my finger on. Their sound has definitely changed, morphed, taken on a new cast for their third album Faking Gold & Murder, which sees the core trio of Stephen O'Malley (you know, Sunn O))), Khanate, KTL, etc etc etc), Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo) and Vincent De Roguin (Shora) joining with a number of additional musicians, not the least of which is David Tibet from Current 93 who contributes a terrific vocal performance to what had previously been a primarily instrumental project. The band also teams up with guitarist Alexander Tucker and percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, and the resulting sound on Faking Gold & Murder is quite different from the Aethenor of before, and not what I was expecting when we first threw this on. The band still weaves their shadowy drones and sheets of occultic ambience around massive prayer-bowl resonances and strange percussive scrapings and clattering, but these four lengthy tracks also move into structured melodies and rhythmic passages that reveal a dark prog underbelly to Aethenor that wasn't apparent on the last two albums.
All four tracks are untitled and reach upwards of ten minutes, and each track unveils an expanse of black starlit heavens hovering above heavy waves of harsh distorted drone and crushing guitar rumblings, endless high end drones strafing the darkness and ominous melodies unravelling against the clouds of twinkling electronics and Rhodes piano. These rich dronescapes are blazed by sudden eruptions of powerful free-jazz drumming from Field and Babel, whose complex bursts of percussion contrast with the majestic black ambience and add much to the tension that runs all through the album. Tibet wanders through these mysterious fields of black drift and infernal melodies, singing and proclaiming above it, sounding something like a preacher giving a feverish, nightmarish sermon over clusters of electronics, clanking atonal piano and glockenspiel, flurries of cascading chimes and the furious free-jazz percussion, and O'Malley's rolling waves of distorted doom. There are similiarities with Current 93 of course, since Tibet's vocals and delivery are so distinctive, but Aethenor invoke a much heavier sound, dark and asbtract, sometimes pushing forward on thunderheads of manic drumming, riding on slow-motion surges of crushing riff. Best stuff yet from this continually impressive outfit, and definitely their heaviest. Comes in a beautiful black Stumptown style six-panel gatefold, decorated with mystical symbols and artwork designed by Nicola Todeschini and Vincent De Roguin and printed with metallic gold ink on the black letterpressed jacket.
Track Samples:
Sample : AETHENOR-Faking Gold & Murder
Sample : AETHENOR-Faking Gold & Murder

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AETHENOR   Faking Gold & Murder   LP   (VHF)    21.98

Finally have the vinyl in stock, packaged in a deluxe letterpressed cardstock jacket created by the folks at Stumptown; it's a beautiful presentation for this heavy-duty Aethenor album.
Loved the last two Aethenor albums. The creepy, creaking industrial dronescapes that this all-star band of avant-rock artists have been crafting on their previous releases were dark, alien-sounding fields of organic ambience and strange percussive formations that didn't really sound like anything else that I could put my finger on. Their sound has definitely changed, morphed, taken on a new cast for their third album Faking Gold & Murder, which sees the core trio of Stephen O'Malley (you know, Sunn O))), Khanate, KTL, etc etc etc), Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo) and Vincent De Roguin (Shora) joining with a number of additional musicians, not the least of which is David Tibet from Current 93 who contributes a terrific vocal performance to what had previously been a primarily instrumental project. The band also teams up with guitarist Alexander Tucker and percussionists Nicolas Field and Alex Babel, and the resulting sound on Faking Gold & Murder is quite different from the Aethenor of before, and not what I was expecting when we first threw this on. The band still weaves their shadowy drones and sheets of occultic ambience around massive prayer-bowl resonances and strange percussive scrapings and clattering, but these four lengthy tracks also move into structured melodies and rhythmic passages that reveal a dark prog underbelly to Aethenor that wasn't apparent on the last two albums.
All four tracks are untitled and reach upwards of ten minutes, and each track unveils an expanse of black starlit heavens hovering above heavy waves of harsh distorted drone and crushing guitar rumblings, endless high end drones strafing the darkness and ominous melodies unravelling against the clouds of twinkling electronics and Rhodes piano. These rich dronescapes are blazed by sudden eruptions of powerful free-jazz drumming from Field and Babel, whose complex bursts of percussion contrast with the majestic black ambience and add much to the tension that runs all through the album. Tibet wanders through these mysterious fields of black drift and infernal melodies, singing and proclaiming above it, sounding something like a preacher giving a feverish, nightmarish sermon over clusters of electronics, clanking atonal piano and glockenspiel, flurries of cascading chimes and the furious free-jazz percussion, and O'Malley's rolling waves of distorted doom. There are similiarities with Current 93 of course, since Tibet's vocals and delivery are so distinctive, but Aethenor invoke a much heavier sound, dark and asbtract, sometimes pushing forward on thunderheads of manic drumming, riding on slow-motion surges of crushing riff. Best stuff yet from this continually impressive outfit, and definitely their heaviest. Comes in a beautiful black Stumptown style six-panel gatefold, decorated with mystical symbols and artwork designed by Nicola Todeschini and Vincent De Roguin and printed with metallic gold ink on the black letterpressed jacket.
Track Samples:
Sample : AETHENOR-Faking Gold & Murder
Sample : AETHENOR-Faking Gold & Murder

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AETHENOR   En Form For Bla   CD   (VHF)    13.98

Back in stock, this is the newest album from the shape shifting improv ensemble Aethenor, which originally formed around the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo) and Stephen O'Malley (Burning Witch, Sunn, KTL, Thorr's Hammer) and which now has them working with Steve Noble from Derek Bailey's Company/N.E.W./Tongues Of Fire and Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg. En Form For Bla is comprised of live recordings from three separate performances that went down in Oslo, Norway in 2010, where the group delved deep into strange dark realms of otherworldly doom-laden ambience, dark fusion atmosphere that at times resembles Miles Davis circa Bitches Brew filtered through spectral shadow, and eddies of powerful sonic movement. Mostly, the music is driven by Noble's fantastic detailed bursts of percussion and the warm, fluid Rhodes keys that O'Sullivan melts like black syrup over the sheets of guitar drift and amp rumble. The effect is enthralling, making this one of my favorite offerings from Aethenor yet, and easily their "jazziest".
"Jocasta" opens as soft looped thrum and abstract metal percussion leads into cymbal washes, deep resonant rumblings, smatterings of fusion-y Rhodes piano and warped jazz guitar, crashing into controlled swells of doom laden darkness and low end heaviness, but never ventures too far from the menacing ethereal improv. Rattling drum volleys appear beneath sparkling star clusters, then veer into strange nocturnal prog soundscapery and minimal dark ambience, a mix of delicate processed guitar, distorted bass tones, and pounding freeform drumming, eventually becoming super blown out and chaotic for a moment at the midway point, then abruptly slips into a clanking anti-groove, almost spacious free jazz blurt and stumble. After a powerful freeform drum freak-out, the track transforms into eerie deep space blissout later on, mixing almost kosimiche textures with the detailed percussive work.
The next track "Laudanum Tusk" is more abstract creepiness, ominous metallic scrapes and squeals over subdued drumming, barely there at times, creating this horror movie style atmosphere that builds to a stunning dark prog jam. "One Number of Destiny In Ninety Nine" takes shape as a strange glitchfest symphony of metal clatter and processed brass sounds, and "Something To Sleep is Still" sees volleys of blast beats sounding through a vast ambient jazz shadow alive with pulsating keys and super-distorted doom-laden bass rumble. More of that deep fluttering bass and rattling percussion scuttles around on "Vyomagami Plume", rumbling beneath gouts of cable sputter before birthing a lumbering and fractured prog jam that forms into something that resembles a chopped up, glitched out Goblin track.
This one is highly recommended for fans of dark, atmospheric improvisation, fans of Bohren and the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation/Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, and Ulver's most recent work. Both editions are beautifully designed by O'Malley, the disc in a gatefold jacket and the double Lp presented on colored vinyl in printed inner sleeves.
Track Samples:
Sample : Laudanum Tusk
Sample : One Number of Destiny In Ninety Nine

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AETHENOR   En Form For Bla   2 x LP   (VHF)    21.00

The double Lp vinyl edition of En Form For Bla comes in an expanded jacket, with both records pressed onto thick white vinyl.
Back in stock, this is the newest album from the shape shifting improv ensemble Aethenor, which originally formed around the duo of Daniel O'Sullivan (Guapo) and Stephen O'Malley (Burning Witch, Sunn, KTL, Thorr's Hammer) and which now has them working with Steve Noble from Derek Bailey's Company/N.E.W./Tongues Of Fire and Ulver's Kristoffer Rygg. En Form For Bla is comprised of live recordings from three separate performances that went down in Oslo, Norway in 2010, where the group delved deep into strange dark realms of otherworldly doom-laden ambience, dark fusion atmosphere that at times resembles Miles Davis circa Bitches Brew filtered through spectral shadow, and eddies of powerful sonic movement. Mostly, the music is driven by Noble's fantastic detailed bursts of percussion and the warm, fluid Rhodes keys that O'Sullivan melts like black syrup over the sheets of guitar drift and amp rumble. The effect is enthralling, making this one of my favorite offerings from Aethenor yet, and easily their "jazziest".
"Jocasta" opens as soft looped thrum and abstract metal percussion leads into cymbal washes, deep resonant rumblings, smatterings of fusion-y Rhodes piano and warped jazz guitar, crashing into controlled swells of doom laden darkness and low end heaviness, but never ventures too far from the menacing ethereal improv. Rattling drum volleys appear beneath sparkling star clusters, then veer into strange nocturnal prog soundscapery and minimal dark ambience, a mix of delicate processed guitar, distorted bass tones, and pounding freeform drumming, eventually becoming super blown out and chaotic for a moment at the midway point, then abruptly slips into a clanking anti-groove, almost spacious free jazz blurt and stumble. After a powerful freeform drum freak-out, the track transforms into eerie deep space blissout later on, mixing almost kosimiche textures with the detailed percussive work.
The next track "Laudanum Tusk" is more abstract creepiness, ominous metallic scrapes and squeals over subdued drumming, barely there at times, creating this horror movie style atmosphere that builds to a stunning dark prog jam. "One Number of Destiny In Ninety Nine" takes shape as a strange glitchfest symphony of metal clatter and processed brass sounds, and "Something To Sleep is Still" sees volleys of blast beats sounding through a vast ambient jazz shadow alive with pulsating keys and super-distorted doom-laden bass rumble. More of that deep fluttering bass and rattling percussion scuttles around on "Vyomagami Plume", rumbling beneath gouts of cable sputter before birthing a lumbering and fractured prog jam that forms into something that resembles a chopped up, glitched out Goblin track.
This one is highly recommended for fans of dark, atmospheric improvisation, fans of Bohren and the Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation/Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, and Ulver's most recent work. Both editions are beautifully designed by O'Malley, the disc in a gatefold jacket and the double Lp presented on colored vinyl in printed inner sleeves.
Track Samples:
Sample : Laudanum Tusk
Sample : One Number of Destiny In Ninety Nine

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AETHYR   Messio   CD   (R.A.I.G.)    12.98

Usually, whenever we crank up a new released from RAIG, we expect some kind of crazy Russian prog to come jiggling out of the speakers, but Aethyr are very different from the label's usual fare. Messio is the first album from this Russian duo, a black-tar spill of occult industrial amp-sludge that blends a pungent ritual atmosphere with huge slugs of metallic black doom. RAIG always puts their releases together nicely, and Messio is especially striking, the disc enclosed in a hand-assembled all-black hardback gatefold jacket with silver embossed lettering and symbols on the cover, and a printed card with the album notes pasted to the interior of the cover. Nice!
The duo creates a kind of blackened instrumental ambient doom that fuses a primitive post-industrial influence to chthonic heaviness on this nearly hour-long album. Messio begins with a wave of rumbling, buzzing slabs of low-end amp roar and gooey ultra-distorted freeform riffage that undulates beneath ancient wax-cylinder recordings of 20th century occultist Aleister Crowley; there's the early Earth/Sunn vibe like you'd expect, but pretty soon the riffs become so twisted and contorted that it turns into something quite different, a sort of pitch-black ultra-heavy improv guitar/amplifier noise jam with bass so low they rattle the phlegm loose in your lungs, melting down into swirling bass drones that wash over the end of the piece. The second track "Ocultus I" takes a different approach, tying a massive slow motion doom riff to a simple plodding percussive rhythm, an echoing oil drum hammered beneath the lava-like serpentine doom riff with some fuzz-soaked, buzzing psych guitar meandering through the ten minute sludge trance. As it goes on, eerie choral-like voices begin to emerge out of the shadows like ululations from partially decomposed Gregorian monks, their looped, ominous chanting adding further shadow to this circular dirge-trance that's part Corrupted, part Neubatuen.
The next track "Mass II" is similar, in that it combines another simple droning doom riff that rides on waves of reverberating low end sludge pushed forward by the steady monotonous clank and pound of martial percussion. But here the sound is actually somewhat pretty, with a maudlin synthesizer melody playing out over the ominous doom, sounding just a little like something from Jesu, but stripped down and devoid of vocals. Later, the song becomes slightly faster and more urgent, a cavernous echoing subterranean Melvins-like crush that eventually returns to the somber sadness of the main melody, ending in a haze of droning keys, rumbling amps and more sampled speech from The Great Beast.
The remaining four pieces on Messio follow a similar route with clanking metallic rhythms banging away beneath Skullflowery psych guitar skree and droning feedback and thick, buzzing blackened distorted metallic sludge, each one unfolding into murky psych sludge that oozes with wailing guitar splatter that sears the blackness, the guitar sometimes shifting into screaming tremolo riffs that add a vague black metal element to the sound, or shifts into stretches of pure noise and incredibly deep low-end over modulated bass frequencies and washes of amplifier hiss pouring out of their speakers in black jets of distortion. Out of these, it's the twelve minute "Ave S" that heads deepest into psychedelic territory, blasting out huge squalls of psychedelic guitar fx and delayed feedback before it slides into a lugubrious acid-sludge plod reminiscent of Burnt Hills or a way heavier Fushitsusha, changing direction every few minutes and shifting between skeletal industrial doom and blown-out space-tripping psychdirge. It's the closer "Occultus III" that's actually the closest that the band gets to Sunn territory, ending the disc with a rumbling, drifting cloud of ambient sludge that fades into Crowley's final utterances, his surrounded by a mist of ancient hiss and crackle.
Track Samples:
Sample : ACS I
Sample : Ave S
Sample : Mass II

