TITLES: COMPILATIONS

VARIOUS ARTISTS AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED PCP Torpedo: ANB Remixed 12" $9.98 Blastbeat

Along with that killer Nevermind 12" that we have also reviewed in this weeks store update, this limited edition 12" version of the Agoraphobic Nosebleed PCP Torpedo remixes heralds the debut of the new BlastBeat imprint headed up by Agoraphobic Nosebleed frontguy Jay Randall. It's appropriate then that this second release in the BlastBeat series is a slammin' vinyl version of the speedcore/terrorcore remixes off of the Agoraphobic Nosebleed remix disc that was included with the recent PCP Torpedo re-issue on Hydra Head (see the last store update for our rundown on that essential double-disc set). This 12", released in a limited edition of 300 (we think?) and packaged in a DJ style labeled record sleeve, contains the ANb reworks from Drokz + Tails, Hellz Army, Substance Abuse, and Submachine Drum for a crushing bout of grindcore/brutal techno/speedcore mutation. All of these jams are ultrafast, 1000 bpm exercises in neck snapping techno ferocity, rendering the original Agoraphobic Nosebleed tunes unrecognizeable beneath the swarming machinegun blasts, mangled samples, and nearly inpenetrable noise filth. Crucial! On black wax, in a standard DJ style 12" black sleeve with center hole cut and DJ sticker in the upper corner. Throw this one on at your next meth amphetimine dance party.

VARIOUS ARTISTS America The Beautiful compilation 2xCD $10.98 RRRecords

Stunning digital mixtape of maximum earbleed circa 1994, of American extreme underground artists "commemorating" life in America, reissued by RRR in this xerox-package double disc version. A celebration of 10 years of RRR. Total punk. Extreme sounds range from turntable junk, plunderphonics, and pop culture/speedmetal cobble, dense noise-metal tape eruptions, druggy industro-tribal percussive jams, devestating hardcore noise holocaust, insectile twilight death drone, avant-garde death metal, and fuggin' snuff jazz...The lineup is fucking massive: you get unique jams from Faxed Head, Borbetomagus, Lee Ranaldo (SONIC YOUTH), Neil Hamburger, Rougeux/Negativland, The Haters, Kings Of Feedback, Thomas Dimuzio, Mandible Chatter, Chop Shop, Slughog, Barry Dalive, Mono Pause, AMK, Vampire Rodents, John Wiggins, ST 37, Idea Fire Company, Gregg Turkington, Luxurious Bags, Grae.Com, Small Cruel Party, Hands To, TAC, Randy Greif, Out Of Band Experience, Phil Milstein, Horse-Cow, Commode Minstrels In Bull Face, Goosewind, The Easy Goings, Phillip Perkins, Blowhole, Shrilltower, Specula, Nisi Period, Nicolas Collins, Crawling With Tarts, Condemek, and Scott Marshall & Mark Giangrande. The standouts include the completely fucked UP awesomeness of FAXED HEAD's buzzsaw death/black metal + sudden cut-and-paste edit/splicing + retarded vocals...KINGS OF FEEDBACK's vitriolic sludge feast, like BRAINBOMBS with Jello Biafra on vox...stunning avant-horror cabaret from VAMPIRE RODENTS...horrifying nocturnal death-glitch from SMALL CRUEL PARTY...an affecting in-the-moment statement of purpose from TAC...fucking grueling noise/sludge/rock from SLUGHOG...some Dadaist Evil Dead action from Sonic Youth's Lee Renaldo...violent death-improv from BORBETOMAGUS....and lots, lots more. The whole comp rules. RULES. A blood-pumping testament to the vital musical underground of the early 90's. Fucking A. Packaged in a punk-as-fuck xerox-junk sleeve. TOtal mandatory.

VARIOUS ARTISTS DestroysAll: A Tribute To Godzilla CD $11.98 Shifty

Finally back in stock! DestroysAll combines two of my favorite things in life: Japanese Kaiju movies and bone-crunching sludge rock! Hell yes. Well, not all of the music on DestroysAll is "sludgy", but it's pretty much all heavy as hell, and leaning heavily towards the tarpit-metal brigade that we love so much. The concept behind this compilation was thunked up by Gary at Shifty Records, who decided to ask a bunch of bands he was into to write original music in commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the classic giant monster movie Destroy All Monsters, which if yer not familiar with it, is the pinnacle of the rock 'em, sock 'em Japanese giant monster movies of the 1960's. The bands enlisted include Mammoth (a solo project from Chris Smith of Keelhaul, who opens the disc with an awesome avant-doom eruption that begins with a couple minutes of deep, wordless, Tuvan-style throat singing that evolves into an awesome megalithic dronedoom dirge...where can we find more stuff from Mammoth!?), Terminal Lovers, Sloth, Hangnail, Gigantasaurus, Space Face (awesome drugged-up Blue Cheer style boogie metal), Fistula, Dot(.), Negative Reaction, Rwake, Patheticism, Leviathan A.D., Third Degree Burnout, The Crunky Kids, and Solace. All of the songs are exclusive to this compilation, and each track pays homage to Godzilla or any one of the other Japanese kaiju monsters. Weirdo hardcore punk, crushing stoner metal, psychedelic Sabbathian doomsludge, and dementoid thrash all show up: Dot(.), who are surprisingly the only Japanese band included here, start off "Nonresistance City" with sampled music from the beginning of the original Gojira, then lurch into a monstrous detuned death-sludge version of the classic "Godzilla's Rampage" cue. In addition, the comp features some amazing original artwork from artist Chris Scalfa that renders Godzilla, King Ghidora, and a host of other kaiju beasts in glorious full color detail. Negative Reaction's "Godzilla Vs. Noo Yawk" is an eight-minute psych-sludge meltdown that wanders off into a trippy, meandering instrumental before finishing off with the opening bars from Blue Oyster Cult's "Godzilla". Crunky Kids spew an economical 2-minute blast of Japanese-inspired hardcore with "Gojira No Gyakushu" which again cops strains from the "Godzilla's Rampage" cue before it ends with the sound of Godzilla's iconic roar. Lastly, Solace serve up the extended instrumental "Mother Godzilla", an awesome, wordless prog-kraut-metal jam that spreads out across King Crimson-gone-doom metal riffage, soaring psychedelic guitar leads racing across the horizon, and manipulated tape loops. One of the heaviest, most freaked things I've ever heard from those guys. Top notch compilation.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Electro Grind Gore compilation CD $11.98 Alarma! (Mexican import)

I've certainly never been shy about my adoration for the most twisted forms of drum-machine-n-electronica augmented grindcore. Throughout the history of Crucial Blast, we've championed the grindtronix underground with an assortment of releases from bands as diverse as Genghis Tron, Dataclast, and Haisha, all of which utilized electronic programming and blasting drum machines in various manners. And as much as we love grindcore bands that fuse themselves to mutant techno and electronica forms, our favorite format for this sort of stuff is the compilation, allowing us to feast our skulls across a wide palette of electro blast freakdom. The new Electro Grind Gore comp CD is one of the best electro-grind "mixtapes" we've heard, and showcases 17 bands from across the planet for 28 tracks of deformed metal riffage, extreme death vocals, spastic techno rhythms, and all sorts of weird, mind bending electronic noise and effects. It's a pretty diverse serving of techno/grind mashup: Avulsed drop "Hash-Perversions", a skull crushing grinder that comes off like an insane hybrid of Cannibal Corpse, Ministry, and 4-on-the-floor techno; another dope hymn from Absurd God via "4 Pot"'s crushing downtuned industrial/techno death sludge; the ridiculously awesome drum-machine driven psychedelic space rock/industrial/techno sludgefunk and gory Spanish hip hop-esque vocals of Atomik Surfing; SMES' gutteral death/electro/pop with sub-intestinal beast belches and aerobics-class worthy rhythms; porno-flavored techno bliss from the bizarrely named Project Your Sister On Four, who come across as a combination of Lords Of Acid and gut-exploding hyper goregrind; Murder 2099's harsh synthesized blast gabba; brutal junglist/gabba beats and mutant vocal spew from Posthuman Worm; Sweet Dominique and Shunt Incision's horrific pigfuck/electro grind; spastic, viscera-splattered glitch/grind/techno from Tourette Sindrome; high-gloss techno filth and harsh noise cut-up from Skrotum; the always-mindblowing, hellishly psychedelic hentai/splatter/breakbeat/tronix and unsavory theatre-of-the-mind action from Basket Of Death; brain melting ambient-speed-metal from 666.Porn.Star; killer intergalactic electronic gore metal from Virus; avant-robot-grind from Denigrare; Fibrosarcoma's minimalist, glitchy fungal-vomit grind; and the Carcass-ish raw drum machine grindcore of Vomitrone. It's a killer compilation for fans of electro/drum machine augmented splatter metal, with almost an hour of blasting, beeping, techno death weirdness. Grab your bib.

V/A - An Evening Of Serious Noise compilation 2x CASSETE boxset $12.98 RRRecords

This double-cassette set is no joke, archiving on tape an entire session of live noise recorded on October 14th, 1996, as part of the RRRecords anniversary celebration. You get absolutely on-fire sets from MERZBOW, MASONNA, EMIL BEAULIEAU, NIGHTSTICK (featuring ex-SIEGE personnel weaving streams of psychedelic noise rockers/drug doom concurrent with the sort of stuff BORIS is doing now...in a word, AWESOME...), SKIN CRIME, and JAPANESE TORTURE COMEDY HOUR (the head cracking harsh tronix assault masterminded by PIG DESTROYER's Scott Hull which fused the anti-music noisecore of his work with ANAL CUNT n' AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLLED, with a total Japanese noise inspired electro soulfuck). Crushing. The tapes are housed in a boss moulded audio box covered in transgressive art spunk.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Anti-Social Hurt Yourself Jams From America's Underbelly compilation CD-R $6.98 CNP Records

CNP Records graces us with another boss collection of head-exploding noise-punk action radiating outward from SUPPRESSION's Richmond HQ. This disc features exquisite, exclusive jams from THE YES SIRS, HALLELUJAH!, INSOMNIACROBATS, SUPPRESSION, MR.SEAHORSE, THE AMOEBA MEN, MAN SPEAKING CHINESE, MATTRESS FOX as MR. ATOMATRON, SILVER NINJAS, LEPER COLONY, RECTAL PUS, P.C.P. ROADBLOCK and MUNGE LITE, ranging in attack from rippin' avant-garage snot, to slurred psychedelic punk, to freaked out prog slop, mutant techno, noisecore, and more, all baked in the glow of CNP's particular brand of anti-social punk nightmare. Personal faves/standouts include crunchy bass/drums thrash insanity from SUPPRESSION themselves, kult noise action from RECTAL PUS, and boozy No Wave bliss from The Yes Sirs and Hallelujah!. Delivered on a hand-scrawled CD-R in a glossy full color wallet sleeve.

