TITLES: A

AARNI Bathos CD $13.98
Firedoom

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

DILLOWAY, AARON Bad Dreams CD $8.98
Troniks

This full length disc is a re-release of the CD-R that originally came out on Dilloway's Hanson Records. Rhythmic, looping bat flutter, oscillator clatter, eerie pre-dawn engine groan, and scorched transistor bleat lays down a grimy static/crunch/hum haze from this Wolf Eyes / ex- Violent Ramp / Galen / Couch guy. Listening to this disc sounds like coming to at 6am in the middle of a parking lot with a streetcleaner bearing down on your head. Superb. As with all of these sweet PACrec releases, this comes in a minimally illustrated wallet sleeve, with a creeped out werewolf thing on the cover.

ABANDON In Reality We Suffer CD $11.98
Thrash And Burn

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

ABE VIGODA Sky Route/Star Roof LP $11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.
Not Not Fun

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

ABISYEIKAH Jiyuumo Kattemo Onajida Nandemo Iikara Yacchimae! 2xCD-R $11.98
Dotsmart

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

ABSEMIA Morbopraxis! CD $9.98
American Line

There's something about gore-soaked South American death metal that really hits the spot. This new full length from Argentinian grinders Absemia features strong musicianship, while maintaining that fiercely raw and noisy edge that draws me to bands from this region of the world. Executing extremely brutal deathgrind that’s rough around the edges, with raw production values and a flair for ultra chaotic riffing and blastbeats, Absemia grind through 9 tracks of atonal, ugly, and clinical shred with guttural vocals and demented song structures that perfectly fit their Carcass-esque medical textbook song titles and splatter aesthetics. The leadwork and riffing on Morbopraxis toe the line between spastic chaos and atmospheric/disharmonic melody, and some great doomy slow passages pop up throughout the disc, breaking up what would otherwise be a nonstop noise gore tech blast fest. Packaging features typical South American psychosexual/autopsy themes, with splatterized, hand-rendered cover art. Features a CD-Rom enhanced video for Cronica Infeccion. MUST BE 18 OR OLDER TO PURCHASE.

ABRUPTUM Evil Genius CD $14.98 Southern Lord

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

ABRUPTUM Evil Genius LP $14.98 Southern Lord

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

ACID KING III LP (BLACK VINYL) $13.98 Kreation Records

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

A FINE BOAT THAT COFFIN Second Nail 12" LP $11.98 Ohnono (Canadian import)

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

ABSOLUT NULL PUNKT Ultrasonic Action CD $11.98 Charnel/NUX ORGANIZATION

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

ACCEPT DEATH s/t CD $11.98 Retribute Records (UK import)

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

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. In C / In E LP
Eclipse
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

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

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE Mantra Of Love CD
Alien8
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

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

ACID MOTHERS TEMPLE & THE MELTING PARAISO U.F.O. Pataphysical Freak Out Mu !! 2xLP
Eclipse
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

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

ACRIMONY / CHURCH OF MISERY split CD $11.98 Game Two

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

ACROSS TUNDRAS Dark Songs Of The Prairie CD $11.98 Crucial Blast

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

ACROSS TUNDRAS Divides CD $8.98 Feeling Faint

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

ACT XL CD
Amanita
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

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

AEOGA Coav CD $11.98 Aural Hypnox

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

AEOGA Zenith Beyond The Helix-Locus CD $11.98 Aural Hypnox (Finnish import)

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

AGAINST NATURE Pluperfect 7" $6.98 The Church Within (Germany)

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

AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED PCP Torpedo/ANBRX 2xCD $14.98 Hydra Head

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

VARIOUS ARTISTS AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED PCP Torpedo: ANB Remixed LP $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.

AH! QUELLE BELLE JOURNEE compilation CD $11.98 Amanita (French import)

We've unearthed this obscure 1994 compilation from French avant rock label Amanita that features an exclusive mix of international avant- electro/beatbox heaviness, experimental hardcore, and Euro-style SONIC YOUTH worship, with most of the artists providing multiple tracks. You get some mutant outsider hip hop from NY's KRACKHOUSE, and some heavy industrial electro-metal from ESCARE, awesome noisy improvised hardcore from FREICORE. The VOODOOMUZAK tracks here are totally unlike anything else we've heard from them, weirdly layered and cut up and brutal snarling noise rock, and only begins to hint at the intricate polyrythmic post-rock of their recent material at the very end of their second song on here. Weird. This is followed by JAYWALKER's narcoleptic, Sonic Youth / Dinosaur Jr. worshipping indie rock, which is quite good. RWA does a manic mix of chaotic, noisy hardcore and bebop/free jazz which is pretty ripping. You'll also find some wonky noiserock from XRATEDX, the icy howl of KILL THE THRILL 's "Jesus And Mary Chain on a Sonic Youth and Wax Trax binge", WOO's stoned free jazz/punk/no wave skronk, and ONE ARM's killer no wave/dance punk. Rad. 19 tracks, over seventy-five minutes of music. Comes in a Bruno Richard designed digipack with a long fold out booklet built into the packaging.

