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7000 DYING RATS - "Forced Boat" 7" $6.25
The Forced Boat 7" is a kind of hodgepodge of 7000 Dying Rats insanity, a collage of brutal grinding blur, 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 necessarily the best introduction to the Rats delirious assault, but if you're already into these guys, the 10 minutes or so of ridiculousness on this platter is pretty zonked. Released in 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.
ACTS OF SEDITION / SADVILLE - "split" 7" $5.50
Sadville delivers a brand new song in three parts which showcases these Tennessee ragers' southern influenced stoner crust metal. Oakland, CA's Acts Of Sedition combine the dark crust sounds of bands like Born/Dead and Tragedy with the early '90s political NYHC of Citizens Arrest and Nausea. Hand-numbered on WHITE vinyl, limited to 400 copies.
ACTS OF SEDITION / SURRENDER - "split" 7" $5.50
Two tracks from Oakland's SURRENDER, who are a total throwback to 80's English peace punk with a slight hint of riot grrrl. and one track from ACTS OF SEDITION, who borrow punk and hardcore sounds from Black Flag as well as modern heavyweights such as Artimus Pyle and Hot Cross with overtly political lyrics. Screened covers with vellum band.
ADRENALIN O.D. - "The Wacky Hi-Jinks of... " $11 2XCD
Man, does this rock. For starters, Adrenalin O.D. were lightning fast (like, D.R.I./Gang Green fast), and heavy. And I do mean heavy; on this, a re-issue of A.O.D.’s classic LP from ’84, there’s plenty of NYHC-style chugga-chugga riffs and breakdowns in-between all the thrash parts. But what separated A.O.D. from just about all the other hardcore bands back then was their wicked sense of humor and their sharp melodic sense. Being fast as hell was one of A.O.D.’s trademarks, but their songs were really catchy, too. The excellent mastering job makes this CD loud as hell, capturing the full power and fury that was Adrenalin O.D. Don’t worry, this isn’t some lame-sounding re-issue of poorly-recorded early 80’s American hardcore, the kind with the paper-thin drums and tin-can guitar. I mean, this CD is full-blown loud. Plus, there’s also a 33-track bonus CD that includes the “Let’s Barbecue” EP. You’ll be getting your money’s worth here, without question, along with all the inside jokes and references to New Jersey “culture” as well, including the 12 page booklet of lyrics, rare photos and flyers, plus photos of the Tick Tock Diner, Uncle Floyd, and the turnpike being shown as the “Jersey parking lot”— yup, people who’ve never been to New Jersey don’t know what they’re missing…
ADRENALIN O.D. - "Phat N' Old - Live on WFMU" CD $9
The 23 track CD recorded live at the legendary WFMU studios by Pat Duncan and Charles Maggio.
A FASHIONABLE DISEASE - "s/t" 7" $5.50
Totally ass kicking and weirdly fucked brutality fills this little 7" from Santa Cruz's own, A Fashionable Disease! Another one of those what the fuck, seemingly impossible combinations of influences, synthesized in such a unique and successful way, that makes us kind of scratch our heads and lament that we haven't been turned on sooner. How do you describe this? Maybe filthyfreejazzcrustyfiedsatanicdamagedgrindpunkavantskronk? Or maybe just Crass meets Ayler meets Pig Destroyer meets Sun Ra meets Schoenberg meets Anal Cunt meets Mahavishnu. We don't fucking know, but it rules! Super demented, ultra damaged grind-jazz, complete with horn section! Putrid angular metallic guitar discordance, feculent terrorist manifesto screeched vocals, growling horns, blasting drums. The first cut, "Veal Medallions" starts with a blast of feedback before hurling into a psychotically chromatic guitar and piano line, ending up in a blasting tumult of throat tearing vocals and frenetically crazed drumming! Some of the lyrics from this number kind of sum up what these fellas are about... "skulls converge ruins/ rainbows ejaculate onto your face/ quiet in the piss-stained evening/ spring wind blows perfume of 1,000 rotting carcasses...". Fuck yes. The rest of the 7" is just as killer. Totally fucked and totally great! For fans of Zorn, Bathtub Shitter, Rudimentary Peni, Crass, Coltrane, Dystopia, Cecil Taylor, or anything filthy, proggy, grindy, avant-jazzy, and totally shredding! Recommended!
AFTER THE LAST SKY - "And This Is Progress?" LP $9
The blackcore revolution is here! This UK band bring totally black metal inspired grind with epic doom and sludge parts! Genuinely raging music!
AGATHOCLES / THE VANISHING ACT - "split" CD $9
Mince Core legends Agathocles (Belgium) destroy with 11 new tunes on this split with grindcore freaks The Vanishing Act (Canada) who follow a split 7" w/ Unholy Grave (Japan) with some killer new material including a cover of IMPETIGO's "dis-organ-ized"!
ALARM - "s/t" 7" $5
Tucson, AZ's Alarm present six tracks of violent mayhem to this debut 7", with a style that brings to mind bands like Gehenna, Pig Destroyer, Fall Silent, Backstabbers Inc. and Napalm Death. On GREEN vinyl.
AL QAEDA - "collaborative works" 7" $7.50
The much-anticipated 7" from AQ featuring Mike Watt (MINUTEMEN, FIREHOSE), Gabe Serbian (THE LOCUST), Chris Carrico (AARKTICA) and Occassional Detroit is finally here. On aqua marbled vinyl and limited to 300 copies.
ALTAR SHADOWS - "Speckledy Falcons" CD $9
From Lithuania, once largest country in Europe, emerges Altar Shadows! Folk/Pagan Metal blending electric and acoustic music, ambient soundscapes, original lyrics and classical Lithuanian poetry, male and female vocals to create a memorable work that summons the ancient spirit from the shadows of false temples. In the vein of bands such as DRUDKH, EMPYRIUM, ANUBI, early OBTEST and should be sought out by fans of Kroda, Burzum, Arkona, Nokturnal Mortum, Temnozor, Velimor, et al. for the combination of folk, pagan and black metal. Always remaining an original and visionary brand of metal, Altar Shadows is the dark aesthetic rising from endless yearning. Yearning the values, that now seem rejected and considered to be humdrum, "unpopular" i.e. sensibility, tenderness, contemplation, love for one's homeland, it's nature, and particularly it's past. The roots of this aesthetic are found in the shadows of foreign altars, where the old Baltic culture wasn't crushed by the power of interloper religion.
A.M. - "Orla" CD $9
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. 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, and it features five tracks of beautiful, entrancing drones that are accompanied only by the occasional recording of rain or other field recording. Each piece 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.
ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK - "Two Thousand Years" CD $9
Hailing from the city of Tilburg, ANAPHYLACTIC SHOCK is one of the most interesting and harsh bands we've heard in a long time. Influenced by legendary bands like Entombed and Tragedy, the Shock adds some very interesting black metal elements to their already crushing sound; taking the genre to a new level, perfecting the loud, the fast and the dirgey. Comprised of members that have been active in the European punk/hardcore and rock underground for a long time, sharing time in bands such as Restless Youth, No Turning Back, The Spades and Union Town it may not come as a big surprise that this band knows what they’re doing. Expect a devastating mix of raw d-beat music, crushing vocals and doom-laden riffing. The vocals chronicle the evils of the world in a way that never patronizes, nor detracts from the unbridled musical rage of his bandmates. The guitar work unites the raw d-beat style of bands like Disfear and Tragedy, with the doom-laden offering of classic bands like Pentagram or Black Sabbath, and contemporaries like Entombed or High on Fire. The rhythm section has clear roots in their aggressive hardcore past, showing zero concessions, taking on a new life and pushing the beast onward more urgently than ever. The outcome is simply gargantuan.
ANDY ORTMANN / JOHN WIESE - "Recorder Out Of Tune" CD $9
The monstrous electronic fug of this collaborative release is initally hinted at by the low-contrast, grey and black layout of the CD package, with a grimm looking photo of the perps on the front cover and illustrations of some sort of Lovecraftian organic horror on the interior booklet. Anyone familiar with John Wiese's work, both with Bastard Noise and solo, or through his collaborations with Sunn O))) and Cattle Decapitation, recognizes that this guy is a master sculptor of total earshred electronics, constructing some of the most brutal tone collages this side of the Pacific. On Recorder Out Of Tune, Wiese teams up with his buddy and Panicsville visionary Andy Ortmann for a 22 minute blast of heavy unease culled from creepy electronic tones and brief, brutal blasts of overmodulated feedback that are collaged together with field recordings, studio weirdness, fractal vomit vocals, partially glimpsed snippets of death metal transmissions, improv clatter, and dark, droning soundscapes. It's definitely a soundtrack for bad dreams and night sweats, like Nurse With Wound and Lustmord scraping metal chairs across your ceiling at 2am in the morning and spinning the dial through a range of AM radio frequencies being beamed out of Hell. A different sort of take on surreal horror electronics. Recommended.
ANOTHER KIND OF DEATH / ADRIFT / MOKSHA / MOHO - "Waterloo" CD $9
This brutally heavy release showcases material from four veteran bands. "Waterloo" compiles eleven tracks spanning 55 minutes total. Featured: Adrift (think of Iron Monkey, Keelhaul, Neurosis, Tool), Another Kind Of Death (reminiscent of Converge, Dillinger Escape Plan), Moksha (influenced by Down, Entombed, Isis, Zao) and the mighty Moho (Sludge Doom a la Corrupted, EHG, etc.)
ANTILLES / TRIFLE TOWER - "split" 7″ $6
A match-up of 2 old-school screamo bands in the vein of such greats as Pg. 99 and City of Caterpillar. Antilles have a jagged and damaged sound with aggressive drumming, jangly guitar playing, and vicious vocals with an almost jazzy vibe at times. On side B, Trifle Tower assault the listener using layered melodies and strong dynamics, giving off the impression of an almost black metal approach to songwriting. Limited to a total of 500 copies, presented in jackets made of 100% post-consumer recycled paper stock and hand-silkscreened with brown ink.
ANUS PRESLEY - "Music to Listen to When You're Dead" CD $9
The bizarre power electronics cut-up collage noise project of Danish controversial film maker and OG comix artist Sverre H.Kristensen, who died only a few months after compiling this 'Best-of' collage taken from obscure Anus Presley cassettes from the 1980s. The title was chosen by Sverre before he died. Cover put together with the kind co-operation of JR Bruun, one of Sverre's closest friends. At the moment this is only available document of Sverre's music. Jewelcase cover. 500 copies.
ARGENTINUM ASTRUM - "S/T" CD $9
Super heavy blackened sludge from Knoxville, Tennessee with some wild noise fuckery that elevates this above the rest of the extreme doom rabble. This 26+ minute disc has just one long untitled song from this young band, and Argentinum Astrum display an enthusiasm for messing around with expectations of what doom metal is supposed to sound like, which ultimately turns this debut into something more than just doom metal. The track starts off with a cloud of black, buzzing feedback, then lurches into a slow, Khanate-like riff, but instead of moving forward with the riff, the music gets all warped and chewed up and dropping out completely, like you're listening to the band on a cassette and the tape is being eaten by the tape deck, the slurred sludgey guitars become a mangled blurt of analogue squelch, starting and stopping, winding down into silence and then revving back up again, until the riff finally disappears completely and is replaced by a single strummed guitar and spacious, laid back drum beat surrounded by tendrils of feedback and amp buzz. It gets heavy again soon enough, building back into a crushing minimalist riff chugging in slow motion, weird pterodactyl shrieks soaring over the desolate doomscape, and those vocals sound totally fucked, wrecked and wretched. The track moves onward, shifting between lumbering, monotonous sludge and slightly faster riffs that have a vague southern feel, then into brief blasts of epic, damaged black metal where the drums seem to float in and out of focus, or simply disappear together for a second. From there it's back to the slow sludge, a different riff this time, then the drums exit the scene again and we're left with nothing but guitars, black and roiling as ultra slow motion riffs unfurl over a caustic ocean of low-end grind, super abstract and droning, with those weird fucked-up reptile screams rising up out of the background. This monolithic metallic dronescape is spread out for more than ten minutes, then drums gradually re-enter the picture and once again the band shifts gears, lurching this time into a drunken bluesy sludge jam a la Weedeater or Eyehategod that closes the track out. These guys have an eclectic style that sounds like a couple of different bands stuck together with the unifying factor being the insane echo-chamber shrieking, a blackened sludgemutant built from scraps of Black Boned Angel, Fleurety, and Eyehategod, bashing out their primitive, noise-damaged sludge on busted amplifiers and broken guitars, electronic noise detritus dripping from their instruments, swampy low-frequency buzz infesting their blasted boogie.
THE ASHAMED - "s/t" CD $9
Aggressive, in your face, Punk/Thrashabilly from Richland, Washington. This is a weird fucking album- it's like speed-metal with a touch of thrash and a touch of rockabilly. Cool artwork. Weird lyrics too. The music sounds like new SLAYER mixed with DEAD KENNEDYS. It totally seems like they'd be a fun band to see live.
ASHTRAY NAVIGATIONS - "Four More Raga Moods" CD $9
English artist Phil Todd has been an underground presence for well over a decade, engaging in countless groups and collaborations, signing on as an occasional member of Vibracathedral Orchestra and Sunroof!, and releasing numerous documents through his Betley Welcomes Careful Drivers and Memoirs of an Aesthete labels. Todd’s major achievement, though, is his ongoing solo project Ashtray Navigations. Releasing a baffling amount of cassettes, LPs, CDs and CD-Rs, Todd has refined a singular take on modern drone construction that references the dynamics of rock, the emotional evisceration of blues, and the white-light intensity of noise. This new follow-up to Ashtray Naviagtion's crucial Four Raga Moods is another heavy dose of transportational drone rock/feedback bliss from guitarist Phil Todd and company, who on this disc include Alex Neilson, Ben Reynolds, Mel Delaney, Chris Hladowski, Matt Cairns, Andy Jarvis and Pete Nolan of MAGIK MARKERS. On Four More Raga Moods, glacial amp trances slowly unfold around epic guitar drip, gauzy folk figures, and rotating casio)drones.This is a baked haze of bleached guitar drones and woozy consumer electronics, as cassette tape detritus accumulates around epiphanic guitar leads, occasionally evoking Keiji Haino in miniature. An exquisite broadcast from an interstellar shortwave radio station, with his blasted guitar submerged under frazzled layers of distortion. Excellent, dreamy trash drone, definitely advisible to fans of Sunroof! and Vibracathedral Orchestra (both of which are bands that Phil Todd has worked with in one form or another), as well as the mid-90's psychedelic SKULLFLOWER output and the New Zealand drone sound. Packaged in a killer fold-out, full-colour four-panel digipak.
ASTRAL DIVISION - "Spadyum" CD $9
From Turkey, ASTRAL DIVISION deliver a destructive mixture of Black Metal and Thrash Metal leading its sound, along with some industrial elements. Limited to 500 copies.
ATHRENODY - "Crazed Development" CD $9
Existing only for a short time in the early 90s, ATHRENODY, along with bands like IMMORTAL FATE, EXHUMED, GORYMELANOMA and COLOSTOMY created a foundation for the emerging Bay Area grind scene. Back then, rumors were floating around about a band from the South Bay that played a brutal style of grind/death metal not-on-like Harmony Corruption era NAPALM DEATH and/or TERRORIZER - turned out this band was ATHRENODY. They played a few shows, and before they split-up, they managed to get into House of Faith studios to record this full length. Unfortunately vocals were not added, until that is, Matt Harvey from EXHUMED stepped up to the plate in 2005. The result is this CD.
AUGHRA - "Proof of Dark Matter/Light the Lights" CD $9
Aughra is the solo ambient/electronic/experimental project of Brent Eyestone (Magic Bullet Rec./Forensics/Corn On Macabre). Living on the borderline between drone, IDM (Boards of Canada) and eerie soundscapes (Tim Hecker, Kranky Rec.) Proof of Dark Matter | Light the Lights is an album of halves or an album with a dual nature. There are the more stylistically and straightforward ambient tracks which range from short incidental pieces to longer much more narrative or soundtrack-like compositions. The duality of Proof of Dark Matter | Light the Lights serves Aughra well by balancing more experimental pieces with more conventional compositional pieces to seemingly ease listeners into the ambient concept. In some respects, Brent Eyestone creates an excellent bridge for people who are not yet fully indoctrinated or rather ready to take the plunge into the full immersion of completely ambient albums.
AUSTERITY PROGRAM - "Terra Nova" CDEP $6
Screeching, clanging guitars, over machinelike rhythms, with half shouted/half sung vocals adding slight melody to the caustic, abrasive noisescapes. Besides the two members, Justin Foley (guitar/vocals) and Thad Calabrese (bass) especially the drum machine is in the foreground of the action. The more than nine minute opener brings us bulky machine beats, screaming guitars and partly hysteric screaming that freezes the marrow in your bones. You could roughly put the brew of the two Americans somewhere into the corner of GODFLESH, DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN and EYEHATEGOD. Repetitive rhythms and mean feedbacks play with the nerves of the listener. Monotony can be so beautiful and oppressive.
BACTERIA CULT - "Soulless Solace" CD-R $7
A new full-length disc from this up-and-coming southern California quartet that features Chris Dodge (Spazz / Hellnation / Despise You / Ancient Chinese Secret / East West Blast Test / Jesus Philbin), Jay Howard (Circuit Wound / Wire Werewolves), Kevin Fetus (Fetus Eaters / Watch Me Burn), and someone named E. Nervo all collaborating on mammoth jet-expulsions of seriously deranged ambient muck. The nine tracks on Soulless Solace tend towards the epic, with more than half of them running past the ten minute mark as the group summons dense, murky clouds of psychedelic effects, swirling opiate ambience, inebriated fx-box fuckery, random flashes of found music and radio transmissions, skullcrushing free-noise mayhem, and flailing demonic heaviness. Some out there have been lazily slapping the "noise" label on this bunch of maniacs, but don't be fooled...this is something much more gorked than just another exercise in mindless power-skree. Nah, Bacteria Cult create something much more druggy and creepy they travel through an upside-down dadaist darkland filled with looped voices, smears of ominous orchestral samples, bubbling mad scientist lab fx, and waves of crushing formless sludge and monstrous distorted vocals. Like some mescaline-doused tumble through a black pit where different turntables are spinning beat-up, shit-encrusted copies of The Conet Project, Nurse With Wound's Homotopy to Marie, Coil's Scatalogy, Contagious Orgasm's The Flow of Sound Without Parameter, and a chorus of unknown, super-obscure Scandinavian black ambient 7"s all spinning on their wobbly axis at the same time. A fantastic and cohesive series of schizophrenic yet mesmerizing bad-dream soundscapes. Released in a limited print run of 300 copies, and packaged in a full-color foldout sleeve.
BLACK CRUCIFIXION - "Faustian Dream" CD $9
BLACK CRUCIFIXION sounds like TIAMAT, SAMAEL, SENTENCED and PARADISE LOST just formed some sort of super-group. The vocals of Fornicator sound like a mix of John Edlund (TIAMAT) and Nick Holmes (PARADISE LOST) along with some Manfred Klahre (JACK FROST) thrown in for some good measure. The music itself is slow, guitar driven, pounding Doom/Goth Metal. The massive production makes everything just sound right and in place. The drums are quieter but make their mark, I also love the bass sound on this album and it’s fully audible and massive. Fornicator’s voice is just so suiting for this style of music, he sounds in pain, he sounds like the agony on this album comes directly from him. Crafting beautiful songs and enrapturing melodies, BLACK CRUCIFIXION has made one hell of an album for sure. Fans of PARADISE LOST, JACK FROST, SISTERS OF MERCY and TIAMAT rejoice!
BLACK ELK -"s/t" CD $9
The eponymous debut from Portland, Oregon's BLACK ELK is a raging destructo rock eruption, heavy, catchy, and flattening. This ten song album contains a creeped out conglom of carnivorous charred hardcore punk, the sludgy power of primo Pacific Northwest tarpit rawk (think KARP, MELVINS, and early SOUNDGARDEN as reference points), twitchy Midwestern noise rage somewhere between Am Rep Records (circa-1991) and a more rabid DIE KREUZEN, and a goatheaded psychedelic backwoods black mass/dance party risen to a freakin' fever pitch. Total crush. Produced by Mike Lastra at Smegma Studios (EARTH, THRONES, JACKIE O MOTHERFUCKER).
BLACK HELL - "How The Rest Was Lost" CD $9
On their 2nd full length Black Hell unleash a heavy slab of thick psychedelic fuzz; blurring the line between bright spaced out psych-rock and dark, punishing heavy metal. A journey of light and dark, “How The Rest Was Lost” delivers a beautifully balanced haze of brilliantly pearlescent soundscapes and furious, thunderous riffage. Black Hell deal in heavy as fuck cosmic stoner rock, emphasizing the groove and looking way beyond the stars. There is a good deal of melody too, sort of melancholy, and totally catchy, with absolutely huge sounding production to give you a nice dose of mountainous drumming and totally rifftastic guitars that sound loud enough to fill all the open space on the album cover. The vocals are cool, and somewhat atypical of the genre, maybe higher than what you sometimes get with heavier groups, but definitely not in a bad way. It's actually quite similar to the guy in The Sword. Not quite as high as the dude in Mammatus, and not as whiney as the guy in Kyuss - the singer's voice is clean and expressive, not guttural or booming or anything. With song titles like "Lunar Procession", "Storms of Jupiter", "Lycanthropy", "Planet Maker", and "Celestial Conquest", you should know whether or not this is for you. We say bring it on. Limited to 200 CDs.
BLARKE BAYER / BONE SHERIFF - "split" CD $9
Blarke Bayer is the solo project of Ben Andrews who also plays guitar in Magnetics, Agents Of Abhorrence and My Disco. This release finds him exploring a wall of drone subtle drifts and waves of noise. Bone Sheriff is the drunken ramblings of Simon Taylor (Whitehorse / EOH / Malakat) and Rob Mayson (Grey Daturas / EOH / It's Is / Whitehorse etc). Fueled by a cocktail of ginger wine and sparkling ale BS shudder to life rattling bones and burning souls. An awesome follow up release to "Moonee Ponds".
BLAST AND THE DETERGENTS - "Blast, Blast, Blast" CD $7
A fun, but too short CD from these Florida punks. Frantic, wild music with bratty vocals. One of those bands where everyone seems to be playing his hardest and most crazy, but yet it all manages to stay somewhat cohesive. I like the oddly sci-fi-sounding guitar soloing, too. A great listen for fans of The Stooges, Richard Hell & the Voidoids and Sonic Youth.
BUCKSHOT FACELIFT - "Universal Goat Tilt" CD $8
This is insanely fast as fuck thrash metallic brutal hc/grind from LI with disgusting vox. If you dig stuff like Graf Orlock, you should check this out. 17 songs in just about 19 minutes!
BULL ANUS - "Enter The Anus" CD-R $8
A name like that creates certain expectations. BULL ANUS deliver with 70 minutes of HARSH drone- noise n' scumfuzz hell, like the most brutal early SKULLFLOWER/BORBETOMAGUS skuzz crawling through the gutter and spurting grotesque feedback swarms over your cranium, courtesy of Erik Amlee (CRACKHOUSE) and company. There's little in the way of dynamics here...BULL ANUS lock in with a crackling avalanche of fuzz and distortion and skree, piling it on, layers and layers of dense, cloudy crunch, with gauzy melodies obscured and blurred by the storm of noise. Pure brooding pestilence and evil tone mulch. Guitar amplifiers bare toothy grins and spastic beats grind away at the withering transistor frequencies. Enter The Anus could possibly be heard as a meditation on the sounds of machinery falling apart, a bleeping,grinding mantra of coarse speaker hurl. Good shit.