V/A Arrhythmia III compilation CD $11.98 Charnel

Third installment in Charnel's excellent Arrhythmia series that focused on rhythm and percussion in outside sonics. III boasts a strong body of tracks heavily influenced by tribal/ritual sounds, with a lineup that includes Neurosis side project Tribes Of Neurot, Raksha Mancham, ABGS, Scot Jenerik, Glod, COTA, Tekachi, Batterie Acid, Ancient Rites, John Herron, Then Tingari, and more. Lots of swirling drones and post-industrial clatter backed by resonant polyrhythms and fierce tribal drumming...fans of Crash Worship, O Yuki Conjugate, and Voice of Eye will love this compendium up-and-down. Nice jewel case package with gold foil stamped cover.

BE VERY AFRAID Electronica Obscura Vol.1 compilation CD $9.98 Dead Mind Records (Dutch import)

This first volume in the Dead Mind "Electronica Obscura" series is exactly that, an ultra-diverse collection of left field electronic drones, beats, noise, and avant-electronica...every track is excellent, and there are some real gems from little-known artists in the underground avant-electronics scene.Monotonos delivers some sublime sine-drone, followed by Bag Lady and Ostomy, who both lay down some glistening glitchbeat and hypnotic fractured electrofunk. Brutal gibbering noise and crunchy Atari blasts follow from the Crank Sturgeon vs. Outermost collaboration, "Sonic Sluggard", then Truck Van Rental emits some whooshing sci-fi space-noise whirr. Kamp Chaos mashes up dub vocals over a grinding distortion bass loop...heavy, trance inducing stuff. The Rubber O Cement VS. James Twig Harper jam, "Subaceous Gland Shoppers" is a 3 part skulldrill of deranged feedback honk, merciless distortion honk, and epileptic oscillating freakishness, not too unlike Harper’s NAUTICAL ALMANAC. Dead Husbands follow with a minimal, almost micro- breakbeat jam, all clicks and squeaks and funky damaged breaks.Mouse On Mars collaborator Harald Sack Ziegler drops "Landebahn 2002", a gorgeous, totally charming and beautiful song that starts off like a bombastic techno pop number, then quickly turns into an orchestral-Tangerine Dream-like synth epic with cute squelching electronics and horns and tinkling cascades of chiming electronics like looped Steve Reich pieces, and a beautiful, insanely catchy melody (that sound like sad female vocals, but I’m not quite sure-ending with a keening, smoky sax solo. Hands down the best track on this compilation, and I can’t wait to hear more from Ziegler. Awesome stuff. Buckettovsissors follows with "Genomic Injunction", a bone breaking exercise in brutal powernoise. The drill noise beat is skullcrushing. Kingdom Scum are next, and dig in immediately with an old school breakbeat backing rhythmic snorting noise and bells. Hard as nails. The final track from Tumour, "Prepare To Putrefy",closes out the compilation with a ferocious blast of grindnoise gurgle,hyperspeed micro-blastbeats,and subterranean metallic puke loops. This compilation RULES. Essential for fans of left-field underground electronics.

BEYOND GOOD AND EVIL: TRIBUTE TO ANARCHUS compilation CD $9.98 American Line Records (Mexican import)

Modern death/grind bands pay homage to the Mexican masters of apocalyptic grindcore! Features RAVAGER, SOL NEGRO, MORBOSIDAD, DISGORGE, BOWEL STEW, DEA, PURGATORIA, OXIDISED RAZOR, CATIVEIRO, NO MAS NO, CARNE, STRESS, HOL A WIT, PULVERIZER, HORRIFIED, INFAMIA, and APOKKRIFOS. More filthy graindcore noise than you can possibly handle.

BRUTALMAGEDDON compilation CD $8.98 Coagulated Records (Italian import)

A 3-way eruption of sickoid mutant European splatter grind. This 3-way split CD features 4-7 songs each from ATAVISM, DRAIN OF IMPURITY, and MINCER. ATAVISM follow up their split EP with FLATULATION with brutal as fuck goreblast. Think MORTICIAN with real drums and vocals like California's DISGORGE. Uber-sick gore grind from Greece. Austria duo DRAIN OF IMPURITY (members of CENOTAPH) are next with drum-machine fueled grindcore vomit a la AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED or RETCH. Shredding squealing riffs and spastic leadwork enhance this belching blast, with super low,repulsive vocals.Another two-piece , MINCER, closes out this split with seven short bursts of rotten goregrind.

CONTRE TOUS compilation CD $9.98 Dead Mind Records

This Dutch compilation features 4 diverse experimental bands: Infidel Castro start things off with two tracks, the first, a spacious almost Melvins/Harvey Milk-ish sludge, with stretched out guitars and almost-pulled-apart beats, but with Mr. Roboto style vocals and lots of glitched out mayhem and high-end splatter, verging on new wave/electro at moments. The second is a weird and rumbling, claustrophobic soundscape, with chiming guitars and warm waves of sound, again augmented with some strange production glitchery. Next up are the Dead Husbands with a beeping, clicking sort of whimsical elctronica goofiness, kind of like an instrumental People Like Us. The oddly named Pidpi are also mostly electronic, but keep things a bit more serious, with fuzzed out rumbling drones, abrasive scraping, swarms of crunchy white noise, strange voices, and chopped up weirdness. And finally we have De Fabriek, who follow in the same sort of elctronic, chop and glitch, weird and almost goofy collages of hooting owls, ringing phones, throbbing pulses, scratching sandpaper rhythms, childrens voices, foreign cartoons, and squelchy synths, but finishing off with a super distorted, almost Laddio Bolocko style rhythmic jam.DUTCH IMPORT.

CRUSHERS KILLERS DESTROYERS! compilation CD $11.98 Shifty Records

The first in Shifty Record's sludge compendium series, this 5 band battering ram is back in stock for anyone who missed it the first time around. An hour and fifteen minutes of unrelenting sludge and doomcore starts off with 3 songs of MUGWART's melodic sludgecore, like a more upbeat Eyehategod but still ugly, snarling, and downtuned. The song "40/90" features sick guest vocals from Ben of BEATEN BACK TO PURE. Canadian doomcore sadists GOATSBLOOD follow with 3 brutal dirges, with strafing blastbeats and dual psychotic screams/deep deathgrowls punctuating their suicidal ultraslow sludge. MOLEHILL continue with 3 songs of unabashed Eyehategod worship. Loaded with Southern groove and a melodic attack similar to that of MUGWART, Molehill have that New Orleans blues-metal sound nailed. FISTULA deliver a single track, "Dysfunction", but at nearly 15 minutes long, it's a devastating sludge stomper that degenerates into heavy,hypnotic feedback drone, orgiastic free-guitar skree, and pounding battle drums. Totally fucking narcoleptic. SLOTH wrap it up with 7 tracks of bizarre Midwestern dirge...their songs are a weird, tweaked mashup of blown-out low fi black metal murk played at quarter speed, with rasping vocals and simple, haunting melodies and gut-churning bass thud. It's sort of like a brain-damaged version of old FLOOR recordings, mixed with BLACK MASS OF ABSU or something. Overall, this is an excellent compilation of modern American sludge-fans of the style would do well to check this and the second CD in the series (which we also carry) out!

CRUSHERS KILLERS DESTROYERS II compilation CD $11.98 Shifty Records

The second installment in Shifty Record's Crushers Killers Destroyers series, this full length compilation CD features 8 of the best bands in the underground sludgecore movement, with 1-5 exclusive tracks from each. Every band has their own unique take on slow, bruising, filthy sludgecore, keeping the compilation interesting throughout without ever relenting from battering-ram heaviness. HEADACHE starts off with 3 tracks of grueling pounding sludge, with dueling vocals screaming "Die!", barbiturate references, loud production, and a GRIEF meets KARP sense of bottom heavy dynamics. WEEDEATER give us 2 new tracks, with Dixie Dave's lung-scraping vocals snarling over some killer vile riffs, and "Long Gone" also has Muleboy from BONGZILLA guesting on vocals. Awesome. FISTULA follow up with a single blast of headcaving heaviness, like a meaner, jailbound sibling to the MELVINS' "Boris". KING TRAVOLTA rip through a whopping 5 tracks of fierce doomcrust that includes a hilarious stab at QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE. CRUEVO appear with a posthumous track, "Black Maria", that again displays the awesome sludgerock these guys possessed while they were around. Another eulogy appears in the form of 2 tracks from defunct bass terrorists TUSKS OF BLOOD, sounding more than ever like MAN IS THE BASTARD on one hell of a bad trip, dual-bass buzz thud smacking against your ribs painfully. Madrid's MOHO bring some depth and "progression" to the comp, with 3 tracks of swinging, snarling, superdope sludgerock that picks up the pace with a hellish, undead version of US Southern Rock. Some seriously fist-raising shit. SLOTH finishes off the comp with a track called "Sloth Loves Floor", and yes...it's an uncanny interpretation of FLOOR's patented bomb-string sludge via their song "Lolita", but more fucked and drunk and downtuned than the original. Sick. Altogether, and amazing collection of destructive, low end crush.

V/A Dead Tech 3 compilation CD $11.98 Charnel Music
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We just managed to get the LAST TWO COPIES of this killer compilation from the label - once these are gone, this title is sold out for good!
Dead Tech 3 is the, uh, third in a series of compilations that started out on the Dossier label out of Germany in the late 1980's, but this final comp came out on Mason Jone's Charnel imprint back in the early 90's. All were curated by K.K. Null (Zeni Geva), with his handpicked selection of extreme Japanese underground bands, so you know you're getting a massive dose of weirdness here...Dead Tech 3 features exclusive jams from bass/drums prog maniacs Ruins (they drop about six minutes of insane precision destruction on here, AWESOME)...a titanic live jam entitled "You Suck" from Zeni Geva that sounds like your house getting sucked into another dimension...bizarre, awesome garage/grindcore/noise rock from Copass Grinderz...Space Streakings blast a medley of Boredooms-meets-Big Black-on crack avant-punk destruction ...killer carnivalesque Japanese psychedelia from Daihakase...and lots of Melvins-inspired metal weirdness from Ixa-Wud, Avalanch, Funhouse, and Te No Kanshiyoku. Heavy shit. Jewel case packaging. As far as we can tell, this is pretty hard to locate nowadays.

DECIDE ON CHANGE compilation LP $9.98 Mountain Records

Featuring some of the best hardcore bands from recent times, with exclusive tracks from STRAIGHT TO HELL, TOTALITAR, BALANCE OF TERROR, LAST SECURITY, DIALLO, SCHOLASTIC DETH, SELF DEFENSE, ESPERANZA, COCKROACH, SOMETHING IN THE WATER, MELEE, and VUUR, to support the NYC More Gardens Coalition. Contains extensive literature on the reclamation of public space in urban areas. Thought provoking stuff with a raging thrash / crustcore soundtrack to back it up.

DESTROYING SOUTHERN TRADITION compilation 7"EP $4.98 At A Loss Records

This 7" comp features exclusive tracks from DEATHREAT, DAMAD, SUPPRESSION, and EQUITY.Awesome layout and artwork on this baby. Total Southeast US darkcore,grind, and hellcrust brutality.

