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!

One of the craziest grindcore albums ever, !T.O.O.H.!'s third album �d A Trest received the vinyl treatment last year courtesy of American avant-garde label Cylindrical Habitat Modules. We've finally gotten this cult classic in stock, on black vinyl limited to five hundred copies, with completely different (and much more appropriate, in my opinion) album artwork. Here's my original review of the CD version of the album that was released by the now-defunct avant-metal label Elitist (which we still have in stock, as well)...

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!

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.

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.

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.

If you're hip to the Italian label Aeternitas Tenebrarum Music Foundation, then you're probably a fan of the more experimental and progressive fringes of European black metal, something the label has been focused on from early on. While this 2010 debut from 11 As In Adversaries is further removed from black metal than most of the bands on the label, it's easy to see why it found a home here alongside the likes of Visthia, Tal'set, Disiplin and Semen Datura. Featuring two of the members of the French black metal cult Glorior Belli and apparently originally intended for that band until they realized that it would be better served by releasing it under a completely different band name, 11 As In Adversaries infuses a bit of BM influence into its angular heavy prog, though those black metal elements are generally petty subtle, taking form as violent blastbeat drumming and bits of evil, metallic riffing. What 11 As In Adversaries really sound like is a sinister, slightly blackened math-metal outfit, with lots of spiky, spidery guitar work and passionate sung/yowled vocals, off-kilter rock guitar leads, and winding complex songwriting.

There's a discordance and off-kilter quality to the riffs that'll remind you of Voivod's later work cica Angel Rat/The Outer Limits, but I also hear the sound of 90's metallic post-hardcore in here as well, faint traces of Quicksand and (especially) Iceburn in the chunky melodic riffs and "rockier" moments. But like the newer Glorior Belli stuff, this stuff really swings, fusing together blazing psychedelic guitar shred and some huge jagged riffs and smatterings of jazziness in the rhythm section. Some other tracks delve into experimental electronic music ("A Stealthy Freedom"), and there's a guest appearance from Shining front man Kvarforth, who lends his gnarled, deranged croon to "The Night Scalp Challenger". Most of this sounds to me like post-hardcore filtered through the blackened weirdness of Ved Buens Ende though, especially on the catchy, ferocious closer "Verses From Which To Whirl" where the lush guitar-heavy sound is fused to killer blackened riffs and the most aggro drumming on the album that finally spins out into a cyclone of blastbeats towards the end.

Definitely something different from the ATMF camp, but not without it's moments of savagery that should appeal to fans of the label's more left-field offerings, as well as those digging the recent spate of post-hardcore/black metal

influenced bands like Deafheaven and Celeste.

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!

Strictly limited to a one-time run of fifty cassettes, the second in 13th Apostle's conceptual trilogy of releases materializes here in an electrocuting shock of existential horror, following the ferocious interrogation of power electronics and Broken Flag-influenced extremity of 2022's Post Annihilism. Presented with a suitably minimalist, appropriately grotesque visual aesthetic, Swallow The Void And Erase Your Soul features four tracks that stream through your neurons like a wave of barbed wire and carbonized human remains, a sustained scream of world-weary loathing and spiritual exhaustion.

It's a goddamn nightmare.

It's also a distinct shift from the piercing onslaught of extreme power electronics of the first tape. Swallow The Void... erupts with massive bomb-blast heaviosity and ultra-distorted power that points towards the most putrid and pungent depths of death industrial. The opening track "N.U.I. (Infinite Ego Death Cell)" promptly batters the listener with steady, sinister blasts of low-end electronic crush as more complex rhythms emerge, joined by gnarly, teeth-gnashing vocals. An atmosphere of pure doom and desolation. Shifting between spare concussive dread and hypnotic evil. Treated samples of cosmic horror are woven into the rotting fabric of 13th Apostle's sound, and mutates into something more abrasive and caustic as it segues into the skull-drill electronic skree of "Ant In The Afterbirth". A war-scape of unyielding bass-blast, corrosive distortion, and increasingly chaotic death industrial.