BULL ANUS - "Anus Comes Alive: Live At Flywheel 8/25/02" CD-R $6
This disc captures a scorching 17 minute free-psych-noise blowout recorded in 2002 at the esteemed Western Mass indie venue Flywheel from maxx crunch heavies BULL ANUS. Titled "Bass Ass Woods", this collective freakout emits a dense deathbeam of free guitar racket and feedback blast and manic electronic synth chaos. BRUTAL power gnarl. Imagine a combination of old MERZBOW and TOTAL, or BORBETOMAGUS meets SKULLFLOWER in a takedown flamethrower match. Towards the end, the jam flatlines into a brain-baking oscillator drone that kills. This CD-R comes with full disc face art, slipped inside of a full color glossy wallet sleeve.
BURMESE / CADAVER EYES - "split" CD $9
The disc alternates tracks between Burmese's Whitehouse-inspired sludge/noise/grind violence and Cadaver Eyes' percussive metal/noise. Burmese's stuff is a continuation of the vicious grind and power electronics sound that the band has been forging. Brutal low end grindcore built from blasting drums, deep ferocious gutteral roars, and splattery riffs is smashed into stretches of abstracted noise, which is still very influenced by Whitehouse all the way down to the confrontational song titles ('No Blood No Cum', 'War Vs Women'). Savage vocal freakouts emerge over rumbling feedbacking dronescapes. Warning alarms scream alongside fractured grindcore. Eleven tracks total from Burmese. Every four tracks or so, Cadaver Eyes appear with a couple of longer pieces. Here they are a duo, with the drummer/vocalist teaming up with someone on no-input mixer, and somehow, two guys manage to whip up a murderous frenzy of abstract grindcore that sounds like an entire squadron of feedbacking amps, blastbeating drummers, and cannibalistic vocalists all going off at once. Impossibly distorted riffs are pulled apart into rubbery rumbling black tar drones, and sampled death metal riffing is plundered and manipulated over splattery drumming. Crushing!
BURN YOUR BRIDGES - "S/T" CD $9
Twenty-three tracks from this two-piece collaboration between Chris Dodge of Slap A Ham / Spazz and Bob of Deep Six / Lack Of Interest. The tracks are fast and furious with an angry spirit; musically sorta comparable to early D.R.I. or Condemned to Death. Raw, aggressive, angry hardcore. This is good powerviolence at it's best.
THE CARBONAS - "S/T" LP/CD $9
HOT ATLANTA PUNK! From the scene that spawned Black Lips, Deerhunter, Beat Beat Beat, Lids, Coathangers, and more! The Carbonas clearly know the ins and outs of the short, loud, and fast power-chord driven late-'70s sound of groups like the Ramones. There's an omnipresent buzzy drone to the guitars, the tempos are almost uniformly fast without approaching the speed of hardcore, and the whole sound's suffused with a lean 'n' meanness as they showcase their knowledge through a solid 20 minutes on their self-titled, third full-length. Even the recording produces a crisply aural front of guitar chords with snotty lead vocals pushed below the mix a bit to mostly capture that vintage sound. But many of the titles, à la "Hate You," "Trapped in Hell," "Frustrate Me," and "I'm a Schizo," give you a pretty good idea that the group's not exactly happy with the status quo.
CAVITY - "Laid Insignificant" CD $9
Perhaps because they hailed from Florida rather than the sludgecore movement's primary stomping grounds of Louisiana (home to Crowbar, Eyehategod, Acid Bath, etc.), Miami's Cavity didn't always benefit from the same amount of media coverage as their consistently inventive body work rightfully deserved. The fact that this prolific oeuvre was spread across a confusing number of full length and EP releases, indie record labels (several of which have since gone titsup), and subject to significant musician turnover, certainly didn't help matters; but the subsequent stream of Cavity reissues undertaken by Hydra Head Industries is a testament to the music's enduring influence and quality. Laid Insignificant, then, is one of those salvage jobs: unearthing, remastering, and repackaging Cavity's original sixsong minialbum, ten years after its initial 1998 release via famed artist Pushead's Bacteria Sour label, and adding a couple of missing tracks from the same sessions for what most observers will likely agree is a definitive version. At the time of its recording (April 1997), Cavity were unknowingly wrapping up the first phase of their career marked by the bewildering volume of minireleases mentioned above, and a resulting widespread anonymity outside the sludgecore underground and verging on the second, which found them temporarily parting ways with vocalist Rene Barge and signing with Man's Ruin for what would become their most successful and accessible album ever, 1999's Supercollider. In many ways, Laid Insignificant bridged the aesthetic gorge between these two phases: the first represented by roughhewn, hardcoreinfluenced material ranging from frantic blasts like "Marginal Man" (a re-recording of Drowning's less forceful "Marginal Man Blues") and the Black Flag-inspired "Spine I" and "II," to the ragged grind of "A Bitter Cold Spell," and combinations of the two such as the title track (ironically left off that first pressing) and "9 Fingers on the Spider"; the second, characterized by a slightly less savage, more disciplined metallic approach foreshadowed here by the admirably nuanced pairing of "The Woods" and "I May Go." Both phases, it should be noted, clearly had a huge effect on the many postmetal groups typically signed by Laid Insignificant's reissue label, Hydra Head, and those groups' enduring relevance offer another good reason for fans of great heavy music to pick up Laid Insignificant.
CHARNEL VALLEY - "The Igneous Race" CD $9
The new album from Charnel Valley maintains the bands brand of primitive Black Metal, and also incorporates a slight trace of early Finnish Death Metal, reminding one of early Belial or early Amorphis. Still recorded in the same spontaneous manner, as the bands debut, 2005s The Dark Archives, The Igneous Race features a fuller production, yet totally genuine to the concept of Black Metal.
CHROME - "Alien Soundtracks" CD $9
Get out the tinfoil, draw the blinds, turn the television to static and brace yourself for the amphetamine-fueled paranoid mind-fuck of San Francisco's industrial wastoids, Chrome! Their three seminal albums from the late seventies/early eighties, have finally been reissued! Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene. Alien Soundtracks from 1978 was Chrome's second album after the relatively straight forward rock of their debut The Visitation. But by then Helios Creed joined the band and Chrome's signature sound, centering on Creed's grinding pitch-shifting guitar attack and Edge's aggro drumming and damaged tape manipulations, were firmly in place. Supposedly recorded as a soundtrack for a live sex show, songs like, "Magnetic Dwarf Reptile" and "Slip It To The Android", display a sleazy suggestiveness with scuzzy rhythms and odd wailed crooning. While their fascination with science fiction's darker side (especially involving man-machine biologies and mind-controlling robots in a techno-industrial wasteland) manifested itself in vicious electronics and disturbing drones over the layers of buried vocals and speed-driven guitar riffage.
CHROME - "Third From The Sun" CD $9
Led by Damon Edge and Helios Creed, Chrome channeled The Stooges raw garage energy with Hawkwind's mindmelting space rock acid-psych and the electronic proto-art-punk of bands like Debris' and The Styrenes into a spazzy amalgam of sci-fi distortion, glam-punk chaos, and all manner of machine fuckery including television samples, bizarre tape manipulations and random fuzz-filled noise. Inspired by the future-shock visionary writings of J.G Ballard and Philip K. Dick, Chrome were cyber-punk before the term had even been popularized! In fact, they were one of those bands who became much more popular after their demise, when bands like The Butthole Surfers, Big Black and other Touch and Go bands started gaining notoriety in the mid-eighties college rock scene. 3rd From The Sun from 1982 was the band's final outing, after a couple years in the wilderness of label and line-up changes. More accessible songwise then the previous two records we reviewed, 3rd From The Sun still displays the sonic weirdness and alien paranoia that is classic Chrome! Dirge-y and brooding but with a new and crisper sounding rhythm section, this is heavier and more feedback laden with a greater emphasis on Creed's psych guitar than Edge's tape manipulations. They're definitely building the darker atmosphere here, rather than aggressively filling the space, on some tracks feeling like they're going in a more Zodiac Mindwarp direction (read: black leather and sunglasses) that Helios Creed would pursue more fully on his solo records. Definitely the type of sleazy sinister vibe that would fit right in at a strip club owned by David Lynch!
THE COMMUNION / COMPOUND TERROR - "split" 7" $7
Canadian West Coast grind meets United States East Coast grind. COMPOUND TERROR are from Victoria, BC, feature a member of ISKRA and play somewhat DISCORDANCE AXIS-style grind. THE COMMUNION are from Bethpage, NY and toss various styles of grind, savage black metal and urgent hardcore into each song. Limited to 100 copies on blue/purple HEAVY vinyl.
CONTROL - "The Cleansing" CD $9
A storm of crushing dead electronics & seething hatred from the mind of Thomas Garrison (Misanthrope Studios, Exsanguinate). One of the leaders of the US power electronics scene, Control has released albums on influential European labels Freak Animal, L.White Records, and Eibon, as well as toured throughout Japan, Europe and the East Coast USA. The Cleansing is a re-release of his highly sought after cdr of the same name (Frozen Empire Media) plus bonus tracks culled from releases on LSDO, Hospital Productions, and others.
CORE OF THE EARTH - "Curtains" CD $8
Core of the Earth’s second album, “Curtains”, can best be described as dwelling in the same area that you might find (the) MELVINS. “Curtains” contains an alloy of both elements of stoner metal and sludge, producing a thick, slow, rhythmic assault on the ears. Also clearly present is slight, but obvious, nods to drone metal.
CORPUS DEI - "s/t" 10" $9
This brutal hardcore band has been tearing shit up in Buffalo for the past few years now with ex-members of THEY LIVE. Pretty cool stuff- definitely harsh, chaotic metallic hardcore with some nods to BORN AGAINST, CATHARSIS, and sludge merchants too, as in 16, CAVITY, etc. Some hyped-up hardcore moments followed by painful, churning sludge with genuinely upset vocals that will create an outlet for you own anger! Good stuff with a cool silk-screened cover.
CORRUPTED - "Paso Inferior" CD $9
It's safe to say that if you are a fan of doom, sludge, psychedelic crust, all things crushing and bleak and ultra SLOW that you've been bowing at the altar of Corrupted for awhile now. Paso Inferior absolutely flattens you the first time that you hear it. A single forty-two minute epic of massive glacial crush, a simple but earthshaking riff played over and over in geologic time, massively heavy and rumbling and downtuned, pushed forward ever so slowly by tectonic drums that crash out and dissipate, a 10 bpm crawl that surges like a wave of molasses through the swirling fog of feedback and high-end speaker shred that swarms all around. The miasma of feedback gives a distinctly mindbending quality to Paso Inferior, surrounding the crushing riffage with keening amp drones and incandescent hum that becomes more and more oppressive as the track continues. The horrific, monstrous vocals growled in Spanish bubble up, demonic incantations recited from deep inside the lavaflow of corrosive dirge. When the track starts, the first couple of minutes are all drifting, distorted amp buzz and guitar hum, a buzzing burnt-out wash of swirling skree and ambient feedback before the track lurches into the lumbering blackened sludge. As crushing and tectonic as this is, though, there are also tracers of melody that appear throughout, gorgeous fragments of melody partially glimpsed in the whirl of Corrupted's crawl. And at the end, the drums fall away, closing the track in several minutes of squealing feedback and amp noise and gutteral growls, a black sheet of howling drone that gradually fades away into nothingness. So heavy and majestic, this is one of the greatest doom/drone/psych/sludge albums ever, and it's ESSENTIAL for anyone into extreme heaviness.
COWER - "HATRED SONGS" 7" $6.25
Cower resides somewhere in the audible crusty punk house between IRON LUNG and TRAGEDY. Pounding at times, driving at others. It’s always heavy, and it’s always intense. Amidst the legions of copycats and style-prisoners, Cower take healthy helping of various sub-sub-genres such as power violence, d-beat, noise, and melodic crust to formulate a sound that seems naturally punishing. They are a promising detonation of unforgiving, unwavering noise.
CRISIS - "Reactor4" CD $9
Reactor number 4 was the nuclear reactor that exploded within the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in 1986. It was considered to be the worst nuclear disaster in history. The disaster left the city of Prypiat abandoned. To this day the city remains an exclusion zone. The recordings on this album were made to create a soundtrack to the whole era, when the Western world learned of the disaster. A mixture of dark ambient and electronics assembled in ten tracks including sampled voices from the Chernobyl nuclear disaster era, coupled with distorted signals and electronics. The humming of analogue synths, the use of reverb, the mumbling of buried voices, the cold and desolate nature of this music is comparable to classic 'The Plain Truth' era Maurizio Bianchi with its depictions of bleak, industrial landscapes.
CROW TONGUE - "The Red Hand Mark" CD $9
The Red Hand Mark is the latest full length from Crow Tongue, the new "Appalachian Doom" group fronted by Timothy Renner aka Timothy Revelator, from dark acid-Christian-folksters Stone Beath. This is the second album to appear from the group since the beginning of the year, actually, the first being the amazing, Julian Cope-endorsed Ghost Eye Seeker that combined a spare, skeletal form of Appalachian folk music with tabla, handmade mutant instruments, and scorched low-end buzz that sounded like a strange mix of Skullflower's Orange Canyon Mind, the circular trance throb of Om gone acoustic, Indian ragas, and stripped-down country woven into a dense and hypnotic dronezone. Packaged in a cool-looking foldout package that is adorned in images of crows and angel statues and woodcuts of humans turning into birds, sinister-looking Cherubim and scenes from Revelations, The Red Hand Mark features six tracks of elongated acoustic trance. The raga quality that the previous album was so steeped in is much more subtle here, but still present; for these songs, the percussion comes to the forefront, and each song revolves around a pounding, layered tapestry of tabla beats and hand drums and the skin-covered djembe, powerful rhythms that move in pulsing circular forms and take on a heavily hypnotic state, while Timothy recites weird apocalyptic lyrics over top in that deep, almost monotone chant voice of his. It is really doomy sounding, simple and primitive and mesmerizing with that dark endtime poetry intoned over the circular beats, way more tribal-sounding than the previous album, and the plunky, meaty strum of the guimbri-banjo (a kind of bass banjo that Timothy invented) adds to the band's earthy, raw sound. Dark, trancey hypno-folk that sounds a little bit like a cross between the dire acoustic prophecies of Steve Von Till and Michael Gira, and the woodland narco-rites of Circle's Forest as fronted by Al Cisneros from Sleep/Om.
CROW TONGUE - "Prophecies And Secrets: The Red Hand Mark In Dub" CDR $7
Just like it says, this CDR features nine tracks that take the original source material from the Red Hand Mark and filters it all through various dubby effects and mixing-board fuckery, remixing and "reinterpreting" the songs. The resultant tracks still retain the skeletal throb of the originals, but now they are veiled in echoey beats and trippy electronic textures, and become a druggy, darker doppelganger of Crow Tongue as whirring beats spinning from one speaker to another, the beats sometimes seeming to run backwards, heavy kosmiche drones previously hidden emerge from the depths of Crow Tongue's mutant hypnofolk. The album takes on a darker cast with these remixes, as the new titles attest: "Undead Voices", "Four Horses Ride", and "Corpse Candles" are all included on this companion disc. It's pretty intoxicating.
CWAF / NOOSEBOMB - "split" CD $9
How can angst, anger, and rage be captured so brilliantly on tape? This Noosebomb/ CWAF split is packed with energy and balls!. CWAF is American made grind/sludge that combines thick, heavy riffs with a powerful driving rhythm section topped off with authoritative vocals narrating fury and despair. They feature an all-star lineup—most notably John Gillis (drums) who played with legends like Today is the Day and Anal Cunt. His performance once again proves that he may be one of the best metal drummers in New England. Noosebomb, who leans more towards sludge/thrash metal, also features a well known lineup with Jeff Hayward (Grief, Disrupt) on guitar, Randy Odierno (Disrupt) on bass and Mike Butkiewicz (Bane of Existence) on drums. This confirms that any band with Hayward and his suburban critique channeled though enraged vocals is bound to make an impression. The final track, “What is the World Coming To,” is a doom- inspired masterpiece, which is just a small example of the tremendous power of Noosebomb.
DAGGERS MID FLIGHT – “self-titled” CD $9
An ensemble formed by members of Spider Goat Canyon and some of their buddies in fellow Melbourne bands Computer Dying and Hotel Wrecking City Traders, as an outlet for the friends to hook up and sink their collective fangs into almost stupefyingly stretched-out jams of ultra druggy space-sludge-metal. Like much of Spider Goat Canyon's recordings, this is all improvised, and the disc features two half-hour tracks of massive, crunchy sludge riffs that sound like they were pilfered off of Houdini that are turned into heaving, repetitious distorto trances plowing through sheets of cosmic fx and feedback, swirling guitar textures and low, rumbling amplifier ambience. The drumming goes from syrupy slow dirge beats to frenzies of percussive free-jazz thunder, the drummer smashing his kit in a blizzard of cymbal hiss and octopoidal chaos, then surging into hypnotic motorik beats. Imagine a stoned eternal jam session between MELVINS, GREY DATURAS and HAWKWIND - sounds pretty great, right? This is pretty great. Each of the two tracks ("Less Like Concrete" and "Dust Settling In Lungs", respectively) start off with a simple, crushing riff that is played over and over again as they nail it into the ground, and as the band begins to fully kick in and the guitar fx begin to swirl around, the drumming locks into a heavy, propulsive groove and the music morphs into a metallic krautrock monster, hypnotic and grinding, surrounded by killer feedback solos and dissonant chiming rhythm guitars that actually kind of start to sound like SONIC YOUTH a little. Great stuff, another improv-sludge crusher from the kickass Melbourne underground.
DATACLAST / EARWIGS - "split" CD $9
Synapse-shredding splatter electronics!! Hyperspeed eGrind glitch violence vs. crushing cosmic electronic chaos! New Jersey duo DATACLAST forge an explosive amalgamation of hyperkinetic breaks and blastbeats organically fused to spastic glitch electronica and bestial vocals with their 29 tracks, bringing post-human grind screaming into the 21st Century. DISCORDANCE AXIS hand picked these guys to open their final show, if that tells you anything. For a point of reference, imagine the surgical grindcore of prime CARCASS brutally molested by KID 606, MERZBOW, and AUTECHRE! And shadowy Northwest decibel merchants EARWIGS follow up a decade long career of twisted electronic noise abstraction with 6 tracks of new material that tanges from evocative shards of crystalline debris to Mecha-inspired blastquakes of apocalyptic throb.
DAUGHTERS - "Hell Songs" CD $9
The gothic metalcore/grind of Daughter's second release is a welcome new direction from the band, infusing their spastic upper-register mathblast with a heavy dose of sweaty Birthday Party n' Jesus Lizard style post punk lost in the throes of demonic metallic possession. I actually like Hell Songs alot more than Canada Songs, as we have actual songs here rather than minute long blasts of controlled chaos, and the whole lurid vibe of this disc makes it a pretty engaging listen. Daughters actually have more in common with fellow Hydra Headers Oxbow and the art-damaged hardcore of Racebannon now, while retaining the upper-fretboard gymnastics, inventive riffing, high pitched guitar squeals, and hyperspeed blastbeats that had everybody flipping out over their EP and first CD. Definitely recommended, one of the coolest non-grind grindcore albums around!
DD/MM/YYYY - "Blue Screen of Death" CD $9
When a band can redeem titles like "Cancer Boy On Hash" and "Welcome To The Fortress of the Fluffy Love Cloud" you know you're onto something special. But when the group effortlessly runs through 25 tunes that recall Modest Mouse, Devo, Mr. Bungle and Zappa all at the same time, it only reinforces the old adage about judging a book by its cover. Blue Screen, then, has a little of everything: guitar skronk with plaintive vocals, carnivalesque keyboard goof-offs, wonky jazzbo interludes and enough ambient noise sketches to make Brian Eno blush.
DD/MM/YYYY - "Are They Masks?" CD $9
The follow up album to 2005’s Blue Screen of Death, Are They Masks documents the continued evolution of the band, with twenty one new songs. Ranging from subdued atmospherics to tempo-tantrum art punk, the album retains the experimental learning of the band, while poking fun at familiar pop formats. Taking influence from the works of Frank Zappa, Melt Banana, DADA art and video games.
DEAD ELEPHANT - "Sing The Separation" CD $9
Loud sonic assault from this Italian power trio. Dead Elephant have a range of influences that pass through Noise, Hardcore, and Experimental to define their own meaning of heavy music. Fans of Neurosis, Unsane, & the Cherubs will find this release satisfying.
DEAD ELEPHANT - "Lowest Shared Descent" CD $9
Heavy-duty Italian noise rock mixed with spacey psychedelia - awesome stuff. Throughout Lowest Shared Descent, the music ranges from sludgy metallic noise-rock, avant-garde, and industrial/ambient pieces. Features guest vocals from Oxbow's Eugene Robinson on one track and another with Luca Mai, the saxophone player in fellow Italian noise makers Zu. Recommended to fans of Unsane, Neurosis, Black Elk.
DEATHPILE - "Ne Plus Ultra" CD $9
Released in a limited edition of 500 copies, Deathpile's 1997 entry in the infamous PURE Series is a piercing, psychedelic assault of power electronic death. Headed by Jonathan Canady (also of Blunt Force Trauma), the nine tracks of Ne Plus Ultra are dense, crushing walls of electronic distortion swarming with detailed noise and layers upon layers of harsh swirling feedback, volcanic surges of buzz, garbled shortwave static, and horrific distorted vocals and high pitched whistles. Packaged in the trademark RRR/PURE style wallet sleeve with xerox-damaged collage artwork.
THE DEATHSET - "Rad Warehouses Bad Neighborhoods" CD $9
12 short, fast, synthesizer-heavy tracks often described as “digitized robot nightmares”. If this is the case, these hypothetical nightmares would include visions of pixie sticks, energy drinks, large, gnarly, leafless trees, cloudy night skies, full moons, and helium balloons. Sung in shrill, high-pitched voices that at times remind me of Gravy Train, at others, Melt Banana, and even sometimes, The Locust. Dig highly infectious spaz punk? Pick this CD up immediately, weirdo! Along with remixes by BONDE DO ROLE and DAN DEACON, the enhanced portion of the CD includes a live video of Negative Thinking, from the band’s stunning performance at the Mauled By Tigers Festival in Chicago and a hand silkscreened 10 inch x 15 inch flag (full back patch).
DEMONCY - "Joined in Darkness" CD $9
Demoncy is a long-running American black metal band, and "Joined In Darkness" is their third offering to the Cloven-Hoofed One. Demoncy creates one hell of a raw black metal album, and has a very filthy and Satanic sound. The guitar sound is very dark and powerful, carrying the excellent dark black metal riffing. A good deal of the material is fast-paced, and it all exudes the same eerie atmosphere which is tantamount in a wonderful black metal release. The vocals are so dark and reptilian that they conjure images of the most twisted inhabitants of Hell’s lower planes proselytizing the glory of Satan. Surely, this is the soundtrack to the nuclear winter which will annihilate the human race. Ixithra is the sole performer on this ripping disc, and he proves that he is at the forefront of truly Satanic black metal in the American and world scenes. Great artwork, by Michael Riddick, completes the atmosphere with images of human remains, decay, and dusty ruins.