DREAMS OF WHAT LIFE COULD HAVE BEEN compilation CD $12.98 Psychedoomelic Records (Hungarian import)

A who’s who of contemporary, grisly sludgecore. 80 minutes of extreme nihilistic sludge and blackened doom. SOULPREACHER starts off with 2 tracks of surprisingly melodic and psychedelic sludge that winds down into monstrous crushing dirge destruction, with excellent contrasting clean/witch vocals. FISTULA demolish 2 tracks of stonerized sludge mastery with more of their patented battle riffs that will glue themselves to yer skull for days. Hate sludge legends GRIEF emerge into the blackness with 2 songs of energetic, suicidal doomcore. Excellent! Belgian psyche-sludgelords. THEE PLAGUE OF GENTLEMEN present an epic, unnerving tracks "Your Love Is King (of the dead) Part 2 & 3", that will nail you to the floor with its proggy tempos and riff changes and slow and low riff thuggery. NY sludge veterans return with "Nod", a bludgeoning, super-downtuned space doom anthem. And from the Uk hails the mighty RAMESSES, featuring the former rhythm section of ELECTRIC WIZARD - "Black Domina" is loaded down with noisy, infectious, sludgy riffs, as crushing as you’d expect from this skilled battery team. And fellow UK doomsters MOSS cap this nuclear blast off with "Beyond Despair", an oozing epic of sledgehammer distorted dronery and hopeless witch vocals and an excellent low-fidelity skin peeling attack that will have you reaching for the Nyquil in no time. A crucial collection of modern tarpit violence and droneriff despair, haunted by the ghosts of WINTER, HELLHAMMER, and AUTOPSY.

ECONOMISED compilation CD $11.98 Manifold/Economy Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A monstrous collection of crushing DarkHop, evil atmospheres and frenetic d&b sickness! This hard-hitting first release from Manifold's new sub-label, Economy Records, focuses on the dark drum & bass, ambient sound that's been the backbone of what is a currently under-published scene. Economi$ed gathers an assortment of styles, but manages to retain that flavorful, fast flow from one track to another, beginning to end, with very off-kilter, heavy beats and merciless background atmospheres with an unpredictability coursing through them. Features all-exclusive, unreleased tracks by Quoit, Cylon, Ocosi, Su8m3rg3d, Totemplow, Gone Postal, PCM, Mothboy, Blankmove, Nos, and Otraslab. Cylon is Justin Broadrick's (GODFLESH / JESU / TECHNO ANIMAL) project, he contributes two pieces, a lengthy original, and a remix of Quoits 'Plug 8'. Totemplow remixes Quoits 'Off'. Not just a label sampler, as all the tracks are previously unreleased!!! Economise now!

EXIT ZERO Electronica Obscura Volume II compilation CD $11.98 Dead Mind Records (Dutch import)

The second in Dutch label Dead Mind's ongoing series of underground avant-electronica compilations, the first of which is also back in stock and highly recommended! Just as diverse and excellent as the previous installment, this compilation features the arctic ambient,deep drones, and Boards Of Canada -esque bliss of Contagious Orgasm, Clay Figure, Die Plagen Des Himmels...the spacey bleep, celestial noise loops and driving beats/mutant bedroom techno of Telepherique, Zyrtax, Yasushi Miura, and Tote Stadt...the lunar post-rock and frenetic squeak funk of Crucial Blast alumni SAMUS...Evil Moisture’s hard white-noise squonk...Massaccesi's choking beats and sub-bass Nintendo spasms...Fckn Bstrds' murderous gabba eruption...Bongoleeros' transgressive group improv junk noise (reminiscent of REYNOLS)...Deep's awesome SUNN O))) / EARTH 2 / Skullflower -esque feedback and amplifier driven powerdrone...Howl In The Typewriter's infectious damaged synthpop mutation...The Machine Gun TV's rubbery dance-industrial /space noise...Ubique Daemon's high-frequency chainsaw sine-wave destruction...Lume's skipping-CD drone and eerie piano melody...and Rony And Suzy close this out with a wiry track of melodic, pretty, and distorted drum n' bass / trip hop. Great stuff all around, not one bogus track. A killer collection for adventurers into the far reaches of underground indie electronica, drones, and experimental beats. There's a lot to like.

GOREZOO compilation CD $11.98 Meat5000 Records (French import)

This 4-way split CD (40+ songs) full length pretty much went out of print immediately after its release, we just managed to grab some copies before it disappeared! Ranging from crushing crust to ultraweird avant-grind, this full length CD from french grindcore label Meat 5000 delivers a severe grindblast to your face, featuring Tekken, Sergent Slaughter and Fate from France and the legendary Suppository from The Netherlands! The first band featured is TEKKEN; since 1999 they have delivered a fierce blend of noisy powerviolence/thrash and sickoid grindcore, with sarcastic,smartass lyrics.Their 13 tracks here include rare and remixed material. Next band up is SUPPOSITORY, featuring 8 new ultra-fierce tracks recorded during the Grindcore Knockout tour 2002; this cult grindcore band is a direct descendant of NAPALM DEATH's Harmony Corruption-era noise brutality. SERGENT SLAUGHTER follows up with 8 tracks of intense groovy grindcore and full on pig-monster vocals...superb ultra filth grind, no wonder the guys from MORTICIAN are working with them on an upcoming release on Primitive Recordings. Last is FATE, ripping out some brutal grind/death but with weird DJ samples and scratching! In similiar headspace as the weird electro grind experimentalism of Relapse-favorites CONTRASTIC. The packaging is cool, non-generic with neat use of iconography.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Grind Bastards compilation CD $12.98 Grave Records (Japan)

Does the world really need another grindcore compilation? When one is curated and compiled by none other than Chew from Corrupted and the selection is squarely focused on the craziest, noisest Japanese grindcore bands kickin' it in 2007, then we are in good fucking shape, sister. This disc is wrapped up in a glossy foldout sleeve covered in band logos and info, and it has anywhere from one to seven songs from Little Bastards, Black Ganion, Brob, Butcher ABC, Disgust, Mortalized, Realized, Gate, Fortitude, Impale, Zone Defection, Red, Easies, Boltstein, Impotence Trichomonad, Zagio Evha Dilegj, World Downfall, and Unholy Grave. There's a healthy amount of both classic old school grindcore and some left-field curveballs on here - some of the standouts include Black Ganion's microburst atonal noisecore, Mortalized's freaked out atmospheric blasts, Realized's crushing acid/doom/grind, and the maniacally percussive ultragrind/blurr/noise of duo Gate. Then there's the awesome Zone Defection, whose super-blown-out grindnoise is combined with trippy bestial vocals zonked on FX abuse. And Easies, who engage their ripping grindpunk with some serious spacecase flanger noise. Impotence Trichomonad deliver some bizarre, effects-dosed goregrind weirdness. And of course there's Unholy Grave, with three rehearsal tracks of vicious, catchy punky grind and Takaho's trademark vocal weirdness. The recording quality of the songs range from decent grind recordings to total dumpster productions; indeed, the more blown out and noisy tracks on this comp are some of the most ferocious.

HAND/EYE compilation 2xCD $14.98 Dark Holler/Hand-Eye Records

The Hand/Eye label has been bringing the world modern experimental-folk and psychedelic music since the early 1990s. Hand/Eye has forged a unique and varied catalog which, along with parent label, Dark Holler, has given the world everything from deep-space astral explorations to traditional fiddle tunes. For the 10th Hand/Eye release they've gathered friends and associates from the world over, hand-picked for this celebration of music. All of the artists have provided exclusive material for this compilation. There are no convenient names for this gathering of music: Psychedelia, wyrdfolk, acid-folk, experimental, astral-folk... call it what you will, it cannot be bottled under one small label. The music shall speak for itself. Disc one features AMPS FOR CHRIST, IN GOWAN RING, PETER SCION, SARADA, ALASDAIR ROBERTS, THE IDITAROD, STONE BREATH, GREG WEEKS, CURRITUCK COUNTY, RING, WITCH-HUNT, ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O., PRYDWYN, FIT & LIMO. Disc two features MARTYN BATES, KEMIALLISET YSTAVAT, DREKKA, TINSEL, FURSAXA, TIMOTHY THE REVELATOR, SKYE KLAD, PELT, DIANA OBSCURA, DEAD RAVEN CHOIR, MASON JONES , and SALAMANDER.

HE'S NO GOOD TO ME DEAD compilation CD $9.98 Game Two Records

An essential gathering of the grimiest in US sludgecore. He's No Good To Me Dead features 74 minutes of exclusive tarpit metal from GRIEF,BONGZILLA, SOUR VEIN, NEGATIVE REACTION, and SUBSANITY! Band by band,you have: NEGATIVE REACTIONS, with three tunes, MMU Man, Cosmic Vertical Overlap, and Hurtling Through the Cosmos, all with an amped up SLEEP/SABBATH Vol. 4 cosmic doom vibe. GRIEF lay down plodding, feedback drenched extreme doomcrust. Actually, these songs are a bit more uptempo crustcore than most of their earlier stuff.You can hear the DISRUPT lineage here, but it's still straight suicidal doom sludge. SUBSANITY grind out a unique mix of crusty death metal riffs, doom tempos, and sludge style vocals.BONGZILLA contribute two live tracks, The sound quality is great and the performance is crushing. SOUR VEIN feature ex-members of BUZZOVEN,CAVE IN, and 13.Like a more rocking stripped down version of BUZZOVEN, huge slurred sludge riffs hammering at your skull. Essential for fans of sludgecore, doom, and crustcore.

VARIOUS ARTISTS I Am Vengeance (OST) CD $11.98 Meteor City

This official soundtrack to the psychedelic indie-splatter film I Am Vengeance features a smorgasboard of doom metal and stoner rock sandwiched between dialogue clips from the film and pieces from the original score. I haven't seen the movie itself, but apparently low-budget underground director Richard R. Anasky drew his inspiration for this movie from both 80's slasher flicks AND classic 80's doom metal (specifically, Wichfinder General, according to the liner notes and the film's IMDB page). Sounds pretty rad to me. As a compilation of Sabbathian doom rock, this is pretty extensive: the filmmaker teamed up with Meteor City to assemble a massive lineup, including Lowrider, Doomsday Gouvernment, Blood Farmers, Sheavy, Count Raven, Eternal Elysium, The QUill, Space Probe Taurus, Las Cruces, The Awesome Machine, and many others. There is a TON of Sabbath worship going on here, with both Count Raven and Doomsday Gouvernment winning the "sounds most like Ozzy" award, and the more uptempo stuff has that post-grunge, stoner rock sound that Man's Ruin branded back around the turn of the decade. All of the songs are exclusive to the compilation, except for the Blood Farmers track "Bullet In My Head", which originally appeared on their out-of-print Hellhound debut; and Sheavy's "Sea Of Tomorrow", which appeared on their also-out-of-print debut Blue Sky Mind. Standout tracks include the massive psych-sludge of Japan's Eternal Elysium, and Count Raven's admittedly awesomely goofy Sabbath homage. The booklet contains extensive liner notes, lyrics, film stills, and commentary by the film's director/creator Richard R. Anasky.

MP3 SAMPLE: ETERNAL ELYSIUM "Burning A Sinner" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: THE QUILL "Mind Drifter" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: COUNT RAVEN "Scream" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: BLOOD FARMERS "Bullet In My Head" (excerpt)

ICING ON THE GRAVY compilation CASSETTE $4.98 Coaxt Records

This cassette comp features a ton of unreleased/hard to find stuff from all kinds of 90's extreme HC bands like ASSHOLE PARADE, MRTVA BUDOUCNOST, KUNG FU RICK, AUTORITAR, VILENTLY ILL, KATASTROFIALUE, PALATKA, WARSORE, DENAK, GODSTOMPER, THE END OF THE CENTURY PARTY. Full color packaging, killer high quality comp.