The other half instantly picks back up as the title track drops you into a pitch-black abattoir of swirling ambient filth and metallic scrape, followed by a persistent, insanely distorted high-voltage deathdrone. Crackling electricity whips and dances through the air, distant sirens howl mindlessly in the depths. The sound shifts beneath the serrated, buzzing synth-drone, a vast yawning maw of devouring blackness slowly opening beneath your feet as 13th Apostle increases the violence of the churn. Everything drops out as horrifying screams explode from nowhere, opening the door to the hideous sampled monologue that possesses "At Least You Thought Of Me". Recollections of depravity and desecration drift like a foul fog across deep, tectonic pulsations; while the closing piece at first feels less frenzied than what came previously, it crawls deeper under your subcutaneous layer than anything else on this tape. It's a singular experience; Swallow sometimes broaches the unforgiving and explicit viciousness of Slogun and Genocide Organ, at other moments touching on the rot and desiccation of Atrax Morgue and Slaughter Productions, but it is ultimately much, much more intimate. It sits close to you. Whispering in your ear as the stench of the electronic carnage slowly begins to burn away. Leaving you with nothing.

Total hell.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

This new duo featuring Ryan Huber of Inam Records / Sujo / Olekranon / Vopat is easily the darkest thing that I've heard from him, a blackened noise outfit that has already released a couple of super-limited Cdr titles that are already long out of print. Nine Angles is as bleak and cancerous sounding as any of the previous 303 Committee recordings I've heard, a fusion of haunting minimal soundscapes formed out of field recordings and subdued synthesizer drones, and more intensive ambient workouts that center around the use of roaring low-end keyboard drones, waves of crushing over-modulated distortion, and simple creepy melodies that spin out of the darkness, short loops of minor-key creep that soar over the gleaming twilight hum of the synths and undercurrents of crackling black electricity like stray bits of a black metal song intro that has been torn from it's moorings. Each of these four lengthy tracks slowly build into walls of blown-out sound, starting with clusters of melodious drone but gradually spreading outward into heavier, more distorted plumes of sound, somewhere in between Tim Hecker at his most apocalyptic and Theologian at his most mournful as they offer up shimmering nebulae of discordant electronic notes within storms of crushing black static. It's the final track "Bride of the south" where the field recordings fully come into play, the thirteen minute piece constructed out of mysterious sound events and environmental noises, distant roaring synthdrones and swirling clouds of low-fi grit, a sprawling dark ambient soundscape that is both menacing and starkly beautiful, it's gorgeous, grainy drift-visions draped in dead-grey Satanic imagery. Fantastic stuff. Like everything released through Huber's Inam imprint, Nine Angles is released in a tiny edition of just thirty-three hand-numbered copies, and comes in a textured sleeve with a vellum insert.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

Fuckin' ass-crushin' experimental Russian deathgrind nedriness from a band that I've been quietly obsessed with for nearly a decade. Their releases prior to 2023's Yantra Creating are a little tough to come by, being released on small, obscure Slavic labels for the most part. But now signed to Willowtip, these diabolical death-warpers are finally getting more of the visibility they deserve, and in this renaissance period of "weird death metal", 7 H. Target are king. They have the proper recipe : a balance between bizarre, otherworldly ambience and solid, crushing riff / groove structures, constant flights of imaginative musicianship and eldritch weirdness cast against a propensity for gargantuan tempo changes and riff-shifts that make me do the caveman-stomp all over my house. Yes, this seven-song album is a goddamn slam-salad, but behind every pulverizing breakdown and twisted riff, these guys bathe their music in a unique and anomalous atmosphere that you only get with the bizarrely named 7 H. Target (still working on figuring out what that band name references). But it's not riff mess like so many "tech" deathgrind outfits - the music here is very deliberate and diamond-sharp, impeccable songwriting that brings all of their strange elements together into a panoramic totality. Strange elements? Oh yeah. The band members themselves call this stuff “innovative psychotropic brutal death", and that pretty much nails it.

The music is ultra-violent, crazed, juiced on transcendent Tantric mysticism, Vedic cosmology and esoteric warfare, blending visions of apocalyptic events both past and future. Gossamer digital ambience surges into a cyclone of jagged riffing, discordant chords, complex time changes and rapid-fire shifts in tempo and intensity, the mad rush of opening song "Aghori" thrusting you headfirst into a massive meat grinder of off-the-wall deathgrind structures. But as mentioned before, 7 H. Target's dark magic is in part the way that these three guys (and collaborative cohorts) constantly tighten the rope and suddenly snap this blasting, squealing, seemingly disordered vortex into a demolishing breakdown groove or sludgy hook that all of a sudden makes what you are listening to jarringly catchy and contagious. There are interesting manipulations of Katalepsy front man Igor Filimontsev's vocals and the varied electronic elements, taking Igor's emetic, gut-busting roar and turning it inside out, creating strange fades and dropouts that along with the sleek ambient textures and electronic elements make all of this sound alien and inhuman. Nutso bass runs, bits of fusiony interstitial guitar stuff, some Spheres-era Pestilence touches, constant blasts of baffling shred, nuanced ambient layering, weird synth noises, there's a lot of stuff going on in each song alongside the signature pinging snare drum and wild polyrhythmic percussion, pig-squeal pinch harmonics and pukeoid gutturals. They've made a standout synthesis of over-the-top tech-death, offbeat and progressive-sounding spacey experimentation, and violence-provoking deathcore here.