DENTIST / CORTISOL - "Only Meat Israel" CD $9
Further proving our staunch belief that French Canadians are consistently producing some of the most whacked out metal on the planet at the moment, comes this split CD entitled "Only Meat Israel" featuring Montreal grindcore trio Dentist back to back with terminal art-doom weirdos Cortisol. Wait a sec...Dentist? Complete with umlauts over the "i"? Had to hope that all of their songs were going to be conceptually based around that most dreaded of professions, but it's hard to tell what the hell they're actually about, with songs titled "Suicide Sheeps", "March Of The MILF", and "No Pain, No Sandwich". Dentist's music is weird, crushing grind, a mashup of Infest and extreme sludgecore, goofball Meatmen style hardcore, bizarre samples, and weird rhythmic breakdowns. Kinda have the same vibe as fellow Canadians FUCK THE FACTS, tho Dentist are way sillier. Hell yeah, their 9 songs freaking crush! This split album turns even more confusional when we realize that the members of Dentist are also the members of Cortisol, making the former an alter-ego of the latter. When the Cortisol tracks kick in with their 3 long tracks though, things turn deadly serious, starting with the morose crust-doom blast of "Hog Tied 2k6". They continue to carve out an abstract, angular form of extreme doom metal, super slooow and complex, with almost math-rock-type riffs frozen to a dead crawl, their grinding glacial riffs littered with odd electronic noises and ghoulish screeching vocals, like a rotted out hybrid of KHANATE and HARVEY MILK. "Mobile Myth" devolves a crushing angular dirge into a mist of finely ground glass, and the closer "Evening Wrench Map" goes out on a somewhat melodic monster of a riff riding on a bashing drum assault. So you get two faces of the same band, one an absurdist ultragrind outfit and the other one of the heaviest, most abstracted math-sludge bands on the planet, combined for one serious dose of fucked up heaviness!
DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS - "Clear Light" CD $9
Destructo Swarmbots has carved a unique niche for themselves over the past 4 years. Their live shows consist of chaotic walls of white noise, improvised textures and battered instruments. Their recordings are delicate, at times meditative, washes of ambience constructed from countless piles of tortured sounds. Influenced heavily by 200+ needle-dropped, out of print psyche records, "Clear Light" is their strongest effort yet and the next step on their journey to artistic isolation.
DISAPPEARER - "The Clearing" CD $9
Huge metallic riffing infused with soaring melodies, streaks of spacey guitar and dense melodic chords formed into majestic hooks can be found on every single song on here. There's powerful singing, rough and gritty, a tuneful bellow that echoes across the pummeling, propulsive sludge rock, and every song has this moody, somber feel, which reveals the apparent love for JOY DIVISION that the members of Disappearer share. Catchy and heavy, the songs sound like a mix of JAWBOX and KARP and MELVINS. There are plenty of bands that heard TORCHE and decided they too could write "pop" songs. But these melodies are fucking great, matched with solid songwriting that really turns this into a cogent whole and not just a collection of mindlessly sludgy jams. Disappearer reinvented themselves here into something terrific, taking the best parts of contempo sludge metal and classic post-punk and, yeah, some of the 90's "post-hardcore" sound of Quicksand and combining it all into a devestating, deeply moving slab of underground rock that is as heavy and catchy as TORCHE or HARVEY MILK without sounding like either band. Highly recommended!
DISKREPANT - "Ex Machina Libertas " CD $9
Diskrepant is a Swedish unit who seem to like the darker, organic side of deep drones and musique Konkret. Using, subtle environmental field recordings Diskrepant dives into a Hadean vision of a world where people are half-natural/half-robot, a world where nature is slowly being squeezed by metal and glass. It sounds like something that would be very much in tow with Muslimgauze, Daniel Menche or even Steve Roach at times. There is a very haunting other-world feeling to all the recordings. If you like the creepier side of Schloss Tegal then you're going for the right direction. Cold Spring, Soleilmoon or Malignant records fans will find this amazing and magical in the layers of field recordings and minimal builds. Though it never become a full-on noise release there are very noiseish moments. If the dead can talk to the living this is the soundtrack they would communicate with. Packaged in a jewelcase with a 6-page foldout booklet with foil stamping.
DREAM DEATH - "Back From The Dead" CD $9
Probably best known as the pre-PENANCE outfit of drummer Mike Smail, who aside from PENANCE and DREAM DEATH has also bashed skins for Cathedral, Internal Void, and Pentagram, this disc from Hungarian doom merchants Psychedoomelic collects the 3 demo tapes released by this cult Pittsburgh proto-deathdoom band circa 1986-1988. Despite the mid-80's grungy demo production values, the music remains heavy stuff, intersecting sludgy caveman-thud Sabbath riffs and growled vocals with bursts of primitive hardcore / crossover speed...DREAM DEATH would've been right at home on Death / Combat Records in the late 80's.
DREAMS OF WHAT LIFE COULD HAVE BEEN CD $9
A compilation of extreme nihilistic sludge and black doom that will shred your nerves and leave you a pitiful, drooling mess. Featuring FISTULA, GRIEF, MOSS, RAMESSES, NEGATIVE REACTION, SOULPREACHER, THEE PLAGUE OF GENTLEMEN.
DREAR / GREAT AMERICAN DESERT - "Warring Against The Sun / Solipsis" CD $9
Desolate, Luciferian, God-Crushing Blackened Doom Metal. Born in the Osage Plains at the foot of the Eastern Hills; transplanted into the grey, rain-drenched landscape of the Northwest... Great American Desert is the essence of desolation, the sonic representation of Lucifer on Earth, and the emanation of the Demonic philosophy of its mastermind. A vehicle for hatred, disgust and majestic mindscape. Drear play raw blackened Doom, snatching glimpses at the futility of Man and the failure of the universe.
THE DRILLS - "Skull Death 2" 7" $6
Recorded in 1981, "Skull Death 2" is one of those very special records that any shred of talent would completely ruin. This shit is the sound of a million dust bunnies getting yelled at by the tweekiest tweeker in all of Washington State while wielding a vacuum. Shitty recording, horrible songwriting, yet somehow PURE GENIUS. The guitars just sound like noise (although the riffs are discernable) and there is an amazing out-of-nowhere, what-the-fuck, twice-as-loud-as-the-rest-of-the-levels over-dub dropped in at the end of track one. Like "No Rule" by LEATHER NUN, if they were more hardcore.
DUSTER 69 - "Angel King" CD $9
This German band traffics in a quirky brand of stoner sludge rock that at times reminds me of Kyuss quite a bit (like on the song "Upcoming", which sounds like it coulda been a rough jam from Blues For The Red Sun, but then there are parts where the singer's suddenly turns into a dramatic husky croon and it starts to sound like Danzig fronting Queens Of The Stone Age. Sorta. Duster 69 certainly keeps things varied and interesting on Angel King, switching the songs up between driving, punkier numbers, slow grooving sludge riffs, and a heavy dose of 90's style alt-metal. This might be one of the most accessible releases we carry over here, actually - I could easily imagine fans of everything from stoner rock, doom rock, Life Of Agony, and Danzig grooving on this, even if it is a little rough around the edges with some of the vocals at times. Holy sh*t, the song "Personal Navigator" just came on and this sounds like a dead ringer for Danzig! Yeah, I still think that the easiest reference point for this album is a loose, slightly buzzed meeting of Danzig and Kyuss and with lots of hard rocking pop-metal hooks and some moments of sludgy heaviness. Best song on here is "Nighttrain". And it's not just because I really like trains at night - nope, it's because this jams is the best execution of that weird Kyuss/Danzig pod-fusion that these guys are doing, with one of the more polished vocal performances, an understated hook that I find excruciatingly catchy, and some meaty desert-rock riffing that breaks down into a punishing sludge riff at the end of the track.
THE EASTERN SEABOARD - "Relapse" LP $9
Recorded straight to analog and only released in a vinyl format, Relapse is the realest studio recording of the Eastern Seaboard (Brent Bagwell, tenor saxophone; Seth Nanaa, drums; and Jordon Schranz, double bass) to reach the surface. With all the energy of the live performance, the tunes are twilit and forbidding – tough as nails. Nothing is held back. They take each of the 13 tracks to task: pushing things up and out with the fire of Coltrane's Meditations, the drive of the Chicago math-rock sound of the 90's, and the sneer of early Sonic Youth.
EL BUZZARD - "tranquilizante del elefante" CD $9
The latest rumblings felt in California, crushing homes and sending school children under their desks is not another West Coast earthquake. Its the devestation coming from the amps of EL BUZZARD! Featuring ex members of Californian legends MOHINDER and DUSTER, EL BUZZARD blare out monsterous riffs and a "fuck this shit" attitude, building some of the most cataclysmic and lumbering sounds heard since the hay day of the MELVINS. This six song release, with the befitting title of Tranquilizante Del Elefante (elephant tranquilizer) is a follow up to the bands self released, self titled CD which recieved praise from publications such as Alternative Press magazine. EL BUZZARD pound their instruments into submission, every once in a while allowing them to spew out a contorted JESUS LIZARD or ORANGE GOBLIN inspired sound, layered in impurity. One listen and you will be done. The CD version contains a video for the song "Pilar of Fire".
EMERGENCY HAND PUPPET - "Please To Enjoy" CD $7
Emergency Hand Puppet is a new solo project of Greg F. (Fear of Dolls) made up of sound collage and other noise experiments, created mostly from applying damage and torture to obscure vinyl records.
END THE AGONY - "From The Lungs" 7" $5
A cathartic, bleak, draining noise-rock duo from Brighton, these Cat On Form dudes bring some pained, negative vibes in a NOOTHGRUSH / CORRUPTED style!
ESB / THE FANTASTIK HOLE - "split" CD $9
A vicious double-shot of French avant-grind! We were already fans of The Fantastikol Hole, a drummachine-powered outfit that mashes insanely complex and jagged grindcore with equally confounding digital rhythms, massive blastbeat action, and a fractured IDM vibe that is somewhat comparable to the kind of fucked-up electronica beats that Genghis Tron employed on Dead Mountain Mouth. If you're a fan of weird, schizophrenic, futuristic-sounding grindcore, you seriously need to check this one out. So here we are with this new split album which features a whopping 17 tracks from the 'Hole, all of them new and exclusive, and just as awesome sounding as their album. Blistering neo-grind metal, with angular meaty riffing and bestial shrieks/distorto roars trading off, is torn apart and stapled back together with glitchy fractured beats, passages of almost total silence suddenly welling up out of a blasting math grind tornado, abrasive electronic textures, breakbeats, weird dissonant rock riffing, bits of French cafe music, samples of mysterious wind instruments, and weird unidentifiable percussive noises. Seriously weird and megaheavy and surreal, like Genghis Tron, Pig Destroyer, and Antigama mashed together with random transmissions of French pop and IDM and old hip hop 12"s into a super heavy and ultra damaged cyclone of electro blastcore violence. How were ESB going to match up to the bizarreness and brutality of The Fantastikol Hole? Not too shabby, actually. Hadn't heard these guys before this split, but we definitely dug their freaked out version of chaotic grindcore, which manages to sound like they take influence from both 90's powerviolence and epic French post-hardcore. Yeah, that might seem weird, but their 12 songs manage to pack in an interesting combination of brutal HC damage a la Infest and Crossed Out with majestic, melodic parts that remind us of bands like Gantz, Amanda Woodward, Cortez, and Envy. Cortez sort of did the same thing, blending brutal grindy HC with epic, brooding heaviness, but ESB are way more ragged and thrashy and savage sounding, while throwing in the odd electronic noise track, sudden departures into French pop, and alien sounding electronic textures into the mix to keep things interesting.
EXTINCTION - "Down Below the Fog" CD $9
Re-release of the cult demo recorded in the diabolical Summer of 2001, originally limited to 50 tapes. This CD reissue captures a new, highest quality version of the recording and can now be played at apocalyptic levels. Each track was re-mixed and re-mastered during winter 2005 through early 2006. Down Below the Fog is the Black Metal essence of Extinction. Eight tracks of unrestrained, discordant, obscure, sometimes improvised Black Metal. A thick, heavy production creates a strong atmosphere that clings to every facet, drawing it down. Guitars whip up violent hypnotic vortexes of noise that expand endlessly, and Vuel’s distinctive bestial vocals complete a truly Occult experience. Down Below the Fog is finally available - fully realized - five years after recording.
FISTFUCK - "Felicitation Pour Votre Beau Programme" CD $9
Latest release from these insane grindcore bastards from Canada! A must for fans of Dahmer, ThinkShit, Warsore, Nasum, etc!
FORGARDUR HELVITIS - "Gerningavedur" CD $9
These Icelandic blackgrind fiends have been almost entirely overlooked by the extreme metal community, which is a shame...these guys have been around since 1991, and their hybrid of epic punky grindcore and primitive black metal sure is pretty damn crushing. There's no mistaking Iceland for a hotbed of extreme metal activity, though, and even with a handful of releases under their belt, these guys remain a somewhat obscure band from off of the beaten path of the global grind underground. For those that do discover Forgarður Helvítis via their 7" releases or this raging, little-heard album from 2002, you get a fucking ferocious blend of frostbitten buzzsaw riffs, weird pogo punk parts, ultra crusty grind cloned from cell matter from the dawn of the Earache catalog, an endlessly pummeling percussive attack of blastbeats and thrashy punk speed, rabid indecipherable screams that are sometimes run through some trippy FX, with weird little vocal/noise interludes in between some of the songs. Imagine Retro-Bution-era Extreme Noise Terror on a steady diet of Immortal, but rawer and more freaked out. This is raging stuff, but the one real mind-frying moment of this album is the very last track, a three minute blast of white-noise wall that sounds like fifty grind bands playing all at the same time, a massive caustic blast of white hot grindnoise of Merzbowian proportions that slowly coalesces into a ramshackle hyperspeed blast of blackened crust. Rippin'!
FROGSKIN / TAUNT - "split" 7" $7
Finally this nasty, alcohol imbued and drug-abusing cluster bomb has arrived! Each band one song. While both playing the same style of dirty, grooving sludge, they still emphasize their own approach and blend. Taunt with a monumental, 1 riff-based but very varied song that crumbles every piece of dope. Foaming with rage, Frogskin on the other hand blow out a rumbling blast of a song, spitting acid in nearly 8 minutes. While Taunt are self-destructive and desperate, Frogskin concentrate on suffering, pain and anger. Imported from Germany. Limited to 500 copies.
FT (THE SHADOW GOVERNMENT) - "Guns of August" CD $9
Guns of August is a call to arms that incorporates all styles of music in its attempt to break down genres and topple governments. FT the SG's lineup reads like a list of old war veterans, with members of Ten Grand, Forstella Ford, Tornavalanche, and Head of Femur. Also enlisted for this recording were members of Call Me Lightning and Shedding. Guns of August is an album that allows fans of both BLACK FLAG and BLACK DICE to join together and share in a protest song or two.
FUNERAL SHOCK 7" $6
Debut EP from west bay California punk junkers. This is dirty vintage American waster hardcore, sounds simular to Negative FX or Bad Posture. Pissed off. Contains ex members of Spazz and Capitalist Casualties.
GATHIENS - "Nesh" CD $9
Heavy, psychedelic, instrumental rock music. Strong guitar playing with big chords and memorable melodies is paired with a backbone of sweetly technical drumming, with a delicate layer of cinematic ambience over the top. The whole album has a strong sense of dynamics, having an almost classical feel to it. Compared to bands such as Isis, Boris, Pelican, Tool, and even Pink Floyd; Gathiens possess a delicacy and intricacy that many post-metal bands lack.
GAY WITCH ABORTION - "Maverick" CD $9
This two-piece rock outfit cultivates a sonic identity that summons what the hypothetical raping of The Black Keys by Big Black might sound like. The result is a relentless and uncompromising breed of breakneck sludge rock that’s only occasionally peppered with a vocal drone. But the relative absence of singing from GWA’s approach is almost certainly by design, because their sound functions best as a pure, simple two-piece rock assault hammering out New Wave of British Metal riffs played fast and loud—really loud—with thunderous drumming behind them. If you close your eyes, you might find yourself imagining your childhood, putting you fingers in to the ceiling fan, it hurts, but it brings a sense of power and risk. Doing the wrong thing, instead of the right thing. Perhaps drawing blood, breaking something. Getting in trouble. This is your soundtrack. Punishing and aggressive, a tornado’s ballad.
GHADDAR / PANACEJA - "split" 7" $5
International split, GHADDAR from Allentown, PA and PANACEJA from Rijeka, Croatia. Brutal as hell powerviolence-influenced hardcore.
GHOST AQUARIUM - "Light Cannot Escape" b/w "Spiritual Cramp" 7" $6
Early Dinosaur Jr. meets "Only Theater of Pain" Christian Death!! Limited to 300 copies on marbled vinyl!!!
GOSPEL OF THE FUTURE - "s/t" CD $9
They use tongue-in-cheek aliases like Ultra, Alena The Burning Witch, and Koffin666, but Gospel Of The Future are definitely not fucking around. This Czech band throws it all into the ring on their debut album: painfully slow and grueling sludgecore riffs, sudden surges of murderous crusty thrash, blastbeats, feedback and pedal FX noise splattered everywhere. It's an approach similiar to the gnarly sludgeviolence bands that have been coming out of the UK since the late 90's like Blackeye Riot, Iron Monkey, Mistress, Charger, Lazarus Blackstar, and Helvis - total detuned skuzz metal. The eight song disc is presented in a sleek 6-panel glossy digipack, using minimal high contrast artwork to good effect, and it's a stellar debut that anyone into low-slung brutality will love, with an oppressively filthy, hateful feel. The vocals sound psychotic and are completely blown out and distorted, like the singer is shrieking through a broken megaphone, and the band keeps the songs varied and interesting by changing up the tempos throughout, charging through rocking noisy riffing and midtempo drumming one minute, and shifting into rolling tribal beats or super slow doom crawls the next. Some of the guitar playing on here is demented too, like the ultra manic shredding on "Cabal", the bass sounds like a jackhammer stuck in slomo, and the band makes excellent use of samples in a couple of spots to add to their nihilistic atmosphere. Crucial, crushing skum sludge with an aggressive noise rock element that's as heavy as it gets.
GRAVE IN THE SKY - "Cutlery Hits China:English For Hearing Impaired" CD $9
Yeah, you could call this Doom, it's definitely very slow and very grim sounding, but it's also so blown out and damaged and NOISY that it borders on a kind of psychedelic noise-dirge...seriously, the five tracks on the oddly named Cutlery Hits China: English For The Hearing Impaired are so fucked up sounding that it makes me think of what it would sound like if you teamed up the members of Wolf Eyes with the original Electric Wizard lineup, I'm thinking of Dopethrone in particular here. Massive black-hole sludge jams of plodding, pounding, sloppy slow-motion drumming rumbling over sheets of terrifying processed vocal noise and gargling screams, all kinds of messed-up modulated electronic wreckage floating around in a black filth haze, and ribcage rattling bass guitar vomiting up totally damaged Iommi riffing into a technicolor low fi spew pool. The songs don't even have real titles, each one is named after a movie ("Donnie Darko", "The Descent", "Straw Dogs", The Devils Rejects"), and all of the "lyrics" are apparently lifted straight from DVD subtitles of various horror and crime flicks; it's not like I can verify that, as I haven't eaten nearly enough barbituates to decode Grave In The Sky's tripped out sludge. The one exception is the last track "Scum", a blackened blast of fried feedback drone mayhem, tribal percussion, and mindmelting chanted vocals blasting out of other dimensions. Obviously, I think that Cutlery fucking ROCKS, it's sort of like a sludgier Gravitar but totally blown out and charred, metallized and completely drowning in 'Tussin, or Khanate fused with Hawkwind and Burmese. I can imagine the free-noise rawk heads into the sounds of Double Leopards, Gravitar, Mouthus, and White Mice eating this up just as much as the extreme sludge crush junkies into bands like Bunkur, Khanate, Halo, Unearthly Trance, and Boris' slowest, heaviest jams. Fucked up, trippy as hell drugdroom noise insanity.
GREY DATURAS - "Dead In The Woods" CD $9
A re-issue of the out-of-print 2004 monsterpiece from the Melbourne, Australian trio Grey Daturas. Originally released through the band's own Crashing Jets imprint, Dead In The Woods is a massive exhortation of lumbering metallic sludge rock, freely improvised amplifier noise and crushing riff splatter, and massive, sky-streaking psychedelic corrosion. The Crucial Blast re-issue of Dead In The Woods features a full remastering by Scott Hull at Visceral Sound, and will also come with a brand new packaging design via a 4-panel case printed by Stumptown Printers.
HABSYLL - "Habsyll" CD $9
Unbelievably heavy and slow amplifier overload from France! Two long tracks of uber-doom which is seemingly devoid of any coherant structure and exists only to open up a black void in your stereo speakers through which to suck out your very soul. Habsyll sound to me like a less happy-go-lucky Khanate, or Monarch without the hipster irony. Totally morbid! Lovely 8-panel digipaks with black-on-black printing.
HARD VENOM / ADALRUNA - "The Broken Swords of Despotic Villainy" CD $8
Two UK black metal bands come together for 74 minutes of black metal fury! Hard Venom seems to draw a lot of influence from all genres of metal: Thrash, Speed, Power, Black, Progressive, etc. There is even a little punkish influence as well. In a genre that has so many copycat conformitive clones, Hard Venom have managed to find a way to add a little variety into the otherwise stagnate world of black metal. Adalruna is for anyone who digs stripped down, raw black metal. Adalruna have a unique sound, but they keep true to the essence of BLACK METAL!!! Limited to 100 copies.
HELLBOY 106 - "Some People Make Better Looking Corpses Than Others" CDR $7
Hellboy 106 is an one man band, started up on 2006.There's no high-technology equipment on this project, just analogue sounds, a bunch of analogue effects and some recordings of machines, humans and animals.The whole concept behind Hellboy 106 is to transform/translate visual arts into sounds. Like Merzbow jamming with Marcel Duchamp or Nurse With Wound collaborating with Jackson Pollack. Packaged in a 7" sleeve with a sticker. Imported from Greece. Limited to 80 hand numbered copies.
HEX MACHINE - "Omen Mas" CD $9
Omen Mas timewarps to an era when grunge and metal were still lounging around in bed post-coitus, the early-90s heyday of Melvins and Today Is the Day and Cows, when Amphetamine Reptile could do no wrong and production clarity was for assholes. Every deranged riff is dipped in electric tempura batter and fried 'til crispy, every one of Trevor T's honest-to-Satan melodies is corroded in feedback. Heavier tracks like "Nurse Me Back to Hell" and "Godheads Full of Candy" crawl in the dirt and puke up mud. The more rockin' numbers drag the filth out into the light -- Hex Machine sound like elephants in tutus on "Black Skeleton" and "Vivisection," their bulging, gritty guitar tone stuffed into awfully well-formed songs. Hex Machine's metallic allegiances keep 'em punching guts, and their grungey tendencies keep 'em frying eardrums. Like Black Elk, Bellini and other graduates of the 90s noise rock academy, there's chaos nearly bursting out of the grimy pores of Omen Mas.