VARIOUS ARTISTS International Blast Fighter 7" EP $5.98 Torture Garden Picture Company

Along with that killer new 10" from the Monarch! garage-pop-punk-powerviolence alter ego Rainbow Of Death comes this new compilation 7" from Torture Garden Picture Company that holds, count 'em, twelve different grind pushers from across the globe - you get anywhere from one to three new jams each from bands like Finland's hyperspeed hardcore punkers Vaarinkasitys, Virginia's Aghast channel ultra-noisy Japanese hardcore, two songs from Rainbow Of Death (sadly, these aren't exclusive to this comp, as both songs also appear on their 10"), turbo speedcore vets Yacopsae (one of the fastest, tightest thrashcore bands on the freakin' planet!), raw-ass San Jose grinderz In Disgust, and a fucking awesome jam from Finnish noise-punk destroyers Kuolema, who have been kicking it since 1982! Plus blazing grind violence from Swedish blasters Netjajev SS, Thai thrash punkers Low Fat, Virginian crustmetal ragers Parasytic (who feature Erik from Alabama Thunderpussy in their ranks), groovy Spanish grindcore thugs Nashgul, Dutch blastnoise from Matka Teresa, and a face-smashing rendition of Frost's "Into The Crypts Of Rays" by Texans Insect Warfare. Dope! Noise not music, ya know? Honestly, I think this is the best grind/speed/blurr comp I've heard since the first Barbaric Thrash Detonation. And dig the sweet Cthulhu-esque cover art from Bill Hauser!

ISIS Oceanic:Remixes/Reinterpretations DOUBLE CD $16.98 Hydra Head Records

This double CD collects tracks originally released on the "Oceanic:Remixes" vinyl LP series (Robotic Empire) onto one handy digital format, and adds the previously unreleased second version of "Carry" from Tim Hecker. This collection of remixes takes the word to the extreme: these are complete re-interpretations of material from Isis legendary Oceanic album, taking the most fundamental elements of the original songs (sometimes just a beat or shadow of a guitar riff), and bends and warps them into vivid,radical new forms. It's way more interesting than I originally anticipated it being, that's for sure.
Some of the highlights for us included Fennesz's total washing out of "Weight", turning the song into a gauzy,wispy dronescape with subtle ,crackling textures...the shimmering, almost trip-hop of Teledubgnosis' take on "Maritime", and Venetian Snares utterly bizarre and righteous tripped-out-dub-with-grindcore-vocals assault on "The Beginning And The End". Theres alot more on here too, raging from epic drones and crushing beat driven noise to the ripping version of "False Light" as done by The Oktopus ( aka Dalek ). Other artists on this double CD include Thomas Koner, James Plotkin (OLD, Khanate), Tim Hecker, Mike Patton (Fantomas,etc), Ayal Naor (27), DJ Speedranch, Crucial Blast faves Destructo Swarmbots, and Justin Broadrick (Jesu, Godflesh, Techno Animal).

V/A Japanese Real Underground Statement compilation CD $9.98 Negative Federal Fund Record (Japanese import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Our pals from Exactly Violent Style hooked us up with this new compilation disc straight from Japan, showcasing 4 of the Japanese scum-grind undergrounds most zonked exports. Exactly Violent Style opens this comp up with 4 new jams of their insane nuke attack, part free-jazz-grind, part swampy NOLA style stoner grind, part epic n melodic Isis/Mogwai/Envy post-metal majesty. Freaking amazing. Here's what we said about their self-titled album from a few months ago...."Absolutely insane blown-out noise grind chaos from Japan! EXACTLY VIOLENT STYLE specializes in brutal blasts of freeform metalcore, a psychedelic feedback grind that makes up one of the most manic "hardcore" albums we've ever heard. And this is hardcore, but totally mutant and torn free from conventional structure and loaded with a million different tempo changes and lightning fast riffs n' axe squiggle. Imagine FUSHITSUSHA teaming up with BRUTAL TRUTH and DEADGUY... Or DISCORDANCE AXIS sitting in on some GRAVITAR jams. It's fucking insane. And amazingly catchy when the band falls into an epic, melodic indie-metal dirge....but this is mostly a skull-bashing session of heavy-duty, speedy, totally damaged hardcore riffs and avalanche drumming coalesce into a hellstorm of apocalyptic improv grind. It's like each of the three guys in EXACTLY VIOLENT STYLE are playing a completely different song, each one complex and furious, all at the same time, a cacophony of blazing speed and anger, but instead of being a huge chaotic mess, it's a huge chaotic blast of totally pissed off power...." We fucking love this band, and this comp CD is worth it for the EVS songs alone.
EVS is followed by Sete Star Sept, who vomit 3 tracks of their gross speed metal/grindcore hybrid with raw production and PO'd gorilla vocals out the yin, complimented by some flame throwing guitar solos straight offa Reign In Blood, and some unexpected major key doominess that sheds some light on their filth. Then there is Cunts, offering up a single live track, "Live At Budokan In 2005", which showcases their utterly retarded/regressive/cathartic vocal/drums improv. Freeform grindcore drumming bashes skulls with a mental patient having an amplified meltdown. Finally, Hell Missionells wrap it up with 4 tracks of over-the-top thrash metal/grind/metalcore that sounds like it was ripped straight out of 1991, with awesome screaming guitar solos and crazed dual vocals and city-killing deathcore breakdowns. All in all, this is a pretty shredding snapshot of the Japanese grind underbelley circa 2006. Minimalist jewel case packaging.

V/A Japanoise compilation CD $10.98 Little Mafia

Japanoise is definitely one of the best compendiums of Japanese sonic terror that we've fed to our earholes...the lineup is all gold, with exclusive jams from PAIN JERK, K2, C.C.C.C., Melt-Banana, KK Null, MSBR, Masonna, Incapacitants, Mo-Te, and Government Alpha. This disc is a total primer in harsh Japanese abstraction, covering a range of styles and sounds from C.C.C.C.'s mind erasing psychedelic theremin/synthesizer crush, to Melt Banana's blink-and-you-miss-it ADD blast of chiming electronics and grindpop remixing, to MSBR's "Yakuza Psychedelia" that conjures swarms of robotic ants to devour the still-twitching corpse of an Atari 2600 game cartridge. Pain Jerk starts the disc out with a grinding electronic peice that begins rhythmically and then devolves into a roar of crashing metal. K2 delivers one of the most brutal tracks on the disc, a high speed junk noise cut-up that reminds us of Monde Bruit's ear frying Selected Works. KK Null's "Star Burst" is an excellent nullsonic jam, sending shimmering shards of patch-cord generated hum shooting into the atmosphere, very similiar to his work on the Datacide In Year Zero CDR, and Masonna's track is a cathartic dose of intense screaming noise and repeating static loops. Incapacitants send psychedelic vocal spew into deep space underneath a deep rumbling void. Every track on this is a keeper and if you are a fan of the Japanese noise and experimental music scene, this is a pretty essential snapshot of what's coming out of Japan's hard core noise scene in the dawn of the new century. Released in an edition of 1000, with cool visuals from Goldensect.

V/A Land of The Rising Noise Vol. 2 compilation CD $11.98 Charnel Music

2nd installment in the excellent New Music From Japan series spearheaded by Mason Jones at Charnel, which brought together a diverse range of sounds from the fertile Japanese noise/psych/heavy underground of the 1990's. All sorts of mutant Japanese sounds are collected here: dense psychedelic space rock from Kadura (whose Charnel full length is reviewed elsewhere in this list, a dreamy journey into heavy tribal psych/noise), a heavy metallic industrial march from Der Eisenrost (featuring Chu Ishikawa of Tetsuo: The Iron Man soundtrack fame!), gorgeous medieval, Ren Faire music from Kuroyuri Shimai, a ripping blast of noisy ultrafast no wave thrash from Melt-Banana, forbidding atmospheric drones from Onnakodomo, demented puzzle-punk from Wnico, Shizuka's incandescent psychedelia, a terrific collage of ringing cathedral bells and urban sounds layered with alien electronics from Contagious Orgasm, psychedelic J-pop from Volkha Dots, weird noise-punk from Gaji, and ominous rhythm & noise soundscapes from Amgsphont. An excellent mixtape transmission from the deep Japanese undergorund circa 1996! As with the other installments in this must-have series, Charnel has illustrated the packaging with very creepy doll sculpture photography from Shizuka. Recommended.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Land of The Rising Noise Vol. 3 compilation CD $11.98 Charnel Music
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We just managed to get the LAST THREE COPIES of this killer compilation from the label - once these are gone, this title is sold out for good!
3rd in the series of the New Music From Japan series spearheaded by Charnel, which brought together a diverse range of sounds from the fertile Japanese noise/psych/heavy underground of the 1990's. Diversity is the word here: you get an excellent cosmic feedback drone jam from Acid Mothers Temple called "Super Sunshine", Grind Orchestra's radioactive mutant hippie drum circle, some fucking isolated sinewave doom from I.S.O. featuring Otomo Yoshihide that combines almost Khanate style plod with ultra-minimalist electronic tweak...plus there's weird sylvan prog-ambient from Mitsuru Tabata of Zeni Geva, classic brutal Japanese noise from K2 that sounds like a kitchen being electrocuted, trippy psych from Mady Gula Blue Heaven, more brutal Japanese noise from Shincho 2m and some skull crushing post-Killer Bug damage from Kazumoto Endo, a freaking awesome collaboration from Coa & Keiji Haino that takes bulldozing noise rock guitar into severely overmodulated improv dimensions, freaked out psychedelic garage-pop-noise weirdness from Ultra Fuckers, seriously creepy howling witch-in-a-cavern drones from Yukiko, and a 11+ minute jam of awesomely stumbling, destroyed, vaguely grungy psych/sludge/indie/folk weirdness from Kaneko Jutoku of Kosokuya. Awesome comp with no duds, and the packaging features photography of Remi Futoyama's exquisitely creepy doll sculptures, making this a solid compendium of shadowy Japanese psychedelic strangeness.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Locked Grooves 2x7" $9.98 Little Mafia

Very cool concept: Little Mafia's Locked Grooves double 7" set features 2 EPs of heavy drone/psych/improv that have been mastered to play backwards. Each track begins at the inside groove and plays outward, eventually ending in a locked groove at the lip of the record where it plays into eternity. Subarachnoid Space founder Mason Jones' cut offers up some beautiful guitar soundscapes and eletronic effects that coalesce into gorgeous drone fields...excellent stuff that Troum fans will love. Cock E.S.P.'s blistering "Cock VH1" is another blast of brutal improv-electronics demolition. Total freaking destruction. Ashtray Navigations drapes a thick, heavy curtain of melodic amplifier drone and lovely overtones, like a psych-folk Earth...our fave track on this release, very beautiful and heavy and LOUD, the locked groove at the end sending a distant bleating radar ping spiralling out into the abyss. And Fellaheen wraps the set up nicely with a loose blast of free-jazz/punk shred/improv entitled "Brotzmann", their tenor sax/electric bass/drums lineup scuttling up cliffsides and emitting roars of octopoidal noise. Released in a limited edition of 300 hand-numbered copies. The two EPs are wrapped in a cool silkscreened foldover sleeve that is held together by a metal bolt (easily openable, though). Recommended!