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AFFLICTIS LENTAE   From Nothing...To Nothing   CD   (Infernal Kommando)    11.98

The first time I heard Afflictis Lentae was on the split 7" with The Austrasian Goat that came out on At War With False Noise, and ever since hearing that brief blast of nuclear blackthrash from this French lone wolf, I've been looking for more of his music. It didn't take long, as Infernal Kommando has just issued this cd collection of out-of-print material from this blackthrash maniac, and ever since I got our copies of From Nothing...To Nothing, I've been spinning this disc almost non-stop! The album collects the seven tracks from the band's Saint Office LP, the Intolerance Deathsquad cassette, and the two tracks from the split with The Austrasian Goat, and all of this shit is blackthrash GOLD. I didn't even realize that Afflictis Lentae was a one-man band (the brainchild of a guy who goes by "Nuclear Thrash Gaichal") until I started looking into the band, the music is so tight and CRUSHING that it sounds like the product of a full band. But Gaichal handles all of the guitars, vocals and programming, crafting one awesome thrash riff after another, his voice soaring from an insane blackened shriek to deep, devilish growls to weird wailing in the blink of an eye, tons of Slayerized soloing and whammy-bar divebombs splattered all over, the sound a cross between the classic Teutonic thrash of Sodom and Kreator and the hyperblast black metal of Marduk, but with Tangerine Dream-y ambience drifting out of the cracks between songs, and strange samples, drunken bar-hall sing-alongs and murky drones lurking at the edges of the bestial blackthrash assaults. And the drum machine programming is out of fucking control. Usually, I tend to think that drum machines are a liability in speed/thrash bands, but Gaichal manages to eke a surprisingly natural drum sound, thick and dense and resonant...that is, of course, until he sets the drum machines for CHAIN GUN BLAST, where the drums suddenly sound like the mechanized blasting of machine guns going off. AWESOME. It's like hearing Sodom outfitted with industrial blasts and creepy electronic ambience. This is some of the rippingest French blackthrash ever, with killer song titles like "Exterminate and Dominate ", "Sadistic Messiah ", "The Eliminator ", and "Panzer Delirium ", and there's even a bestial blackened cover of Judas Priest's "Nightcrawler"! Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Reject The Devil
Sample : Sadistic Messiah
Sample : There Heretic Part I
Sample : Traitors Of Mankind

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AFTER THE LAST SKY   And This Is Progress?   LP   (Super-Fi)    13.98

Vinyl only import of the debut album from this blackened British grind/sludge/crust band, who are pretty much unknown over here on these shores despite being active in the UK underground for several years now. You should check these guys out pronto, though, if yer into sickeningly heavy sludge and dire apocalyptic warnings, 'cuz these cretins have knocked out five tracks of insanely heavy anarcho-violence on this five song record that blends together urgent and grim anarcho punk with hyperblasting black metal and awesomely epic crusty doom. They remind me of the old UK band Hard To Swallow, who were also an uncatagorizeable mix of grind and sludge and other elements a little harder to pin down, but After The Last Sky bring a big helping of BLACK METAL to the proceedings, as they shift between gloomy, bass-heavy parts that are reminiscent of Amebix to frantic, dissonant raw black metal riffing and ultrafast blastbeats a la Marduk with insane sounding screeched vocals that sound like someone screaming, weeping and blowing their fucking appendix out simultaneously, switching so abruptuly that it blows yer hair back, and just when the grindy black metal seems on the verge of going so fast and becoming so freaked out that someones head is going to explode, the band falls back into a crushing, majestic doom riff that just flattens you. The song "Fire!Salvation!" is one of the highlight of the album with it's frenzied grinding buzz and heartwrenching melodic lead that's played over the slow part, but all of these songs are crushing and raw and vicious, all the way up until the track "I Weep For The First Bluebell Of Spring" where the buzzing, psychotic black metal gives way to a somber acoustic guitar part that eventually builds into a crushing, droning Mogwai-esque crescendo. From there, the last track, "Land Of Gluttony And Rape" breaks out some awesome epic guitar leads over one of the album's most chaotic tracks, blasting black metal that winds knots around itself with tangles of choppy, intricate riffing, finally downshifting into bloozy, swampy sludge before dissipating into a cloud of ambient noise that lingers for several minutes before fading into blackness.
Track Samples:
Sample : AFTER THE LAST SKY-And This Is Progress?

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AGAINST NATURE   Pluperfect   7" VINYL   (Church Within)    6.98

Revelation were always one of the more enigmatic bands to arise from the Maryland doom metal scene of the late 80's/early 90's, with a style that was more informed by progressive rock than the grittier Sabbathisms of their peers in Wretched, Unorthodox, and Internal Void. When I was assembling the Doom Capital compilation a few years ago, Revelation were one of the few bands that I had heard was still around and recording, but for one reason or another I had been unable to get ahold of anyone (this was before the Myspace explosion, obviously). Curious as to what the members of Revelation were up to, I didn't hear anything about them until recently, when I found out about a new band called Against Nature from Baltimore that was bascially comprised of the Revelation lineup from their debut album Salvation's Answer that came out on Rise Above back in 1991. Taking their name from a Revelation song, Against Nature combined the crushing bluesy riffing of Black Sabbath and Trouble with prog rock moves reminiscent of Rush and even Voivod at times, a distinctive brand of doom metal different from anyone else from the Doom Capital. This German import 7" is the first thing I've heard from 'em, but the two songs on here are killer, "Pluperfect", a new jam exclusive to this EP, and "Confusion", a new reworking of an old Revelation song from one of their early demos that never appeared on any of Revelation's albums proper. Limited edition of 500.

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AGALLOCH   Ashes Against The Grain   CD   (The End)    13.98

This brilliant 2006 album from Agalloch marked a quantum leap for the band, who had already created a buzz for themselves with their previous release, The Mantle. Their earlier releases blended together black metal, Godspeed-style post rock, fragile folk music, and majestic slow motion heaviness into a highly evocative style that didn't sound like anything else happening at the time, but with Ashes Against The Grain, the Portland, OR quartet move into another realm that has just as much in common with old school shoegazer atmospheres as it does with the arty black metal that Agalloch had pioneered. The album opens with "Limbs", and the first minutes of this monolith deliver a melodic sludge wave that is as dreamily gorgeous as anything that Justin Broadrock has done with Jesu. It eventually gives way to a dark piano interlude though, and then plunges into slow, super dramatic black metal with a somber central melody and deep, raspy vocals, and the ending of the song turns into a moody metalgaze coda, again reminding me of Jesu, slow and somber and super melodic but heard through a darker, black metal informed lens. The next song "Falling Snow" picks up in speed and continues the shoegazey black metal, awesome rock drumming moving the amazing melodic hooks and crushing riffs forward, effects-soaked guitars laying down emotional, almost poppy melodies, and about halfway through the clean vocals kick in for the first time and it takes my fucking breath away, sounding like later-era Katatonia but with a more overt indie rock edge. Jesus, "Falling Snow" is easily one of the catchiest metal songs ever, if it weren't for those blackened hissing vocals you could probably pass this off as some long-lost, unusually heavy '90's shoegazer band.
"This White Mountain On Which You Will Die" is a brief bit of beautiful ambience, made up of ominous industrial loops and gauzy distortion, kinda like a flash of Eluvium or Tim Hecker style prettiness, and it moves right into the folky "Fire Above, Ice Below", a slow moving 10+ minute epic that shifts from dark strum to epic builds a la Mono accompanied by lovely vocal harmonies. The last quarter of the album is taken up by a three part suite titled "Our Fortress Is Burning", which begins with a proggy piano-driven instrumental, builds into a heavy hypnotic indie dirge with some searing psychedelic soloing, and then liquifies into a storm of droning feedback, ambient metal powerchords, heavy amplifier rumble, and swirling melody that closes the album. A masterwork of progressive, atmospheric metal - all throughout these songs I'm reminded of everything from Opeth to Jesu to Catherine Wheel to Katatonia to Mogwai and Godspeed You Black Emperor, but Agalloch doesn't particularly sound like any one of these bands. Comes in a full color slipcase.

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AGATHOCLES / BRIGLIA BUTLER SCHOONMAKER WILLIAMS   split   7" VINYL   (Self Released)    4.98

It's been years since the last time that I picked up a 7" with Agathocles on it, even though I've always been a fan of their faithful, tried-and-true old-school grind. The Belgian grinders are one of the few constants in underground grindcore, and have a discography that has by now reached absurd lengths with a prolific output that rivals Merzbow and Unholy Grave. Honestly, after I picked up the discography CDs of Agathocles 90's singles that Selfmadegod put out, I just couldn't bring myself to try to keep up with their subsequent hundreds of EPs. It's too daunting a task.
I jumped on this newish split EP with Agathocles when Logan Butler, one of the members of the other band on the split and a longtime Crucial Blast customer, got in touch to tell me about his project. His band goes by J. Briglia/L. Butler/D. Schoonmaker/J. Williams, like they are a jazz quartet or something, but their music is anything but. On the J. Briglia, L. Butler, D.Schoonmaker & J.Williams side of this 7", the "band with no name" (as they also sometimes call themselves) blast you in the face with three tracks of ultra-raw blackened thrash that sounds like old school West Coast extreme hardcore like Crossed Out or Infest mixed with truly scummy primitive black metal, each song a tangled chaotic blast of trebly buzzsaw riffs and sloppy blastbeats and pounding sludgy dirge and shrieking vocals, and then drown the whole thing in caustic, speaker-shredding noise a la Merzbow. Nice! The sound is extremely raw and blown, giving distorto-blackpunk bands like Akitsa and Malveillance a run for their money in the noise department, but the waves of electronic screech and molten burblings that wash over the blackened power-violence and ooze up between the cracks in the songs gives this a weird, noxious aura of it's own. This is what I'd imagine Gasp might have turned into if those guys had been ardent fans of the seriously low-fi underground black metal.
After that mayhem , the Agathocles songs almost sound comforting. If you've heard them before, you know what to expect with their six songs: blasting, detuned grindcore with dual vocalists, one belching out pissed-off socially conscious lyrics in a deep, gutteral voice, the other shrieking in that high-pitched, electroshock scream, tons of crusty Carcass-esque riffs, midpaced punky breakdowns, ferocious blastbeats, the works. Agathocles haven't evolved one step beyond the raw, anti-corporate grindcore that they started out with over twenty years ago, but dammit, they sound just as brutal and ferocious as ever. Limited to 400 copies.

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AGHAST   Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis   CD   (Eternal Pride)    12.98

Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

There was lots of strange musics that appeared on the periphery of black metal in the early 1990's, projects that were intrinsically linked to the black metal scene in one way or another but whose music didn't sound anything like actual black metal, at least not the kind of black metal that was becoming popular in the extreme metal underground. One of the best and most obvious examples of this kind of necromutation continues to be Abruptum, whose mix of deformed improvised riffing and crawling dungeon ambience went way over the heads of many fans of traditional Scandinavian black metal. Even more obscure was the band Aghast, a Norwegian duo of two women who only played together for a brief period of time and released just one album during their short existence, a limited edition release called Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis that came out on the Swedish industrial label Cold Meat Industry in 1995, and which has been an extremely difficult album to track down ever since.
Not only did the ladies of Aghast come out of the early Norwegian lack metal scene, they were actually married to some of the most influential members of the scene at that time, Andrea Haugen (who would later go on to form the band Hagalaz Runedance) to Samoth from Emperor, and Tanja Stene to Fenriz from Darkthrone; you might also recognize Tanja Stene as the artist behind some of the iconic album artwork for Darkthrone, Burzum and Ulver from the early 90's, and it's safe to say that she's probably much more recognized for her contributions to early black metal art than her forays into ghostly black ambience. But Aghast's music is truly amazing stuff, and it was a crime that their album slipped into total obscurity for so long. At long last, Hexerei has finally been reissued, via Eternal Pride, and it's an amazing piece of nocturnal dread that fans of the more ambient ends of the avant-garde black metal spectrum, black ambience, and experimental horror film music will all fall in love with. The sound of Aghast is a mix of spectral, minimal synths, ghostly female vocals, and extreme layers of echo and other fx, but the way that Aghast shapes this sound into their mesmeric stygian drift is pretty unique. Heavy sheets of minimal low-end and swells of pulsating rumble drift slowly through expanses of vast emptiness, and above this dark ambience float dreamy female vocals, which vary from lusty narcotized moans to hair-raising witch-shrieks, echo-drenched chanting and demonic howls, like hearing Diamanda Galas leading a series of occult rituals in a huge cavern deep beneath the earth. The music is sparse but chilling, with stretches of near silence opening up between the sounds of chimes and swells of orchestral strings, minimal violins and thick foglike ambience, everything obfuscated by a murky quality that gives the impression that this music has been mouldering and decaying for years. Most of the music is without percussion, save for one track: "Totentanz", the most terrifying track on the album. Here, Aghast lay down a pounding tattoo of tympani drums that rumble beneath the sounds of wailing, laughing witches and processed strings, and it sounds alot like the more percussive pieces from Goblin's fearsome soundtrack for Susperia, and I'd recommend Hexerei alone just for this awesome piece of psychedelic witch-ambience. But the whole album is fantasic, definitely very black and evil sounding and occultic, but unlike any other black ambient project that I can think of - really, the clostest comparison that pops into my head when listening to Aghast is the creepy Japanese ghost-ambience of Onna-Kodomo, but the connection is more in spirit than actual sound. An amazing album of blackened dread and witchy ambience that is obviously highly recommended! Comes in a digipack featuring metallic silver print.
Track Samples:
Sample : Das Irrlicht
Sample : Enter the Hall of Ice
Sample : Sacrifice
Sample : Totentanz

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AGHIATRIAS   Ethos   CD   (Epidemie)    14.98

Ethos IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Yet another label that we've just started to carry, Epidemie is kicking my ass with their diverse and mindblowing catalog of avant-heaviness that often defies description. While most of the bands that Epidemie releases are undeniably metal, this disc is one of the exceptions, although it's also one of the heaviest albums that we've picked up from the label.
Crushing industrial doomscapes and haunting orchestral ambience make up this album from the Czech duo Aghiatrias, which was formed by composer Vladimír Hirsch and sound-engineer Tom Saivon in 1999 as an offshoot of their symphonic industrial band Skrol. Ethos is the fourth album from Aghiatrias, and it is about as heavy as this kind of classical-music informed industrial gets, layering dark ambient electronics, samples and electronic noise over slow, grinding machine rhythms and blasts of epic orchestral instruments. Each of these tracks are massive, flowing seamlessly into each other as one epic extended soundtrack, as booming timpani drums thunder behind loops of apocalyptic symphonies of what might be French horns, strings, piano, and crushing metallic drones, blasts of harsh, abrasive noise and ghostly operatic vocals rise up from deep black ambient electronics, and when the rhythmic elements appear, Aghiatrias suddenly become monstrously heavy as drums and machine pistons lock in together into a flattening industrialized doomdirge, or a massive wall of tribal percussion. Total end-of-the-world filmscore stuff...imagine Christopher Young's score for Hellraiser II performed by members of Lustmord, Test Dept., Wolf Eyes, and Godflesh. Released in a limited edition of 500 copies in one of the thickest, heaviest digipacks I've ever seen.