HEX SCREW / NEWAGE HILLBILLY -"split" CDR $7
HEX SCREW is an utterly weird and abstract take on progpunkpop/harsh noise/noisecore blitz made by 17 year old Sam Garrett of Baltimore, Maryland. This earfuck suggests Scutopus meeting Flying Luttenbachers and Anal Cunt in a hailstorm of burnt circuitry at some cannibal dance club. Baltimore improv-noise-folk-rock shaman NEWAGEHILLBILLY creates cool drugged out basement psych, with cyclical drones, beat/loop driven, minimal electronica/psychedelia created by guitars, trumpets, and electronics, over which drift dark,catchy melodies. Not too far removed from some of Warp Records more adventurous stuff.
HIGHGATE - "untitled" CD $9
This album presents a single 54 minute track that is an examination of manmade armageddon, warfare and nuclear horror as told through Highgate's noxious fusion of minimalist deathdoom, electronic noise, and raw black metal. Highgate's song-long epic doesn't even have a title, but the anonymity of the song adds to the fearful atmosphere that Highgate create...it's a real bad trip as the band winds through a dreary battlefield littered with corpses, moving from crushing detuned doom metal with sickening anguished screams, to plaintive guitar over whirring black static and into the pure dead void of delayed undead howls and shortwave drone that appears twelve minute in to the album. When the band eventually crashes back in from that eerie dronescape, a new riff rears it's head, slightly brighter and bluesier, a bit more catchy, but still devestatingly heavy, swimming in effects and feedback. Every five to ten minutes they move onto another riff as Highgate's World War III narrative unfolds, each one as heavy and grim as the last, shifting in speed from midtempo trudge to super slow creep, always surrounded by background noise and drones, evolving into a kind of triumphant doomy black metal dirge at the end with some awesome mangled guitar playing that really pushes the wah pedal into yer skull. Finally, this gives way to an incredibly catchy final ten minutes that become a kind of ultraheavy, doomed gloompop dirge, like a freaked out, blackened and crusty Katatonia track, clean guitar and post-punk bassline ala Joy Division wrapped around gnarly sludge riffing, finally decomposing into a loop of crushing distortion noise that ends the album. Highgate's debut is a killer slab of negatory, nihilistic doom that moves through a range of moods, all of 'em dark. Their mix of noise and doom and black metal is deftly handled, coming somewhere near a mix of THERGOTHON, FISTULA, KATATONIA, and BURZUM; definitely recommended to fans of extreme black doom.
HIRETSUKAN - "Invasive/Exotic" CD $8
In their debut recording for G7, Hiretsukan have combined meticulously-crafted lyrics with non-stop brazen hardcore energy. Reminiscent of Born Against and early-90's emo (when "emo" was actually indicative of true passion and energy, as opposed to being a fucking mumbling cry-baby.) All totalled, this amounts to fucking great, over-the-top, emotionally-driven, lyrically arresting, melodic political hardcore. Includes an insane cover of Metallica's "Creeping Death". From Brooklyn no less. Recorded at Cyclone Sound with Don Fury.
HOG MOUNTIN / MOSE - "split" CD $9
An excellent split album of pissed-off, pulverizing sludgecore from Hog Mountin and Mose. Hog Mountin drop three tracks of greasy, demonic boogie-sludge that sounds like it's being played by a bunch of whiskey chugging mountain barbarians from the backwoods of Alabama, clad in animal skins and bone necklaces, recording their sprawling, 10+ minute jams of psychedelic sludgecrust in an abandoned chicken shack. Which might very well be the case. This is slow, pounding sludgecore in the vein of Eyehategod, Weedeater, and Buzzoven, but with an even heavier propensity to take a riff and ride it out into infinity. Great song titles too: "Harvest Temple", "13 Horns", and "Dirt Worshiper" all drip with a sinister rural scumfuck vibe. Great shit. Then comes Mose, the Belgian sludge weirdos which features members of Neuthrone and former Southern Lord outfit Thee Plague Of Gentlemen as well as a current member of Kiss The Anus Of The Black Cat. Mose deliver three songs which are even more raw and low-fi than the Hog Mountin tracks; "Fistful Of Broken Nails" and "How To Kill A Pig" move from torturous, heavy as hell mud-crawling sludge a la Eyehategod/Grief to weird melodic, mathy breaks and oddly catchy choruses, fronted by a drooling, drawled blackened rasp that makes Mose sound pretty diseased. The final track "Atlas Shrugging" is even slower and more strung out, a glacial death-blues processional marching over heavy blackened amplifier wreckage for about nine minutes, and then suddenly breaks down into a very weird math rock coda. I still can't put my finger on exactly what the fuck these guys are doing, but it sounds great. Really heavy and crushing yet uniquely weird.
HOLOKAUST - "Into the Void of Oblivion" CD $9
Here's the long awaited full length from southern California's HOLOKAUST. Ten songs of genuine, hard-hitting d-beat punk in the spirit of classic DISCHARGE, ANTI-CIMEX, VARUKERS, HELLKRUSHER, etc. HOLOKAUST have previously release one EP on their own, plus three split EP's with the likes of ISKRA, DISSYSTEMA, and WARHORSE. The CD version contains all eight of the EP tracks as a bonus!
HORRORS OF THE BLACK MUSEUM - "Gold From The Sea" CD $9
Old school doom metal meets Italian horror prog a la Goblin? This French band came from out of nowhere with this four song disc that combines traditional doom with a keyboard-heavy sound that sounds exactly like Candlemass or Saint Vitus hooked up with the awesome vintage synthesizers of Claudio Simonetti or Fabio Frizzi. Well, not exactly...the sound of Horrors Of The Black Museum is vastly heavier than any of those old doom bands as the band doesn't use any guitars, just bass, massively distorted bass that has a huge processed tone that makes it sound insanely crushing. And I mean CRUSHING. The riffs on this album have to be some the heaviest that I've ever heard. And the vocals are awesome, too. The singer has a deep baritone croon that is part Ozzy, part Bowie, and part Dax Riggs, a flamboyant velvety croon that works perfectly with HOTBM's crushing prog-doom, cuz' this guy can really sing. He's one of the best singers for a doom metal band that I've heard in ages. And the songs are super catchy, especially "Dead Men Shed No Tears" and the devestating cover of "Hiding Mask" from The Obsessed. These songs have awesomely sinister hooks that have totally embedded their barbs in my brain, and whenever the proggy Goblin synths kick in, man, it's awesome, like hearing Zombi playing over crushing epic doom. The coolness continues on this disc with a pulpy Lovecraft/Weird Tales visual aesthetic that gives the package some kitschy charm, and the name of the band itself is taken from a cult British horror movie from the late 50's.
HORSEBACK - "The Invisible Mountain" CD $9
Super intense, and super heavy psychedelic twang flecked metallic post rock. The guitars buzz, and drone, and occasionally twang, the drums are powerful, tight, the instruments locked into slow burning build ups, some strange hybrid of newer Earth, Godspeed, Circle, the Necks and maybe a little Scenic. There's a sort of krautrock vibe going on too. Sun baked, a little lysergic, space-y hypnotic, repetitive, the tracks looooooong, with mostly a single part, that gradually builds and builds. The cool thing is it never explodes into a metal coda, a la Isis or Neurosis or a million other bands, it's all about the journey not the destination, and the journey is riveting enough without tacking on an explosive blow out. Gorgeous packaging, black on maroon, oversized vellum sleeves, inside, another vellum sleeve housing the disc and a printed poster with lyrics, liner notes and a strikingly detailed and garish ink drawing of a horse being attacked by wolves!
HOTEL WRECKING TRADERS - "Black Yolk" CD $9
Across the album the ghosts of Torche, Karma To Burn, Mogwai, Capricorns, Goliath Bird Eater, Circle, and of course, Zeppelin and Sabbath, rise from the tracks like hypnotic, post-metal leviathans. Hailing from Australia, the band have that fuzzed up sound perfected, with deranged slices of noise heaven that pummel you into a grinning pool of pulped flesh. The other thing that finally strikes you about the album is that it is an instrumental, something that takes a while to sink in; the riffs so powerful and fluid that you don’t even notice the lack of words within the songs. It is an album that occupies some kind of middle ground between rock, post-rock and metal, demonstrating an evolved interplay between musical styles that has produced an album of not only sheer volume and seismic riffs, but of shapes, textures, space, and density.
HOTFUCKACTIONTOTHEMAXX - "Fluff" 3-inch CD $5
All the noise you've come to love from this group, except this time around they decided to use some beats, imagine Christoph Debabylon and Slayer smoking Lebanese Blonde Hash inside the Swans rehearsal room with Duran Duran spinning in the back ground. Limited to 100 copies.
HOTFUCKACTIONTOTHEMAXX - "Lexicon" 3-inch CD $5
A somewhat softer side of HFATTM. Easily the best aural concoction to fall asleep to from this group. Somewhere between Athenor and a hive of bee's on Ambien. Limited to 100 copies.
HOTGUITARS - "Hierarkia" CD $9
HOTGUITARS are Teemu Korpipaa and Jyrki Laiho, who are both members of Finnish hypno-rockers CIRCLE (Jyrki currently, Teemu formerly), as well as doing time in STALWART, EKTROVERDE, and LEE MILLER...But HOTGUITARS is a far cry from CIRCLE and family. This is space-blasting abstract guitar noise, with lots of glitchy pulses and sub-technoid rhythms created from looped guitars, endless washes of textured noise, spiralling melodies, crunchy string bash, squealing bouts of freeform feedback blurt and pickup/fretboard mangle...but swirling into surprisingly pretty miasmas most of the time. HOTGUITARS explore similiar axe- terrain as K.K. NULL and SOLMANIA, so fans of those Japanese guitar/effects shamans will find much to like. But this album is also a collaboration with Finnish poet Santuu Puuka, whose stern, ominous sermons add an utterly surreal haze to HOTGUITARS axe abuse. Killer abstract avant-guitar shrapnel.
HUMAN HOST - "Exploding Demon" CD $9
The ten tracks on this disc form an apocalyptic science-fiction space opera of sorts, complete with futuristic synth doodling, strange sounds from various gadgets, and lots of singing / shouting of lyrics. A couple of songs were recorded live, but sound perfectly at home among the studio-induced madness. Cryptic, even bizarre ideas about song structure and sound keep things interesting. If you like your perverse electronica weird and obsessed with science-fiction themes, you'll want to check this out.
HUNDRED DOLLAR BAND - "Waves And Particles" CD $9
The Hundred Dollar Band is the new collective led by Alastair Galbraith, a New Zealand legend who has released scores of loner psychedelia over the years. Joining Galbraith on vocals, violin and guitar are his wife Maxine Funke on cello, guitar and transceivers, and Mike Dooley (The Enemy, Toy Love) on drums, spoons and fireworks. Waves and Particles contains live recordings and home recordings, captured on a four-track, half-inch tape machine in all its hazy glory. The album abruptly takes off with swirling drones and falling drums, a sea of metal strings weaving in and out of the mix. The second song is an updated version of Plagal Grind's 1989 "Midnight Blue," that swings out the core of the original melody to a shuffling and expanded workout. The record settles down toward the end, where a group ritual and meditation in "Chronicle Fireworks" creates a Jack Nitzsche score to a Manson murder scene. The drummer is killed off, husband and wife kick on a buzzing rhythm machine and feast on the gore with the closing "Engine Song," reducing the gristle and bone to a distorted glaze.
INFIDEL?/CASTRO! - "Bioentropic Damage Fractal" 2 x CD (DOUBLE CD) $12
Undefineable, uncatagorizeable, INFIDEL? / CASTRO! return with Bioentropic Damage Fractal,a 14-part, 2-disc epic of electro-acoustic experimental electronics harsh noise / ambient metal / avant post-rock that travels the extremes of density and sparsity, speed and sluggishness, length and brevity, beauty and ugliness. Hyper-complex and hyper-epic, the band weaves an engrossing tapestry of spastic electronic carnage, sweeping melodic bliss, futuristic heaviness, and swirling, hypnotic walls of sound. Concepts of degradation and the inherent instability of the organic are thoroughly explored in this cohesive and focused double CD. Features Colin Marston of DYSRHYTHMIA and BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS.
IN FORMATION: A TRIBUTE TO THROBBING GRISTLE CD $9
Star-studded tribute to Throbbing Gristle which features the Melvins, Deerhoof, NON, MSBR, Noisegate, The Spacewurm, Lesser, Concentrick, Radiosonde, Lockweld, 5/5/2000, Zipper Spy, Abdomen, Erik Core, Wizards Of War, Psywarfare and 3 Bloody Monkeys.
INTO THE GORE - "Bureau Of Disgust" CD $9
Freestyle grindcore madness! Relentless beating, political violence for fans of NASUM, REGURGITATE, WOLFPACK, NAPALM DEATH. This is their 2nd and ultimate album, since the band collapsed after the tragic death of their guitarist/vocalist Mihalis Xidas. 17 tracks of at light speed ferocious material that could firmly stand alongside most any such traditionally-based grindcore albums of the last decade. Beautiful custom-cut digipack of a man vomiting into a toilet.
INVISIBLE FROG - "Space Makes Noise" CD $9
This Belgian duo used a stripped down lineup of drums and guitar to craft ten lengthy tracks of sci-fi obsessed shred/prog/grind devestation, each track exploding into intricate mini-cyclones of progged out math blast, like Orthrelm taking a bunch of Botch riffs and stretching them out into five minute jams. Spastic, dissonant riffs race over tornado drumming that goes from grindcore speed to angular breakdowns, and the songs are wrapped up in super complex structures that get pretty mind-boggling. Alot of this might even be improvised for all I know, and when the band really get going into full on mach 20 mode, the effect is like hearing Flying Luttenbachers channeling Morbid Angel style atonal deathshred. Fucking dizzying shit. The artwork for Space Makes Noise is totally fucking insane, too.
IRE - "I Discern an Overtone of Tragedy in Your Voice" CD $9
This strikes with the subtlety of a sledge hammer powering down on your noggin. IRE combine slow to mid-tempo with a heavy force that pushes force with strength. They bring to mind HIS HERO IS GONE, in the way they create this massive wall of noize that has a crushing weight, almost an auditor (sic) destructive force. Dark, brooding, and abrasive. Then there's a part of this band that reminds me of the punishing aspects of GRIEF. Methodic at moments with corrosive vocals. IRE play the kind of music you listen to alone in the dark late late late at night. Or early in the morning, depending on where you stand.
JAPANISCHE KAMPFHORSPIELE / ARE YOU GOD? - "split" 3-inch CD $5
JAPANISCHE KAMPFHORSPIELE means "Japanese combat radio play" auf Deutsch and they are absolutely raging with their admirably busy grindcore which also has a varied attack and isn’t afraid to explore tempos not usually found within the genre. They dive into punk, death-grind and jazz and flirt with flashed of electro. But what should sound cluttered and clumsy kicks like a mule in fuck-you cleats. ARE YOU GOD from Brazil follow up with some dashing grindcore rock! Fans of grind that have lost some faith in the genre, definitely need to get this album.
JENKS MILLER - "Approaching the Invisible Mountain" CD $9
A beautiful set of solo electric guitar pieces reminiscent of John Fahey and Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. Miller picks and coaxes sounds from his guitar exploring some of his most nebulous territory yet through six instrumental improvisations bend around a thematic piece, "Babylon Destroyer," a blues-based guitar revision. Miller breaks up minitature guitar figures using space and silence in surprising ways. The result can be alternately confusing and alluring, but this record isn't meant to unfold in black and white. What you think may turn into a melodic blues piece akin to some Skip James number during "Part III" drifts away suddenly. What seems to be forward motion is misdirection. The drift of these guitar voices becomes Miller's language here—a deliberate, if often stuttering, talk from some ghostly folk-blues mantra.
THE JUDAS ISCARIOT / SEEIN' RED - "split" LP $9.50
The Netherlands' Seein' Red are back at it again with twelve more lightning fast hardcore songs complete with revolutionary political messages. New York's Judas Iscariot offer up eight songs on their side. They also play great hardcore with a political message, but they bring in a sort of emotive experimental flavor. Great Shit.
KADAVER - "Molested Into Form" CD $9
Taking up where SUTCLIFF JUGEND and SICKNESS left off, “Molested into Form” is the soundtrack to accompany our species’ inevitable (and, some would say, welcome) demise. This is the sound of human cancer, the sound of the last hopeless spasm of existence. The searing, painful, blasting electronics that make up the ten tracks on offer resemble the static of a human culture scrambled, all of its digital outpourings irreversibly damaged but still spewing forth in grand crescendo. Through the streams of machine-built chaos are disorientating samples, layers of interference and sonic booms designed to harm body and mind. "Black Death Return to Me" and the two "Project Suicide" tracks are where the assault peaks, with electronic white noise blasts sounding like nothing so much as barbed wire being pulled through your brain, or an over-sharp dentist’s drill going way too deep into pristine enamel. Modulations in the screeching sound offer a surprising amount of structure, but it’s still an absolute relief when the sound drops out and the tracks end. You don't really get projects with this much pent up anger anymore. Also included is a tribute to Jörg Buttgereit’s classic underground film “Nekromantik”!!! Packaged in a jewelcase with a 6-page foldout booklet.
KAITEN - "Turning of the Heavens" CD $9
TURNING OF THE HEAVENS is the debut album from KAITEN, the collaborative project featuring Erik Jarl (IRM, JARL) and Lirim Cajani (INSTITUT, OPERATIV PERMANENT). As would be expected from an alliance of these two Swedish artists, KAITEN is a foray into dark, dense, and superb harsh electronics. Taking their name from the infamous Japanese manned torpedoes, a submarine counterpart of the Kamikaze planes of WWII, KAITEN submerges the listener in a world of claustrophobic, shuddering tension.Distorted echoes of mayhem resonate against the hull of a steel coffin speeding toward certain destruction. Grating, shouted vocals, radio intercepts, and bombastic rhythms are crushed together to represent an inevitable fiery death and a hero's grave in the cold, crushing depths of the Pacific Ocean, all in the name of imperious glory.
KAKISTOCRACY / NUX VOMICA split 7" $5
KAKISTOCRACY cannot be labeled as just another anarcho crust hardcore band. They perform crushing live shows and are a long standing part of North Carolina history, having been a band ever since I can remember. This record is their first output since their debut LP on Profane Existence four years ago. As far as the music is concerned, they play crucial NC mountain crust and continue to throw in super heavy parts that transition seamlessly into melodic breakaways. On the flip side, NUX VOMICA throws together some more metallicaly driven but still equally melodic crust. Having members from WAKE UP ON FIRE from Baltimore, the band has made a pilgrimage from the east coast to Portland to ruin eardrums and minds everywhere conceivable. This record single-handedly bridges the coastal gap.
KATASTROFIALUE - "Tuskatakuu 1994-1998" CD $9
A 36 song semi-discography CD featuring unreleased and out-of-print material from this cult Finnish crustcore band. A must for fans of violent crust, raw-punk, and noisy blown-out thrash! Formed in 1992, the devastating Finnish ensemble KATASTROFIALUE (roughly translated as "Disaster Area") delivered some of the most pulverizing scum-encrusted thrash of the past decade. The band combined an unrelenting early DISCHARGE and SORE THROAT influence with minimalistic (yet BRUTAL) metal stylings, headcrushing speed,and excruciating inhuman vocals. The band excelled at incendiary songwriting and memorable,gritty (yet sometimes beautiful?) atonal riffs laced with acidic vocals that employed their native tongue....expressing nihilistic,transcendentially intelligent and morbid ruminations on life through the lyrics. Awesome,brutal crustcore. This full length semi-discography CD features an unreleased studio album, their tracks from the NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT double CD compilation on CRUCIAL BLAST, more unreleased studio tracks, and their material from the 1994 split 7" with FREAK SHOW."Tuskatakuu '94-'98" comes packaged in a DVD style shrinkwrapped plastic case and features a glossy booklet with lyrics, Finnish-to-English translations, liner notes, and more.
KHLYST - "CHAOS LIVE" DVD $13
The first, and highly likely, the only live date from the James Plotkin (Khanate / Phantomsmasher)/ Runhild Gammelsæter (Thorr’s Hammer / Sunn0))) / Tim Wyskida (Khanate / Blind Idiot God) trio. Multicamera live footage from 2006 hydrahead CMJ showcase in NYC. Edited and prepped for consumption by Mr Plotkin. Comes housed in a ½ fold heavy matte stock cover adorned with paintings from Stephen Kasner’s reckless mind dropped into a 10mil. custom sized PVC outer sleeve. All text on outer and inner covers silkscreen in metallic silver by broken presses. Mirror faced pit art DVD comes slipped inside a hand stamped black sleeve. Pressing of 500 copies.
KK NULL / JOHN WIESE - "Mondo Paradoxa" CD $9
Comprised of 10 untitled pieces & created via mail over a two year period, it's a most pleasurable match made in (absolute) noise heaven. Both artists bring their styles into the mix. Null (the leading force behind proto-metal-group Zeni Geva and the dark-industrial project Absolut Null Punkt) creates digital sculptures and futuristic oscillations whilst Wiese's sonic detritus and scummy audio junk adds a layer of dirt to Null's precise blips and tones. There are some gargantuan abrasive peaks of pure sound and screeing feedback as well as more subtle and deep layered pieces. Comes in beautiful full color digipak, designed by Government Alpha, typesetting by John Wiese.
KOEFF - "Liminal Looks" 3 INCH CD $6
Excellent dark, heavy industrial from this Malmo artist. This project is the solo work of one Johanna Rosenqvist, and Liminal Looks is her second disc under the Koeff name, with four tracks/seventeen minutes of pulsing machine dread and caustic, crushing rhythmic grind. For an EP with only four tracks, Koeff gives us a fairly varied selection of sounds that veer from harsh, low-fi industrial noise to pounding, super distorted tribal rhythms. The first track "Within" is a dense, crushing slab of blackened amplifier grue, slow oozing strains of grinding feedback and haunting melodic chordal shifts that sounds like a cross between the harsh amp noise of Cloama and some of the more zoned-out Total stuff. Then there's "Inspecting It Further", layering buzzing distortion and primitive electronic effects over this really heavy, thumping percussive loop that sounds like tribal rhythms being beaten on oil drums in the middle of a downpour of tape hiss and mechanical scraping, while Johanna does this deadpan disco chant over top. Very cool. "Transgressor" is another heavily rhythmic piece with vocals, but on this one the looped beats are drowned in even heavier quantities of noise and distortion, the skittering industrial rhythm clouded by deafening machine noise while Johanna whoops and chants in the background. It's like a Test Dept jam smothered in melted cassette noise. Lastly, "Preamputation" is a near-ambient piece with murky machine rumblings, ghostly spoken word mutterings, swells of grinding distortion, and an oppressive factory feel throughout. Really cool, heavy rhythmic industrial all around. The disc is limited to 500 copies, and is packaged in a glossy miniature sleeve.
KORPERSCHWACHE - "Sordid Revelations From The Cult Of The Nazaren" CD $9
Extended buzzsaw feedback necrodrone blasts that resemble the slow shrieking and crushing destruction inflicted by heavy machinery. Existing somewhere between pure noise/drone/ambient and the grisliest depths of avant-garde/mutant Black Metal (minus any semblance of percussion, mind you), this is the sound of a small orchestra of fried out amplifiers performing extreme exercises in dissonant annihilation, with occasional vocal proclamations by Elektra Sturmschnell. But believe it or not, there are some DAMN CATCHY moments here. Using tape loops, gadgets, distorted samples, effects pedals, and blown-amp guitars and bass, Korperschwache creates an extremely loud form of isolationism. LIMITED EDITION OF 150.