MASTERS OF THE SCENE: The Definitive ABBA Tribute compilation CD $14.98 Nihilist Records

Back in stock!
I was never the biggest ABBA fan. Their supper-sunny Swede pop was played around the house alot when I was growing up, and I was pretty sick of them by the time I hit my teens. So maybe it was my sadistic side that wanted to hear this 24 song "definitive tribute to ABBA" put out by harsh noise label Nihilist Records...the lineup on compilation features names like Sockeye, Guilty Connector, Sudden Infant, and Viki, so one would expect an orgy of power electronics and high-impact noise pulverizing the living crap out of ABBA's hits, no? Well, you definitely get some of that, but theres alot more here as well. All of your fave ABBA anthems are distorted, cut up, and rebirthed by a wide variety of modern noise/psyche/damaged pop artists. Some of the "covers" are really cool and pretty re-imaginings of the original songs - the best track on here is the rendition of "Eagle" by I & Makoto (Cotton Casino and Kawabata Makoto of ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE) , which layers Cotton's heavenly singing over a sublime guitar drone from Kawabata. Awesome! The irr. app. (ext.) cover of "Knowing Me Knowing You" is a beautiful drifting morass of in-key/out-of-key vocals and psychedelic guitar strum, very nice. Guilty Connector and Sudden Infant deliver devestating harsh noise ABBA "covers". Sockeye does an expectedly retardo,noisy garage-pop cover of "Take A Chance On Me". There's some ridiculously great beat-driven noise-fests from Canned Hamm,Kazumoto Endo's atonal electro/plunderphonic/noise rendition of "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)", and Evil Moisture's spastic cut-up of "One Night In Bankok". Other artists featured are Vertonen, Ungrateful Deadbeats (aka Strangulated Beatoffs), Ski-Mask And The Bucketmen, Absorb, Waldchengarten, Brain Transplant, Foamula (aka Metalux / Magic Is Küntmaster), Spider Compass Good Crime Band (aka CAROLINER !), Body Tong, The Rib, Wounded Head, Gunshop, Viki, Julia Sets, and Methypnox. Altogether, this is a fascinating and highly listenable translation of ABBA's pop sweetness, enough to make me want to check out the original music! Limited to 500 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: CANNED HAMM "Does Your Mother Know" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: GUILTY CONNECTOR "Rock Me" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: PLASTIC CRIMEWAVE SOUND "Watch Out" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: I & MAKOTO "Eagle" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: KAZUMOTO ENDO "Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight)" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: SKI MASK & THE BUCKETMEN "My Mama Said" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: SOCKEYE "Take A Chance On Me" (excerpt)

MEANS TO AN END compilation LP $5.98 Armed With Anger Records (U.K. import)

OUT OF PRINT. This compilation LP features exclusive tracks from VOORHEES, MANFAT, HARD TO SWALLOW, UNBORN, SOLANKI, STALINGRAD, TRIBUTE, SCHEMA, BABY HARP SEAL, and BOB TILTON. Released as a benefit for the 1 In 12 Club, a long running underground anarchist venue in Bradford,UK. A great mix of UK bands, ranging from hateful thrashcore to nightmarish dark hardcore,futurist crust visions to melodic heavy emotional hardcore. These were dug out of the shadows, and have some shelf wear on the edges of the sleeves, hence the low price. Records are in otherwise great condition.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Merzbow - Frog - Remixed And Revisited 2xCD $14.98 Misanthropic Agenda

This mammoth remix release pulls out all of the stops: it's presented in a two-disc edition with an incredible lineup, with Boris, When, Ulver, Fennesz, Sunn O))), Hrvatski, Pita, House Of Low Culture, Tim Hecker, Russell Haswell, John Wiese, Terror Organ, Gerrit, Never Presence Forever, and even Merzbow himself all reconfiguring elements of the excellent Frog album (which we also just now got in stock and is reviewed elsewhere in this weeks update). All of the remixes on here are pretty rad, and my favorite tracks include the epic 20-minute long "Froggie Bee-Baa" from Boris with it's oceanic waves of rumbling guitar drones surging over layers of shortwave noise, the pastoral noise-bliss of both Tim Hecker's "Cloned Frog Language" and Fennesz's "Frog Remix", the beautiful dronescape of distant groaning guitars of Sunn O)))'s "Catch 22(Surrender Or Die)", and Ulver's minimalist horror movie score conjured from cut up slices of Merzbow noise and disorientating minor key melody. This is an excellent companion piece to Merzbow's Frog, which in my opinion is one of the best post-analogue releases from Masami Akita, but Frog - Remixed And Revisited just as easily stands on it's own as a high-quality collection of big names in the avant-heavy underground scrawling their own manifestos with the spewings of the master of Japanese noise. Comes in a beautiful glossy foldout package covered in awesome psychedelic artwork by Aaron Turner from Hydra Head/Isis.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Moby Dick compilation VHS VIDEOCASSETTE $9.98 RRRecords

A killer piece of handmade videocassette art from RRR, compiled in the mid-90's and packed with all kinds of random pop-culture debris collage, surrealist puppet skits, some inspired editing, frequent moments of awkward hilarity, and skull exploding live performances and footage from a feast of noise punk / improv-grind / harsh noise artists, including Emil Beaulieau, Big City Orchestra, Borbetomagus, Bulge, Die Todliche Doris, Dilaudid, F/i, Lance Gargoyle, The Haters, Japanese Torture Comedy Hour, Joiesko, LAFMS, Macronympha, Rougeux, Adam Spellman, The Whales, and John Wiggins. Yikes! This tape is 60 minutes long, and comes in a pink hardshell case.

V/A Most Unwanted : Electronic Compilation 2006 compilation LP $13.98 Borft/Ufomongo (Swedish import)

Super limited (300 copies) LP compilation of international electronic drone/free/noise mediums: Interzone inc, Treriksröset, CPU, Jeanne Fremaux, Inyurmania, Maor Appelbaum, Alvars orkester, Commando Laarz, Goz mongo alliance, Smell & quim, En halvkokt i folie, Eugenics council, FDASFDA, Five o´clock traffic, Sewer election & Enema syringe all appear on this black slab. Borft and the whole gang have assembled a flowing compendium of totally intoxicating deep space/back hole electronics that ranks as one of the best wyrd-circuitry comps of 2006...from the goatness of the cover art, to the manifestations of Lustmord-ian abyss ambience, stoned free jazz utterances, some exquisite amplifier feedback droneology, Lovecraftian cosmic synth burbling, and charred post-punk noise burnout, this comes off like a Black Mass of deep outtsider electronica. Excellent.

THE NATURE OF SYSTEMS compilation CD $11.98 Carbon Records

This excellent compilation has been out for awhile, but we've never carried it before, and with the great mix of artists/bands on this CD, we just had to offer it for anyone who hasn't come across this stellar psyche/drone/free noise/deathjazz comp previously... Featuring exclusive songs from CHARALAMBIDES, THE FLYING LUTTENBACHERS, PELT, LOREN MAZZACANE CONNORS, BARDO POND, as well as THE ARTHUR DOYLE ELECTRO-ACOUSTIC ENSEMBLE, Andy Gilmore, FINKBEINER, THE GOLDEN CALVES ESKIMO LIME BAND, BURLAP, JOE+N, NOD, MICK TURNER, SHEET, SQ, Karl Precoda/Mike Gangloff, and PENGO. Arthur Doyle Electro-Acoustic Ensemble starts off the disc with "Flue Song," a queasy flute melody delivered overtop what sounds to be field recordings of frogs with some spacey whoosh appearing throughout. Nice. Andy Gilmore follows with some pleasant string-bending ambient guitar abstraction, all subdued haze and hum with a strange voice sample appearing briefly halfway through, and ending with a chime-driven climax. Charalambides donate "Mansfield Dam", a minimal, glacially paced piece of abstract folk drift, not too far from their "Being As Is" material released on Crucial Blast, though it sounds strangely "digital", with the sporadically plucked acoustic strings being processed into little blips of melody that zip by via tape editing and masking. Eventually a minimal riff appears reminiscent of LOW and Charalambides "Home" and "Houston" CD, as Christina Carter's angelic voice loops in and climaxes the track with an absolutely GORGEOUS haze of droning bliss as her vocals become layered upon each other into infinity. Next up is FINKBEINER, with a dusty, cosmic drone-jam that straddles the line between sublime 70's sci-fi sound effect bleepery and Ennio Morricone style epics. Golden Calves Eskimo Live Band emerge from the shadow of TOWER RECORDINGS, with a brief duet between a roughly Jandekian acoustic guitar and what might be the weird recorded laughter of a battery-operated talking doll. Thoroughly creepy. The Flying Luttenbachers appear next with "Maximum Cruelty", a BORBETOMAGUS -esque blast of improvised-with-cues free-jazz-meets-death-metal splatter. Burlap’s "Coming Home" features a haunting, repetitive bass and guitar melody with wheezing electronics and shimmering blip noise. Pelt's track is recorded live and is more of their basic ethno-forgery drone sound, being a cavernous/ominous jam by an actual violin quartet, reminiscent of Sun City Girls collaboration with Eyvind Kang. Joe+n delivers some droning vinyl pops layered over ORGANUM style metallic shimmer. Loren Mazzacane Connors coaxes a dreamlike melody from gently reverbed guitar. Nod do their usual shambolic garage-rock, although "John Henry vs. The Smog Monster" infuses it with a country blues vocabulary, making it a wistful, vaguely Dixieland-sounding burst of free-rock stumble. Mick Turner of the Dirty Three follows and defies expectations with a rather wild cut-and-paste plunderphonic 'contemporary classical' type piece. Sheet is another Rochester-ite doing 'sheets' of noise. Kind of John Wiese-y, though with less "digital shock" and more on the "incendiary robo-drone" tip. SQ brings back the free-death-chaos with "After Being___So Long", an icy room-ambient piece with distant amp buzz, improvised cymbal splatter, and eternal feedback that mutates into shrieking skree collapse. Bardo Pond lumber through "Vagabond", a gnarly drone rock abrasion that sounds like SHELLAC drunk on cough syrup and stuck on a merry go round. Karl Precoda and Mike Gangloff team up for "Metal Shop", fusing field recordings of the aforementioned locale to a lower-register bowed-string drone. And Pengo end the disc with a jam called "New Loft Elevation 2001." At the raucous beginning, John Schoen's 'sound sources' create a feel more like To Live and Shave in L.A. than what one would expect from these guys, although it soon dissipates and out of the dust emerges a percussion-driven ethno-forgery jam with weird multi-tracked reed playing by Joe Tunis. The last few seconds are really great stuff, as the percussion groove morphs into a lurching electro-glitch groove. Overall, a superb diverse collection of drones, psyche-folk, free-noise, and deathjazz!