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AGIT8   Recycled Music Series   CASSETTE   (RRRecords)    4.98

This entry in the Recycled Music Series of tapes from RRR is from the Australian free-noise project Agit8. This is the first recording that I've picked up from this band, after seeing them described as 'ultra brutal Australianoise' that seem to frequently employ the use of hand made noise instruments. The material on this tape is certainly brutal at times, although it's far from the pure harsh noise assault that I had been expecting at first. Instead, the music is a rough montage of sounds, almost like a mixtape of weird anti-rock moves that are pasted together haphazardly. Each side of the tape is a collage of brutally distorted noise loops, distressed cassette noise, field recordings of the chatter of concert audiences, room ambience, and other, less recognizeable sounds, low-fi recordings of stumbling, disintegrating rock that almost sounds like a noisier, even more low-fi version of the Dead C, scalding blasts of feedback, and a section where it sounds like Agit8 took a dozen different bootleg tapes of old thrash metal shows and layered them on top of each other to create a dense blast of harsh noise with metallic riffs and rattling bass guitars jutting through the wall of crunch and hiss. This stuff stands out from the rest of the RRR catalog with its engrossing (if chaotic) mix of sinister ambient field recordings, violent Prurient/Masonna style feedback scultpure, low fi Babel drones of mumbling masses, and fucked up abstract free-metal, and the second side alone qualifies this as one of the heavier Recycled Music tapes next to that crusher that Josh Lay just released in the series (which is also listed in this week's update).

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AGLAOMORPHA   Perception   CD   (Wroth Emitter)    11.98

The debut album from this obscure Russian experimental doom band is a strange, disconnected dreamworld, where crushing death doom dissipates suddenly into haunting, minimalist guitar instrumentals and vast expanses of black electronic ambience. Like much of the stuff that I've been picking up lately from the Wroth Emitter, Stygian Crypt and Solitude labels, the sound here is unmistakeably rooted in super slow, bleak doom metal, but it's like there's something getting lost in the translation that turns Aglaomorpha's version of doom into something weirder. The atmosphere in Perception is grim and sorrowful, pure melancholy that seeps from the odd existential lyrics into the crushing riffs and plodding tempo of these twelve jams, and it sounds like the epic funeral trudge of bands like My Dying Bride, Shape OF Despair, and prog doomsters Mar De Grises had a hand in influencing Aglaomorpha's sound. But the song structures are out of whack, massive crushing doom dirges suddenly just disappear, leaving only pitch black ambience and rumbling cavernous drones. Orchestral keyboards drift over murky recordings of urban life, and a series of beautiful piano pieces appear with tracks like "Revelation (epilogue)". Blasts of blazing black metal guitars scream out of the void only to disappear in a blink, replaced by a fragile guitar melody. Droning guitars swarm and wobble, bent into vaguely distorted tones and fucked up angular riffs that recall the mutant textures of Blut Aus Nord's recent albums. The vocals seem to be delivered by two different singers, though since the album is almost totally devoid of band information I'm only guessing; harsh hellish screams constantly trade off against deep monstrous gutteral roars. Aglaomorpha's surreal blackened doom is definitely something that fans of experimental, adventurous doom and black metal will want to check out. The mix of crushing, vaguely industrial sounding death-doom, dark chamber rock, even darker droning ambience, and fractured black metal is deeply warped, somewhere in between Shape Of Despair, Amber Asylum, Blut Aus Nord, and Aural Hypnox style driftscapes.
Track Samples:
Sample : Track 10
Sample : Track 4
Sample : Track 6

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AGNUS DEI   Paternoster   CD   (Musik Atlach)    11.98

Here is a phenomenal new album of dark, gorgeous ambience and portentous heaviness from the Japanese solo project Agnus Dei, the pseudonym of one Naomi Hoca who creates all of the vocals and sounds on this album. Described by the label as “funeral dark drone”, Paternoster is the first official album from Agnus Dei, and just came out on the excellent Japanese psych label Musik Atlach (run by Sachiko from Overhang Party/Kousokuya). Hoca's music is heavy on the blackened ambience and psychedelic drone, but more than anything this is obsessed with classical sacred music, using long stretches of liturgical organ, medieval religious music and cut-up sections of baroque religious vocal hymn that are interwoven with the more crushing and formless sounds of overdriven guitar distortion and furious industrial noise to create a seriously nightmarish dronescape. While listening to this disc, I'm reminded of everything from Arvo Part to Lustmord to Corrupted at their most ambient, and even the more atmospheric and abstract moments of Bloody Panda, although you can't really call Agnus Dei "doom", even if much of this album sounds doom-ridden as hell.
The first track "Paternoster" is a seventeen minute epic of atmospheric musique concrete and liturgical doom that begins with grinding low-end noise and waves of massive Sunn-like low-end drone heaviness, but as the track slowly evolves, the sound is joined by samples of propaganda speeches, industrial noise, pilfered loops of traditional Latin Mass, the haunting sound of female choral voices, random voices speaking in various languages, Gregorian chants, looped applause, blasts of brutally loud jet-engine noise, long stretches of mournful church organs, and gongs all puzzled together into a surreal landscape that resembled something from Nurse With Wound polluted by jets of blackened industrial doom guitar and orchestral strings.
The other track, "Holocaust Missa", gets even darker and creepier with samples of WWII-era speeches enshrouded within the buzzing drone of minimalist church organs and waves of pure black drone and CRUSHING ambient doom-guitar, at times sounding a lot like Corrupted or Black Boned Angel, but eventually the grinding guitar drone fades away as ghostly female choral voices appear, dark and delicate as they drift across a blackened field of drone and buzz and distant battlefield sounds, flecked with samples of gorgeous classical piano and choral voices and the fearsome insanity of large-scale wartime rallies. Highly recommended, and packaged in a simple glossy cardstock wallet sleeve with creepy religious-themed imagery.
Track Samples:
Sample : Holocaust Missa
Sample : Paternoster

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED   Honky Reduction/The Glue That Binds Us   LP + 7"   (R.S.R.)    22.98

Honky Reduction/The Glue That Binds Us IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

These weren't cheap, but we scored some copies of this super-limited (less than 500 pressed, apparently) German import LP release of the now classic Agoraphobic Nosebleed mini-album Honky Reduction that came out at the end of last year. Formed by guitarist/bassist/drum machine programmer Scott Hull (who you probably also know from Pig Destroyer, and maybe even his harsh noise project Japanese Torture Comedy Hour) and vokillist/noisician Jay Randall, Agoraphobic Nosebleed blasted into the grey matter of grind nuts everywhere when the nineteen-minute, twenty-six song CD was released in 1998. This stuff was over the top when it came out- an onslaught of transgressive, misanthropic hallucinations mixed together with Jay's harsh vocals, insanely fast drum machine blastbeats that would contort and warp into rhythmic patterns that no human drummer could possibly replicate, blasts of scathing electronic noise, and Scott's crushing, complex grind riffage, all wrapped up in short, compressed songs that usually barely break the minute mark. Jay's lyrics and song titles lean towards the confrontational and disturbing, with songs like "The Withering Of Skin", "LIves Ruined Through Sex", "Clawhammer And A Ether Rag", and "Her Despair Reeks Of Alchohol" skulking the darkest recesses of the human condition, but conveyed through weird lyrics that address drug conspiracies, consumerism, homophobia, and terrorism in surrealistic eruptions of profanity. On one hand, Honky Reduction is fucking hilarious, in a crackpot, drug-addled way. Just look at the album cover (a 60's era blonde serving up sides of beef in some nightmarish butcher shop) and the rest of the deranged, thoroughly un-PC imagery that is found throughout the album sleeve, or follow the lyrics, which are about as pitch-black as humor can get. The negativity and the sheer brutality of the music is so intense, though, that there's no denying that these cats are dead fucking serious about the grind. No joke band, here, no matter how freaked out their imagery gets. It's a disorientating grind album from one of my favorite grind bands ever, a bestial assault all the way up to the Bastard Noise-inspired space noise jam that closes the album.
What will no doubt seal the deal for diehard Agoraphobic Nosebleed fans is the bonus 7" that R.S.R. packaged with this LP. Titled The Glue That Binds Us, this EP comes in it's own full color jacket, and features thirteen songs of it's own, ten originals and three mind melting covers of Corrosion Of Conformity ("Hungry Child", my favorite C.O.C. song of all time !!!) and DRI ("I'd Rather Be Sleeping" and "I Don't Need Society"). Not just that, but all of the tracks on this EP sound like they had been recorded super hot and in the red, the already-caustic grindcore made all the more corrosive by piling on a thick sheen of white noise and distortion. Awesome.

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED   PCP Torpedo/ANBRX   2 x CD   (Hydra Head)    15.98

The masters of drum-machine fueled grindmetal return to resuscitate their famed PCP Torpedo EP, originally issued on 5" wax in 1999 and which has long been out of print. No one comes close to these guys when it comes to total crackhead drummachine grind, and that original EP displayed what is still some of Agoraphobic Nosebleed's most lethal blasts ever. Hydra Head went balls-out with this redux, beginning with the material housed on 2 discs: the first disc is the PCP Torpedo EP, consisting of 10 songs in 7 minutes, but those 7 minutes are pure compressed savagery, a souped up, highly stylized cyborg version of classic Earache grindcore that outfits Scott Hull's crushing grind riffs and Jay Randall's dissociative, misanthropic rantings with a barrage of relentlessly hyperspeed gabba/speedcore style machinegun beats, the only respite occuring when ANb bottom out into the occasional dissonant Godflesh-esque industroid dirge. These jams are punishing. Then there's the second disc, ANBRX, which is a collection of rethinks/remixes of the PCP Torpedo material from an assortment of speedcore/noise/extreme IDM artists including Vidna Obmana, Dev/Null with Xanopticon, James Plotkin, DJ Speedranch, Merzbow, Jansky Noise, Auek, Justin Broadrick, Drokz & Tails, Drokz, Hellz Army, Substance Abuse, and Submachine Drum. All of these tracks kill, with some of our faves including the gargantuan Godflesh invocation of Justin Broadrick's "Flesh Of Jesu" mix, DJ Speedranch's gibbering digital knife attack, and Hellz Army's brutal gabba translation. The packaging for this double CD set is off the hook...it comes in a deluxe gatefold digipack covered in psychedelic artwork depicting warehouses on fire, the flames streaming into the sky as multicolored pills rain down onto the streets. The inside panels are a kaleidoscopic sea of pills in all the colors of the rainbow. The PCP Tprpedo disc is a 3" fan disc with a clear outer ring and covered in tiny drawings of blue flames, the ANBRX disc ccovered in red flames. Total eye candy, and one of the best packaging designs of 2006 without a freaking doubt. An absolute must-have for Agoraphobic Nosebleed fans!

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED   The Glue That Binds Us   7" VINYL   (R.S.R.)    6.50

Previously available only as a bonus 7" that came with the German import vinyl for Agoraphobic Nosebleed's Honky Reduction, this mangy little EP is now available on it's own from R.S.R.; I think that the label must turned up a stray box of these 7"s, as we were only able to get about a dozen or so of these for C-Blast.
Formed by guitarist/bassist/drum machine programmer Scott Hull (who you probably also know from Pig Destroyer, and maybe even his harsh noise project Japanese Torture Comedy Hour) and vokillist/noisician Jay Randall, Agoraphobic Nosebleed take the feral violence of early grindcore and augment that shit with over-the-top modern blast-programming technology, infusing the whirlwind razor-riff attacks with supersonic blastbeats and synthesized jackhammer percussion that goes way beyond what any organic set of arms would be able to pull off.
Titled The Glue That Binds Us, this EP comes in it's own full color jacket, and features thirteen songs of it's own, ten originals and three mind melting covers of Corrosion Of Conformity ("Hungry Child", my favorite C.O.C. song of all time !!!) and DRI ("I'd Rather Be Sleeping" and "I Don't Need Society"). Not just that, but all of the tracks on this EP sound like they had been recorded super hot and in the red, the already-caustic grindcore made all the more corrosive by piling on a thick sheen of white noise and distortion. One of the songs features Aaron Ulcer on vocals, too; Aaron has one of the sickest screams I've ever heard, and his old band Ulcer was one of the best blastcore bands of the 90's, even though they were mostly overlooked by the hardcore scene when they were around, so I was fucking stoked to hear him spew his cheesegrater'd larynx all over the cover of DRI's "I Don't Need Society". Awesome!

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED / ANS   Tribute To Gang Green   5" VINYL   (Tank Crimes)    5.98

This short little 5" platter is a mutual ode to the legendary Beantown hardcore band Gang Green, specifically their late 80's crossover era. The crazed grind duo Agoraphobic Nosebleed (here in duo mode with Scott Hull handling both guitar and drums, no drum machine this time) team up with West Coast rippers ANS to cover one Gang Green jam apiece, with ANS throwing out an additional original of their own. Pressed on "beer piss yellow" vinyl and housed in a great looking sleeve with killer booze-geyser skate-skull artwork from Tall Boy, this is a quick shot of nuclear energy for fans of old school crossover...
The guys in Agoraphobic Nosebleed pound out a cover of the classic Gang Green anthem "Alcohol" that's surprisingly straightforward, no blastbeats or crazed grind riffing, just a burly, faithful cover complete with wailing wah-wah rock solos, a straight thrash attack that time warps back to 1987.
On the flipside, ANS open with their own cover of another Gang Green beer-guzzlin' whiplash anthem, "Let's Drink Some Beer", which is likewise pretty faithful to the original, although ANS pump it up with an added shot of metallic muscle. It's a goddamn ripper. That's paired up with one of their own songs that's exclusive to this split, the heavy metallic punk-thrash of "Bl'azing Saddles", itself stuck in a late 80's time warp which appears to be what this Cali band specializes in; think DRI, Gang Green, No Mercy, Whermacht, that sort of blistering speed-core laced with ferocious midtempo pit-riots and plenty of high speed fury.