LHD - "Curtains" CD $9
John Wiese and Phil Blankenship make five tracks and 19 minutes worth of relentless harsh noise. Expect a shitload of abrasive distortion that rests more in the midrange to high-end, lots of swirling panning effects and crisp, biting feedback, and then some. On rare occasion some really twisted ambience will appear within the midst of the distortion, as well as a few quick cutups, which at times can make it hard to notice when things changeover from one track to the next, but none of the songs have titles so it's not like that's important. The recording is really good, it's right on the line between having a rugged sense of warmth and density and being overly clear, so it's aptly aggressive and forceful but also has a clarity to it that lets a good amount of detail shine through. The disc comes in a nice matte black and white slipcase with minimal artwork and text, no track titles, etc. I think it looks nice and slick though, and the minimalism works in its favor. Good stuff. I definitely enjoy the fact that with this CD the duo recognizes the impact of kicking your ass and then calling it quits, rather than beating you over the head for an hour, so the thing's over in a flash and that's that. Limited to 500 copies, so don't wait around too terribly long if you're interested. Those who like it harsh won't be disappointed.
LIBYAN HIT SQUAD - "Fiji" LP $9
Their debut LP! Awesome experimental punk! Think of early MEAT PUPPETS meets MINUTEMEN (with DK and THE SONICS thrown in). This Floridian trio mixes the aggression of BLACK FLAG, the insane musicianship of THE MINUTEMEN, the passion of LOVE and the rip-roarin' of THE SONICS into a unified idea and makes it work. Three instrumentals on the album further accentuate the talent of the band, simultaneously recalling the chromatic noodling of BLACK FLAG's The Process of Weeding Out and dark inner space of LOVE's "Emotions" ending with a grand finale sounding something like a psychedelic BUTTHOLE SURFERS. Limited to 300 copies only!
LOCRIAN- "Drenched Lands" CD $9
First full-length studio album from one of the most consistently good bands around today, Chicago's Locrian. Drenched Lands is a beautifully thought-out piece of music, from a gentle guitar strum/synth opening (not a million miles away from culver/Earth "Pentastar"-era territory) which cuts out abruptly just as you're becoming entirely engrossed, only to give way to an epic cavernous drone. The whole thing brings to mind some sort of disused industrial factory or barren post-apocalyptic landscape. Dark tones, noise, keys and the odd well-placed guitar strum combine brilliantly to evoke feeling of desolation, loss, a submission of will....it's almost like the logical conclusion of Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack; almost tangiential in sound to Earth's recent(ish) "Hex" record. Since their inception in late 2005, Locrian have been honing their sound; working and re-working material; finding the right blend of noise, power electronics, dark ambient, and black metal to work into their sound. Drenched Lands is Locrian’s first full-length studio recording of all new material, and unfolds with an almost narrative structure. It starts with a slow descent into a dark abyss, moving torturedly, gradually rediscovering the light, then leaving you where everything began - completely transformed. The hour-long disc is rounded out by an extended bonus track previously unavailable in any digital format. The black-on-black disc packaged in an arigato pack with a 4-panel insert. Edition of 1000 copies.
LOUT SOCIETY KURSE - "Waiting For The Apocalypse" LP $9
New LP from this French crustpunk metal band. Very good and brutal sound with a gatefold sleeve!
LUCERTULAS - "Tragol De Rova" CD $9
Killer Italian noise rock; demonic mathy heaviness, equal parts Shellac and Daughters and Melvins. Angular, noisy, and dense, Tragol de Rova rocks like a brick to the face, jerking along in a haze of flailing time signatures, heavy guitars, and exuberant vocals.
MAHAKALA - "S/T" CD $9
The debut album of this sludgecore road roller from Greece. 5 tracks with influences of Bongzilla, Buzzoven, High On Fire, Iron Monkey, Cavity, Sleep, Alabama Thunderpussy and Eyehategod. Limited to 1000 copies. Not a release to miss out on!
MANIAC BUTCHER - "Barbarians" CD $9
The first full length from Czech Horde Maniac Butcher originally released over 10 years ago in 1995. Now re-released with a bonus track. Fierce raw aggressive black metal that doesn't fuck around with keyboards or female vocals. For fans of Immortal, Darkthrone, old Mayhem.
MANIAC BUTCHER - "Cerna Krev" CD $9
Real fucking Black Metal, not for pussies!!! "Cerna Krev" is the fourth full length masterpiece from Maniac Butcher. Expect nothing but fast, raw, brutal black metal with relentless blasting and chainsaw like guitar onslaught and a violent wave of harsh vocals. The songs are simply cold, harsh, will completely annihilate. "Cerna Krev" is a big "Fuck You" to all unorthodox black metal bands.
MANSLAUGHTERER - "Turn Me Loose" LP $10
I stumbled across this band's Myspace page sometime last year and was instantly hooked when I heard the violent blastage that they had posted. Lots of stuff going on that I dug: the wicked combo of high-speed hardcore destruction and drug-addled death metal with bizarre electronic noise and hypnotic ambient loops, their crazy artwork, the fucked-up song titles. And the band name, Manslaughterer, total perfection. Turned out that the band was from Nebraska and had some of the guys from Wasteoid, the awesome grind/hardcore band that released an LP called Total Pukeoid years ago and was more recently featured on the Relapse comp This Comp Kills Fascists that Scott Hull put together. Wasteoid were a pretty freaked-out proposition on their own, but Manslaughterer extrapolates on their brand of chaotic power-violence influenced blastcore and turns it into a massive cosmic vomit blast of slurred ultra-heavy sludge, chaotic thrashcore riffs, screeching vocals trading off with chunk-blowing gutteral roars, harsh oscillator tones and psychedelic electronics. Fourteen songs, most of em clock in at around a minute long, and each weaves erratically from grind to sludge to Bastard Noise-esque circuit meltdowns. The songs exalt heavy drug consumption, nihilism, sex/suicide pacts, and other sordid subject matter with titles like "Oxycotton Mouth", "Weapons Kiosk", "47th Trimester Abortion", and the whole deal sounds like standing in the middle of a massive collective psychotic breakdown. Good times, and SERIOUSLY heavy shit. One of the reviews that I read for this record compared it to a cross between Bay Area powerviolence goons Plutocracy, Grief, and Bastard Noise, which gives you a pretty good idea of what Manslaughterer are about; another reference point is what cult hardcore/PV experimentalists Gasp might have turned into if they had become obsessed with old school death metal instead of breaking up. Ferocious! I love the album artwork, too; the band's logo is a nigh-unreadable crossover thrash looking monstrosity, and the album cover is a headache inducing vision of a cosmic vortex rendered in bright colors sucking in skeletons and emitting a gargantuan demonic hand grasping to the stars, all spewed from the mutant mind of Jeff Sayers. Limited to 500 copies, and pressed on green/black colored vinyl!
MARAH-MAR - "S/T" CD $9
Delicate cello lines gain momentum until they burst apart at the seams, textural noises are pealed away exposing an underlying song, guitars collide in a wide stereo field to cascade and weave together. These are amongst the most apt descriptions of Marah-Mar's self titled debut album, a collection of songs as memorable for their mood and atmosphere as they are for their melodic counterpoints. Elements gleaned from electronic music, instrumental groups such as Dirty Three, Tortoise, Explosions in the Sky, and GSYBE!, as well as a vast body of psych rock, jazz, and chamber music all contribute to an aesthetic that dazzles the ears and entices the imagination. Marah-Mar recorded in the capable hands of Tucker Burns, a talented engineer whose studio built in an abandoned church provided the perfect atmosphere to capture the group's expansive sound. This is music that rewards the listener who can lost themselves in the epic sounds and the cinematic imagery that Marah-Mar skillfully creates.
MARAX - "Feel Free To Fuck Me" CD-R $6.50
Limited cd-r pressing of the Feel Free conceptual cassette released in an absurdly limited edition wooden crate in the late 90's by Southern extreme noise and abyssal drone artist Eric Crowe (MARAX). Painfully intense power electronic love. These tracks are blistering high-frequency wipeouts with a nervous sense of humor...much different but no less adventurous than the cavernous blackened droneworks of his more recent material. 12 tracks of sweetness. Comes packaged in a full color glossy sleeve thats in an airsealed mylar bag. LIMITED and #d OUT OF 100.
MARKS OF THE MASOCHIST / ENECARE - "split" CD $9
Marks of the Masochist capture a dark melancholic atmosphere with shrieking vocals and cold raw riffing. Enecare brings deranged, blown out and fucked up Irish black metal. This album is nothing short of pure audio destruction from two highly original black metal bands today.
MARZURAAN - "Five Years Of Fuck All" CD $9
Latest release from one of our favorite proponents of drone/doom/dirge, alongside folks like SUNNO))), Corrupted, Earth, Khanate, Boris, Eyehategod, etc. But unlike many of those other bands, UK's Marzuraan always seemed to approach their sound with one eye on the sludge, the other on the pop. Imbuing even the heaviest and murkiest of dirges with crystalline shimmer, or subtle muted melody, or even buried hooks, without sacrificing any of their sheer power or skull caving heaviness. This collection comprises demos, live stuff, rarities and rehersals from the UK's most consistantly interesting, forward-thinking, and just plain fucking great band of the last decade. Starting off from now and moving backwards through time to the early bedroom demo days, this CD shows Marzuraan's evolution from simplistic droning minimalism of the two bass lineup to the full-on rock beast of today. So track by track, the sound becomes more and more simple, moving away from the progressive drone pop and blown out shoegaze drone of recent recordings to something much more primitive and noisy. All in all, Marzuraan do it better than anyone else going right now; be it bleak minimal droning walls of sound, controlled experiments into feedback or balls-out "post" rock, without the scene points. They sound like the late, twisted Black Flag stuff on a mid-period Voivod album, with Swervedriver on in the background. Played by Helios Creed. Totally great packaging by the guys at Thumbprint Press; three-panel chipboard sleeve, double-sided print, with stark black letterpress and clear varnish. You may know these guys' work from the Sunn0))) live album or one of the many Bastard Noise family releases. Also, a full Marzuraan discography is featured inside.
MASS MOVEMENT OF THE MOTH / THE CATALYST - "200666" CD $9
An eleven song collaborative split of apocalyptic proportions from two of DC/VA's most fierce and twisted young bands. Mass Movement Of The Moth returns with blast after contagious blast of synth-driven, psychedelic post-hardcore, while The Catalyst sludge through their latest offering of kerosene-soaked, in-your-face noise-punk/grunge. Song order switches from band to band allowing no side A or side B to keep the collective rock apart. For fans of Born Against, Pg.99, claymation, Camera Obscura, Melt Banana, and the movie Labyrinth (especially the scenes with Ludo).
MAURIZIO BIANCHI & CLAUDIO ROCCEHTTI - "Alienation" CD $9
Estranging sounds complex in five unusual recordings, edited and assembled over a period of two years. Fantastic collaborative work; file under: experimental, concrete music, deep dark noise ambient. Limited to 700 copies only. Maurizio Bianchi: tapes, radio waves, electronics, samples. Claudio Rocchetti: dusty analog devices. Mastered by Valerio Tricoli.
MERZBOW - "Merzzow" CD $9
MERZZOW combines animal concepts and deconstructions of 20th century music, ambient drones and a deep grinding groove, synth tones and harsh bursts of liquid electricity in a varied and dynamic 11 tacks in 70 minutes that is sure to please all you fans. It is even accessible enough that it makes a perfect introduction for your friends who have never heard Merzbow music before.
METH AND GOATS - "Attack From Meth And Goats Mountain" CD $9
Meth And Goats prove that punk rock doesn't have to be overproduced and glossy on "Attack From Meth And Goats Mountain". They rip through 42 minutes worth of post-hardcore dirt-rock comparable to bands like Transistor Transistor, At The Drive In, and The Blood Brothers, but with an originality all of its own. Meth And Goats marry an art damaged punk sound with an absurd amount of spaced out jams, numbing feedback, and distorted screams that reeks of beer and body odor. Raw, rough around the edges, and catchy as sin.
MG-15 - "The Black Album" CD $9
Brutal D-Beat Punk/Crustcore attack from Spain. Their raw, dark punk sound, their apocalyptic lyrics, the fact that they sang in Spanish, the limited editions of their records and totally underground distribution all helped them to become a cult band on the hardcore Punk scene since they formed back in 1983.
MILLS OF GOD - "Call of the Eastern Moon" CD $9
’70s-flavored instrumental psychedelic doom metal from Germany. Consisting of three nearly equal length songs over 63 minutes, the music on here is a blend of Traditional Doom, Funeral Doom, Sludge and Post Metal. Some of the riffs carry a swaggering, yet slow, groove while others are like an aural tsunami washing over everything in its path. Some of it reminds me, musically, of Ahab, some of it of early Cathedral and some of it of stuff like Earth and Ufomammut. Mastered by Bob Weston of Shellac, with artwork by Tom Denney.
MISTRESS OF THE DEAD - "White Roses White Coffin" CD $9
Fans of extreme funeral doom just can't get enough of this one-man Czech doom band and his ultra-depressing cemetery epics. White Roses White Coffin is filled with MOTD's miserable ambient doom, four tracks that range from thirteen to twenty minutes, each song a massive earthshaking funeral dirge made up of rumbling drones and dark atmospheric pulses, dark classical piano pieces, slowly drifting clouds of sorrowful synthesizer ambience, inhuman guttural death metal growls echoing out of massive underground tombs, and the guitars, dense and distorted, grinding out crushing doom riffs so slow that the individual chords hang in midair, the riff slowly changing shape and pushed forward by the time-stretched industrial pound of the drums. The lead guitars are really psychedelic sounding too, draping heavily delayed melodies and sustained feedback over the slo-mo riffs, the melodies infinitely sad and filled with grief. White Roses fits right in alongside the slowest of the funeral/death doom bands like Until Death Overtakes Me, Nortt, Thergothon, Mournful Congregation, Heirophant, Esoteric and Skepticism, although the classical piano that appears on all of these songs gives Mistress Of The Dead a gothic, romantic sound of their own, as do the bizarre vocalizations on songs like "The Fading Light Of Her Dying Eyes", where the vocals start out as the usual cavernous death metal roars a la Evoken, but then begin to turn into a weird weeping howl, like hearing some monstrous grief-stricken demon sobbing at the bottom of a black pit.
MOS GENERATOR - "Jam Room Demos Vol. 2" 7" COLORED VINYL $6
Two tracks from the vaults on a limited edition (500 only) black n' yellow splattered 7" vinyl. 'Step Up' kicks off with a Sabbath-esque riff, before it turns into a catchy MOS GENERATOR song, with its powerful, yet relaxed groove. Once again the band is in best shape, so that 'Step Up' is definitely more than just a second-rate tune. On the B-side the band pays tribute to riffmaster Tony Iommi, aptly named 'Godhand Iommi'. This is a clever combination of well-known riffs, but the band integrated them into their very own catchy arrangement. Fans of Colour Haze, Los Natas, King Crimson, Deep Purple or anything remotely 70's influenced will be a fan. Pull out the bong for this ‘un.
MR. BLANDING'S DREAMHOUSE - "Ninety-Nine Aprils" CD $9
Mr. Blanding's Dreamhouse plays late 90's indie rock. Female fronted vocals, backed by powerful yet sweet guitar lines, and held together with a solid building rythm section. MBD is midwest indie rock at its finest. Fans of Rainer Maria, Superchunk, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Mineral take note.
MURKRAT - "s/t" CD $9
Wow, the first album from this Australian doom duo totally took me by surprise. An all-female duo no less, Murkrat debut with an eight song disc on Aesthetic Death, who we know by now have a golden ear for strange, crushing new veins of doom, and it's a surprising blend of sounds whose nearest precedent (at least to my ears) is New York ritual-doom experimentalists Bloody Panda. The first three tracks on this album are brand new, and long as fuck, running anywhere from 8 to 11 minutes apiece. The other five tracks are all taken from their demo, and are just as killer. This is weird shit, kind of old school sounding, maybe some traces of Saint Vitus and Candlemass in here somewhere, but that classic doom sound is blended with trippy contemporary downer-doom that's reminiscent of bands like Thergothon and Skepticism, dark, depressive, and miserable. The riffs are heavy and definitely doomy, but have a strange, fuzzy, processed sound, and the drums are super minimal, lumbering through each song with an economy of motion that makes Murkrat's sound that much more trance-inducing. Then there are the vocals, dark and melodramatic but not overwrought, sometimes delivered in a sorrowful Gothic moan that reminds me of Yoshiko Ohara from Bloody Panda, sometimes belting out a blackened screech. Even better is when multiple ladies all join in for some harmonized singing, which happens pretty often. Lots of organ too, which further reminds me of Skepticism. The organ is laid on thick, a dense cathedral pipe organ buzz draped over the depressing Sabbathoid riffs and oozing amp drone, and when the pipe organ tones and delirious singing all melds together, it's goddamn intoxicating. Everything is drenched in a kind of dusty, eldritch murk, the instruments sound like their blurred by age and decay, the sound still definitely heavy, but the music sounds remarkably old. One of my favorite songs is "Morality Slug", with it's vaguely catchy verse and chorus of voices and fuzzy 80's synths, like hearing Saint Vitus playing in a crumbling cathedral while some drugged goatcult performs bizarre rites beneath a canopy of neon sigils. Quite awesome. The demo songs that make up the other half of the disc are even weirder, if anything. There's strange industrial clanging; deep cavernous droning; ultra-distorted riffs that almost sound like old school synthesizers, they're so fuzzy; creepy processed doom riffs bathed in murk and mold, stretched out beneath the awesome witchy vocals, still totally possessed with that classic Vitus vibe, but with tinges of weirdo 70's occult rock and psychedelic folk under the surface, turning their sinister sound into something that much creepier and esoteric. Fans of old school doom are gonna love this, and it goes without saying that anyone that's been bit by the femme-fronted doom sound that's been going around lately with bands like Jex Thoth, Reino Ermitano, Blood Ceremony, Deadmask, etc. will dig this in a big way too. Recommended!
NAPALMED - "Never Mind the MSBR, Here's the..." CD $9
Packaged in a full-color gatefold sleeve, Napalmed delivers two tracks of seemingly unending anguish. Power electronics ala the glory days of Masonna and Merzbow mixed in with the organic and bombastic feel of cut-up greats like Illusion of Safety and Chop Shop. Two tracks, 15:10 and 56:44 respectively, create an avalanche of outsider noise from this Czech quartet, fueled by metal junk clatter, terrorizing electronic noise, prepared and homemade acoustic guitars, treated vocals, and an arsenal of effects pedals and microphones. Think NO NECK BLUES BAND filtered through a brutal metallic attack. Friggin' fierce.
NAPALMED - "III" CD $9
From the Czech Republic comes this pro-pressed, full-length CD, packaged in a really unusual pro-printed, hand-made cover and bound in copper wire. NO MUSIC, NO SILENCE, NOTHING MORE THAN 'PURE HARSH INDUSTRY IMPRO NOISE' IN NAPALMED WAY! 80 minutes long. Limited to 500 copies.
NECROMONDO - "s/t" CD $9
Necromondo is a new project from Tidad at Mechanoise Labs, dealing in gore-soaked industrial scum drone that's been inspired by a healthy diet of classic Italian splatter cinema. Tirdad name drops such spaghetti splat classics as City of the Living Dead, Zombi 2, Burial Ground, and Cannibal Holocaust as his inspiration, and with tracks titled "Flesh Eater", "Theme For A Machete", "Feeding Frenzy", and "A Fistful Of Intestines", he crafts industrial skuzz jams that evoke zombie-infested streets, densely forested tropical islands swarming with gut-munching cannibals, and hidden halogen-lit labs that have been abandoned by their keepers via some seriously sinister oscillator throb layered with deep, heavy low-frequency distortion loops, freakish gurgling vocal noises, sizzling currents of electricity, tribal drumming, bone rattles, putrid death industrial. Sort of like Wolf Eyes at their most droney and hypnotic, getting baked and vomiting up heavy streams of crusty industrial splatter trance. Or like an Atrax Morgue jam mixed in with a greasy copy of the audio track to Fulci's Zombi. Or old school 80's Broken Flag/Iphar/Come Organisation tapes being collaged together with Girolami's Zombie Holocaust. Limited edition of 525 copies. Highly recommended!
NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU / EMPTY GRAVE / PURE NOISE - "split" CD $9
Take a look at the back of the jewel case for this CD, and where there would normally be a track listing or some other similar indicator of the content within, there are only the words “172 Songs” beneath the nearly incomprehensible logos of the three bands that make up this 3-way split CD. This absurd statement should hopefully prepare you for the ridiculously wicked blitz of freeform Brazilian grindnoise on order here from NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU, EMPTY GRAVE, and PURE NOISE. While virtually extinct in other regions of the globe, it would seem that the ANAL CUNT / FEAR OF GOD / SORE THROAT noisecore legacy lives strong in Brazil. NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU, who are virtually legends in this “scene”, open this up with 28 blasts of nonsensical blastbeat mayhem, brainmelting Casio melodies, entire riffs lifted from VAN HALEN and RUSH, and mongoloid thrash breakdowns mashed together into a blur of lo-fi speed chaos. Imagine early BOREDOMS action as filtered through the noxious grind of ANAL CUNT. EMPTY GRAVE are a tough-looking drums’n’guitar duo whose 69 songs flirt a little more with old school death and speed metal, busting out some pretty vicious lo-fi speedcore riffs and monstrous breakdowns, but the frequent forays into nursery rhymes, 5-second "songs", and roaring walls of distortion that barely obscure the frenetic, sloppy blastbeating relentlessly going on in the background keep this firmly entrenched in the noisecore/blurr orbit. The production here is slightly improved over NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU’s vaccum-cleaner eruptions, but it’s still no picnic. Mostly it’s multi-second riffblast on par with early CRIPPLE BASTARDS and FEAR OF GOD accented with moments of brootal mid-tempo crustcore, evil monk chants, old time spirituals, and fucked structures like a retarded NAKED CITY, complete with dual cave troll/rabid warthog/electrocuted housewife vocals. PURE NOISE wrap it up with what would appear to be 75 individual compositions, but since a CD can only have 99 labeled track ID’s, all of the PURE NOISE material has been squashed together as one continuous stream of improv blast violence on track 99. None of this really matters…what does matter is that PURE NOISE sounds like Scum-era NAPALM DEATH channeling old school Japanese harsh noise through their shitty practice amps and attempting to lock into some flesh destroying free-jazz thoughtwaves. Obviously, this feast of blast is only recommended to serious noise heads, old school grind freaks, and fans of truly adventurous/fried brutal improv. This disc is packaged in blown color Xerox graphics which make this appear more like black market Brazilian snuff vid product than it has any right to.