VARIOUS ARTISTS Noise - Untitled 3xCD BOXSET $17.98 Public Guilt

Oh man, this is ridiculous. If you're at all following what's going on in the current "noise" underground and are digging the multi-faceted, diverse ranges of heavy abstraction that's happening right now, then friend, you're going to love this massive feast of electrical chaos. Curated by no less than three labels operating at the fringes of underground noise/metal/rock (Public Guilt, Epicene Sound System, and Underadar, all three long-time favorites here at C-Blast), and spread out across three full length CDs filled to the lip with exclusive and semi-exclusive material from just about every static-charged band of psychonauts currently active as of 2005-2007. 225 minutes long, this compendium took over a year and a half to assemble, and the final product is stunning: each of the three discs are attached by hubs to individual cards that have screenprinted artwork on one side, and liner notes/track listings on the other; these are collected, along with an additional insert of boxset credits and artwork, in a 5" x 6" x 1" kraft paper box which is then wrapped with a red paper band printed in gold ink. There are four visual artists involved with the screenprints, with 2 pieces each from Shaun Flynn (of Wzt Hearts, Christopher White (of Magicicada), Jason Zeh (as himself) and Matthew Reis (Teeth Collection); all four also contributed tracks to the compilation. It's a beautifully realized boxset, and and the lineup is serious:
Disc 1 features one track each from Black Meat, Door, Noveller, Jason Zeh, Teeth Collection, Earwicker, tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE, Gerritt, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, Wzt Hearts, Skullcaster, Steve Bradley, Wether, Mermaids, Strotter Inst., Mike Shiflet, Leslie Keffer, and Magicicada.
Disc 2 features Burning Star Core, Oblong Box, Aughra, Travis Ryan, Donna Parker, Robert Inhuman, Yellow Tears, 1thousand holy shards, Back from Iraq, Sick Ill Cell, Dead Machines, Herpes Ö DeLuxe, The Cherry Point, Scutopus, Ben S. Jacobs, Blango, Decimation Blvd., Ultra//Vires, Subterrane, Destructo Swarmbots, and Darsombra.
And Disc 3 has Panicsville, OP Rechts, Bet Hell, Gerritt & John Wiese, Josh Lay, Cotton Museum, Big China/Little Trouble, Forbes Graham, Small Life, Iovae, Heirs of Rockefeller, Perfect Teeth, Hum of the Druid, Sword Heaven, Tonight Golden Curls, and Guilty Connector.
Holy shit. And the range of diversity on this compilation is huge - you get everything from death electronics and possessed metal clatter, psychedelic cosmic doomtroniks, harsh dronescapes, icy, glacial dronescapes, beautiful futuristic New Age dronescapes, overloaded glitch/guitar feverdreams, drug-fueled improvised scap metal rituals, funeral marches for diseased toys, blown-out melodic blasts of fuzz, demonic blacknoise assaults, ghostly feedback hauntings, rumbling wall noise, and of course, lots of mind-melting, ear-destroying, psychotropic HARSH NOISE DESTRUCTION. Some of the standout tracks I tripped out on the first time I listened to this included Josh Lay's charred and sludgy necro-trip-hop, the crushing tribal Swans dirge of Sword Heaven's "Skinned & Glued", Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation unleashing a blast of apocalyptic ambient doomsludge, another skeleton-disintegrating dose of crushing sludge-noise from our personal favorites Yellow Tears, some awesome, obliterating free-improv noise rock/noisecore/noise terror from Teeth Collection, Black Meat's hyperspeed electronic noisecore, Thurston Moore and his crushing guitar-noise freakout, and Darsombra's awesome Earth/Thrones-esque beatless sludge rock. This is already in the running for coolest compilation of 2007 - noise/avant/heavy drone/abstract sludge fans aren't going to want to miss this. Highly recommended.

VARIOUS ARTISTS No Tribute: Music Of The Nihilistic Spasm Band compilation CD $13.98 Little Mafia

Out of print, we just snagged the last few copies from the label! No Tribute is a 24 band tribute album to The Nihilistic Spasm Band. Formed in Canada in 1965, the Nihilistic Spasm Band have become legendary for their boundry exploding free-noise aesthetic and have influenced an entire generation of instrument abusers across the globe. This compilation has a killer lineup of modern noise, improv, and free-destruction outfits paying homage to The Nihilistic Spasm Band through reinvention and subversion of the original music. Just check this out: Hijokaidan, Wolf Eyes, Alan Licht, Smell & QUim, V/VM, Carlos Giffoni, Reynols, Cock E.S.P., Baku, U Can Unlearn Guitar, The Pin Vs. Bellchamber, Unconditional Loathing, Jacopo Andreini, Winter Carousel, Roughage, Dapper, Madame Chao, Inca Eyeball, Del, Pengo, Panicsville, Wrong, Newton, and Glands Of External Secretion. Holy shit. 72 minutes long, released in a limited edition of 500. We only have a couple in stock, so move fast!

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT compilation 2xCD and zine set $9.98 Crucial Blast

We must have been huffing freon back in January, as we totally neglected to add the Not Without A Fight 2xCD compilation re-issue to the Crucial Blast webstore when it was released. So for anyone who missed this on the Crucial Blast main page, here's the scoop:
This limited-edition re-issue of the 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, we grabbed 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. This second edition is limited to 1,000 copies, never to be repressed. 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.

OBSOLETE VIEW compilation CD $7.98 The Rectrix

Three underground blackened ambient / corroded drone industrial acts on one full length cd. HOLLOWING bring a mind-melting sonic barrage, aggressive as ever. Tribal electronic rhythms, paranoid sampling, and a sick and twisted world view. AERE AETERNUS gives us a serene and gripping neoclassical ambient mixture, featuring two members of the Dark Sanctuary cult. And METANEMFROST unveils minimal twisting rhythmic structures flirting with the psychotic void of uncertainty. First, Hollowing gives us 3 tracks of unsettling apocalyptic electronics. 'Call to Arms: Xowardice' has a martial feel, with threatening percussion and militant vocal samples. The song starts rather bare and minimal, which is effective as an introduction. Towards the end of the song it gets a bit stranger and more chaotic and nosiy. The next track is a 12-minute tranquil soundscape, with rumbling machinery and guitar ambience in the background. After a few minutes some brooding horn sounds are introduces, followed by noisy rhythmic blasts. Halfway it really gets loud and aggressive. Towards the end the song slows, and even incorporates some piano. Strange machines whirrr in the background. 'Convergence upon the Biopsychic' starts with some triumphant straightforward drumming. Shrill noises and filthy voices are added to the mix, as well as gritty drones and buzz. A strange, short composition.Aere Aeternus offer 4 tracks, filled with neo-classical ambience. Epic cinematic atmospheres abound on 'Of suicide, pain and old age', a track that is classical in nature, yet infests itself with some difficult industrial elements and slightly bombastic drums. Awesome. 'Uselees, the obsolete view' is a track of VERY dark ambient, ulta low subterranean thrum to make your speakers rumble.And 'I should have missed my birth' features some subtle acoustic guitar work and nice atmospheric drones. Their last contribution is a long, experimental ambient track, with unsettling high tones piercing the drift. As the composition progresses it gains in volume and fullness, developing more and more interesting layers of sound.Last but not least is Metanemfrost, aproject of Adhab Al-Farhan, born in the Philippines, and also active in a few metal projects. 'Chtonian' starts with a dark orchestral intro, a la Puissance. But then the music shifts to a spacious, atmospheric sound, filled with slow and repetive, powerful beats. Very nice. 'Black Flames' of Phlegethon' is more noisy and dense, but with a beautiful classical outro. 'Empire Ablaze' nicely builds up the tension, with subtle changing rhythms and electronic sounds. 'Ancient Blood Scriptures' is a ritual soundscape, which invokes obscure ceremonies, performed in deep hidden cellars. Finally 'The Black Vortex' reminds one of classic power electronics, with very low, distorted beats crunching through the grit. All in all an exciting collection of three experimental electronics artists that covers a variety of dark electronic styles. Comes packaged in a nice full color wallet. Another stellar release from THE RECTRIX.

VARIOUS ARTISTS OC/LA GRIND: Pure And Sick compilation VHS Videocassette $9.98 ScumProductions

We just unearthed a couple copies of this obscure DIY video compilation from the mid 90's, a serious blast-from-the-powerviolence-past, collecting all sorts of live detritus, show clips, and performance footage from a wealth of Southern California extreme hardcore/grindcore/stench/noise outfits, including Carcinogen (grinding crust gristle from members of Dystopia), Narcosis, Stapled Shut, funeral doomsters Morgion, Excruciating Terror, Gasp (Crucial Blast's favorite psychedelic powerviolence band ever!), psych crusties Dystopia, Dead America, Mange, Mindrot, Phobia, and Crom. OC/LA: GRIND is a totally DIY punk affair, with loads of video camera footage and blown recordings, but the grittiness of this video comp only adds to the total filth/noise vibe. The tape is packaged in a hardshell plastic case with a full color cover that notes the dates and locations of each band's footage.

OLD TYME LEMONADE Providence and Olneyville Rhode Island compilation CD $11.98 Hospital Productions

Originally released as a retardedly ultra-limited cassette comp, this super-sweet compilation disc showcases one of the coolest scenes anywhere: Providence / Olneyville , Rhode Island ! All exclusive shredz from LANDED , NOISE NOMADS , NECRONOMITRON , MINDFLAYER , KNIGHTS OF TIMBRE , EM DATH RIR , PRURIENT , DROPDEAD , MAHI MAHI , SERATONE , FOOTBALL RABBIT, SUFFERING BASTARD,SMASHED FEMUR DANCE PARTY, THRONE OF BLOOD,KITES,LIGHTNING BOLT,KNIFESTORM,MEERK PUFFY,WHITE MICE,and PATOOTIE LOBE. Providence rules! You've got everything you need here: gnarled warp-prog no-wave metal, free-noise jam assaults, glacially drifting post-rock, sweaty drum/noise stomping freakouts, loopy plunderphonia, hyper-primitive bedroom blackened grindcore, Am Rep noise-rock worship blasted to smithereens, blazing thrash...Standouts? DROPDEAD's fucking awesome live track from Finland circa 1996, where a droning washout reminiscent of DEAD C or SONIC YOUTH emerges from the wreckage of their 1000mph onslaught of thrash... LIGHTNING BOLT's loose, hypnotic dirge-riot...FOOTBALL RABBIT's stomping, proggy metal n' handclap crunch...tis' a killer comp, much of it low-fi and raw around the edges, but this stuff wasn’t made for sissies. Get it and get yer head caved in.