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED / APARTMENT 213   Domestic Powerviolence   LP   (Relapse)    15.98

Holy shit. Could there be a more fearsome lineup? This split album came out on Relapse last year but we just recently picked up some of the limited edition vinyl, a full length split featuring all new exclusive material from the legendary drum-machine driven grinders Agoraphobic Nosebleed and neo-powerviolence thugs Apartment 213. And I guess you could call this a "concept" record, with the disturbing artwork from the acclaimed German artist Florian Betmer and the combined sociopathic rantings of both bands putting forth some really disturbing visions of familial discord. Listening to this split is like hearing an audiobook version of Goad's Answer Me!. Yikes. The Agoraphobic Nosebleed side of the split is something different: joined by Steve Makita from Apartment 213 on vocals, Scott Hull and Jay Randall scrape through three lengthy (for them) tracks that are almost devoid of the convoluted blastbeats that make up their previous releases. Instead, they channel a fucked up version of Man Is The Bastard and mutant noise rock through sludgy bass-heavy riffs that bend at unfriendly angles and slow, chaotic rythmic dirges, and with Steve Makita's terrifying roar, they manage to sound even scarier than usual. I know that there were alot of fans that were a little turned off by this slower, sludgier side of Agoraphobic, but I think this fuckin' rules. There's also a surprising turn at the end of "Ejector Seat" where the music suddenly opens up on a vast expanse of Popul Vuh like ambience - very rad.
Apartment 213 rule. They are one of only two bands to get the blessing of Eric Wood from Bastard Noise/Man As The Bastard as being legitimate "power violence" (the other being The Endless Blockade), which is a righteous endorsement, and they are the only band around that is doing the Infest sound and harnessing the same murderous power that those masters had. The Apt 213 side features seven songs, five of which originally appeared on their Vacancy 7" but were rerecorded for this split. Brutal, vicious blastcore that goes from hyperspeed grinding to slow, smoldering dirge. Intense and hateful, with songs called "Instrumental (In Child Rearing)", "Mutilation", and "Kill For Christ".
The record is pressed on thick vinyl, and the version that we have in stock is the swirled yellow/red sunburst color. Packaged in a full color jacket with a full color inner sleeve.

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED / CROM   split   7" VINYL   (R.S.R.)    7.98

Last time we listed these, they sold out immediately, but we finally were able to get some more in stock...
Los Angeles grind weirdos Crom team up with Agoraphobic Nosebleed to deliver a short but brutal 7" that features five tracks of what-the-fuck powerviolence from the former and two new tracks of blazing drum-machine powered ultragrind from the latter. It's comin' to us courtesy of German scum peddlers R.S.R., who released the 7" on black vinyl in a limited run of 500 copies, and packaged it in a full color double sided sleeve which includes all of Agoraphobic Nosebleed's lyrics (thank christ) along with bizarre liner notes from Crom.
These are the first Agoraphobic Nosebleed tracks that I've heard with new vocalist Kat (from doom/sludge creeps Salome), and both "Pantheon Crack Torche" and " Home Invasion" seriously fucking shred. The first one is a blasting holocaust of angular grind/speed violence with paintscraping screamed vocals, monstrous growling, punishing sludge riffage, and ultra heavy drum programming. The second song is the longer of the two, and it's total fucking chaos, with singers Kat, Jay and Richard splattering their shrieks/screams/roars across Scott Hull's schizoid mangle of jagged thrash metal riffs, clusterbomb blastbeats revved up to an insane 500 bpm velocity, and slurred, lurching sludge, complete with crack epidemic metaphors and lyrics about having the LAPD run roughshod over your apartment and killing your entire family.
Crom spew five new tracks of hesher weirdness on their side: the Bavarian Metal tribute, Conan samples, boogie rock collage and discordant neanderthal powerviolence of "Swords And Sandals; "Talons Of Ibis" and its phased speed metal defrag that clocks in at 30 seconds; the longest track is "The Black Ring", it's sludgy feedback infested verse, whooshing Hawkwind effects and delayed snarls trailing off into infinity; "Mystics And Heretics" breaks off a ten second blurt of Infest-esque hatred; and closer "Tree Of Woe II" drifts in on a wave of fucked up effects and pounding drums, launches into what sounds like it's going to be an absolutely crushing doom metal riff, then suddenly vomits up an 80's pop sample and stops.

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED / TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION   Frontside Nosegrind (RED VINYL)   7" VINYL   (Bones Brigade)    6.98

Back in stock, now on RED vinyl!
What a teamup! Longrunning drum-machine grinders Agoraphobic Nosebleed are back with three new jams, "Self Detonate", "Degenerate Liar", and "Alcoholocaust", performed by the core duo of guitarist/drum programmer/speaker waster Scott Hull (also of Pig Destroyer fame) and vocalist J. Randall, and with additional lead vocals from Benumb singer Pete on "Degenerate Liar". A scathing assault of sludgy noise-rock informed power dirge, crushing thrash metal riffing, and 5000 mph hypergrind annihilation. Smokin'! Total Fucking Destruction are on the b-side with the freaked out psychedelic noise/funk/drug rock jam "Last Night I Dreamt We Destroyed The World" that degenerates into Rich Hoak's manic trademark blastbeat wipeout and some damaged FX abuse, followed by a raging speedcore cover of the Exploited's "Sid Vicious Was Innocent"! Pressed on limited edition thick opaque red vinyl. And the package for this 7" is AWESOME - the outer cover features brightly colored illustrations of reptilian skateboarding demons tearing up some ramp against a psychedelic backdrop of skulls, all created by famed artist Florian Bertmer, with trippy spiral shapes printed in clear spot varnish and swirling out from the center...and the inside of the jacket features wicked photographs of a kid with his fuckin' nose ripped off, giving a big thumbs up to the camera (hence the Frontside Nosegrind title...). Badass!

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AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED / TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION   Frontside Nosegrind (BLUE VINYL)   7" VINYL   (Bones Brigade)    7.98

Frontside Nosegrind (BLUE VINYL) IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Back in stock!
What a teamup! Longrunning drum-machine grinders Agoraphobic Nosebleed are back with three new jams, "Self Detonate", "Degenerate Liar", and "Alcoholocaust", performed by the core duo of guitarist/drum programmer/speaker waster Scott Hull (also of Pig Destroyer fame) and vocalist J. Randall, and with additional lead vocals from Benumb singer Pete on "Degenerate Liar". A scathing assault of sludgy noise-rock informed power dirge, crushing thrash metal riffing, and 5000 mph hypergrind annihilation. Smokin'! Total Fucking Destruction are on the b-side with the freaked out psychedelic noise/funk/drug rock jam "Last Night I Dreamt We Destroyed The World" that degenerates into Rich Hoak's manic trademark blastbeat wipeout and some damaged FX abuse, followed by a raging speedcore cover of the Exploited's "Sid Vicious Was Innocent"! Pressed on limited edition thick opaque blue vinyl. And the package for this 7" is AWESOME - the outer cover features brightly colored illustrations of reptilian skateboarding demons tearing up some ramp against a psychedelic backdrop of skulls, all created by famed artist Florian Bertmer, with trippy spiral shapes printed in clear spot varnish and swirling out from the center...and the inside of the jacket features wicked photographs of a kid with his fuckin' nose ripped off, giving a big thumbs up to the camera (hence the Frontside Nosegrind title...). Badass!

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AGUIRRE   Calvaire   CD   (Bones Brigade)    11.98

Bones Brigade slows down their usual mach-10 pace for the debut album from Aguirre, a French band that channels the negative gooey sludgecore vibes of Iron Monkey and Eyehategod and puts their own frantic hardcore edge on that sound. Calvaire had been released on vinyl a while back on the Blind Date label, but appears here for the first time on cd. Like both Iron Monkey and Eyehategod, there's a seething viciousness at the center of Aguirre's four lengthy bitter slow-motion diatribes that make up this album, easily traceable back to the member's collective background in the French hardcore scene; the songs on Calvaire use the slow, sludgy heaviness as a starting point for songs that often break into galloping mid-paced thrash a la High On Fire, or frenzied and chaotic passages that remind me of His Hero Is Gone and the French Canadian hardcore scene from the late 90's (Ire, Union Of Uranus, One Eyed God Prophecy, etc), which is something that I don't hear too often anymore. But mostly this is rooted in pounding, crusty, droning sludge, usually centering around a single grinding sludge riff with lots of dissonant chords, a thick dank hellish atmosphere hanging low over the songs, the introspective lyrics (sung in both French and English) leaning towards the nihilistic and delivered through a combination of deep emotive screams and higher pitched screams and anguish-wracked wailing. Heavy stuff, with half of the album going for epic song lengths of ten minutes or more, with just one song going in what could be described as a melodic direction; “[…]” is one of the slowest songs on the album, but there's a doleful melodic undercurrent that appears throughout the song that at times reminds me of Harvey Milk. That's definitely the exception though; the rest of this is malevolent and ugly, and closer to the likes of Cavity, Iron Monkey, Graves At Sea and early Overmars. A solid debut of sinister metallic sludge presented in digipack packaging and limited to 500 copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : Blisster
Sample : Vaincu Mais Non Dompte

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AHKMED   Chicxulub   CD   (R.A.I.G.)    11.98

Chicxulub IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Even though their title stands for "Russian Association Of Independant Genres", R.A.I.G. has been mining some of the raddest, heaviest space rock action from outside of the former Soviet Union, starting with the debut from U.S. Christmas that had just about every cosmic hesher that heard it praising 'em as the best new psych rock outfit around, and now bringin' us to this hefty disc from an Australian power trio that I hadn't heard of before. It only took a couple minutes of their music to glide across my ear canals before I decided that we had to get this album for the C-Blast store, and stat. I dug around and it looks like Chixulub is Ahkmed's first album, even though the band has been around since 1998...leafing through the album booklet (which is goddamn killer, but I'll get to that in a sec...), however, reveals that Chicxulub is actually a collection of two previously self- released EP's, 2005's In Your Neck of the Dying Woods and 2003's Ahkmed.
At first, the songs on this disc sound like they are going to be super fuzzed out, epic instrumental rock a la Mono or Pelican or Mogwai, and I was even reminded of their fellow Aussie sludge slingers Fire Witch: lotsa big fuzzy riffage, catchy hooks riding on big instrumental clean guitars that start off mellow and wind up into explosive crescendos, trippy guitar fx swirling around brooding chords. But Ahkmed start to mix things up pretty quick, cranking up the space rock FX really hard, the fuzzbomb guitars kicking out utterly wicked Sabbathian stoner riffs, and then everything suddenly surging forward into a sick Krautrock style jam, acid guitar freaking out over propulsive amphetimine fueled drumming that cuts a swath across red desert wastelands, a burly soulful drawl comin' out of nowhere and describing mystical vistas, then stumbling back into muted druggy psychedelia, soaring cosmic drones and lengthy passages of spaced out ambience. The loud/soft, stomp-on-the-distortion dynamics are used to great effect on alot of these songs, but it's the massive crushing Krautrock rhythms and super zonked, fx-splattered guitar that wanders all over the horizon of Chicxulub that makes my eyes roll back into my head. Very crucial heavy psych - imagine Hawkwind, Finnish hypno-metallers Circle, the more recent Isis stuff, Acid Mothers Temple, Pink Floyd, Kyuss, and Monster Magnet rolled into one big fat bong blast of psychedelic stoner post-rock. Man, the final track "Samar" just kicked in and it's horizontal motorik drive and stomping acid metal grooves kill it.
And the package is freaking awesome. R.A.I.G. usually goes pretty creative with their stuff, but this is the coolest CD package that I've ever seen from the label. A full color digifolder illustrated with strange images of floating rock hovering over an abstract landscape, which opens up to reveal a twelve page booklet that is bound in to the internior of the jacket, and which features an array of surreal photographs of prehistoric looking cave warriors covered in animal skulls, tattoos, animal hides, bones, and demonic ceremonial masks.
Highly recommended to fans of heavy psychedelia. This album rules.

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AHLZAGAILZEHGUH   Recycled Music Series   CASSETTE   (RRRecords)    4.98

Ahlzagailzehguh...quite the mouthful,huh? Sounds like the name of some ancient Elder God out of the Necronomicon, which is an apropos reference since Ahlzagailzehguh delivers some of the most evil, blackened noise thisn side of Richard Ramirez and The Rita. The NY harsh noise project has been dropping cluster bombs of charred wallnoise brutality for years, including a crushin' LP on Hospital Productions operated by Prurient's Dominick Fernow, which should give you an idea of the sort of attitude on display here. Ahlzagailzeguh's entry in RRRecords legendary Recycled Music Series is pure destructive noise, two untitled side-long tracks of brutal, fast-swirling black noise chopped up and slammed from speaker to speaker through the use of some really assaultive stereo panning. You need to really crank this tape, too; there's so much detail in these chaotic walls, blasts of whiplash feedback and mangled guitar noise, razor-sharp electronic glitches, monstrous roaring vocals ripping through a curtain of filth, awesome demonic noises that sound like cassette player heads having strips of human skin run through them at high speed, and it all melts together into a wall of thick, rumbling, hyperviolent blackened dronenoise straight from hell. With all of the feedback and amplifier abuse going on in these lengthy pieces, it actually gets pretty close to the murderous power-skree of Matt Bower's Total, so fans of that project might want to look into this and other Ahlzagailzeguh releases, which I'll be working on trying to track down as soon as I can. As with all of the Recycled Series tapes, these cassettes are recorded onto random prerecorded cassettes from the RRR record store, and both the tape and the jacket are covered in duct tape scrawled in black magic marker.