NIGHTSTICK JUSTICE - "Claustrophobic E.P." 7" $5
On their second E.P. (and third vinyl output) California's NIGHTSTICK JUSTICE bring you five more discordant cuts of raw and explosive hardcore! If you were lucky enough to grab either their demo 7" or the MINDLESS VIOLENCE E.P. on WAY BACK WHEN / EVEN WORSE you have an idea of what to expect: fast and biting hardcore that combines a range of influences and elements from early Boston and California HC to Japanese hardcore. With this new E.P., NIGHTSTICK JUSTICE have honed their sound even tighter and cranked up the power and intensity times ten, pummeling you with a nonstop barrage of sonic insanity.
NO IDOLS - S/T 7" E.P. $5
Five song debut EP from Syracuse's NO IDOLS. Featuring ex members of THE FUNERAL and THE DISASTER, NO IDOLS churn out five chaotic blasts of powerful and noisy hardcore, quite similar to later era UNBROKEN mixed with the sheer intensity of BLACK FLAG.
NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT - compilation 2xCD $14
This 1999 double CD compilation NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT is Crucial Blast's homage to the scuzz-caked grindcore/noise/sludge/speedpunk underground of the mid/late 1990's embodied in cheap cassette compilations and xerox-sleeved split 7" EPs. One of Crucial Blast's first ever releases, it contains exclusive outbursts from an array of subterranean sonic abusers, including BASTARD NOISE, AGATHOCLES, DAHMER, CRIPPLE BASTARDS, MACRONYMPHA, UNHOLY GRAVE, and loads of other purveyors of damaged, anti-social grind and noisecore, free noise and power electronics, spoken word, brutal fastcore, blazing D-beat driven crustcore, and lysergic psych-sludge. NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT is packaged in a DVD style plastic double-disc case that holds both CDs and a mega-thick, 64 page fanzine-style newsprint booklet loaded with band info, art, stories and rants. ARTIST LISTING: Mark Bruback, Cruel Face, Strong Intention, Bastard Noise, RPOD, SoIHadToShootHim, Katastrofialue, Unfound, Dark Skies Fallen, Retribution, Global Holocaust, Flammable Child, Depressor, John Bender, Aural Torture Mechanism, The Last Day No Human Voice, Agathocles, Daybreak, Puncture Wound, None Of Your Fucking Business, Dahmer, Samus, Mizuko, Cripple Bastards, Miseries AD, A Death Between Seasons, Macronymhpha, Unholy Grave, Falsies, Final Exit, JDog, Bloodstains & Bulletholes.
OAKS - "Bravo!" CD $8
Oaks is Justin Olsen's, from Tight Bro's from Way Back When, new band. In the tradition of sludge-slingers Karp and Big Business, OAKS have come to provide the soundtrack to your next bongload. Oaks are next in a line of bands that extends back to old school smart asses Killdozer, the hick noise metal of Mule, Pac Rim big shots Mudhoney and the terrifyingly awesome Karp. Misfit rock music that is loud as all hell, features yelled, unfriendly vocals and offers zero timeline as far as what the band is up to. Bravo! has moments of the Melvins' "Houdini" and Kyuss' "Blues for the Red Sun" in it but this is not slow moving stoner metal by any stretch, or even psychedelic, "Bravo!" rages past like a thunderstorm. Toshi Kasai, the Melvins' sound engineer for the past six years, and newly official Big Business guitar player moved around the nobs for this excellent debut.
OLD BOMBS - "Audios" CD $9
The fifth release and first "official" CD from manipulative sound scientists Old Bombs--members of Monotract, Fukktron, and Grass Jeans. A genre-defying mix of mutilated, layered, and re-sampled sounds that has earned the group comparisons to John Cage, Merzbow, Organum, V/VM, Pita, Christian Marclay, and Keith Rowe's work with radio. Group member Carlos Giffoni is known to occasionally collaborate with Nels Cline, Chris Corsano, Thurston Moore, and Lee Ranaldo among others.
ONE MASTER - "Forsaking A Dead World" CD $9
Like a blast of fetid black wind over a ruined landscape littered with bone shrines and post apocalyptic wreckage, One Master's Forsaking A Dead World sets loose six tracks of stripped down, harsh black metal that posesses one of the nastiest guitar tones I've ever had rip through my canals. The New England outfit unleashes some raw black metal hiss, no joke, with droning, repetitive riffs and that super brittle, razor-sharp distortion tone that adds an additional level of unfriendliness to the songs. The riffs are excellent, minimal and GRIM and hypnotic as they are woven over and over again around the combination of pulsating mid-tempo drumming and ragged blastbeats. Valder's vocals are just as blown-out and soaked in distortion, a hideous, processed croak; and instead of rehashing the Satanic imagery that has been beaten to death, One Master strangely enough reference the Dragonlance fantasy novels from the 80's, which I'm sure fellow D&D nerds will appreciate as much as I. And yet under all of the brittle fuzz and cyclonic drumming and esoteric imagery are some really amazing, eerie melodies that stand out against the harsh, buzzing atmosphere. Crude, bleak as fuck, yet surprisingly captivating USBM that wields shredded-speaker distortion like a rusty razorblade in a manner reminsicent of early Norwegian black metal legends Immortal, Ulver, Darkthrone.
OPEN CITY - "Birth of Cruel" CD $9
"The Birth of Cruel" is Open City's follow-up to the 2002 LP "L.A. We Revise Your Neglect". The trio still consists of two electric guitarists (Peter Kolovos and Doug Russell) and a drummer (Andrew Maxwell). This album presents two main differences. First, the pieces are longer. Second, silence plays a more prominent role in the music. That is, the improvisations leave a lot of room for breathing and show minutiae in the spatial-temporal placement of sound gestures. If it sounds arid stated that way, in fact it makes for very dynamic, although fragmented music. Each of the three pieces bears at least four different titles in sequence, hinting at a "suite" form, but identifying a clear transitional points between these "sections" is virtually impossible. Beginning with the "Assembly Language" suite, the piece coming closest in terms of density to the material found on "L.A. We Revise Your Neglect". Maxwell is particularly busy laying down a rough percussive terrain (Paul Lytton comes to mind, but a Lytton who would have spent a couple of summers with Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo). The shortest piece at seven minutes, the "Fetch and Squabble" suite presents two handfuls of ideas and climates flashing by in front of the listener's ears, like the stings from a swarm of bees, each prick more precise than the previous ones. The album finished with the 20-minute "epic" (the word goes well with "suite"; it feels like a progressive rock album) "A Valley Forge," one of Open City's finest moments. The trio manages to sustain the momentum despite several angle shifts. The last five minutes or so see the two guitarists conversing in a noisy but very articulate way, before joining forces for a quiet drone.
ORN - "Teeth/Knowing" CD $9
Orn are a new three piece doom metal band from Toronto, one drummer, two guitarists and a wall of amplifiers. Orn's doom is heaving and raw, the drone is delivered in snarling unapologetic straight shots. The intensity is built up and torn down with minimal structures with guttural screams, sustaining guitars and punishing insistent rhythms that force their way into your mind. With extended listen the music becomes impossibly heavy and hypnotic hitting you with wave after wave of hard charging, supremely gratifying, destroyed noise. Welcome the arrival of a new player in the noise world: Orn. FOR FANS OF OCEAN, BURNING WITCH AND GRAVES AT SEA. Limited to 1000 CDs.
OVER VERT - "Gagging + Swallowing" CD $9
Great BLACK FLAG influenced band from Reno, recorded at Steve Albini's studio. Churning, bass-driven art-rock with a singer from the SCRATCH ACID / JESUS LIZARD school of ironic detachment and saliva going all over the place. Got it? That's pretty much what OVER VERT has going on. Plus they do a cover of "What We're Made Of" by VAE VICTIS (pre-IRON LUNG).
OVO - "Cicatrici" CD $9
Cicatrici ("Scars") starts blaring its championing of violent hybridization from the moment you lay eyes on the cover art, which features a drawing of two happy amputees stitched together at the arm-stump. The music follows through on the promise of the image by taking a dog's breakfast of parts—doom-metal riffs, the sweaty percussive energy of hardcore, studio-based noise-fuckery, weird vocal manipulations—and, over the course of nine tracks, conjoining them all together into a freaky chimera. For fans of COCK ESP and BOREDOMS.
PANTHER SKULL - "Slothwave" CD $9
Panther Skull is the invention of Justin C. Meyers, whose other activites include involvement with Tone Filth, Devillock and others. Under this new pseudonym, however, Meyers comes up with a more foreboding approach. Here he uses tapes, organ and electronics to produce a quartet of sinister sounding moanings that echo and reverberate in some dark, dripping sonic cave of his own design. Sloth Wave has distinct elements of Mirror drifting through it, as supernatural gusts of electronic fog roll in and out of the mix and traces of feedback suddenly rise up like tiny voices trying to be heard through the ensuing gloom of Meyer’s bleak blanket of electronic murk. 446 copies made.
PEACEMAKER / IRON MOLAR - "split" CD $9
Peacemaker is a transformational harsh noise project founded by Richard Hoak, drummer of grindcore primitives BRUTAL TRUTH and TOTAL FUCKING DESTRUCTION. Iron Molar is Italy's most extreme power electronics/piercing circus. Fucking Clinica, the most brutal of labels in the new Italian extreme noise scene, has released all new studio recordings by Peacemaker and Iron Molar together as a full length split cd. The cd comes with 8 page booklet/special packaging and 3 stickers and is limited to 300 copies. Peacemaker's cover of 'I Not Pose' by Japanese noisemonger Boss Poppinski features totally fucking sick guest vocals by legendary philadelphia rapper Dirty Dave.
PEACEMAKER/ACTUARY/HOTFUCKACTIONTOTHEMAXX - "3-way split" DOUBLE CD $9
Peacemaker is Rich Hoak from Brutal Truth/Total Fucking Destruction, HOTFUCKACTIONTOTHEMAXX is Kevin from Fetus Eaters/Bacteria Cult, and Actuary is violent west coast analog noise enforcement. Packaged in a bad-as-fuck limited edition, hand-numbered slimline DVD case with mega-artwork (courtesy of Kevin Fetus) are two CD's for your noise-fetish pleasure.
PEDESTRIAN DEPOSIT - "Fatale" CD $9
Dark collage compositions of high velocity and fierce electronic noise, dismal piano passages, acoustic metals mantras, and ambient electronic turbulence cut with explosions of emotional violence and urban noir. Masterfully woven while still festering a raw and chaotic edge. This is the PD masterpiece follow up to the influential "Volatile" album.
PIG EXAM - "Contort Thine Cells" CD $9
On Contort Thine Cells, New Zealand native Loren Clements (aka Pig Exam) lets fly with the SHOCK VOLTS - heavy electric razor wire blastage kicking and screaming from your shreded-out speaker cones. Nothing dark, dreary, or mysterious here, just the unadorned sounds of getting shot in the face by a police taser from short range. Twice. Lorent has been creating the sharp painful noise for over ten years in both solo and group settings under various monikers: Downfeed, Zorac5, EggSpecies, Blisstuff, Balance & the Blossum, Mommy Won't Wake Up, Degenerate & Enable, and of course, Pig Exam.
PJ GLAUBERZON - "Cubicle Puppets" CD $9
"Cubicle Puppets" is an odd affair, a meticulously crafted pop gem, written and recorded by one PJ Glauberzon. It references an era when artist's made albums as miniature worlds, a place you could visit for the better part of an hour, or as long as two sides of vinyl would allow. The songs fit together like scenes in a movie with Glauberzon adopting the voice of a narrator, wherein he spins tales of paranoia, heartbreak and the mundanity of life's struggle. Glauberzon isn't your typical songwriter. Although he works within the framework of traditional forms, his songs never sound familiar. He is both a talented multi-instrumentalist and clever songsmith. His musical tastes vary from upbeat skiffle tunes and vaudevillian pop to calypso music and bar room piano ballads, while his lyrics read like absurdist adventure stories riddled with shady characters. Conceptually, he is situated somewhere between Warren Zevon and Steely Dan, as he is fond of both irony and comedy in song, as well as musicianship and studio wizardry. His arrangements, although seemingly elaborate, never feel dense or crowded. Like a good composer, he knows how to build on themes but more importantly, when to leave things out.
PLF - "Pulverizing Lethal Force" LP $10
Texan speed trial champions' first full length after almost ten years in the game! Members have toiled in numerous other projects like Insect Warfare, 50/50, Race Against Time and Knucklescraper. Totally maturing from their Gulf Coast cretin Warsore/Denak raw grindforce origins adding strong elements of lethal German thrash metal ala Sodom and Massacre style pulverizing Florida death production. A noxious cocktail made even more tempting with superior artwork to the CD version!
PONY PANTS - "Fives" CD $7
Pony Pants is a three piece DIY dance-punk outfit from Philadelphia, who play complex, driving guitar riffs over smart, sweaty drum machine tracks with songs about sex, politics, friendship and the intersections of these things. On "Fives" they offer up 4 new songs and 2 remixes by GENGHIS TRON and VYTEAR.
POOSTEW - "Misericordia" CD $7
Can't say that I've ever heard of a concept cd quite like this before: a grind/melodic death metal band attempting their longest (10 minutes, 53 seconds) and shortest (18 seconds) songs in one tidy EP package. The title track is the behemoth here- four chapters of time changes, incessant growling and mile-a-millisecond riffs. And "Silence Is As Golden As Piss"? Well, its the finest Pig Destroyer slaughter I've scoped in a minute.
PROJECT HOUSING - "V/A" cassette $6
Assembled one dick-spitting summer -- completely in the red zone, 'no tomorrow' style. Imagine a BOREDOMS and IRON LUNG collaboration. Imagine FLIPPER or THE SWANS on crack, speed and DMT. Features trash dog, public bummer, cell block, snakebite, rawar, pukers, jewish uprising, total abuse, deep jew (final recording), chameleoness, and marine rape. Essential L.A. scum / crew document -- more real and raw than any of the media darling / art world bands here. Edition of 150, glossy covers and labels.
PRURIENT & CARLOS GIFFONI - "Heavy Rain Returns" CD $9
New collaboration between Carlos Giffoni and Dominik Fernow. Starts off in an intense, minimal-beats Suicide style before Dominik erupts with classic Beelzebub throat contortions and Giffoni lays out blankets of loud chattering insect invasion over what has got to be the ginchiest rhythmic base ever eviscerated by Prurient. Levels of fuzz are beautifully eruptive and the second track gets even further into the whole "we're all Frankies/we're all lying in hell" feel. An intense trip into harsh noise and electronic sickness.
QUEEN ELEPHANTINE - "Surya" CD $9
Best described as a sprawling psychedelic space jam, "Surya" is the full-length debut of Queen Elephantine and a crushingly impressive follow-up to recent split-albums with Sons of Otis and Elder. Surya's five tracks stretch out to over an hour, as the band lives up to its name and presents a perfect soundtrack to the unwieldy march of a mystical elephant caravan across the celestial plains. They melt down the sounds of Black Sabbath, Sleep, Hawkwind, Pink Floyd, early Monster Magnet, and a variety of other influences into a cosmic swamp all their own, populated by droning numbers like the self-titled lead off track and lumbering epics such as the 16-and-a-half-minute "Ramesses II," which rumbles along almost religiously with its chanted lyrics and smoky atmosphere. "Surya" presents a dense fog of soothing distortion and repetitive progression, lysergic delight and a slow sludge of spiritual warmth. These are the bastard children of the Grateful Dead that listen to Swans and Earth and Velvet Underground and OM.
QUIVERS - "Once There Were Some" CD $8
Once There Were Some, is a midnight séance conjuring the spirit of the avant-improv scene of Brooklyn's underground. Unfurling the combined forces of double-bassist Jordon Schranz (the eASTERN sEABOARD, ex-La Otracina), guitarist Ninni Morgia (S.X APPEAL, ex-White Tornado, ex-La Otracina), and drummer Adam Kriney (Owl Sounds Exploding Galaxy, La Otracina) with vocal sound artist Marie Evelyn, QUIVERS bring together fast and furious with outer space massiveness. Reeling in the heady mixture of 60's psychedelia, 70's prog-rock, and 80's hard-core, this record cuts out its own piece of the Sonic History. A blend of Sonny Sharrock/Boredoms/Black Flag-influenced frenzied guitar and acoustic sounds of every color, it can be menacing one moment, and blissfully spacious the next.
RASPATUL - "Devils In Renewed Birth" CD $9
RASPATUL unleashes "Devils In Renewed Birth", an entire collection of their thrashing Death Metal assault from their best active years of 2000-2004. "Devils In Renewed Birth" is an album for the old school Metalheads and with a distinct Blackened Thrash flavour to it; fans of early Kreator, Slayer, and Possessed should enjoy this release. Mastered by legendary guitarist James Murphy (Death, Obituary, Testament, Disincarnate) at the Safehouse Productions (USA) and also features a brand new artwork and layout by Swedish graphic designer Tomas Andersson (Freevil / ex-Denata).
RATIONAL ANIMALS - "Perception Becomes Reality" 7" $5
Killer hardcore punk from this Rochester, NY band. These guys have the little Greg Ginn riffs down pat, making them sound a lot like ANNIHILATION TIME or B'LAST, though Rational Animals have a bit more straightforward hardcore in their sound than those bands. If you're addicted to that BLACK FLAG riffage than this is is a must.
RAW POWER - "Screams from the Gutter / After Your Brain" CD $9
Classic Italian proto-Thrash and HC holocaust from 1984! You are not allowed to call yourself a punk without this CD! Originally recorded in Indianapolis, Indiana, by ZERO BOY Paul Mahern and Italy's RAW POWER! This "2 Albums on 1 Disc" CD is 30 Songs, 54:14 minutes of pissed-off Anarchy in the vein of GBH, CONFLICT, and MOTORHEAD!
RAW POWER - "Live DVD & Reptile House" CD + DVD $13
DOUBLE-DISC SET featuring "Reptile House" CD (audio, 17 Songs), and "Live" DVD with tour documentary plus lots of extras! Old-School Italian Thrash / HC anarchy! In 1998 RAW POWER had several new songs ready for release and began shopping for a label in the U.S. to release them. The end result was "Reptile House", their greatest album yet! Three American tours in support of the album followed. This CD has been remastered and now includes a bonus DVD with the hour-long 1998 "Big Ass" Tour documentary, plus extras that include live at the Olympic Auditorium in 1984, live in Phoenix 1986 (when they opened for Slayer/Venom), live and in the studio Italy 1983-85, and live in 2000 in Nogales, Mexico and Gilman Street, Berkeley. Over an 2 hours of RAW POWER footage you wont want to miss!
RED SPAROWES / GREGOR SAMSA - "Split" CD $9
RED SPAROWES return with another amazing record, this time being joined by GREGOR SAMSA for this split CD release. Richmond, VA's GREGOR SAMSA shine bright here with two tracks of serene and dark ambient/rock music. Haunting and beautifully sung male and female vocals intertwine with atmospheric guitars, keys and string arrangements. Los Angeles, CA's RED SPAROWES deliver two phenomenal tracks of their moving and intense instrumental creations. One exclusive new track is joined by a phenomenal demo version of a song found on their "At The Soundless Dawn" debut... and with members of ISIS and NEUROSIS behind this ship, RED SPAROWES continue to steer into amazing directions. In fact, both bands harken back to the glory days of shoegazing's past without compromising their modern spin on powerful and innovative independent music.
THE RIGHT MOVES - "The End of the Empire" CD $9
Second album for the Brooklyn trio led by guitarist Ninni Morgia (ex White Tornado, ex La Otracina), in this recording with Stuart Popejoy (Bassoon) on bass and Kevin Shea (ex Storm and Stress, Talibam!) on drums. The eight tracks open up to psychedelic and ambient music besides free jazz, marked by Ninni Morgia’s visionary guitar, Stuart Popejoy’s pulsating industrial bass and Kevin Shea’s pyrotechnic drums that haven’t sounded so inspired ever since his Storm and Stress era. Fans of John Coltrane, Faust, Throbbing Gristle and US Maple among others will love this album.
ROBOT VS RABBIT - "Trading The Witch For The Devil" CD $9
The debut from long-gone North Carolina amplifier thugs Robot Vs. Rabbit, a massive 56 minute blowout of satanic feedback deathdrone and mangled occult dirge riffage that takes the heaviest powerdrones of Sunn O))), Skullflower, and Boris, dunks them in black oil, and runs it through the industrial creep of Throbbing Gristle, Factrix, or SPK. These are some of the murkiest speaker tones to hit our ears, total black basement amp chant and low-end feedback stroke that washes over you like a dead tide, but propelled sideways by chattering, smoking tape loops and obscured Japanese traditional melodies. Yep, Trading The Witch For The Devil is a high point in evil primitive psychedelic sludge, and the more we bomb our skulls with this album, the more we realize that this is like a kosmiche black-mass take on the missing link between the Midwestern noise skulk heralded by the likes of Wolf Eyes, Universal Indians, Hair Police, Gravitar... etc., Skullflower at their most brutal, the evil tarpit hate of Southern Lord's most extreme artists (Sunn O))), Khanate, etc), and the dense walls of sound of Soundtracks era SWANS. This concept will no doubt get many of you hot n' bothered, as it well should. Psychedelic and metallic, heavy as fuck but totally amorphous and otherworldy and evil.
R.Y.N. - "Astral Death" CD $9
This is the first full length from the British duo R.Y.N., which features Pete Burn from Marzuraan and Dean Glaister from the harsh noise/cutup project Romance. I have yet to hear Romance, but Marzuraan is a band that I've already been into for awhile. Their slow mantric sludge rock is seriously heavy stuff that references pure molten doom metal, 90's mathrock, and even the sweeping distorted shoegazer of Swervedriver and Loop's hypnotic drone rock. So from the members involved, there was little doubt that R.Y.N. was going to be some sort of heavy. Bringing together the distorted guitar textures and abstract noise of each members other project, this six song disc is just under an hour of all-engulfing amplifier-melting ambient raga sludge. Each track is a vast ocean of swirling feedback drone, with layer upon layer of rumbling amp hiss and grinding low-end stretching out for eternity, as if an army of guitars have been set against massive amplifier stacks and left to roar and hum while ghostly melodies and keening high-end skree ride on the black waves of slowly shifting, richly textured drone. Really massive ritual powerdrones, with some tracks like "The Cleansing" and the epic fifteen minute "Mind Over Mind" taking on Sunn O)))-like proportions while bathing in sheets of soft white-noise hiss and ominous minor-key chordal washes. This is amazingly thick and powerful drone music of the darkest breed, crushingly heavy and so hypnotic that I can't help but zone out every time I play it. Imagine a blackened, demonic Sunroof crossed with Earth 2, or Skullflower's Tribulation stretched out into infinite jet-roars of tar-thick thrum.
RUST IONICS - "Moving/Pictures" 12" LP $9
Following a stream of craftily packaged CD-R releases from his various other free/psych/improv projects (La Otracina, Owl Sounds Exploding Galaxy, Blizzards, etc), Colour Sounds operator and freak-out drummer extraordinaire Adam Kriney opts to get LOUD with this killer LP from the free-improv/grind/jazz brut ensemble that has Kriney pillaging his drumkit alongside Dual members Ed Chang (alto sax) and Doug Theriault (guitars). Totally blinding power-improv workouts with Chang's extended sax eruptions spitting out a volley of white-hot squeaks and squeals like machine sparks over a din of crashing, blastbeating drumming and textured guitar noise. The trio frequent puts on the brakes and wraps themselves around some mesmerizing free-jazz, but most of Moving/Pictures is intense, insane primal skronk conjured from the same fires that birthed the likes of Last Exit, Painkiller, Ruins, Borbetomagus, and Peter Brotzmann's heavier material, and meant to be played LOUD. Presented on transparent blue vinyl in a clear plastic sleeve with a plastic sticker inscribed with the band logo and minimal album credits, in a limited edition of 311 copies.