AIDAN BAKER Candescence CD-R $8.98 Suggestion Records (German import)

Awesome minimal melodic guitar drone from Canadian ambient rocker Aidan Baker that's cast adrift in similiar ether as Oren Ambarchi, Growing, Troum, and Fennesz. Created entirely with electric and acoustic guitar and bass guitar, these five racks feature lighter-than-air, immensely beautiful melodies floating amongst low tones and fuzzy smears of amplifier hum and feedback. The repetitive melodies spin off into eternity, propelled by barely-there rhythms formed from loops of scraped guitar strings and the vibrations of thumps off the guitar's body that could easily be mistaken for submerged glitchy electronic beats if the liner notes didn't betray thye source. The first track is even based on some Autechre material, but we couldn't place it. It's all very Troum-like, and fans of those German droners would totally love this, an angelic postrock blur that sounds like it's buried deep beneath the earth. Truly gorgeous, and one of the best recorded works we have heard yet from Aidan Baker. Packaged in an austerely printed cardstock wallet encased in guazy stocking material. If you at all enjoyed the Periodic CD-R we released through Crucial Bliss recently, or are into the evocative droneology of Troum and Growing, we cannot recommend this highly enough.

AIDS WOLF The Lovvers LP CD $11.98 Lovepump United

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

AIR CONDITIONING Catneck / Frustrating Ice Princess 7" Picture Disc $6.98 Electric Human Project

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

AKIMBO Forging Steel And Laying Stone CD $14.98 Alternative Tentacles

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

AKIMBO Harshing Your Mellow CD $14.98 Alternative Tentacles

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

ALABAMA THUNDERPUSSY / HALFWAY TO GONE split CD EP
Underdogma
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

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

ALARUM Eventuality CD $11.98 Willowtip Records

Back in the early 90's, which were undoubtedly the glory days of death metal, there were bands like Cynic, Atheist, and Pestilence that were far ahead of their time playing a style of jazzy progressive death metal that set the standard for the genre. Years have past and still these bands are considered to be the tops in the genre and few bands have ever come close to recording albums as great as the pioneers, UNTIL NOW.Eventuality is quite simply as good as progressive jazz-infused death metal can get, and will prove to be a classic release. This is an album that any fan of forward thinking and progressive music cannot pass up. Their penchant for Cynic worship is still heavily in place, with plenty of energetic riffing and tightly knit alternate picking patterns with lots of intricately woven layers of guitar parts and basslines that could've easily been at home on Focus, not to mention some of the more ethereal textures and clean passages, but their songwriting has definitely become more diverse and creative over the years. Their influences remain rather obvious (the key staples of technical/progressive metal: Cynic, Atheist, Pestilence, etc...along with fusion players like Allan Holdsworth and Chick Corea, to name but a few), but they're certainly coming into their own. The solos on Eventuality are off the chart, super fluid,jazzy,melodic playing that blows us away every time we hear it. Essential for tech heads, especially anyone into Athiest and Cynic !!

ALCHEMIST Organasm CD $11.98 Displeased Records - Dutch Import

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

ALETHES Aletheia CD $15.98 Glass Throat Recordings

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

ALGEBRASSIERE / GANG WIZARD split 12" LP $11.98 Yod / Little Mafia

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

ALIENATION MENTAL Kopferkingel CD $10.98 Burning Dogma Records

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

ALUK TODOLO s/t 7" EP $5.98 Implied Sound/Public Guilt

Featuring members of such esteemed French black metal iconoclasts as Vediog Svaor and Diamatregon, Aluk Todolo's debut EP is an amazing, occult-tinged eruption of heavy drone/Kraut/trance rock that uses the bands driving motorik formations to explore transcendental consciousness and trance-like states. Each song on this 7" is identified with only an arcane set of runes, and the compositions are based on music conjured during Aluk Todolo's live improvised sessions. The A side sports a rhythmic drone rock jam that builds into sheets of guitar sound similiar to Rhys Chatham overlaid with recordings of legendary occultist Aleister Crowley. On the B side, the band generates a powerful krautrock influenced number that pulsates like a darker Circle/AMT jam. The riff is totally trance inducing before it fades into a cavernous grey drone, then exploding suddenly back into full-on heavy hypno rock. This EP is a killer debut, and I'm dying to hear more from this band. Aluk Todolo's take on kraut/drone influenced heavy psych rock imbues the music with the sort of bleak blackness that you'd expect from their black metal projects. There's parts of their jams that make me think of the obvious modern heavy hitters in the field of heavy trance-psyche, like the aforementioned Acid Mothers Temple and Cirlce, as well as Circle side project Pharoah Overlord, as Aluk Todolo can get pretty heavy...but I also hear that Rhys Chatham/Robert Poss/Band Of Susans brand of overloaded guitar drone in parts of these songs that push the intensity level even further. Awesome stuff, highly recommended. Our buddy J.R. at Public Guilt did a killer job of presenting this EP as well, packaging the 7" in a simple but effective glossy gatefold sleeve printed in silver and grey inks, with cabalistic symbols and photography.