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AIDS WOLF   The Lovvers LP   CD   (Lovepump United)    11.98

Here's the anticipated album from Montreal hotshits AIDS WOLF, whose vaguely narcoleptic and dissonant No Wave stew slops around a half hour of ear splitting free-noise improvisation, art-damaged costume thrash, haunted drones, brittle hooks, and Chloe Lum's possessed kiddie-howls across The Lovvers near-half hour running time. It reminds us of a post-apocalyptic XBXRX meets WOLF EYES, or early SONIC YOUTH fused with the BOREDOMS, TOTAL SHUTDOWN, and LIGHTNING BOLT. Spiky guitars and spazzy ramshackle drumbeats tumble over each other, and more often than not lock into a wild hypnotic skronk jam that will eject you from your seat, if you have an ear for this kind of head shred. The disc closes out with the 12 minute free-drone-noise haunted house jam "Some Sexual Drawings", and it's a knockout. Definitely one for fans of Load Records, Afrirampo, artsy noise punk, Melt Banana, and Skin Graft jams. For those that don't know, members of AIDS WOLF also double as the design group Seripop, whose eye popping artwork is all over this thing. We just got these in from our buddy Mookie, who besides singing and banging keys for our very own GENGHIS TRON, also operates the Lovepump United imprint that unleashed this album.

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AIR CONDITIONING   Catneck / Frustrating Ice Princess   7" PICTURE DISC   (Electric Human Project)    6.98

Killer picture disc 7" of lung-burning migraine RAWK from this Pennsylvania outfit. "Catneck" is the A-side jam, and enters with a buzz of cable/amp presence before it bursts into molten rock riffage jammed into a tarpit of distortion. The B-side follows with "Frustrating Ice Princess" and napalms a noise rock jam with even more sickening feedback and ends in a caustic trainwreck of brick-on-guitar action transmitted through a malfunctioning truck engine. Crucial. Fans of Wolf Eyes, Burmese, Geisha, Rusted Shut, etc., need to get on these guys post-haste.

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AIR CONDITIONING   Weakness   CD   (Level Plane)    12.98

This is one of those albums that I pull out when I feel the need for real NOISE rock, and I am absolutely not in the mood for any weak-ass shit. These Allentown brusiers debuted with this three-song disc on Level Plane that came out a few years ago, and it's a required dose for anyone looking for total immolation. The lineup is classic power trio - guitar, drums, bass, someone singing lyrics - but what these guys do with that lineup is more akin to a serious industrial accident: pounding percussive bomb blasts, shrieking overdriven feedback, quasi-riffs and melodies buried in an avalanche of skull splitting fuzz and skree, seriously fucking heavy but oddly tuneful, if your a similiar breed of mutant as I and are able to glean the hooks from Air Conditionings brutal noise pummel. Three songs: "Accusation, Denial, Denali" a mere minute of spastic inter-dimensional punk spew; the 23 minute epic "Baby With a Graphite Soft Spot/Smooth Branches" which drags you across a wasteland of pounding factory-machine grind, gooey guitar tones that sound like the most malevolent seconds of Loveless infected with an especially virulent case of rabies, multiple voices shouting snottily in a cough syrup soaked fug, and ultraheavy blown dirgecore. The last jam, "Welcome to Seaworld/Championship Rings", is another long one, 15 minutes in fact, and it sounds like a meth'd up Brainbombs set being blasted out of a cosmic megaphone. This is not for sissies, no sir. Weakness is super catchy, but it's catchiness and hooks are reserved for only those steel-gutted scum pilots that think that the idea of listening to monolithic distorto-grudge punk dirge pushed to Merzbow levels of brutal crunch is a solid way to spend a Saturday afternoon. And are down to PLAY IT LOUD. Position this motherfucker next to your Vegas Martyrs, Goslings, Burmese, New Flesh, Heavy Winged, and Brainbombs collection, and pull out for immediate catharsis whenever the urge to bury a hatchet in someone's headbone strikes ya.

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AIR CONDITIONING   Dead Rails   CD   (Load)    12.98

There's been plenty of heavy noise-punk action comin out of Allentown, Pennsylvania lately, Pissed Jeans probably being the most well known of the bands to come out of that burgs cool little underground community, but nobody from Allentown trumps the sheer heaviness of Air Conditioning. These cats dropped this block of headcrushing psychedelic noise rock back in 2006, but if yer a fan of ultra-heavy, ultra-dense distorted noise rock and haven't heard Dead Rails yet, you gotta pick this up now. Air Conditioning's second album (and first for their new label Load) is another essential one for those of us that like our rock brutal, elephantine, and distorted to the point where all of the instruments and vocals are blurred into a churning mass of blistering CRUNCH. The Weakness album that Air Conditioning released on Level Plane was an awesome fistful of blownout sludge that was just as great as likeminded albums from Vegas Martyrs, Heavy Winged, Goslings, and The New Flesh that I'm always spinning around here, and on Dead Rails, the AC guys crank the crunch and distortion and white noise even further into oblivion. These four lengthy tracks have massive skullcrushing riffs bulldozing through an ocean of extreme distortion and sublime amplifier grit, at times sounding like a noise rock version of Nadja, or Skullflower strapped down onto pummeling industrial percussion, hooky melodies popping up out of the murk and distortion but always, always washed over with brutal blown out noise. The guitars rumble and grind in a fog of strange tunings, spewing warped acid-rock solos and crawling over pounding scrapyard percussion and thunderous drums, their vocals are an indecipherable howl drowned out by gooey FX and wailing feedback, and the surging currents of distortion roiling underneath it all at all times. Definitely rocking, but with more noise and crud slathered over everything than any other noise rock band I can think of, and MUCHO HEAVIER too. Towards the end, the band hunkers down and weaves some more laid-back, droning textures and hypnotic buzz on "I Run Low", but then the final sixteen-minute-plus epic "Accept Your Paralysis" unfurls the heaviest, most blown trudge of em all, drowning their guitars in feedback and squeal while the drummer snakes through a hypnotic beat, slowly blossoming into a super-rhythmic grinding jam that takes on a sludgy forward propulsion that sounds like Hijokaidan getting down with a particularly stomping Black Sabbath loop. The heaviest jams yet from this punishing trio.
Track Samples:
Sample : Conclusions/Concussions
Sample : Where to Litter/Trash Burning

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AIR CONDITIONING   Dead Rails   LP   (Load)    14.98

Also available on vinyl!
There's been plenty of heavy noise-punk action comin out of Allentown, Pennsylvania lately, Pissed Jeans probably being the most well known of the bands to come out of that burgs cool little underground community, but nobody from Allentown trumps the sheer heaviness of Air Conditioning. These cats dropped this block of headcrushing psychedelic noise rock back in 2006, but if yer a fan of ultra-heavy, ultra-dense distorted noise rock and haven't heard Dead Rails yet, you gotta pick this up now. Air Conditioning's second album (and first for their new label Load) is another essential one for those of us that like our rock brutal, elephantine, and distorted to the point where all of the instruments and vocals are blurred into a churning mass of blistering CRUNCH. The Weakness album that Air Conditioning released on Level Plane was an awesome fistful of blownout sludge that was just as great as likeminded albums from Vegas Martyrs, Heavy Winged, Goslings, and The New Flesh that I'm always spinning around here, and on Dead Rails, the AC guys crank the crunch and distortion and white noise even further into oblivion. These four lengthy tracks have massive skullcrushing riffs bulldozing through an ocean of extreme distortion and sublime amplifier grit, at times sounding like a noise rock version of Nadja, or Skullflower strapped down onto pummeling industrial percussion, hooky melodies popping up out of the murk and distortion but always, always washed over with brutal blown out noise. The guitars rumble and grind in a fog of strange tunings, spewing warped acid-rock solos and crawling over pounding scrapyard percussion and thunderous drums, their vocals are an indecipherable howl drowned out by gooey FX and wailing feedback, and the surging currents of distortion roiling underneath it all at all times. Definitely rocking, but with more noise and crud slathered over everything than any other noise rock band I can think of, and MUCHO HEAVIER too. Towards the end, the band hunkers down and weaves some more laid-back, droning textures and hypnotic buzz on "I Run Low", but then the final sixteen-minute-plus epic "Accept Your Paralysis" unfurls the heaviest, most blown trudge of em all, drowning their guitars in feedback and squeal while the drummer snakes through a hypnotic beat, slowly blossoming into a super-rhythmic grinding jam that takes on a sludgy forward propulsion that sounds like Hijokaidan getting down with a particularly stomping Black Sabbath loop. The heaviest jams yet from this punishing trio.
Track Samples:
Sample : Conclusions/Concussions
Sample : Where to Litter/Trash Burning

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AJILVSGA   Destruction of the Bison   CDR   (Faunasabbatha)    9.98

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AKIMBO   Forging Steel And Laying Stone   CD   (Alternative Tentacles)    14.98

Akimbo's first album for Alternative Tentacles delivers 12 jams of their quirky, crushing metallic rock flavored with the heshhead sense of humor those guys have, injecting their massive metallic rawk battery with stylized artwork and song titles like "Rockness Monster" and "Spooning With Disaster". They merge the off-kilter lurch of Jesus Lizard with a kind of complex progressive metalcore that points towards fellow Seattleites Botch, with lots of angular, sorta-mathy riffs and sludgy, burly boogie-metal parts a la Eyehategod, Jon Weisnewski's intense ripped snarls, and Nat Damm's seriously heavy, pummeling drumming. Occasionally Akimbo pull back to reveal brief flashes of tense math/indie rock that remind us of Unwound or maybe Drive Like Jehu, and the indie rock vibe is heavy in their sound, which I guess kinda makes them heirs to the Karp throne of huge, crushing indie metal destruction. Band creeds like "Sharpen Swords, Polish The Armour, It's Feeding Time" and their longrunning motto to "Live To Crush", a psychedelic-poster style band logo, eerie metal imagery, heavy stoner-boogie riffage and frenetic hardcore punk, Karp meets Unwound meets Melvins for a fun, crazed riff heavy blast of twisting, skull splitting crunch. Awesome!

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AKIMBO   Harshing Your Mellow   CD   (Alternative Tentacles)    14.98

Akimbo rules. I've been a devout fan of these guys ever since I first witnessed them live when they toured with Genghis Tron; a tightly wound power trio, Akimbo have this undefineable power that feels like it draws from the noise rock of Amphetimine Reptile and Touch And Go, early Neurosis, hard edged math rock riffs, and classic hardcore. Incredibly potent and ferocious sounding, easily one of the heaviest bands to have ever been on Alternative Tentacles, but really catchy too. Remember how Karp had that streak of indie rock catchiness underneath their crushing riffs? Akimbo has that too. Complex, crushing, rocking, unstoppably catchy and anthemic. A killer live band, too, and you can tell that these guys are lifers, dedicated flesh and spirit to the power of crushing riffage. Harshing Your Mellow was the band's first album, originally coming out in 2001 on Amalgamate Records, but it subsequently sold out and went out of print, and has been a tough one to find in the years since. Alternative Tentacles has re-issued the album with all ten tracks remastered, and has tacked on an additional unreleased cover of 'Vertigo' from LA punk legends The Screamers that was recorded during the original album session. These early songs aren't as balls-out crushing as the more metallic Forging Steel And Laying Stone, but this is still heavy HEAVY stuff, a blistering, thunderous onslaught of angular hardcore pummel and ominous riffs, quirky time signatures appearing out of speedy HC blasts and awesome infuriated vocals. This re-issued is served up with brand new artwork in a digipack case. Definitely recommended!

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AKIMBO   Navigating The Bronze   LP   (Alternative Tentacles)    13.98

Akimbo are back with a new album, their fifth, and mere months after the reissue of their crucial Harshing Your Mellow debut. And boy is this a ripper! Ten new jams of burly, crushing rock from one of the best live bands around, encased in a slick package with lots metallic inks, an album cover depicting a tour van with a Viking sail mounted to the roof and bull horns welded to the hood, chopping through a violent sea on it's way to deliver earth crushing rock. Throw this puppy on and yer blasted with the bands heaviest shit yet, channeling grungy noise rock of the Am Rep sort, fierce hardcore moves, Neurosis style dirge riffs. And a HEAVY 70's rock influence. For real. There are riffs on Navigating The Bronze that could have come off an AC/DC album, like on the bluesy HC charge of "Wizard Van Wizard", at least right before the band lunges into a monstrous sludge groove. On "Dungeon Bastard", the band breaks through the stormclouds of brutal angular riffing with a passage of beautiful epic melody. "Roman Coins" is a nearly 3-minute drum solo that sounds like the drummer is playing 2 kits at once, and it leads straight into the lead-heavy dirge rock of "Lungless". The first time I heard the epic melody of "Megatherium" 's soaring prog sludge, it took my breath away. It's brutal, ass-shakin' rock from start to end, huge riffs and awesome Angus Young style shredding, gruff howling vocals, bits of beautiful post-rocky bliss, massive dirgey slow parts and Southern grooves, ripping blasts of speedy hardcore, loads of catchy hooks, and Nat Damm's awesome drumming. These guys lay the hammer down. Zero bullshit heaviness from one of the best bands in the scene. Highly recommended.

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AKIMBO   Navigating The Bronze   CD   (Alternative Tentacles)    14.98

Akimbo are back with a new album, their fifth, and mere months after the reissue of their crucial Harshing Your Mellow debut. And boy is this a ripper! Ten new jams of burly, crushing rock from one of the best live bands around, encased in a slick package with lots metallic inks, an album cover depicting a tour van with a Viking sail mounted to the roof and bull horns welded to the hood, chopping through a violent sea on it's way to deliver earth crushing rock. Throw this puppy on and yer blasted with the bands heaviest shit yet, channeling grungy noise rock of the Am Rep sort, fierce hardcore moves, Neurosis style dirge riffs. And a HEAVY 70's rock influence. For real. There are riffs on Navigating The Bronze that could have come off an AC/DC album, like on the bluesy HC charge of "Wizard Van Wizard", at least right before the band lunges into a monstrous sludge groove. On "Dungeon Bastard", the band breaks through the stormclouds of brutal angular riffing with a passage of beautiful epic melody. "Roman Coins" is a nearly 3-minute drum solo that sounds like the drummer is playing 2 kits at once, and it leads straight into the lead-heavy dirge rock of "Lungless". The first time I heard the epic melody of "Megatherium" 's soaring prog sludge, it took my breath away. It's brutal, ass-shakin' rock from start to end, huge riffs and awesome Angus Young style shredding, gruff howling vocals, bits of beautiful post-rocky bliss, massive dirgey slow parts and Southern grooves, ripping blasts of speedy hardcore, loads of catchy hooks, and Nat Damm's awesome drumming. These guys lay the hammer down. Zero bullshit heaviness from one of the best bands in the scene. Highly recommended.