SADVILLE - "Make Ready The Cross" LP $9
"Make Ready The Cross" is 8 songs from this Tennessee five-piece that play stoned out political hardcore/metal. His Hero Is Gone, Zann, Eyehategod and Catharsis are all starting points to describe the sound of this very unique LP. Recorded by Jay Masterson at the Jamroom in South Carolina. Limited edition pressing of 500 copies!
SANCTIONS / DAWN - "split" 10" $10
Dawn and Sanctions return with the follow-up to their 2008 albums. This record sees both bands developing into way more menacing creatures. Brutal blasts of hardcore, black metal, and doom! Dawn's tracks descend further down the path of depressive art-thrash. Sanctions' songs increase the extremity of their breakneck speed neo-crust agenda. Pressed on thick black 10" wax with screenprinted inserts and a digital download of the tracks included.
SATURNALIA TEMPLE - "Ur" CD $9
Saturnalia Temple was formed by members of Count Raven, Therion, Nocturnal Rites, Dead Congregation and Kaamos who blend together a love of old dark psychedelia and doom metal, but their blueprint is entirely different. The band emerged in 2007 with a five song demo that eneded up getting released as an official cassette release through the Greek label Nuclear Winter Records, and that tape has been building a buzz within the underground doom scene ever since with it's gnarly, crushing drug-doom. That led to Psychedoomelic stepping in to release Ur on CD, and this killer edition features all of the music from the demo and packages it up nicely in a six-panel digipack that keeps the rudimentary metal demo aesthetic intact with high-contrast primitive artwork and low-rent typewritten lyrics. The first thing that I noticed when I heard Saturnalia Temple is how much these guys sound like Electric Wizard. Their soporific riffs are gnarled and immensely downtuned, and they have a similiar satanic black stickiness as what the Wiz was doing on their classic Dopethrone album. There's buzzsaw blower bass and grisly sludge riffs stretched into infinity, reducting Sabbathoid blooze riffs into a noxious black tar that leave behind massive snailtrails of bongresin and liquified brainmatter across the stretched out jams as the band loses themselves in pulverizing psychedelic groove and relentless hypno-riff mantras. Fans of Dopethrone will most likely go apeshit for these guys. However, as you get deeper into the songs, it becomes apparent that Saturnalia Temple are actually doing something a little different. The band break out some monolithic drones, spewing out huge globs of buzzing amplifier stasis that would make Dylan Carlson proud, especially on the glacial ur-drone of the opener "Enter The Temple Of Saturn". There are these slimy, primitive death metal parts that pop up in a couple of places, there's some tripped-out delayed grunt vocals echoing off of the cavern walls of the song "Mount Meru Is Tall" that sounds like Tom G. Warrior blasted on acid, and much moreso than Deadmask, you can REALLY hear the influence of 70's occult rock like Black Widow and Coven. Not just that, but there's also a bit of 60's psych influence going on here, like when the vocalist breaks out into drugged out singing on songs like "Devils Eyes" and "Dreaming Out Death", and in the killer acid-rock soloing that the guitarist smears across a couple of tracks. Lyrically, Saturnalia Temple are fully immersed in bizarre satanic babble, and they invoke a weird vibe through both their lyrics and music that turns this into a killer slab of narcotized satanic psychdoom.
SEAWHORES - "Opus Magnanimous" CD $9
Seawhores are a weird band from Minneapolis that revolves around the core duo of Adam Marks and Cody Weigel, who bring in a small army of guest musicians and friends to aid them in constructing their sprawling instrumental songs. Adam Marks is a former member of the band Vaz, and Opus Magnanimous also features ex-Cows drummer Freddy Votel sitting in on skins here, so I was thinking that this was going to be some kind of heavy, post-Am Rep noise rock. It is heavy, at least in some parts, and there are some elements of full-blown noise rock that show up throughout the album, but Seawhores put together a sound on this disc that is way beyond easy catagorization, and it's really pretty weird. First off, the CD is made up of a single thirty-three minute track that is divided into several different movements; the whole track is instrumental, and the music goes all over the place. Opus Magnanimous opens with a music box playing the theme from A Love Story while trippy noises and caustic grinding gradually overtakes the melody, and then suddenly shifts into creepy dark ambience, with booming piano chords ringing out over sounds of dripping water and weird fluttering noises. An acoustic guitar enters, playing a dark folky melody and joined by what sounds like harp and percussion and a mangy distorted guitar. The song then shifts back into dark, Lustmordian ambience before changing direction again as it lurches into a blown-out, corrosive noise rock jam, the guitars belting out some vicious riffs over burly drumming, kinda Melvins-y but splattered with feedback and noise. The band twists and turns, turning their noise rock into an extended jam that falls into krautrock style repetition when the guitar and drums tighten up and lock in on a single skronky groove that goes on for more than five minutes, then fades off once again into dark, rumbling ambience. The album becomes more abstract from this point on, moving through dark washes of bowed cymbals and metallic drones, eerie landscapes of metallic shimmer, field recordings and distant machine sounds, growing more noisy and chaotic and turning into a weird industrial metal-percussion jam, almost becoming a darker, dronier Ramleh with warbling feedback and plodding basslines joining the din. The last ten minutes of the track see the drums kick in and the noisy, industrial racket evolves into a heavy, feedback-splattered noise rock jam a la Grey Daturas, the guitar chugging on formless metallic riffing, the drummer spitting out energetic free-jazz clatter through the thickening fog of amplifier vomit and low-end sludge. Very strange and abstract, not quite noise rock, not quite industrial, but some weird mix of the two, as surreal as it is heavy and noisy, like what I imagine an Amphetimine Reptile album might have sounded like if it was recorded and mixed by Steven Stapleton from Nurse With Wound. Packaged in a digipack with an eight page booklet, and both booklet and digipack are filled with weird childlike drawings of animals.
SERVILE SECT - "Stratospheric Passenger" CD $9
This is a bizarre and hauntingly beautiful slab of alien black metal. Not sure what else to call it, it's definitely black metal, but it's weirdly blissy and electronic sounding, more like ALCEST or AMESEOURS than old school grimnity, but even then, it's still weirder, like it must have been played by robots or insects, or some massive black metal machine assembled beneath the surface of some mysterious moon. The sound of Servile Sect is epic, and majestic, the guitars glistening sheets of sound, the surface of that sound peppered with bits of electronic shimmer, causing the long drawn out riffery to reflect and refract, tiny little sonic events occurring every second, the surface alive and constantly squirming and changing color, but viewed from afar, it's simply a blown out undulating buzz. Those guitars are digitized and processed, spread into thick smears of warm glowing whir, the riffs barely discernible beneath the constant roar of Servile Sect's sonic swirl. There are also elements of doom mixed in, deep low tuned guitars explode underneath the drugged-out-haze and strap the listener in. A psyched out ride into a dark and lifeless universe. Another out of left field immediate black bliss classic. Fans of the new wave of droned out dreamy metal, black and otherwise: NADJA, ANGELIC PROCESS, AMESEOURS, ALCEST, etc. will dig this, as will dronelords who like their drones heavy and loud and yeah, a bit metallic. Limited to 200 CDs.
SHALLNOTKILL - "2001-2004" 2xCD $12
This double disc set collects all of the recorded studio work from French hardcore/indie/noise group SHALLNOTKILL, along with an entire disc of "deconstructions" of the bands songs. From what little we have been able to SHALLNOTKILL seem to have been a part of French emo/hardcore scene, but their odd, fucked up brand of genre-mashing is definitely right up our alley. The fourteen studio tracks recorded during their brief 3 year existence that are presented on the first disc in this set are a strange conglom of seasick metalcore, jumbled mathy chaos, hoarse screaming and strangley warbly background vocals, Dinosaur Jr.-brand indie-noise blown-bass thunder rumble and accompanying melodic sense flowing into sloppy blastbeats and queasy stoner jamz, delicate post-rock arpeggios, brutal cookie beast grindcore melting into rainy guitar jangle, ISIS/CULT OF LUNA meets SONIC YOUTH armageddon dirge, and crushing death metal flatlines/freakouts that sound like Entombed collectively being shoved down a flight of stairs mid-song. The second disc collects fifteen tracks from a variety of avant-electronic artists, where they take fragments of SHALLNOTKILL songs, sometimes nothing more than a bleat of feedback or a measure from a verse, and create a completely new and original piece of music, similiar in execution to the reconfigurations found on the ISIS Remixes double disc set from a few months back. All of this material is terrific, imaginative and alchemical reimaginings of the source material, but personal favorites include PRESSURE vs. Tin RP's hissing disembodied amp buzz that reminds us of FULCI, SHIZUKA's cosmic/orchestral darkhop, the awesome glitchy dub meets epic EARTH style amp drone of EXTERMINATINGANGELS, and the MONSTROUS city-squashing dirge of AURAL SUISSE "ps grv/50 gfy". Other tracks range from apocalyptic 8-bit meltdowns, harsh noise, glitchy minimalist IDM with ogre vocals, fucked up noisy techno, dark ambient and sublime dronescapes,and lovely chopped-up trip-hop. Neat stuff. Limited to 500 copies.
SHALL NOT KILL / FANTASTIKOL HOLE / TEKKEN / MOON - "split" CD $9
Four bands, all amazing, all totally different, all French. A record so heavy and weird it took TEN labels to release it. So what exactly are Fantastikol Hole all about? Super aggro, mathy, convoulted experimental heavy rock weirdness. Stop start stuttery arrangements, huge slabs of Neurosis-y sludge, bits of shimmer and drone-y ambience, wild tangled squiggly leads, angular atonal riffage, howled distorted vocals, long stretches of crumbling doomy buzz, and that's just the first song of three. The second is even more manic, a sort of proggy grind, with tons of space, and weird stops, jagged riffing, swirling dizzying bursts of buzzing fury, programmed drums, explosions of impossibly convoluted synth swathed hypergrind, shortwave radio interference. The third track is only two minutes, but they spend it plodding along doomily, a huge downtuned riff, wrapped around a simple percussive thud, the vocals processed and super distorted, so genius. Complex and confusional and mathy and heavy as fuck. Shall Not Kill offer up three tracks of their own brand of heaviness, a groovy stoned, heavy as fuck plodding midtempo post punk sludgy doom, rife with harmonized lead guitars, yowled vocals, super psychedelic squalls of twisted tangled leads, busts of furious octopoidal drumming, some super fast Maiden style jams, some blissed out droney dirges, but always returning to some sort of cracked classic doom sound. Up next is Tekken, who are fast and fucked up and furious, a white hot metallic hardcore, bordering on grind, with weird samples, blasts of incendiary buzz, pounding chaotic drumming and snarling punk as fuck howled vocals. The last track finds their grinding punk chopped up and flipped backwards, slathered in static, turning it into some weird fuzzed out, stuttering soundscape of skipping punk rock cds and shortwave interference. And finally, comes the band Moon, whose three long tracks fall somewhere between ultra minimal dronemusic, and the slow motion sludge riffery of Old Earth or SUNNO))), nearly ambient the slow low rumbles eventually build into a lugubrious downtuned crawl, the buzz occasionally receding, and revealing a glimmering glistening shimmer beneath the rumble.
SICKNESS / SLOGUN - "The Scars of Happiness/Always Numb" CD $9
HARSH ELECTRONIC PURITY. Sickness crafts his own brand of technical harsh, detail oriented blasts that cut and shatter. Movement, complexity, intensity; the defining elements of the Sickness sound. Includes a cover of the classic Slogun track "Kill to Forget". From the gutters of New York City, Slogun is a punch in the gut, a kick in the face to the power electronics community. Singularly obsessed, Slogun IS true crime, violent and dirty. Constant abuse, shouted vocals, searing sound. This release rescues all of the material from the limited double 3" cdr set released for their 2003 Japan tour. Packaged in PACrec-style cd wallet with four panel insert.
SILENCE & STRENGTH - "Opus Paracelsum" CD $9
Second full-length esoteric dark ambient/alchemical experimental opus full of weird sounds composed by Silence & Strength. The album is inspired by life and works of Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, medieval Swiss physician, chemist, alchemist, one of the fathers of modern medicine and rebellious thinker, developed his own system of medicine and philosophy. All music by Stephan Friedman.
SILENCIO - "Dead Kings" CD $9
Instrumental. Silencio (from Columbus, OH) combines many different styles including harcore, noise, metal, jazz and others to craft very precise and explosive songs. Silencio shares some common ground with the Flying Luttenbachers (longer, more composition oriented racket), Naked City (genre switching, mind boggling, manic intensity), and late Iceburn (unbelievably good musicianship used to make totally innovative music). Silencio are truly forging new ground in music.
SIMBIOSE - "Evolution?" CD $9
DARK BRUTAL CRUSTY HARDCORE THRASH ATTACK from PORTUGAL!!! The brand new album by Portuguese DIY crust veterans SIMBIOSE! Totally late 80's style metallish crust thrash with heavy down tuned guitars, brutal vocals! This is a must for all nowaday's hellish Swedish hardcore fans and DOOM/ENT style UK crust/hardcore fans! With guest appearances from Dean Jones (Extreme Noise Terror) and João “Gordo” (Ratos De Porão)!
SINAH - "Sparkling Scars of Intuitivism" CD $9
"Sinah" means "hate" in Ancient Sumerian. Hailing from the misted land of Ukraine, Sinah strikes the whole dead world with straightforward, cold storming raw Black Metal. This monument of solitude features 2 demo materials of 2003-04 and 1 additional track. A deserted portrait for empty minds.
SIXTY WATT SHAMAN - "Ultra Electric" CD $9
Finally back in print! The full-length from Baltimore's adrenaline-laced, 70's-influenced, Blues-based, whiskey-drenched, Southern-fried Stoner Groove band, Sixty Watt Shaman. Imagine CLUTCH crossed with KYUSS after a night out with SKYNYRD. Eventually signed to Spitfire, their debut was subject to rave reviews in Metal Maniacs and Kerrang!
SPLINTERED / HEADBUTT - "split" CD $8
Warehouse find of this 1992 CD EP split release by these two UK groups. Purveyors of drone rock/heavy noise/dirge rock, this British school of guitar-noise groups combining experimental music elements within the rock format. Splintered is one of the best UK noise bands that no one gave much attention to. Don't know why, it is great dark shit. Improvised guitar noise / feedback worship combined with monstrous squalls of ominous dirge rock Headbutt is more pulverising, very industrial noise. For fans of SKULLFLOWER, RAMLEH, GODFLESH.
STALKER - "s/t" CD $9
Stalker from Italy present a mature version of modern atmo-core, similar in sound to Isis, Neurosis, Cult of Luna or Minsk. 5 tracks, 4 of them over 7 minutes and remaining one being close to 7 minutes, featuring their slow, heavy and dark sounds.
STA$D400 / ELEKTROKILL - "split" CD $9
Ever wonder what grindcore drummers do in their spare time? STA$D400 (Sven from grind/death band, WORLD DOWNFALL) churn out Commodore 64- channeling cuts and ELEKTROKILL (Christ, from grind-punkers JAPANISCHE KAMPFHORSPIELE) veer between slightly twisted downtempo tracks and Venetian Snares-like experimentalism. Definitely a must-listen for anyone that's into heady electronic music.
STRAIGHTHATE - "Indigenous" CD $9
Greece is one country that I've never heard of having much of a grindcore scene, but Straighthate set me straight. This twelve song album was released in Greece last year, presented in a slick six panel glossy digipack with extensive lyrics (most of which are in the socio-political, vehemently anti-christian punk rage vein but with a cool surrealistic edge to 'em) and multilayered artwork depicting abstract artwork over icy landscapes. As far as Straighthate's grindcore goes, it's lethal - their earlier material was more of a straightforward deathcore sound, but here they've developed into a more nuanced and even heavier beast, pairing up highspeed punk-tinged grind a la Brutal Truth and Nasum with shades of black metal, old school death metal, and surprisingly, the occasional use of noisy dissonant guitar textures and droning leads that remind me more of Sonic Youth and Swans than anything. This is, first and foremost though, punishing grindcore: relentless blastbeats and blazing tremelo riffs combine with gutteral roars that trade off with sickening black metal screeching, awesome melodic riffing tumbles out into churning dissonance and chunky grooving passages that take a page from the more progressive 90's output of Napalm Death. Then there's "Higher", a rampaging blast beast that suddenly opens up to reveal haunting acoustic guitars towards the end, and in the second half of the album starting with "Stench Of Immortality", Straighthate really let loose with their black metal side, unleashing shredding blasts and grim as fuck riffing that meshes perfectly with the blackened grindpunk across songs like "Kollapse" and "Procreate". It's the final track, "Which One Of Us Is Gonna Die First", where they go epic with a nearly twelve minute saga of life-affirming fury, a proggy wind through bulldozing grindcore, dissonant metallic dirge, and finally ending in the silver fog of the acoustic guitar funeral marches that trails off over the last six minutes of the song, disappearing in the distance. Great stuff, a solid slab of modern grindcore with some really cool non-grind sounds worked into their music, and certainly recommended if yer already a fan of the more forward thinking grind outfits like later Brutal Truth, Pig Destroyer, Total Fucking Destruction, Disassociate, Nasum and Discordance Axis.
STROM.EC - "Divine Legions Beyond Psyche" CD $9
The fifth full length from the Finnish power electronics/industrial outfit Strom.ec, which follows some well-received releases on established PE organizations like Freak Animal. The foundation of Strom.ec's sound is obviously brutal power electronics, with lengthy tracks of sickening low-end distorted noise and grueling feedback backed by juddering mechanical throb and a hellish, heavily processed vocal attack. It's along the lines of fellow European neo-PE artists like Ex.Order, Grunt and Genocide Organ, but Strom.ec also pushes past the boundaries of the PE aesthetic with psychedelic effects applied to the outbursts of mangled noise, vast stretches of pitch-black ambience, sinister pulsating rhythms buried beneath the chaotic electronics, and those vocals are some of the wildest I've heard on a power electronics album lately...at times watery and robotic, at others intensely distorted and hallucinatory, the vocals on this disc sound completely demonic and nightmarish, seemingly filtered through the bizarre modulation heard on Dane Davis/John Fasal's vocal effects on Prince Of Darkness (1987). This mutant power electronics assault is combined with strange sci fi/mystic/psychological themes and imagery to make up this extreme industrial nightmare, one that fans of Navicon Torture Technologies will certainly dig. The packaging for Divine Legions is amazing as well, the disc packaged in an eight panel DVD sized digicase with bizarre full color artwork from Jerome Nougaillon (Propergol).
STUMM - "I" CD $9
This is the debut full length from Finnish extreme sludge/trio Stumm. Just looking through the grim black-and-red booklet for this CD clues us in that this is going to be an unfiltered stream of negative energy, from the creepy cover image of the little boy curled up, fetal-position style in a corner, to grisly images of substance abuse, suicide, and homelessness. Grim shit. It doesn't get lighter when this CD unfurls it's four songs across 35 minutes of RAW, primitive, massively heavy Finnish DOOM, with thick and filthy syrupy riffs churning over and over again, slow and snail-crawling, sometimes stripped down to a single powerchord banged out ad infinitum, a nihilistic sludge feast that references the points between Eyehategod, Grief, Melvins, and Khanate (James Plotkin from Khanate actually mastered I). Spattered with feedback and hoarse tortured howling over spare, planet-shaking drumming, these four tunes are super slow, saurian numbers that sometimes pause to hang in mid-air before crashing back to earth. Fans of monstrous ultradoom like Fleshpress, Corrupted, Moss, Bunkur, etc., can't go wrong with this one.
SUN OF NOTHING - "And Voices, Words, Faces Complete The Dream" CD $9
The first track of SUN OF NOTHING's debut full length And Voices, Words, Faces Complete The Dream will weed out the weak right away...Thank You is a 13 minute blast of facemelting high frequency skree and noise drone. Awesome! After that though, the album shifts into full blast mode with a unique and intense amalgam of noise, grind, black metal and oozing sludgecore like nothing you've ever heard. This is completely aurally devastating. Ilias Apostolakis' vocals are unnerving, unintelligible shrieks and screams tearing through a veil of scar tissue - even in songs like the Southern groove-driven Kick, Ilias's obtuse utterances darken what could be a riff straight out of an ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY song, with a massive whiskey soaked breakdown. Purge Reality (The Revenge) pits sludgecore riffs with damaged black metal blastbeats and speedcore explosions. Diablo starts with a menacing acoustic intro, takes off into a charred blast of necrobuzz black metal-esque speed, and then mid-song, slows to a dead sludge crawl, all plodding bass and spare elephantine percussion before the whole cacophony begins again, this time with a steady muted crunch that sounds as it were played on steel cables. Imagine a crusty, crushing mix between Fleshpress, Sunn O))) and screeching black metal. Highly recommended to fans of fucked up, freaked out hyperviolent avant sludge / doom, filthy scum-coated black metal, and blazing crustcore! Packaged in a full color digipack.
SUPPRESSION - "Amputated Brain Stem 1993-2000 Discography" CD $9
Noisecore. Well, grindcore with a ton of samples and a bunch of noise tracks thrown in. One of those bands that successfully mixes noisy raw grindcore and FULL ON noise. These guys have been around forever and this CD collects a ton of 7", split 7" and comp tracks, 64 tracks in all, including the splits with GRIEF, DESPISE YOU, CRIPPLE BASTARDS and collaborations with FACIALMESS and CRANK STURGEON.
TALIBAM! / WASTELAND JAZZ UNIT - "Ecstatic Jazz Duos" LP $9
In the first installment of the Ecstatic Jazz Duos series, there is no room for subtlety. On the Talibam! side, the 18-minute “The Geometric Mophometrics of P.P.P.P.P. McNasticals” (what?!) is a multi-part epic unlike anything else in the New York City duo’s recorded output. Matt Motel (synthesizer) and Kevin Shea (drums) run through the cacophonous noise-jazz most of us know them for, but also seamlessly engage in righteously proggy pursuits taking hits off King Crimson and Keith Emerson. On the B-side, Wasteland Jazz Unit gurgles shrapnel on two rippers of Borbetomagus-size reed-distortion for amplified saxophone (Jon Lorenz) and clarinet (John Rich). Cincinnati’s premier Art Damage skater-jazz crew have recorded with the likes of C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core) and Ryan Jewell (Pink Reason, Psychedelic Horseshit), and here deliver an aural abuse that just ruins your day. Edition of 500.
TEAM ROBESPIERRE / BREVATOR - "split" 10" $9
Brooklyn's no-wave Screamers-inspired electro punk band, Team Robespierre, join forces with Albany's psych-doom merchants, Brevator, who sound like the Butthole Surfers jamming with Khanate. The best in speed, the best in sludge. Get it while you can. Limited to 500 copies.