VARIOUS ARTISTS REALICIDE / EVOLVE / CAPITAL HEMORRHAGE : LIVE CD-R $6.98 Realicide Youth

An hour of live performances from three bands that are part of the really cool and vibrant progressive/noisy hardcore scene that's happening in the southern Ohio area, this split was released primarily for Realicide to sell on their U.S. tour this summer, but we were able to get a few for C-Blast. Features a bunch of live tracks from each with fairly solid recording quality that sounds like it came off of a soundboard, but most importantly each set is super energetic and a great document of how wild each of these bands are. The only outfit on here that we had seen before in a live setting is Captial Hemorhhage, who we caught at the 611 Florida house in DC back in December '06...their set of brutal "aktionist hardcore" os from a show in St. Louis from March of 2007, and it's just as nasty and violent here as it was when we saw 'em, a drummer and guitarist two-piece unleashing gnarly noisy hardcore, deformed Am Rep noise rock riffs, throwing cymbals and lead pipes around the room, and devolving into formless sludge. Evolve is a guy named Colin Murray who performs a kind of sound collage/avant hip hop hybrid that's firmly rooted in old school Industrial moves, graff culture and a passionate DIY punk aesthetic. His set from Johnson City, TN in December '06 is a spacey experience, with airy dub beats and heavy drum machines rattling beneath layers of field recordings and effects-heavy tape collages. Last up is Realicide, the noisecore/gabba/electronics trio featuring Robert Inhuman's spoken-word/hip hop inspired anarcho rants. Their set is from Nashville in December '06, with second vocalist Jim Swill and drum machine/sampler/synth abuser Mavis Concave joining Inhuman in whipping up brutal wacked out panic speedcore, rhythmic blocks of noise, blastbeats and breakbeats, sometimes sounding like a fucked up mixture of Nine Inch Nails, Atari Teenage Riot, and hard drive grindcore. It's a cool little live document, the disc sorting a cool screenprint on it's face, and packaged inside of a plastic wallet sleeve with a large xeroxed poster insert. Released in a tiny edition of 110 copies.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Real Japanese Underground 2005: Grind & Noise Omnibus compilation 2 x CD-R $5.98 Lost Rivers Product (Japanese import)

This double CD-R compilation is one of the craziest mixtapes of extreme noise/core we've ever heard, two discs completely loaded with over 2 hours of fucked up, utterly bizarre psychedelic Japanese noisecore, avant grind, psych drones, harsh noise, gabba pop, and other 100% mutant, 100% Japanese confections. Unfortunately, the label that put this out stuck the discs in what pretty much amounts to the most unimaginative packaging possible, a simple xeroxed sleeve with absolutely zero artwork, appearing more like a cheap label sampler than anything. That sucks, because the sounds collected here are from another fucking planet. But then again, you can't really go wrong with 2 hours of music for $6. The first disc has improv noisegrind from Sete Star Sept and Napalm Death is Dead, AWESOME speedmetal/techno from Bakans, retardedly brutal goregrind chugalug from Pultrefaction Apartment and Fuck Me Please, Aostrapos' epic blast psychedelia, freaking killer deathcore weirdness from Deathlate, amazing brutal noise/pop/gabba/hypergrind from Grind D.C.P.S., two MINDBLOWING solo-guitar post-rock/psych/hard rockin' shred instrumentals from Mindweaver (honestly, we recommend picking this sampler up for the Mindweaver tracks alone! Total lo-fi stoner guitar bliss!), plus a handful of other bands whose names we can't read because we can't read Kanji, but we can say that they deal in a variety of bizarre avant-garde J-pop noise, immolating digital noise improv. Then there is the very last track, again by someone whose name is written in Kanji, entitled "Unholy Satanic Improvisation". It's six minutes of a man alone in a room, muttering all sorts of insane nonsensical shit, sometimes letting loose with death metal grunts while he severely abuses his guitar through a tinny practice amp. Essential. The second disc has more brutal electronic noisecore chaos from Feedback Nine VOlt, spastic digital cut-up destruction from Bloody Letter, PLANET CRUSHING powerdrone rumble from Aiz, crunchy harsh noise from 666, ultraviolent feedback improv from Destructionisties and Vent, evil dronenoise from Wyrs, Wolf Eyes-esque devilgnarl from Beautiful Demise, and an awesome set of massive Sunn O)))-meets-Astromero drone metal and ambient annhiliation from Te:ch/a/os:mosis. We're talking GOBS of variety here, folks. In a way, this is a perfect companion to that Japanoise compilation CD we reviewed recently, a detailed exploration into the utterly mutant underbelley of the Japanese extreme underground.

RENO: Where Dreams Come To Die compilation CD $7.98 Sedition Records

This compilation kills on contact. If ever there was a city whose hardcore community was disproportionately massive compared to its population it would have to be Reno. Each band on here is impressive in its own right, you've got everything from old school thrash to neo-black thrash to noise thrash to THIS COMPUTER KILLS (who sound like VERBAL ASSAULT would have if they were a thrash band). Full-on, top-notch fastcore, scuzz punk and occasional grind here (plus SCURVY BASTARDS pirate punx closing track) representing Reno. Features exclusive tracks from Redrum, Headgrenade, Vae Victis, This Computer Kills, The Livid, Bloody Victim, Iron Lung, All Opposed and the Scurvy Bastards. Damn good stuff, total aggro.

REISTANCE IS FUTILE compilation 7" EP $4.98 Invertabrata Records (Austrian import)

Out of print. Import harsh hardcore comp feat. exclusive tracks from STALINGRAD (avant-darkcore),NO COMPLY (hyperthrash duo),GRIEVANCE (technical crust metal), and KONSTRUKT (chaotic hardcore grind).

VARIOUS ARTISTS Secrets And Sounds compilation CD $10.98 Animal Disguise

A great mix of true basement noise/rock/blast freakdom circa 2004 from Animal Disguise, which has quickly become one of my favorite labels currently dealing in this sort of challenging ear mess. This disc is jam packed at 74 minutes, with 22 previously unreleased, exclusive jams from artists with releases on Animal Disguise (Football Rabbit, Viki, Mammal, Growing, Meerk Puffy), and friends and affiliates of the AD imprint, including more well known names like Hair Police, Prurient, Neon Hunk, and Sinking Body, amongst others. It's a solid comp with killer cuts from all involved, and you couldn't ask for a more varied buffet of noisy destruction: blown-out noise/scum rock seizures from Hair Police and Football Rabbit; gnarly, infectious noise-electro-pop-trash and strange beat experiments from Viki, Libythth, Panama, Meerk Puffy, ROTFLOL, The Lowdown, Ferox Head, and Neon Hunk; crushing electronic power, junk noise sculptures, and psychedelic circuit mangle from Prurient, Arnoux, Nautical Almanac, Zombi, Liger, Charles Lareau, Smashed Femur Dance Party, Ton B, Sinking Body; Mammal's head exploding techno corrosion; Cipher Fox's kaleidoscope of maximalist electronic fractal-melody that makes me think of newer Growing material on crack; and the too-brief kosmiche blissout from Growing themselves that closes out the compilation, entitled "F-4 Phantom Flying Overhead". One of the best scene snapshots since the Old Tyme Lemonade compilation.

V/A Senza Tregua compilation LP $11.98 Enterruption

Man, this LP is nothing but MAXIMUM FANG from the heydey of noisey Italian hardcore (we're talking 1983 here), each band offering a savage primitivism and raw weirdness that's totally "out" compared to almost anything you'd wanna call hardcore, yet start-to-end, this is total ferociousness and speed, a snaggletoothed mixtape of grade-A aggro. Senza Tregua is a commemorative vinyl re-issue of the seminal cassette comp originally released through BCT Tapes back in 1983...fans of Italian hardcore just need to see the lineup on this mother: CHEETAH CHROME MOTHERFUCKERS, STATO DI POLIZIA (SDP GR), WARDOGS, PUTRID FEVER, I REFUSE IT!, TRAUMATIC, and JUGGERNAUT. Crucial. These are manic, super noisy, totally pissed punk disasters from all involved, every song coming apart at the seams and whipping out ridiculously catchy hooks with some completely OFF THE CHARTS guitar playing, but each band has their own amazing style too, the grooves on this LP overflowing with pure raw energy and anti-social slobber that makes me want to climb the walls. EVERY SONG on this shreds, but we really freaked out over the eardrum bursting feedback-infested political 'core of STATO DI POLIZIA, the out-of-control speedcore slop of WARDOGS, SKULL SHREDDING thrash from CHEETAH CHROME MOTHERFUCKERS, and I REFUSE IT!'s unreal speed/art/thrash that just freaking wasted us. Obviously essential for fans of Italian/international hardcore from the 80's, we also gotta suggest this comp to any lunk that thinks BAD BRAINS were the final word in totally weird, awesome, bouncing-off-the-walls hardcore thrash! Edition of 1000 copies, released by our pals at Enterruption, who have also put out essential items from GRAVITAR, LARSEN, and GODSTOMPER. Comes in a gorgeous Winston Smith -illustrated sleeve, with a dope liner-note loaded booklet included.

SHOWTUNES OF THE CONDEMNED compilation CD $11.98 Hospital Records

Another cool compilation from Hospital, this time gathering together anywhere from 1-4 songs each from SINKING BODY, PLEASUREHORSE, KITES, WORK/DEATH, SMASHED FEMUR DANCE PARTY, and MEERK PUFFY. Lots and lots of terrific urban buzzsaw drone-noise, nuclear-wasteland techno, and danceable test tones ,often driven by some mutant ultradistorted beat or pulse. Low-fi fuzz skitters across ambient soundscapes, gonzo sound collages rot before your ears, while other tracks deliver pounding and terminally funky powernoise rhythms. Each artist has about 15 minutes of stuff on here, so you get a great big bag of primo Providence,RI outsider-electronica and noise freakouts. Booklet includes a "short story of contemporary mythology" from Scott Wilson.

V/A - SIX DOORS compilation CD $11.98 Housepig

A powerful presentation of modern extreme waveform manipulators. This six-way split CD features six epic tracks, each one clocking in at around 11-12 minutes in length, from Unicorn, Aube, Bastard Noise, Luasa Raelon, Guilty Connector and Tabata, and Oblong Box. Unicorn offer "Sleeper Wave", a gentle Rhodes piano melodic figure blossoming slowly into purring drone hiss, quite meditative and just as cool as last year's stellar Playing With Light material. Japan's Aube follows with "Shackle", an epic pipe fight and metallic scrape feast, generating skin crawling tension over it's 12 minute duration. The mighty Bastard Noise resurfaces with "Flesh Near Automation", which begins as broootal death drone with Wood's signature monster vocals proclaiming endtime over caveman electronics and distortion gristle, but then morphs into a gorgeous shimmering hissing drone that's more akin to Maeror Tri, Troum, and Sunroof! than the usual violence we'd expect from Bastard Noise. Awesome! Luasa Raelon "Infradimensional" is another beautifully depressing and ominous slab of dark ambient drone, similiar in feel to the heavy shit presented on the Poison City album released on Eibon last year. Moaning submerged synths glide underwater, beneath a swirling miasma of black oil, buzzing UV electronics, and distant industrial loops, connecting the dots between Bastard Noise at their most subdued, and the nightmare drift of Lustmord. This is followed by "France Oscillation From Limbo", a masterpiece of squiggly bashed electronics and transcendent guitar drone from the duo of Guilty Connector and Mitsuru Tabata, K.K. Null's co-guitarist in Japanese heavies Zeni Geva. Howling feedback tones and wildly oscillating electronics are tempered by a subtle melodic structure, and this track becomes a highly hypnotic dronework filled with detail and slowly shifting melodic figures, a psychedelic merger of heavy pedal-stomping noise with psychedelic electro drones, guitar ambience, and minimalist strokes, like Oren Ambarchi and K.K. Null fusing together in a ten minute vertical stream. Oblong Box wrap this compendium up with "The Knife That Cuts The Handler", another forbidding drone creepout with moaning chant vocals and buzzing cable hum and midnight ambient float that reminds us of Troum and Yen Pox and bad,bad dreams. Six tracks, 71 minutes, highly recommended to drone/drift/ambient noise fans...every track here is a keeper.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Spill Your Guts Friend compilation CASSETTE $4.98 Stomach Ache Records / RRRecords