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AKIMBO   Jersey Shores   CD   (Neurot)    14.98

Framed by episodic vignettes, Jersey Shores is the latest album from Akimbo, a concept album, in fact, that revolves around a series of infamous shark attacks that occured in 1916 off of the coast of New Jersey, a subject that has captured the imagination of the Northwestern sludge rockers for their sixth album (and first for Neurot). The five songs on Jersey Shores weave a chronological, if slightly surreal narrative that describes each of the key events that happened during the horrific shark attacks, which included four deaths and one serious injury. These shark attacks were the inspiration for Benchley's Jaws, and Akimbo spins the story into an equally epic sludge-metal saga with the band's heaviest music to date. Previous albums delivered their manic metallic assaults in short hardcore-style blasts, but now Akimbo lets their songs stretch out into longer, epic jams that sometimes spill out over ten minutes or more, as if the Neurosis influence that's always lurked in the shadows of their thunderous metallic rock has completely come out into the light. "Bruder Vansant" melds together burly stoner rock riffage and aggressively fast tempos with old school metal at first, but then evolves into moody, jazzy post-rock. The eleven minute "Lester Stillwell" is the album's centerpiece, its spacey Karp-like crushrock alternating with bluesy Sabbathy doom before wandering into a twilight field of twangy, Big Sky psychedelia and shuffling blues. The whole album is filled with these long, epic wanderings from punishing heaviness into dark musical calm, blending smoky blues and post-rock with Neurosis-esque dirge, super-heavy Kyuss groove and angular noise rock, and Akimbo are now moving further from the Melvins/Karp comparisons that have saddled these dudes since day one. They still sound very "Pacific Northwest", if you know what I mean, but Jersey Shores has them exploring a whole new side to their sound. Might disappoint fans of their older stuff that are looking for more of their faster, hardcore-injected sound, but Akimbo's newer, improvisational approach to brooding heaviness is pretty damn cool. Comes in slipcase packaging.
Track Samples:
Sample : Great White Bull
Sample : Matawan

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AKIMBO   Jersey Shores   LP   (Alternative Tentacles)    14.98

Akimbo's peculiar concept album about the New Jersey shark attacks of 1916 finally makes its way onto vinyl thanks to the folks at Alternative Tentacles, who have put together a deluxe package for this slab of murderous noise/sludge metal that includes a gatefold jackter, thick 180 gram vinyl, and a download code for an MP3 copy of the album.
Framed by episodic vignettes, Jersey Shores is the latest album from Akimbo, a concept album, in fact, that revolves around a series of infamous shark attacks that occured in 1916 off of the coast of New Jersey, a subject that has captured the imagination of the Northwestern sludge rockers for their sixth album (and first for Neurot). The five songs on Jersey Shores weave a chronological, if slightly surreal narrative that describes each of the key events that happened during the horrific shark attacks, which included four deaths and one serious injury. These shark attacks were the inspiration for Benchley's Jaws, and Akimbo spins the story into an equally epic sludge-metal saga with the band's heaviest music to date. Previous albums delivered their manic metallic assaults in short hardcore-style blasts, but now Akimbo lets their songs stretch out into longer, epic jams that sometimes spill out over ten minutes or more, as if the Neurosis influence that's always lurked in the shadows of their thunderous metallic rock has completely come out into the light. "Bruder Vansant" melds together burly stoner rock riffage and aggressively fast tempos with old school metal at first, but then evolves into moody, jazzy post-rock. The eleven minute "Lester Stillwell" is the album's centerpiece, its spacey Karp-like crushrock alternating with bluesy Sabbathy doom before wandering into a twilight field of twangy, Big Sky psychedelia and shuffling blues. The whole album is filled with these long, epic wanderings from punishing heaviness into dark musical calm, blending smoky blues and post-rock with Neurosis-esque dirge, super-heavy Kyuss groove and angular noise rock, and Akimbo are now moving further from the Melvins/Karp comparisons that have saddled these dudes since day one. They still sound very "Pacific Northwest", if you know what I mean, but Jersey Shores has them exploring a whole new side to their sound. Might disappoint fans of their older stuff that are looking for more of their faster, hardcore-injected sound, but Akimbo's newer, improvisational approach to brooding heaviness is pretty damn cool.
Track Samples:
Sample : Great White Bull
Sample : Matawan

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AKITSA / PRURIENT   split   CD   (Hospital Productions)    14.98

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AL QAEDA / DRIED UP CORPSE   1309   CASSETTE   (Rainbow Bridge)    7.50

Creepazoid noise from Al Qaeda meets a vicious harsh noise wall erected by Dried Up Corpse, a side project from one of the guys in Blue Sabbath Black Cheer. Now, Al Qaeda was a new one to me; I had seen their name around before, but for some reason thought that they were some kind of lighter psych/noise outfit. I apparently had 'em figured all wrong, at least as far as their side on this tape is concerned. The thirteen minute nightmare of "Fucked" that fills the a-side uncoils it's atmospheric evil with distorted, heavily processed vocals, subdued feedback and crackling mechanical noise, ringing metallic tones that hover over fields of ultra low dark ambient drift...this is creepy shit that I wasn't expecting at all and which duly impresses, a pitch black fogbank of horrific industrial noise and infernal fug laced with sparse percussion and swirling psychotic dissonance, sounding like the wretched contents of hell being vomited up from the bowels of the underworld. A fantastically bleak and nightmarish mix of brutal Merzbowian skree and smoldering black ritual ambience. I'm on the lookout for more of Al Qaeda's stuff now, for sure.
On the other side, Dried Up Corpse counter with their own thirteen minute "Fucked", a brutal high-end wall of dense blast and swarming mid-range frequencies that whip through a black static storm. This is vicious chaos, formed through the powerful layering of high end hiss and snarling, howling electronics that are set deeper in the mix, and underscored by a crushing bottom-end rumble and a constant screeching tumult that hurtles through the piece like chunks of jagged busted machine wreckage scraping and grinding against the swirling blizzard of distortion, or an ancient torture device at work within the center of a raging inferno. Fans of intense HNW will not be disappointed.
Only one hundred copies of this tape were issued, each in full color packaging and on chrome cassette.

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AL QAEDA / DEMONOLOGISTS   split   CASSETTE   (Teen Action)    6.00

Back in stock! A new cassette injection of scathing black atrocity from Demonologists, pairing up with Al Qaeda whose work continues to become more savage every time I hear something new from 'em. This split tape matches five super short tracks from AQ and one sidelong noise attack from Demonologists, released in a limited run of seventy copies.
The Al Qaeda side is a series of demonic noisecore miniatures, starting up with the echoing thud of dubbed-out drum machines, then explode into a frenzy of ultra-distorted black noise. Over-modulated riffs and spastic, rabid vocals pound away in a wash of white noise, resembling a section of a Wold song clipped and looped over and over. That's followed by a slow lurching industrial dirge of chugging out-of-tune guitar, mangled hyper distorted drums and static, then a brief flash of an electric guitar melody repeated over smoldering low end noise. Putrid shrieking vocals introduce another industrial black metal hypno trance, this time sounding something like a super low-fi version of Nekrasov stuck in a locked groove and bathed in vinyl crackle and hiss. And last, a gleaming ambient dronescape of glistening keyboard tones that drift and waver beneath strange wet crackling sounds.
Demonologists follow with "The Bastard Curse", a blast of black hiss and fluttering electronic chaos that shifts between grinding, crackling slabs of heavy low end filth laced with high metallic tones, and even heavier stretches of ultra distorted noise wall and light-devouring black drone. Like all of Demonologist’s work, it's harsh, heavy, and ferocious, a night-black noise wall seething with animus.

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ALA MUERTE   Santa Elena   CD   (Public Guilt)    13.98

Recorded at home in her apartment in Queens, Santa Elena is the debut full length from Bianca Bibiloni, who records her dark dreamy ether-pop under the name of Ala Muerte. Some of you might remember that 3" CD-R that Ala Muerte released with Max Bondi on Public Guilt a while back, a beautiful little slab of blissed-out, crumbling metallic dreampop that knocked me out of my seat when it came out. Been looking forward to hearing some more music from Ala Muerte ever since, and J.R. over at Public Guilt has followed up that 3" CD-R with her first full length, a ten song disc of hazy, surreal melodies that drift like a heavy morning fog through vocal-heavy arrangements and meditative music formed by spare bass and guitar riffs, viola, collages of field recordings, recorder, a ten-string Puerto Rican guitar called a Cuatro, hints of almost imperceptible percussion (at least until the very last track), and dark sheets of airy synthesizer, ambient drone and heavy distorted guitar. Ala Muerte's vocals are layered and ghostly, and the lyrics are often blurred and indiscernable beneath the near formless singing that gives the music an ethereal, haunting sound somewhat similiar to Cocteau Twins, a kind of dreamy slow-core infused with currents of dark folk and delicate dark ambience. Many of the songs on Santa Elena also remind me of what Swans were doing on their later albums, mixing together ominous sounding recordings of urban life and background noise with spare acoustic guitar strum and Bianca's moving vocals. Then the last song "Fireweed" appears, starting out with Bianca singing a fragile little melody over minimal guitar, her vocals and the guitars building in layers and growing in power and volume, then drums come in a few minutes in, a huge, blown-out beat bashing away in the background and joined by crushing distorted guitars, and the song turns into sweeping, crushing noise-pop that totally blows me away, like hearing some old K Records band gone heavy and majestic. Wow! The disc comes in nice full color gatefold packaging with a full color lyric booklet. Recommended.

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ALA MUERTE & MAX BONDI   Saturday   3" CDR   (Public Guilt)    5.98

Saturday IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Immensely beautiful post-rock crushscapes make up this awesome 3" disc that Public Guilt just put out. For the record, this unassuming looking little disc is one of the best damn things that the Guilt has released to date, and I'll be shocked if this doesn't incur at least a minimal buzz from fans of ultra-blissful, metallic shoegazery. It's a collaboration between Destructo Swarmbots guitarist/vocalist Bianca Ala Muerte and London-based vocal conjuror Max Bondi, and they blend together ethereal vocals with delicate guitar melodies and softly shimmering drones into something that resembles the mellower moments of the Swarmbots fused with slabs of metallic dreampop. The guitar sounds are heavily processed, stretched out into drifting smears of melody and glitchy feedback that sound like it's being shaped by an e-bow. The vocals sound almost wordless, breathy male and female voices lilting over sometimes folky guitar strum, a fragile swirl of beautiful circular arpeggios and angelic throats swimming in ephemeral electronic FX, and when they build into the crashing walls of massive distorted riffage and overdriven noise on tracks like "Still" and "Hiding In A Tiny Space", it's some of the heaviest, most exquisitely beautiful music I've ever heard, like a glitchy Windy And Carl crossed with the crushing dronemetal of The Angelic Process. Highly, highly recommended, and you're going to have to move fast, as this has been released in a super limited edition of only 100 copies in a silkscreened 3-color, 3 panel trifold sleeve with rubber stamped images pressed onto the paper by Bianca herself!

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ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY / HALFWAY TO GONE   split   CD   (Underdogma)    6.98

split IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Recorded in 2000, this split contains two weighty slabs each from these low-toned aural bruisers. ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY delivers "Heavyweight" and "Rabdos (The Strangler" from Richmond sludge rockers ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY and "Darktown Strutter" and "Thee Song" from Jerseys Southern sludge lords HALFWAY TO GONE (ex-SOLARIZED).

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ALABASTER SUNS   self-titled   CD   (Iron Pig)    15.50

Out of all of the instrumental sludge/doom/metal bands that have popped up over the past decade, the UK band Capricorns found their way into the upper echelons of the form, their heavy, dramatic math-crush more than just another plodding sludgefeast, incorporating some fantastic math rock maneuvers and sweeping, sometimes almost cinematic atmospheres into their super heavy metallic riffage and delivering an elaborate sound that succeeded at keeping interest without the presence of a singer. Their last album River, Bear Your Bones was really great, a proggy, atmospheric record that balanced epic sky-streaking majesty with violent bursts of angular aggression, and saw the band playing with a wider variety of psychedelic colors than ever before. Unfortunately, their best album was also to be their last, and the band broke up not too long after River came out.
Since then, I hadn't heard anything about what the members were up to until a few months ago, when I found out that the British label Iron Pig had just released the debut from a band called Alabaster Suns that turned out to have three quarters of the Capricorns lineup. This new band has some clear connections to the sound of Capricorns, a sludgy, bottom-end heaviness in particular, some of the same math rock influences, but Alabaster Suns goes in a much less metallic direction, evoking a heavy rocking sound that's closer to early 90's post-hardcore than the doom/sludge that was at the root of their previous outfit. And they've got a singer, too, whose hoarse, emotive bellow appears sporadically throughout the album, punctuating some of the band's more dramatic moments. There's enough here that Capricorns fans will want to get on board, the post-hardcore influences matched with proggy arrangements, chiming melodic guitars scrabbling over crushing riffs, the songs generally pretty rocking and mid-tempo, with lots of complex time signatures and skronky guitar, and even some really cool Voivod-esque riffing mixed in. It reminds me a lot of both Jawbox and Quicksand, a sound that'll be instantly recognizable to any of you guys who were around in the early 90's when this sort of stuff was everywhere, but Alabaster Suns add a drop-tuned metallic crunch and dissonance to it that makes this way heavier than anything from that era. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Cosmo-Nought
Sample : Royal 6 in Hand

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ALARIC   self-titled   CD   (20 Buck Spin)    10.98