THEE ELECTRIC BASTARDS - "Live! At Club Awesome" CD $7
Featuring members of CLOUDS, OCTAVE MUSEUM, and PET GENIUS, and produced by Stephen Brodsky of CAVE IN and NEW IDEA SOCIETY, "Live! At Club Awesome" is a 11-song STUDIO recording of the band playing live at their rehearsal space. Boston's Thee Electric Bastards, whose expansive psych-pop falls somewhere in among Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd, the Zeppelin end of the White Stripes catalogue (but only if it was scored by an Elephant Six band), and Yoshimi-type Flaming Lips. And if that seems like an awful lot of territory, well, they cover a hell of a lot of it. With songs about futuristic life (Robots Do Not Rock) blatant machismo (The Peepin' Song, Play The Fool), alcoholism and mental health (Millennium Blues, Black Jets), The Bastards have allowed the listener a peek into their sordid little world, where society's ills and fears are celebrated. All of The Bastards songs are well crafted slices of weirdness, with compelling breaks in the music that are sometimes jarring in effect. It harkens back to the days when rock music was more experimental, and less formulaic. RIYL: PIXIES, SYD BARRETT, FLAMING LIPS
TO BLACKEN THE PAGES - "The Urgency " CD $9
The Urgency presents 1 massive track clocking in at 47 minutes. Beginning with luscious, gently lulling guitars, it becomes saturated with a droning holler of feedback. The Urgency is a testament to failed hopes and dreams, residing somewhere between Earth's Thrones & Dominions and Skullflower. Foldout cardboard sleeve, hand numbered in an edition of 100.
TOMB OF... - "...Those Dismal Moments" cassette $6
A Greek ambient doom one man band with a baffling mix of Windham Hill like piano, and harsh hateful demonic growls. As if George Winston were possessed by the spirit of Satan. Simultaneously soothing and dreamy, ominous and so very black. The combination of piano and vocals was so simple, yet so intense and emotional, a bastardized take on the singer songwriter, a lonely soul expressing sadness and misery through music, but placing it in a black ambient context. With huge expanses of sweeping synths, delicate crystalline chimes, huge swells of rumbling low end, very epic and dramatic, with an almost loped hypnotic quality, it's like the super dramatic denouement of some horror movie, but looped into some slowly evolving mantra, the whole thing wreathed in dense swirls of reverb and echo, the vocals, sometimes a deathly growl, other times a strange alien grumble, way down in the mix, guitars wail and scream, but they too are buried beneath the thick tendrils of warm whirring chords and buzzy blown out ambience. It's almost like entering some crumbling old church in a dream, everything foggy and indistinct, the sky is visible through the roof, the windows are all broken, you can see hills and trees outside, lost and wandering in a dreamlike daze, slowly taking in all of the destruction, the mystery and the misery. It doesn't even have to be a church, just some old ruined building, as long as it has history, and is imbued with the life force of lost spirits and lonely souls. ...Those Dismal Moments is actually quite true to its title. And we're not sure whether it's intentional or not, but there is so much distortion and tape hiss, so much fuzz and buzz, it almost sounds like a Tomb Of... record recorded by Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, all blown out and blurry, indistinct and shot through with warm streaks of dusty sunlight... So completely amazing!! Limited to 500 copies.
TORSO / GACK - split cdr $7
The Torso/Gack split is two sides of the same apocalyptic coin. The Torso portion's P.E. styled synth destruction walks you through your own torturous death. Then Gack's more atmoshperic blackened noise takes you on a slow journey through purgatory and leaves you stranded in hell. Edition of 103.
UNCONDITIONAL LOATHING - "Cornholecopia" CD $9
For several years spanning the late 90's and early 00's, Unconditional Loathing were the kings of the Minneapolis "noise" scene. With line-ups of up to a dozen members, and a million incestuous side-projects, they alternately showcased high-concept performance art and the lowest in scummy absurdity. Beginning in 2001, the core members one by one relocated to various cities on the west coast, leaving many of us to believe the UL magic was lost forever - but this CD proves they're back on top, where they belong. So whats on tap? Nasty improvised static drones and psychic noise and experimental surrealist electronics are interspaced with damaged freak-rock, nuked breakbeats, field recordings, diseased outsider ballads, blasts of fried disembodied AM Radio pop, all glued together by a twisted and thoroughly hardcore psychedelic attack. This stuff RULES. There are also live recordings of the band getting unplugged by local noise promoters. Fun stuff!
UNPERSONS - "III" CD $9
Unpersons are bringing something unique to the table with this release. They use crust as a foundation for their insane sound, but maintain a very loose song writing style over the course of this 11 song monster, that shows there are really no limits as to what they are ready to unleash on your unsuspecting ears. Mellow, almost jazzy sections of psychedelia turn into out of control bursts of hatred without a moment's notice. The band even get downright sludgy from time to time with a few very well placed doom riffs that are a bit punked up in the vein of late greats, Cavity and Buzzov*en. Add to this some extremely fucked up vocals and you are in for a trip that you won't soon forget!! It is an intense, musical journey that is nothing short of insane and even epic at times. This is an amazing album. For fans of Cavity, Buzzov*en, Black Flag, Damad, Dystopia, Kylesa.
UNSEEN FORCE - "In Search of the Truth" CD $9
You won't find any post-hardcore mid 80's progressive art rock garbage here; we assure you that this cd contains nothing but, fast, chaotic unadulterated 80's hardcore punk rock. We've unearthed one hell of a hardcore gem with this one. Finally available once again after 22 long years is the official reissue of UNSEEN FORCE'S devastating LP from 1986 "IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH." Comprised of members of WHITE CROSS, HONOR ROLE, and 2000 MANIACS (and eventually FOUR WALLS FALLING and GWAR) ... UNSEEN FORCE made a name for themselves in their brief two year existence, playing countless shows both locally and nationwide, and releasing their 11 song monster of an LP. This reissue contains 35 songs total ... their long out of print IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH full length (originally a one time, self-released press of 500 copies) in it's entirety, a live soundboard set from their 1986 tour which features several unreleased tracks, and all of the tracks from the 2000 Maniacs (pre-UF band) 1984 demo. The LP songs were taken directly from the master reels, and all of the material was then remastered by Dan Randall at Mammoth Sound (who has mastered records for 86 MENTALITY, DIRECT CONTROL, GOVERNMENT WARNING, WASTED TIME, and tons more). Coupled with the original lyric sheet insert and a ton of rare flyers and pictures from the band members' personal collections, this release has been given the proper re-issue treatment it deserved.
THE VALLEY - "Purple Octopus" 10" COLORED VINYL $10
The Valley takes cues from past rock-n-roll luminaries with big visions and a big muff pedal. You'll find hints of Scratch Acid, Mudhoney and Dinosaur Jr. here. Very cool purple/black splatter vinyl. Limited to 500.
VARIOUS ARTISTS - "Tryptaphonic Mind Explosion" CD $9
This compilation from 2001 features a cross-section of some of the heavy psych-noise-rock underground's best, and charts several streams in the damaged space rock / free noise paniverse. There's some crushing freeform amp-death-drone from Robot Vs. Rabbit that combines Total, Earth, Sunn O))), and Skullflower into a single chainsaw mantra that'll kill planets... Pink Floyd meets Circle hypno-rock sorcery of Japan's Mandog... some gloriously wasted Boredoms -on-acid jamming from Acid Mother's Temple, who unleash a nicely fucked Cotton Casino-led cosmic freakout...Primordial Mind's waves of anti-gravitational amplifier hate...drugged space-prog splatter from Interferents... Escapade offers up waves of howling synth noise backed by thunderous drum rolls on the Krautrock / psyche dream "It Gets Banished Forever", and the mighty Reynols gives us another slice of their surrealist shamanic splatter prayer, like a Catholic high mass taking place on the set of Conan The Barbarian. Finnish trance rock heavies Circle delivers more spacious ambient journeys with "Harmaat", while Pine Tree State Mind Control's proto-industrial drone chug exhumes the corpse of early Chrome and rattles walls. Theres lots more too, a killer heavy comp that could well be the equivalent of No Mew York for the modern heavy cosmic-gunk-rock underground.
VERDE - "Karmes" CD $9
Yet another collection of fantastic and far out musical weirdness from Finnish madman Verde, also known as Mika Rintala, one time member of CIRCLE and EKTROVERDE, but by now, much better known as a mad scientist instrument builder, whose records are constructed using the various and sundry electronic devices Rintala designs and assembles. The machines can create pretty out there sounds, which Rintala deftly mixes with bits of jazz, looped droniness, and hypnotic rock. Fans of CIRCLE and the various Circular offshoots will definitely find much to love here. Analog synths swoop and shimmer, wrapped around a repetitive guitar figure and some sizzling cymbals, deep pulsing bass tones throb underneath atonal steel string clang. The result a little bit new age, a little bit abstract electro, pretty hard to describe, as is the whole disc, from old timey jazz accompanied by what sounds like whales songs, wreathed in tape hiss and whirring fuzz, to ominous downtuned looped low end rhythms, peppered with percussive thumps, and squalls of creepy robotic buzz, to wildly malfunctioning electronics wrapped around off kilter guitars and thick sheets of feedback, to gorgeously warped chamber music, played on what sounds like the inside of a piano and some thick warbly rubber band strings, to gorgeous minimal rhythmscapes, with muted percussion, and mesmerizingly woozy melodies, fractured detuned steel string guitar, found sounds, a men's choir speaking not singing and more weird sounds and musics than we could ever find words for. The cool thing about Verde records is that these are not just collections of 'weird sounds', or even sonic experiments, these are actual proper (or perhaps IMproper) songs, pieces, movements, they just so happen to be composed and recorded using a motley collection of hand assembled machines, which if anything, makes the music of Verde more bizarre, but also, way more special and unique.
VIVA LA RXEVOLUTION - "v/a" CD $6
15 band STONER/DOOM/ROCK compilation CD featuring With A Bullet, Hellrancho, The Valley, Mendozza, Mos Generator, Kaskadia, Backwoods Payback, Golden Pig Electric Blues Band, Oaks, Lozen, Sower of Dischord, War With Saturn, 3D Witch Hunt, Stone Axe, Bacchus.
VOMIT - "Kate Moss" 7" $6
Disjointed and spastic fast hardcore out of SoCal. Eight songs on one side, so you know what you're getting yourself into: a couple sludgy ones and a whole bunch of super fast, super short, priceless gems of unsightliness. Near clean guitar, distorted bass, dry drum sounds work great for their classic sounding tone. Great artwork. Dig it!
VOODOO SHOCK / IRONKIND - "split" 7" $6
This split pairs the Swiss/German trio of Voodoo Shock with Colorado's Iron Kind. Voodoo Shock do melodic Doom Metal with a strong Obsessed influence, while Ironkind play Rocky Mountain Sludge Doom with homage paid to Pentagram. Limited edition of 1000 copies.
VULGAR PIGEONS - "Burning Episode" CD $9
The brand new album from the under lords of crust grind enthrallment. Seven new songs of intense and utter abomination that will coax your mind into a fitting frenzy. Comments the band, "the new material starts where 'Imperialism' left off but throws a lot of new twists and dimensions on top of that." Recorded at House Of Faith Studios in Oakland, CA the effort was mastered by Nick Zampiello at New Alliance East (Pelican, Cave In, Keelhaul).
WARBOYS - "Too Drunk to Skate" 7" $5
Forming in late 2006 from the ashes of a few other side projects involving everything from crust punk to grindcore, the Leeds based 3 piece known as Warboys have finally conjured up their first vinyl release. What can only be described essentially as 11 tracks of ultra fast grind mixed with manic, 625 styled fastcore/power violence. The band tend to adopt one motto - "No messing about style" and thats exactly what you get, a brutally intense fusion of powerviolence and discordant grind. The record is limited to 500 and the sleeve itself is available in 3 different colours. Warboys draw their influences from INFEST, CHARLES BRONSON, THE ENDLESS BLOCKADE and pretty much any other band that sound like a bomb flattening a city.
WEAVING THE DEATHBAG - "s/t" 7" $5
Raging and galloping intense hardcore, midwest style. Combining the full throttled speed with melodic guitar lines and a full energetic adrenaline. Short and fast songs with good lyrics-including one about not bringing dogs to shows. Quick tempo changes deliver incredible hooks and a relentless energy that makes this both really catchy and memorable. This record comes with one of those old school huge lyric sheets with a poster on one side and the lyrics and the band pictures on the other.
WHAT ARE THE MUSEUMS DOING? CD $5
A weird folk/experimental compilation featuring Death By A Thousand Cuts, The Black Swans, CNTR, Boo Hiss, Whitman, The Great Lakes, Carbonic, Red Weather Tigers, The Great Onanist Swindle, Derek Joe Brockett, Everything Is Fine, Cake On Cake, Manipulator, Holly and the Dead Saints, Theath.
WHAT IF GODS LIE - "Third World" CD $9
Ex HOG members from Mexico City playing angry political crustpunk (lyrics in both Spanish and English). Musically they are heavy, down-tuned crust with growled vocals - pretty closely capturing the classic sounds of late 80's crust/punk crossover bands like DOOM and ENT. There is also a hint of the more modern, tuneful influences of TRAGEDY and friends which, coupled with a excellent recording quality, really makes for an exciting and not entirely predicatble release. This is their first full length, hot on the heels of their great split CD with ALL SYSTEMS FAIL.
WHISPER ROOM - "Birch White" CD $9
Whisper Room is a trio based in Toronto, Canada and Berlin, Germany featuring Aidan Baker of NADJA on guitar/affects, Neil Wiernik of NAW on bass/laptop and Jakob Thiesen of STUDENTS on drums/electronics. These three creative minds had moved in similar musical circles in Toronto and Montreal for years sporadically sharing stages but did not actively come together to play as a trio until Dec 2006. Since then they have worked as a improvisational unit and combined their disparate musical backgrounds to create music which explores the conjunction of electronic rhythms and textures with the pulsations and psychedelics and shoegaze and krautrock music. After the initial meeting and first set of shows it was clear that the collaboration between the three had a rare dynamism that took the music to another level. Thus was born Whisper Room.
WHITE EYES - "A Demonstration of..." CD $6
A mix of grind, noise, light jazz and electronic music. Fans of AN ALBATROSS will definitely dig the synth shrapnel and Squarepusher-schooled IDM beats that are sprayed across the screeching of the vocalist. The title "A Demonstration of" certainly lives up to its title as the band shows what it can do and what you can expect more of soon. Definitely for fans of experimental grind!
WICKED KING WICKER - "self-titled" CD $9
Some of the heaviest, most deformed noise/doom weirdness ever! This New York band is hard to pin down; their sound is definitely doomy and metal as fuck, ultra slow and punishing, but it's slathered in so much noise and distortion and caustic filth that it starts to lean more towards the more abstract, noise-damaged end of the doom spectrum. This self-titled album is Wicked King Wicker's debut, with four songs of unbelievable psychedelic heaviness. At their core, Wicked King Wicker are pure doom, playing huge subsonic Sabbathoid riffs over pounding glacial percussion that sounds kind of industrial, a plodding pounding metal trudge, but the guitars are completely fucked, mashed into a howling, grinding mass of ultradistorted buzz, insanely blown out and crumbling under the weight of their distortion, this crunchy and abrasive black roar of viscous amplifier grind that is poured over everything. The first song "Faith Through Fear" is this one massive upwardly winding riff grinding over and over through a thick cloud of blackened buzz and grit, the drums buried deep in the corrosive murk and pounding out a simple, skullcrushing industrial groove, gibbering vocals howling in the chaos and drenched in nasty, warped FX, multiple screaming guitars spewing bizarre acid-rock solos across the throbbing, propulsive sludge, like some ultra-noisy mix of Skullflower, Whitehouse and early Pitchshifter. But that's followed by "Through A Soul, Darkly", which veers into a vast elongated buzzsaw riff thats been slowed down into a massive glacial buzzroar hovering over a blackened landscape of sparse percussion and distorted FX, like a static Sunn O))) riff stretched out into infinity, until halfway in when everything is overtaken by a huge wave of black distortion that slowly evolves into this suffocating wall of demonic deathdrone. The other two tracks "Often Referred To (But Never Seen)" and "Don't Go In The Woods" follow a similiar path as the first two, moving from bizarre percussive thunder and warped psychedelic effects to lurching motorik rhythms, buzzing swarms of rust-encrusted ultradrone, damaged doom riffing, hissing black metal vocals, murky Hawkwind effects, grinding industrial plod, everything enshrouded in blasted distortion and filthy metallic drone. Minimal and crushing, way, way zoned out, it's like this mutant spawn of Skullflower and extreme black doom, ridiculously heavy, and mega recommended to any of you that worship the damaged, droning scumdoom of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Khanate, Burial Chamber Trio, RYN, Alkerdeel, Black Boned Angel, Burmese, and Grave In The Sky. The CD is limited to 1000 copies.
WICKED KING WICKER - "Borne Black" CD $9
Those who worship at the altar of all that is slow and low and heavy and sludgey and doomy and droney, you must now bow before a new lord, the duo from New York known simply as Wicked King Wicker. After three records, each heavier than the last, comes Borne Black, a sprawling black sun explosion of creepy crawly riffage, lumbering lugubrious tempos, tarpit sludge, and spaced out abstract buzz and shimmer, if you fancy Moss, Bunkur, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, SUNNO))), Wolf Eyes, Khanate, Skullflower, Human Quena Orchestra, Monarch, Corrupted, Otesanek, Habsyll, and all the various other denizens of the inky black dronedirgedoom underworld, and have yet to hear WKW, you are in for a treat. That is, if a treat for you is two guys all dressed in black, mere shadows, pummeling you to within an inch of your life with bloodied guitars, tossing your limp form into a freshly dug grave, before toppling a Guitar Center's worth of amplifiers into the hole, then burying you alive, before pushing the amps, the bloody guitars and your mangled corpse across an endless expanse of blackened filth and debris with a massive demonic KILLdozer. That's kind of what it feels like listening to Borne Black, five lengthy tracks of ultra slow riffing, and black ambient soundscaping. And while these guys can lean their guitars against the amps with the best of 'em, conjuring up thick black clouds of noxious low end slither, they are also masters of the RIFF, and most of these songs do in in fact contain riffs, not always right up in front, but the songs are driven by the riff, giving them more weight, more heaviness, and making them sound way more METAL than most of their contemporaries. Fucking awesome, and definitely some seriously difficult listening, but for the legions of the slow and low, who can't ever seem to get enough glacial, near static, demonically riff-ed, doom-ed blacknoize, then Borne Black is yet another gloriously grim missive from the darkside, another black sonic stone to hurl at the heavens, as let these sounds drag you further into the fiery deep. WAY recommended!!
WILDILDLIFE - "Six" CD $9
Heavy, crunchy riffage rolls over celestial FX freakout and gang choral voices: part gluey pop hallucination, part psychedelic blast furnace, part metalloid skullcrush. Super melodic and catchy but vaguely menacing and dark at the same time: this is WILDILDLIFE. Their debut full length Six follows up a fistful of CD-R and vinyl documents and summons a wicked whirlpool of dense distorto crunch and freaky singing, raging metallic percussive pummel, tribal rhythms and crushing effects-soaked guitars, subdued floatational drones and ecstatically gorgeous melodies, all let loose in a series of psychedelic slowcore eruptions and swirling cosmic sludge. Going back and referencing a review that Terrascope Magazine printed about one of the band's earlier CD-R releases, this sounds vaguely like Black Sabbath and Butthole Surfers jamming together with ancient forest mystics, an experience both brutal and beautiful, and which proves that Wildildlife have already established themselves as serious purveyors of blown-out mindmelt heaviness.
WINTERS IN OSAKA - "Red Tooth, Red Claw" CD $9
Two new tracks from Chicago based noise band Winters in Osaka. It is the last recording to feature Erik Stanis, who died earlier in 2008. The first track is a collaboration with Norway's Zweizz (ex-Dodheimsgard) and Japanese writer-Kenji Siratori, Entitled "Satyr's Birth", the ten minute track is WIO's harshest and most intense. In contrast, the second track is a the bands' quietest and most slow moving song to date. No surprise, as it is a collaboration with drone legend-Mykel Boyd. Will appeal to fans of extreme sound art.
WOLFSSCHREI - "Torture Of A Human Soul" CD $9
New release from Germany's WOLFSSCHREI!! Recorded Jan/Feb 2006 by Taaken (ODAL, BARASTIR, ERHABENHEIT). Mixtures of Satanic Warmaster and Darkthrone. Excellent CD!! Weathered artwork on textured paper, includes all lyrics.
WRECK OF THE HESPERUS - "The Sunken Threshold" CD $9
This debut full length from Irish tarpit beasts Wreck Of The Hesperus carries on the fine tradition of maximum downer doom. The album contains three looong songs, "Stop The Black Coffins", "Grave Signal", and "The Osseous Tomb (Echoes Of Winter)", which clock in at a combined 42 minutes in length, so you know you're going to get immense, ultra-slow stretched- out riffs pulled apart like gobs of tar over some surprisingly busy drumming, sickening demonic vocals screeching in slo-mo while the crusty riffs are set to hypno-repeat mode, grinding and stumbling over and over for up to eight minutes at a time, while hallucinatory electronic noises and processed vocal murk lurks in the shadows. The last track "The Osseous Tomb (Echoes Of Winter)" even has a minimal, whispered second half that owes as much to the slow-core of Codeine and Low as it does the gnarly deathsludge of Noothgrush and Khanate. The artwork and package design for this disc is really cool, too...a stark, high contrast tangle of withered vines and squid tentacles that scrambles across the entire multipage booklet and case. This one is a crusher, highly recommended to fans of crusty, gnarly doom filth like Khanate, Moonshine, Grief, Noothgrush, Corrupted, Fleshpress, Eyehategod, Moss, and Graves At Sea.
YUKON - "Medallion" CD $8
Regardless of what you prefer to call it — prog, math rock, or otherwise — Yukon are a band that push the technical limits of a traditional guitar rock combo to its logical extremes. Yukon play some sort of post-hardcore Touch & Go / Skingraft memorial rock with a slightly jazzy edge. The guitar, bass and drums all occupy their usual sonic space, and retain a texture and timbre you’re accustomed to, but the players arrange them into inventive structures and intricate polyrhythms that never fall into neatly predictable patterns.
ZAMMUTO - "Willscher" CD $9
With a number of post-rock starting points (multiple bass harmonics, motorik pulse hypnosis, lust for 70s German electronics), Zammuto constructs a rhythmically bubbling sound by broadcasting these sounds through a construction of PVC pipes, and sampled the results for hard-disc editing. As if Fridge's percussive grooves and Noto's slow constructions of sine wave oscillation had a meeting of minds.
ZANDOSIS - "George W. Bush Go Straight To Fucking Hell" CD $8
Love them or hate them, Zandosis unleash their debut full length cd, “George W Bush Go Straight To Fucking Hell”. Zandosis unleashes a shotgun blast of mayhem. Sounding like Mike Patton fronting a guitarless Melt Banana on crack complete with such hits as “Dick Cheney Bleeding to Death on the Streets of Detroit”, “Donald Rumsfeld Buried Up to His Neck in Dogshit with Lawnmower on Top”, “John Ashcroft Flattened Under the Weight of a 5,200 Pound Replica of the Ten Commandments”, “Tony Blair Trampled By French Poodles”, “Pat Robertson Plagued by Locusts”, “Karl Rove Forced to Roam the Earth Forever as One of the Living Dead Feeding on Raw Sewage” including the soon to be MTV hit “George W. Bush Go Straight To Fucking Hell”. Zandosis were way ahead of their time with most of these hits having been written six years ago.
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