The stuff that seems to divide some fans is the heavy presence of Indian folk and classical music elements, which are in keeping with their Vedic apocalypse concept. The third song "Shiva Yajur Mantra" in particular sticks out, fusing traditional Indian mridangam percussion, the hand-cymbal-like karatels and Maria Lutta's exotic Sanskrit singing around a background of choppy, off-kilter instrumental death metal. A kind of cybernetic bhajan devotional that transports the album to another plane entirely. Lutta appears later in the album on apex moment "Fire And Places For His Work", where the traditional Hindustani influences and folk-singing styles merge surprisingly well with the band's gruesome tech-slam overload. And closer "Meditation" lays out one final hyperblast assault before dissolving into a wash of dreamlike, gorgeous synth ambience that flows out into the ether. It all feels deeply alien.

Can't stop listening to this disc. The "flow" is fantastic. If there is a stand-out song on Yantra, it's right towards the end with that track "Fire And Places For His Work". Everything has built up to the crazed fusion explosion that goes supernova. This thing fires off synaptic connections I didn't know I had. For anyone hooked on the way-out experimentation and textural weirdness of bands like Wormed, Defeated Sanity, the warped alien-influenced prog-slam of Germany's Maximize Bestiality, those Czech mutants like !T.O.O.H.! and Lykathea Aflame, even certain elements of Discordance Axis, this album is an ideal portal to the gonzo techgrind weirdness that is 7 H. Target. Very recommended, guys.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Still don't know much about A Black People, the rather mysterious death rock/post punk outfit on Death Agonies And Screams who've returned here with their second cassette release; the band has kept all information regarding their lineup and location a secret thus far, though it's probably a safe bet that the key players are the same folks behind the label. Over the course of these two mini-albums (always manifesting physically on cassette only, at least so far), A Black People has become one of my favorite bands in this current death rock/dark post-punk resurgence that's been going on for awhile now, pursuing a more menacing vibe and aggressive attitude that's naturally right up my alley.

Issued by Death Agonies in a super-limited edition of just one hundred copies like its predecessor, Visceral Realists features six new songs that continue with the somewhat blown-out, fairly morbid post-punk of the first tape, just as dark and infectious as the earlier stuff, but also feeling a little less ragged around the edges than the previous release, with a slightly more polished sound. Still fantastic stuff, though; you've got the requisite Christian Death and Rudimentary Peni influences still coursing through Realists' grim mid-tempo pulse and the nihilistic, surreal imagery found in the lyrics. The band's sound is mainly driven by the ominous throb of the bassist, each song formed around a simple but catchy hook that is also tinged with some cool, subtle use of tape-noise fuckery and spacey effects that are thrown into the mix, songs like "Harlett" sometimes drifting into washes of trippy electronic ambience, and the singer's got this great derisive monotone sneer, moaning throughout the entire tape like an even more blase Rozz Williams. They crank the distortion up on some of the tracks, belting out droning fuzz-drenched riffs that buzz beneath the occasional swell of 'gazey distortion and dreamy tremolo drift that wash across songs like the uber-catchy "Sanctuary", and there are a few moments where the riffs even take on a metallic bite, adding to the menacing tone. The closer "Drowning" is another standout, finishing this off with a morose, heavy dirge that ends with a killer final blast of suffocating pessimism and miserable buzzsaw blackness. Like the previous tape, I can't recommend this enough if you're into the sort of miserablist punk and neo-deathrock stuff that's been coming out from likeminded gloom-punks like Blue Cross, Arctic Flowers, Dekoder, Crimson Scarlet, Night Sins, Funeral Parade, Blessure Grave and Liar In Wait.