Do you need an injection of paint peeling early 90's noise/punk damage? This DIY tape compilation compiled and released by Stomache Ache Records will deliver. This comp features about 40 minutes or so of weird noise improv, scorching noisy punk rock, and fucked up heaviness from the likes of GG Allin, ANA, Emil Beaulieau, Bringdownzz, Brown Supper, Faxed Head, Gerogerigegege, Needles, Out Cold, Lee Ranaldo, Royal Trux, Specula, Squirmbo, Steeplesnakes, Gregg Turkington, and also includes a vocal/cut-up intro from Eye Yamatsuka of Boredoms/Hanatarash ! Cool shit, a perfect soundtrack for your next 'Tussin binge in the basement with your buds. The tape comes in a regular tape case with a green cardstock xeroxed sleeve.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Supersonic Sounds From The 'Fuck You' Movement compilation CD $11.98 CNP Records

Assorted bits of noise rock, prank calls, bizarro avant-racket, and overall punk as fuckness are gathered here on this 25 track, hour-plus long compilation from the SUPPRESSION hq. Guilty parties include exclusive jams from CHARM CITY SUICIDES, KOJAK, THE IRREVERSIBLE NEURAL DAMAGE, SEVEN HEARTS, THE BEARDED EDDIES, P.C.P. ROADBLOCK, BASTARD NOISE, S.S.S. , NUMBER ONE BLOOD, SILVER NINJAS, PUS DEL RECTO, RAPISTS IN SHANGRI-LA, and lots of ridiculous phone pranks. Nonstop fun from start to end.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Triad CD $12.98 Neurot

Neurot presents this three-way split that showcases three of the label's newer outfits, Made Out Of Babies, Red Sparowes, and Battle Of Mice. Red Sparowes have already made quite a name for themselves with a couple of really well-received albums of moody, explosive instrumental rock epics, and here they offer two live tracks recorded at KFJC's 'Live in the Pit' series, "Alone And Unaware, The Landscape Was Transformed In Front Of Our Eyes" and "Buildings Began To Stretch Wide Across The Sky, And The Air Filled With A Reddish Glow", both as massive and panoramic as their verbose titles would suggest. The recording of these live jams is PERFECT, sounds like they could be studio tracks, both beautiful winding blasts of melodic shimmering distortion and symphonic walls of spacey fuzz, steadily climbing twin guitars, propulsive drumming and proggy basslines building and exploding into crushing cosmic crunch. Totally amazing and stirring - these guys have definitely formed their own language of instrumental majesty , but if you're also a fan of Mono, Explosions In The Sky, Souvenir's Young America, you'll love Red Sparowes.
Battle Of Mice, who have quickly become one of my new favorite bands, contributes two tracks to this disc: "Sleep & Dream" and "Lamb & The Labrador", both of which appeared in slightly different form on their album A Day Of Nights (which is listed elsewhere in this weeks store update). BOM features a member of Red Sparowes and Made Out Of Babies singer Julie Christmas; if you've heard Made Out Of Babies, then you're already familiar with Christmas' unique vocals. Her singing style shifts between a creepy, breathy little-girl voice, sultry hushed whispering, and fucking fierce screams that she really belts out, and for Battle Of Mice she leans more towards the softer singing, at times reminding me a little bit of Bjork. The music has some of Made Out Of Babies aggressive noise-rock crunch, and there's also a celestial quality that reminds me of both Red Sparowes and Isis a little, rolling tribal drumming, ominous melodic shadows and monstrous sludgy metal riffs, super creepy and catchy and icy vibes, a menacing mutant alt-metal unlike anything else out there. I can't fucking wait till their upcoming split with Jesu comes out!
Then it's Made Out Of Babies closing this out, again with Julie Christmas singing, but much more agressively, her harrowing screams and dramatic croon trading off as the band busts out "Gunt" and "Proud To Drown", histrionic eruptions of percussive post-Am Rep metal, lurching angular riffage and pounding beats that bash it out like an apocalyptic meeting of PJ Harvey, NYC pigfuck, brooding metallic postrock figures and Jesus Lizard street sleaze.
Comes in a full color case with awesome artwork from Seldon Hunt.

MP3 SAMPLE: MADE OUT OF BABIES "Proud To Drown" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: RED SPAROWES "Along And Unaware, The Landscape Was transformed In Front Of Our Eyes" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: BATTLE OF MICE "Sleep And Dream (edit)" (excerpt)

VARIOUS ARTISTS TRYPTAPHONIC MIND EXPLOSION compilation CD $11.98 Mandragora

Available again at a lower price than before!
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.

TU CARNE / A.T.S. / GERMEN 3-way split CD $9.98 American Line Records (Mexican import)

Features 3 of the most vile Spanish goregrind bands in existence. Spanish splatter fiends TU CARNE are featured here with the re-release of their first demo, a 7 song blowout of raw gore destruction. Spanish gore blasters GERMEN (with members of TU CARNE) continue the cheese grater chaos grind. AGONY TERROR SYSTEM wrap things up with seemingly improvised grind noise wipeout.

TUNGT SVENSKT Swedish rock and roll dammit compilation DOUBLE 7"EP $9.98 Game Two Records

This Double 7" set features four exclusive cuts from today's top Swedish Rockers and Doomers. This stellar comp was produced on double-blue vinyl and is limited to 1000 copies. GENEROUS MARIA, THE MUSHROOM RIVER BAND, RISE & SHINE and SPACE PROBE TAURUS are showcased here. A heavy duty dose of rocking Swedish Doom and stoner rock.

V/A Unlucky For Them: A compilation CASSETTE $7.98 Borft/Ufomongo (Swedish import)

A hour-long, hallucinogenic dose of industrial cassette culture and heavy drone dreams/midnight noise captured on this rare Borft-issued tape comp from 1992, released here in a numbered edition of 75 copies. Just like the Most Unwanted LP comp we boosted from Borft, this anthology seeds your submerged mind with exclusive trance-loop constructs from Mohr, Disumana Rez, Etat des stocks, DSIP, Alvars Orkester, Paul Kelday, A.B.O., PPP, Nux Vomica, New 7th music, Smell & Quim, and Las cometras alegres, each artist fabricating droning, dreamlike soundscapes formed from carefully assembled sound collage, mellow electronic urk, and drugged ambience. We jam this tape when we're driving 'round town late at night, a perfect soundtrack for a.m. asphalt silence. Comes with a strangley parchment like jcard sleeve in plastic case.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Waterloo CD $11.98 Underhill Records (SPANISH IMPORT)

You want a four-course meal of the finest progressive metalcore/sludge bands the Spanish underground currently has on offer? Look no further than this full length, 4-way split which features multiple exclusive tracks from Moho, Moksha, Adrift, and Another Kind Of Death. Waterloo is actually the name of a heavy music festival in Madrid that featured these four bands, so this is kind of an event program showcasing each band's twist on contemporary metallic hardcore. Madrid's own Another Kind Of Death open Waterloo with three tracks of fierce, technical metalcore with heavy grind elements; I was already familiar with 'em from their No Signal album on Red Cobalt from a couple of years ago, and these tracks continue to dish out the complex, super-rocking heaviness with weird intricate polyrhythms, spacey FX textures, and vicious layered vocals, sort of a cross between Botch and older Cave In. Also from Madrid, Adrift follow with an even more progressive take on churning metalcore crunch, their first two songs featuring hypnotic mathrock guitar figures and droning metallic riffage weaving around crushing drumming that surges in epileptic fits. Super complicated and proggy, and reminding me of everything from Neurosis to Meshuggah to Pelican all at the same time. But their third track "Paseo por el Nilo" shifts gears as it opens with a brooding ambient guitar chug that sounds a little like something off of Earth's Pentastar before the rest of the band kicks in with a huge lumbering riff, turning the song into a massive menacing doom instrumental, then giving way to an extended math rock workout with chiming angular guitar lines and rubbery basslines that squirm around the drummer's dynamic offtime beats. Imagine a more convoluted, prog-rock take on Isis' chugging dronemetal jams on Celestial. Ultra heavy and very cool.
Next up is Moksha, who crank up the aggression level even more with their fast paced doomcore assault that sounds like a combination of Entombed's later death n' roll stuff, burly grind-influenced hardcore, some slight psychedelic elements a la spacey effects floating around in the background, and that weird shit that German chaoscore pushers Systral were doing on their last album when they suddenly decided to start applying Motorhead riffs to their atomic-blast Teutonic meltdowns. In other words, Moksha's jams are mega rocking, you could almost call this stoner boogie riff-rock if it didn't have so many chaotic blastbeats, fucked-up rhythm changes, weird electronic effects, and straight up deathcore breakdowns tossed into their fiery raveups.
Last is the longrunning Spanish power-trio Moho, who you've probably already heard if you follow the Shifty Records/Throne orbit of DIY sludge rock. They've only got two tracks here, but each run 6-9 minutes long and are chock full of Moho's trademark molten riffage, raspy ripped screams and ridiculously swampy groove. Midpaced bluesy stoner crush downshifts into sticky slabs of gargantuan Sabbathian sludge. Essentially the Spanish answer to Buzzoven, early Floor, High On Fire, and Weedeater. Their last track "El Segador" is a freaking streetcleaner, laying down one of the heaviest, most droning and hypnotic sludge riffs on the whole disc that seems to pound away at forever.

MP3 SAMPLE: ANOTHER KIND OF DEATH "The Murderer In Our Romance" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: ADRIFT "Ramses" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: MOKSHA "The Nemesis Summer" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: MOHO "Gargantor" (excerpt)

VARIOUS ARTISTS We Would Be Happy: A Noise Opera CD $11.98 Nihilist / Sunship

Noise opera? As weird as that idea might seem, We Would Be Happy does largely focus on a bizarre, surreal story arc formed out of singing, transgressive monologues, and downright weird ranting from French noise/performance/outsider artist Jean-Louis Costes, who was formerly a member of the Suckdog Circus, the agit-art performance group whose actions were centered around the noise music "operas" written by Costes and Lisa Suckdog. We Would Be Happy is a composed work that continues in that spirit, a dark dreamlike narrative with Costes and Cock E.S.P.'s Elyse some unnamed human drama, his violent rambling the counterpoint to Elyse's sinister suggestions of love, rape, and castration. Their story is underscored by a combination of eerie minimal drones and crushing harsh noise material both composed by and collaborated on by a truly impressive lineup of extreme noise heavyweights, namely Lasse Marhaug, K.K. Null, Richard Ramirez, Smell & Quim, Cock E.S.P., and Costes. This album is definitely something different from any other heavy noise album we've heard, and is an unsettling psychic journey. Heavy.

VARIOUS ARTISTS Where Is My Robotic Boot compilation 2xCD $15.98 Hydra Head

The compilation gets no love anymore. That sad fact is probably due to the sheer number of shitty, ill-advised compilations that labels have put out with no unifying theme or context over the years. But for me, there's