As more and more bands are revealing an affinity for the sound of dark 80's post-punk and death rock for inspiration, I'm hearing a lot of amazing new gloomy heaviness coming out that draws from what is some of my favorite music of all time, the sinister black-clad rock of Bauhaus and Sisters Of Mercy, the occult power of Fields Of The Nephilim and Killing Joke. This sound has emerged over the past decade with more accessible bands like Interpol and the like, but what I've always wanted to hear is this influence coming through in heavier, more aggressive music, and with fantastic new albums from Anatomy Of Habit, Deathcharge, Hateful Abandon and Alaric that all have their own unique take on this particular set of influences, I'm finally getting my wish.
Made up of members of several well-known bands from the Bay Area metal/punk scene (Noothgrush, Cross Stitched Eyes, Dead & Gone, among others), Alaric brings the gloomy, shadowcast atmosphere and delivery of 80's darkwave and goth to a pummeling, vaguely metallic sound that also has some subtle traces of Neurosis that I can hear in some of the band's heavier moments. It's probably more that Alaric mines some of the same influences that helped to define Neurosis's sound, the application of metallic crunch to the apocalyptic tribal power of early Killing Joke and Amebix. This is incorporated into a set of heavy, driving songs on Alaric's debut that range from the wash of chorus-heavy acoustic and electric guitars that lead to the apocalyptic dirge of "Eyes" to the churning tribal rhythms and swirling reverberant bass-driven power of "Ugly Crowds", with the grim lyrical matter delivered via singer Shane Baker's Brit-accented moan. There are several songs on here that crank up the heaviness such as the lumbering "Your God" with it's militaristic pummel and moments of almost Swans-esque crush, but the bulk of the album is spent driving the gloomy minor key melodies, anthemic choruses and propulsive, bass heavy n' doom-laden crunch forward through ever darkening clouds of urban dread.
This album is pretty killer, one of the best of the new fusions of dark heaviness and post-punk gloom to come out this year, definitely recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Alone
Sample : Eyes
Sample : Shadow of Life
Sample : Tribute

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ALARIC   self-titled   LP   (20 Buck Spin)    16.98

As more and more bands are revealing an affinity for the sound of dark 80's post-punk and death rock for inspiration, I'm hearing a lot of amazing new gloomy heaviness coming out that draws from what is some of my favorite music of all time, the sinister black-clad rock of Bauhaus and Sisters Of Mercy, the occult power of Fields Of The Nephilim and Killing Joke. This sound has emerged over the past decade with more accessible bands like Interpol and the like, but what I've always wanted to hear is this influence coming through in heavier, more aggressive music, and with fantastic new albums from Anatomy Of Habit, Deathcharge, Hateful Abandon and Alaric that all have their own unique take on this particular set of influences, I'm finally getting my wish.
Made up of members of several well-known bands from the Bay Area metal/punk scene (Noothgrush, Cross Stitched Eyes, Dead & Gone, among others), Alaric brings the gloomy, shadowcast atmosphere and delivery of 80's darkwave and goth to a pummeling, vaguely metallic sound that also has some subtle traces of Neurosis that I can hear in some of the band's heavier moments. It's probably more that Alaric mines some of the same influences that helped to define Neurosis's sound, the application of metallic crunch to the apocalyptic tribal power of early Killing Joke and Amebix. This is incorporated into a set of heavy, driving songs on Alaric's debut that range from the wash of chorus-heavy acoustic and electric guitars that lead to the apocalyptic dirge of "Eyes" to the churning tribal rhythms and swirling reverberant bass-driven power of "Ugly Crowds", with the grim lyrical matter delivered via singer Shane Baker's Brit-accented moan. There are several songs on here that crank up the heaviness such as the lumbering "Your God" with it's militaristic pummel and moments of almost Swans-esque crush, but the bulk of the album is spent driving the gloomy minor key melodies, anthemic choruses and propulsive, bass heavy n' doom-laden crunch forward through ever darkening clouds of urban dread.
This album is pretty killer, one of the best of the new fusions of dark heaviness and post-punk gloom to come out this year, definitely recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Alone
Sample : Eyes
Sample : Shadow of Life
Sample : Tribute

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ALARUM   Eventuality   CD   (Willowtip)    14.98

Back in the early 90's, you know, the glory days of death metal, we were soaking our ears in the sounds of Cynic, Atheist, and Pestilence, all bands that were blazing some brave new paths in death metal by connecting brutal DM with fusion jazz, forming a new branch of progressive death metal that set the standard for the genre. Since the early 90's, there aren't that many bands that have come close to matching the technicality and jazz chops of those seminal bands, but Alarum are one of the few that have totally knocked our socks off with some of the most brain-frying death/fusion we've ever heard. Yikes! Eventuality is as good as progressive jazz-infused death metal can get, and it quickly became a classic release within the realm of tech/death.
Alarum's penchant for Cynic worship is still heavily in place, with plenty of energetic riffing and tightly knit alternate picking patterns with lots of intricately woven layers of guitar parts and basslines that could've easily been at home on Focus, not to mention some of the more ethereal textures and clean passages, but their songwriting has definitely become more diverse and creative over the years. They are obviously influenced heavily by the forerunners of technical/progressive death metal like Cynic and Atheist, but I'm hearing just a heavy influence of jazz fusion musicians like Allan Holdsworth and Chick Corea...the solos on Eventuality are off the chart, super fluid,jazzy,melodic playing that blows us away every time we hear it. Essential for tech heads, especially anyone into Athiest and Cynic !!

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ALASEHIR   The Stone Sentinels   CD   (Archive)    13.98

The Stone Sentinels IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

I've liked all of the records that I've heard from Bardo Pond, it's all great, smoke-wreathed psych rock jamming delivered from deep in the dopezone, but while listening to 'em, I always inevitable finding myself hoping that the Bardo guys are going to kick in with a truly crushing riff to shatter the languid torpor of their sprawling jams, and really go into the red, ya know? Thanks to this somewhat recent new disc from Slim and his consistently amazing Archive label, we've got a full length disc from the Bardo Pond side project Alasehire, and it totally meets my aforementioned needs. Alasehire features three of the members of Bardo Pond, and on Stone Sentinels, they create three sprawling tracks of riff-heavy sludgy psychedelia that sounds like Bardo Pond on 'roids, indeed; the Gibbons brothers are on dual guitars, dropping Sabbath strength slomo riffs alongside the meandering drumming from Bardo drummer Jason Kourkonis. The 1st track "Nazca" unfurls massive Western-tinged psychedelic improvisation, almost Earth-like guitar meditations and narcotic slide guitar twang laced with blasts of powerful feedback and noise, before moving into the free-floating Sabbathian psych of "Lost City". This starts off as a cloud of hazy and dreamy ambience that drifts from mellow acoustic guitars and woodsy psych-folk but evolves into a massive tangle of crushing sludge metal riffing, sweeping oscillators, and strafing wah-wah freakout, like Hawkwind, Acid Mothers, and Sunburned Hand Of The Man filtered through heavily drugged sludgecore. And "Shroud" follows a similiar route, a far-drifting dopehaze of exploratory stoner jamming, tweaked electronic noises, Kourkonis' powerful, busy drumming constantly divebombed by spacey, superphased electronic FX and swirling feedback. Towards the end of the track, guitars and drums disappear altogether as the band bottoms out into a field of sparse electronic textures and chirping Bastard Noise-esque noise. I loved this disc, it's an immenselt spaced out slab of free psychedelia with moments of chaotic heaviness that really blast off. The disc comes in a six panel glossy full color gatefold jacket much in the same style as Archive's other recent releases, with the disc attached to the jacket on a plastic hub. It's limited to 600 copies, too.

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ALCEST   Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde   LP   (Hyperrealist Records)    15.98

Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Back in stock once again!
The US vinyl version of Souvenirs seemed to go out of print almost as soon as it was announced, and I was only able to get a couple copies of it. Released by Hyperrealist in a limited edition of 1000 copies, this domestic pressing has the same artwork as the European LP release on Northern Silence (which is itself different from the CD release), and the copies we have are on black vinyl.
When Souvenirs d'un autre monde (which translates to "Memories Of Another World") came out in late 2007, it seemed really weird that the most beautiful rock album of the year (in my mind) came to us by way of the French black metal underground. Looking back, I've heard alot of other equally beautiful, very un-black metal albums come out of the black metal scene, but Alcest's latest full length is still one of the best, and one of the few albums to really take me back to the height of the whole UK dreampop/shoegaze scene that I grew up with. Souvenirs... is a perfect pop record, totally immersed in delicate jangly melodies and gorgeous blasts of shoegazey distortion and utterly removed from the blissed-out black metal shred of Ameseours, which is the other band that Neige from Alcest plays in. No, there are only the barest traces of metal found on this disc, heard in the super-distorted speedpicked guitars roaring down underneath the beautiful dreamy pop hooks and heartrending melodies, and in the occasional blasts of furious double-bass drumming that erupts here and there. For the most part, this is pure heavy shoegazer rock refashioned in a more distorted and epic form, much like how Justin Broadrick has taken early 90's shoegaze and molded that sound into the blissful grinding dreamsludge of Jesu, only here the sound is all dense layers of lush guitars and fragile fingerpicked acoustics, like My Bloody Valentine powered by a black metal drummer, or a heavier Chapterhouse or Catherine Wheel. All six songs here follow this route, awash in majestic swells of guitar and keyboards and dreamy vocal harmonies that evoke images of innocence and springtime. While Alcest's sound is drawn directly from early 90's shoegaze, those of you that are fans of the more atmospheric sounds of bands like Drudkh and Agalloch will likely love this album just as much as fans of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. Highly recommended! Comes in a full color digipack with booklet.

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ALCEST   Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde   CD   (Profound Lore)    14.99

Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

When Souvenirs d'un autre monde (which translates to "Memories Of Another World") came out in late 2007, it seemed really weird that the most beautiful rock album of the year (in my mind) came to us by way of the French black metal underground. Looking back, I've heard alot of other equally beautiful, very un-black metal albums come out of the black metal scene, but Alcest's latest full length is still one of the best, and one of the few albums to really take me back to the height of the whole UK dreampop/shoegaze scene that I grew up with. Souvenirs... is a perfect pop record, totally immersed in delicate jangly melodies and gorgeous blasts of shoegazey distortion and utterly removed from the blissed-out black metal shred of Ameseours, which is the other band that Neige from Alcest plays in. No, there are only the barest traces of metal found on this disc, heard in the super-distorted speedpicked guitars roaring down underneath the beautiful dreamy pop hooks and heartrending melodies, and in the occasional blasts of furious double-bass drumming that erupts here and there. For the most part, this is pure heavy shoegazer rock refashioned in a more distorted and epic form, much like how Justin Broadrick has taken early 90's shoegaze and molded that sound into the blissful grinding dreamsludge of Jesu, only here the sound is all dense layers of lush guitars and fragile fingerpicked acoustics, like My Bloody Valentine powered by a black metal drummer, or a heavier Chapterhouse or Catherine Wheel. All six songs here follow this route, awash in majestic swells of guitar and keyboards and dreamy vocal harmonies that evoke images of innocence and springtime. While Alcest's sound is drawn directly from early 90's shoegaze, those of you that are fans of the more atmospheric sounds of bands like Drudkh and Agalloch will likely love this album just as much as fans of Slowdive and My Bloody Valentine. Highly recommended! Comes in a full color digipack with booklet.

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ALCHEMIST   Organasm   CD   (Displeased)    12.98

The Australian Neurosis! Yeah, Alchemist have been compared to Neurosis ever since Relapse first released Organasm here in the US, but these guys totally take the epic post-metal thing to a new place. The music on this CD is epic, certainly, but it's more spaced out, more psychedelic , and DEFINITELY Australian sounding, with digideroo and what can only be described as the "Australian Rock" sound...if you heard it, you'd understand what I mean. The kind of Aussie rock that you might here over a travelogue video promoting vacations down under, or something. Anyways, this album crushes, with huge riffs and metallic atmospherics that definitely remind me of later Neurosis stuff, but with Pink Floyd -style psychedelic leads, that Aussie rock sound, the digideroos, awesome occasional shrieking vocals that sound like Dani from Cradle Of Filth, total VOIVOD -isms, more uptempo parts, chant-like vocals, Ennio Morricone style film music.

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ALEPH NAUGHT   Rituals   CASSETTE   (Infernal Kommando)    5.98

Infernal Kommando brings us another great cassette of mysterious blackened ambience, but this time it's from a project out of Honduras of all places, not a place well known for it's black ritual ambient output. Aleph Naught turns out to fit right in with the sort of abstract graveyard drift that I look for from this label, fitting in perfectly with bands like Malvoisie, Stigma Diabolicum, and the like, with a side full of evocative kosmische blackness and dark drugged dreamscapes that winds through menacing wormholes and Lovecraftian cave systems. The five tracks on Rituals had all previously appeared on a self-released disc, but this kind of ominous black cathedral ambience always seems to sound even better when heard on cassette. Described in some quarters as "Occult Ritual Dark Ambient", Aleph Naught channels some classic Popul Vuh/Tangerine Dream style synthesizer drift and space drone into darker forms, each track a dreamy, low-fi synthscape of haunting minor key creepiness and murky sonic shadow that are kept fairly short at around five minutes or so each, lacing the synth drones and rumbling on pieces like "Death Ritual', "Insects And Rats", and "The Womb Of Opposites" with what sounds like detuned piano and eerie circular keyboards that circle overhead, swells of dissonant noise and copious amounts of echo, and slabs of damaged Mellotron, dolorous choral voices and dark symphonic strings. Try imagining Zeit/Rubycon-era Tangerine Dream, but filtered through the low-fi catacomb rituals of drug-zonked occultists, and you'll have a general idea of what's up. Fans of Vinterikett's take on grim, minimal synthscapes in particular should look into this. Released in an edition of two hundred copies, the Rituals tape comes with a cover printed on metallic gold paper.

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ALETHES   Aletheia   CD   (Glass Throat)    15.98

A duo made up of J. Joshua Philips and someone named Exile, Alethes is the blackest shot of woodland ambience to come out of the Glass Throat camp so far. This six-song album is their debut, issued in a limited edition of 1,000 copies, and it's manifested as a visually stunning 6" by 6" gatefold jacket that folds out to six panels. The jacket is made from some sort of thick, leathery pitch-black card material that has an almost silky finish, on which the eerie artwork and calligrapy-style lettering of the lyrics and sleeve notes are printed in black foil-stamped relief ink. This really looks freaking amazing. On Alethia, the duo are joined by Armin Zomorodi on cello, Nora Danielson on violin, and Markus Wolff (Crash Worship, Blood Axis, Waldteufel) on percussion, and create a grim, minimalist doom-folk from the darkside, a reverse negative image of delicate sylvan psych-folk forming out of slow, atonal acoustic guitar melodies and minor key arpeggios, raw, with the gravelly, raspy voice of some unseen thing reciting ominous, spiritually-contemplative lyrics. A slow moving glide through shadowy nocturnal glades and clouds of shimmering strings, doomed and mystical. Almost like some combination of Neurosis, Comus and Swans performing acoustically as background sounds for ancient pagan rites under cover of total darkness. Another heavily evocative doom-folk document from the GT orbit, grim and doomy enough to appeal to fans of the more acoustic-tinged edges of doom and black metal. Highly recommended.

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ALFARMANIA   Nojjan   CASSETTE   (Cathartic Process)    8.98

Nojjan IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Alfarmania the self-described "post-mortem power electronic" project from workaholic Kristian Olsson, who also records with projects like Survival Unit and Blood Ov Thee Christ, and Tony Hallén; like those outfits, Alfarmania is dark, heavy industrial, but this is a much more blackened and sinister sound than anything else that I've heard from Olsson. The sound is dark, creepy industrial with a seriously blackened streak running through it; I hear hints of Abruptum, the early Broken Flag output, and SPK in the grinding slow-motion clang and murk of Nojjan, all of which signifies that this is exactly the kind of industrial sound that I'm addicted to, and this tape (the first ever American release from Alfarmania, and released by the excellent Cathartic Process label) is definitely on the heavier side of the noise/industrial spectrum. Each side of the sixty minute tape has two long tracks, lengthy sprawling fields of blown out murky drones, demonic howling, harsh distorted shrieks, electronic FX, pounding percussion buried underneath the layers of noise, streaks of high pitched feedback, indiscernible samples from old low budget horror films, scraped metal and surges of blown-out scrap metal chaos, and heavy doom-laden riffs that seem to be coming from distorted guitars (or at least seriously distorted synths, it's hard to tell exactly). The atmosphere on these tracks is positively apocalyptic and steeped in dread and despair, the sounds densely layered, shifting between corrosive noise and a blackened power electronics assault. Overdriven synths roar, blasting heavy metallic drones and deep rumbling electronics, deep distorted vocals echoing through the clang and buzz, at certain parts the sound is invaded by the whining skree of what sound like dentist drills; at other points, squealing gears and clanking metal rise to a deafening din. When it really launches into it's heaviest, the sounds on Nojjan sound almost like classic power electronics infused with doomdrone-strength heaviness. This is excellent apocalyptic abysmal industrial. The cassette is packaged inside of an oversized zip bag that also contains a full color folder with disturbing, hellish-looking collage art.

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ALGEBRASSIERE / GANG WIZARD   split   LP   (Little Mafia)    9.98

This super limited 12" pairs up two gooey sides of sweet n' clunky noise/free/howl punk from Gang Wizard and Algebrassiere. Gang Wizard destroy forms with their feedback spiked mysticism and muddy improv crumble that's sort of like a yowling combination of Truman's Water and Dead C oozing across the grooves of black wax, while Baltimore's Algebrassiere creep around their side with a crude, weird formlessness that recalls early Smegma and creeps us out. Released in an edition of 264 copies, in handassembled black jackets with xerox art damage pasted on.

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ALIEN DEVIANT CIRCUS   Satanic Djihad   CD   (Flamme Noire)    15.98

Nice, some new French filth from the consistently-killer black metal label Flamme Noir. The discs that I have thus far grabbed from this label have all blown me away, from the cold, satanic mecha-black metalof C.Y.T., to the furious hate-filled distortion whiteouts and murderous buzzsaw ambience of Drastus. The kind of stuff that seems to drop the temperature in the room a couple of degrees whenever you put it in the deck. Now we've got a new Flamme Noir outrage to run by you, and bud, this thing is pretty fucked. On the surface, Alien Deviant Circus appears to be black metal, of that peculiarly French variety with icy, dissonant guitars that form into strange riffs and unexpected song structures. But it's not long before this album reveals it's twisted agenda as looped film samples, volleys of pounding tribal drums, looped machine noises, skittery breakbeats, savage gabba beats lifted from a Bloody Fist 12", swells of orchestral majesty and slabs of malevolent black ambience are all layered together into evil industrial dirges, which make jarring, almost frightening transitions into feirce buzzing black metal riffs and hyperspeed blastbeat programming. Style-wise, Alien Deviant Circus are closer to the industrial/electro-black metal of bands like Manes, Dødheimsgard, Mysticum, Black Hole Generator and Aborym than the current crop of French avant-gardists, but there is still that perverse French sensibility still burning at the core of these hallucinogenic tracks. Could be because ADC actually has a member of Mutiilation in it's lineup, one of the original members of the notorious Les Légions Noires. This doesn't sound at all like Mutiilation though, with the mangled drum programming and bleeping digital effects that swarm through these tracks; at times, this sounds more like Deathspell Omega buried by explosive gabba beats and sheets of electronic fuckery, or a more hypnotic version of Dødheimsgard with heavy tribal beats. Fans of the aforementioned bands should check this out, or if yer into the weird industrial/black metal deathscapes of C.Y.T. and Spektr. Blazing, warped sci-fi industrial black metal, with an overtly Satanic credo that reads like this:
Art, philosophy and drugz are the way ov this awakening towards Satan. We shall awake in order to match our vibration to his source and to arrange the manifste according to our will…
Let’s draw our strengh from decay, let us sawmp with this source ov creativity, expression and death!!!
Order shall never rise from disorder again!!!
Dethroned mankind shall end his cycle in pain and dishonor!!!
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…
Vae victis, and they’ll be numerous!!!
Oderint dum metuant!!!
The CD is limited to 500 copies, and has some great devilish sci-fi artwork included in the packaging, all created by the singer from what I can tell. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Eschaton
Sample : Follow The Left Hand Path
Sample : Kaly Maha Devi

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ALIENATION MENTAL   Kopferkingel   CD   (Burning Dogma)    9.98

Brutal machine grind from the Czech Republic! EXTREMELY brutal and freaked out spazztoid grindcore delivered at insanely high speeds. This Cd features the entire Kopferkingel demo, full on crusty Cryptopsy-worshipping grind with some odd quirks. The second track on this is the awesome 'TV Digger' which got an excellent gabba remix treatment on their split with Inhumate and rules even more in its original form. Blasting drumming with technical fills that recall the legendary Flo Mounier, the guitars are able to switch from slower, crushing riffs to the high end chaos and into topspeed mayhem seamlessly, and the gutteral vocals are sick vomitous shrieks.This also features the tracks from the split with Cerebral Turbulency, which also kick total ass.

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ALKALYS   Choeur Delys   CD   (Basement Apes)    11.98

Choeur Delys is a new album from the French quartet Alkalys that just came out recently on Basement Apes. Don't know much about this band due to my lack of French, most of the band's website/myspace is in French and there isn't much information on them out on the web, I'm not even sure if this is their first album or not (though I'm pretty sure that it is). COming from Basement Apes, it's no surprise that their music is pretty mathy, but they combine a bunch of other interesting elements along with math rock for their sound. The seven songs on Choeur Delys mix together bits of sunny folk melody and lush guitar ambience, treated guitar strings that are scraped and bowed to create layers of textured sound, strange found-sound samples and hypnotic drones are built upon a heavy foundation of bass riffs and thunderous, complex drumming. Very proggy, very epic, I hear bits of Sonic Youth and King Crimson and Explosions In The Sky and early 90's math rock all tied up in the Alkalys sound, and those weird samples (what are those? street sounds? wildlife noises? it's impossible to tell) that float over the instrumental music throw this slightly off-kilter, giving their heavy, wall-of-guitar epics an offbeat, surreal vibe. Sometimes the guitars are woven into such thick curtains of sound that Alkalys even evoke the guitar-symphonies of Branca or Chatham. The drumming stands out, too, as it moves from busy jazz-informed flourishes and intricate patterns to bludgeoning slow-mo power. Then there's the dual bass attack - yeah, two bass guitars, but it's not as heavy as having two bassists might suggest; instead, they weave their instruments around each other in complex melodic riffs that serve as the foundation for the guitars to ascend from. Like a way proggier Explosions In The Sky with a tendency to erupt into the occasional burst of metallic heaviness, and splattered with weird random field recorded noises and samples. Comes in a four-panel digipack with cool artwork.
Track Samples:
Sample : db3.14IN
Sample : Main Courante
Sample : SInk

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ALKERDEEL   Luizig   CD   (At War With False Noise)    11.98

Alkerdeel's the heaviest thing that I've ever heard come outta the Funeral Folk label and the tight-knit Belgian basement-funeral-psych/folk scene that those cats associate with. Luizig first came out as a demo tape that Funeral Folk released in a tiny run of 66 copies, which had fans of gnarly outsider Doom clambering to get their claws upon it after it sold out quickly from the label. In steps Al over at At War With False Noise to re-release this as a limited edition CD in a run of 500 copies, and it fits right in with the other low-fi outsider black/sludge metal releases that At War has been dishing out lately like Sloth, Black Sun, Seppuku, etc.
The sleeve for this looks great, a three panel foldout sleeve with silvery ink printed onto the thick black stock, screenprinted by the French printer/label Tetedemort, and fantastic Art Nouveau artwork lifted from Aubrey Beardsley. The music? A single track of feircely noisy, low-fi basement metal weirdness. A twenty one minute track that starts off ultra chaotic and noisy black metal, blown out thrashing guitars whipped up into a thick murky sonic storm, sloppy blastbeats bashed out on trashcans, tortured screams stretched out horrifically. The song then moves through sections of nothing but room ambience and male and female voices speaking in French, haunting violins, strange clattering objects and other sounds, before kicking back in to the heaviness, only now the band breaks into some crawling, neanderthal sludge, a lumbering dirgey Melvins style riff, demonic howls, pounding trashcan drums, everything wrapped up in sludgy distorted noise. The rest of the song goes back and forth between the sludgier slower stuff and the noisy black metal, smashing the two together by the end into a mindmelting mass of fucked up, speaker shredding blacknoise doom. Crazed, filthy, deranged skuzz metal damage that puts a pounding on yer skull. Fans of blownout, noisy BM like Ildjarn, Akitsa, Bone Awl, Beherit and Malveillance will worship this, as will all of you creeps that dig the ultra low-fi sludge stuff like early Sloth and Fistula. Gruesome!
Track Samples:
Sample : Luizig

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ALL HAIL THE TRANSCENDING GHOST   self-titled   CD   (Cold Spring)    11.98

The output of Henrik Nordvargr Bjorkk (Toroidh, MZ412, Korperwelten, Folkstorm, etc.) has become so insanely prolific that I've given up trying to keep track of all of the different projects he's involved in. Whenever something new comes down the pike from his noize-injected black metal alter ego Vargr or the black industrial ambience that he creates under the Nordvargr name, I'm usually on top of it, but I didn't find out about this particular project until a good five months after the damn thing had been released. This guy is an unending fountain of black atmospheric music.
The music that's featured on the debut cd from All Hail The Transcending Ghost has been in the works for a while. The liners mention that this was recorded between 2004 and 2007, a collaboration between Nordvargr and guitarist Tim Bertilsson that engaged in on-again, off-again recording sessions that eventually birthed these seven tracks. Bertilsson is probably better known to some as the drummer for the Swedish instrumental metal band Switchblade, who released a couple of excellent albums on Deathwish and Cyclops Media a few years ago, though he has also appeared recently as a drummer for the guitar drone project Fear Falls Burning on their Frenzy Of The Absolute album from last year. As All Hail The Transcending Ghost, the two musicians create a series of restrained industrial dronescapes that might surprise some with how subdued and ambient this is compared to other recent Nordvargr related releases... the first few tracks especially are haunting driftscapes that never peak into full on aggression, but instead carefully layer soft post-rock guitar strum and minor key melodies across black oceans of machine whir and ambient drone, endless metallic shimmer and far-off factory rumblings, bits of backwards melody and traces of chanting vocals swirling in the murky dark dronescapes. The first three tracks all remind me of a much more muted and droneological version of the dark kosmiche/post-rock/blackdrone of Locrian, but the fourth track heralds a more caustic shift with deep electronic belches, Nordvargr's gutteral mumbling vocals, and glitchy noise that fully takes shape with the crushing industrial clamor of the following track. Here, dissonant guitar clang echoes across bursts of electronic blackfire that pan from speaker to speaker, erupting into a blown-out noisedirge rife with shrieking tortured vocals, like a Neurosis guitar riff ripped away from the rest of the band and left to drift over an abyss of corrosive blackdrone. The last two tracks return to the more droning, ambient end of the band's sound, but still feature swells of ominous ambient riffage and abrasive guitar noise that lurks just below the surface of their distorted dronescapes. It's a strange but effective mix of black ambience, cold droning industrial, and metallic guitar sludge, sort of like a blackened industrial version of Fear Falls Burning at times. Another winner from Nordvargr, for sure.
Track Samples:
Sample : Track 3
Sample : Track 6

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ALL IS SUFFERING   The Past: Vindictive Sadisms Of Petty Bereaucrats   CD   (Crucial Blast)    9.98

Along with the small number of copies of the out of print early Crucial Blast titles from Rune and Katastrofialue that recently surfaced as part of a return that just arrived here from one of our old distributors, I also found a couple of copies of the Cd from blackened death/crust beasts All Is Suffering. A collection of studio and Ep material, The Past: Vindictive Sadisms Of Petty Bureaucrats has been out of print since at least 2005, and is one of the label's earliest efforts. It's also one of the only releases from a a little known but amazing band from southern Maryland who blew me away during their short span of existence with an apocalyptic mixture of old school death metal, imperial black metal, ultra-bleak ambience, majestic doom, and a definite Scandinavian crust influence. Not many people heard 'em when they were around as the band rarely played live and never toured outside of the area, and only released one other 7" Ep after this disc came out, but every single person that I've talked to about the band fucking loved them. Here's my original description of the disc from when it first came out, with all hyperbole intact:
"Fueled by war and corruption, The Past:Vindictive Sadisms Of Petty Bureauracrats collects both new studio recordings and demo and EP tracks from this visionary Maryland grind/crust band. All Is Suffering combine rabidly violent grindcore and epic black/death metal with monastic chants, blackened drones, incredibly catchy melodies, and a cosmic endtime ambiance. Some have compared them to His Hero Is Gone meets Marduk. Fourteen blasts of adventurous, grim, and vicious disgust for diseased humanity."
So there you go. Less than four in stock!
Track Samples:
Sample : Mauthausen
Sample : Through Deep Snow Darkness Stalks the Hunters

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ALLEGORY CHAPEL LTD.   When Angels Fall   CD   (Charnel Music)    9.98