ALUMINUM NOISE Outnumbered And Fatigued: Romantic Music CD-R $10.98 Mechanoise Labs (UK import)

ALUMINUM NOISE is Jason Crumer, also of Southern crust-grinders FACEDOWNINSHIT and cult label Sacred Noise, here embarking on an isolationist drone/noise/dark ambient wave that moves between superb, Aural Hypnox-style ritual drones, and BROOTAL tempests of distortion swarm, haunted with angelic choir voices or roof-caving power noise loops. This is apparently the last recorded work from ALUMINUM NOISE, created between 2001-2002, but is by far the best stuff we've ever heard from Crumer. Layers of menacing whirr and distant industrial clatter blend together, creating extremely evocative and unsettling (actually, downright frightening) sound fields that violently erupt into crushing rhythmic harsh noise jams. Excellent. This is a nearly 70-minute long private-press disc packaged in full color jewel case setup with artwork by James Keeler of WILT, and limited to a single edition of 100 copies, of which we only nabbed a few.

A.M. Orla CD $14.98 Ikuisuus (Finland)

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

MP3 SAMPLE: "Ribscraper" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Sky Voltage" (excerpt)

AMBER ASYLUM Garden Of Love CD $11.98 Paradigms (UK import)

Up-and-coming imprint Paradigms started off with this CD re-issue of the limited edition 10" from SF chamber-doom ensemble AMBER ASYLUM, who now boast members of trance-BM legends WEAKLING. Garden Of Love is the first new recording from Amber Asylum in years, a welcome return of their gloomy, moody string/horn/heavy arrangements moving languidly over a bed of voice, trumpet, viola, cellos, piano, percussion, etc. This disc has the original 4 tracks from the 10" vinyl, plus a previously unreleased song called "Serenade". Following their previous recordings on Relapse and Neurot, these songs are heavy, brooding works, working an almost funeral-doom weight into neo-classical forms. The heaviest points are found on the first two tracks, the first channeling those SKEPTICISM/UNTIL DEATH OVERTAKES ME vibes through somber string arrangements and ghostly operatic vocals, and the second song delving into an ominous cello/stabbed strings construct that wouldn't be out of place on an early 80's Argento soundtrack. The following tunes ("Stillpoint part 1 and 2" and "Serenade") are more delicate, beautiful, even fragile, string heavy textures with Kris Force's ethereal singing, like Godspeed You! Black Emperor mixed with Cocteau Twins floating on sheets of cello drones and clouds of reverb. Excellent Paradigms presentaion in a color wallet sleeve slid inside of a sealed brown envelope with hand-stamped artwork, in a strict edition of 750 copies.

AMBER ASYLUM Still Point CD $13.98 Profound Lore

Oh yes, we've been waiting for years for new music from Amber Asylum, whose mesmerizing, gloomy chamber music has always captivated us here at C-Blast. Still Point is the first new full-length release from the ladies of Amber Asylum since 2000, as a matter of fact. That baffles us, as Kris Force and company have always created amazingly beautiful music that combines the lush introspective gloom of later Swans material with a unique combination of neo-classical, gothic, and post-rock elements. Why there aren't legions of adoring fans clamoring for more Amber Asylum, we'll never understand. Headed by founding member and classically trained multi-instrumentalist Kris Force (who Neurosis fans will know from her contributing pretty much all of the string arrangements to Times Of Grace), Amber Asylum's Still Point offers nine moody tracks of austere, elegant chamber doom, with ghostly operatic female vocals gliding on lush droning violins and cellos, doomy folk-dirges like "Garden Of Love" and "Outer Dark" groaning icily, everything draped in somber, melancholy atmosphere. "Diminishing Returns" is a 7-minute flurry of eerie, droning strings, and "North" unveils an ominous horror movie score heavy with pulsating piano notes and minor key creep stalked by scraping electronic tones. On the album closer "12 Months", Amber Asylum unveil more of their gorgeous austere vocal harmonies that gradually become lost in the wash of cymbals crahing like tide over Jackie Perez-Gratz's cello. When the deep, resonant bass guitar and drumming eventually appears, the music takes on a heavy weight almost like hearing Neurosis' quieter moments being interpreted by a classical orchestra. It's all so heartbreakingly beautiful and downcast. Features a cover of Richard Thompson’s folk classic "The Great Valerio", with acoustic guitars by John Cobbett from Bay Area metallers Hammers Of Misfortune, and Tim Greeb from The Fucking Champs also shows up to contribute guitar to Still Point. Presented in a 4-panel gatefold case with metallic printing and nicely abstract imagery of cloudy greys and silvers.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Black Phoebe" (excerpt)

AMERICAN BAND American Bands First Album CD $12.98 Blossoming Noise

More than likely, if you've heard of Jason Crumer, it's through his crusty sludgecore outfit Facedowninshit that he plays guitar and sings in. Those guys have been spreading a trail of grime for close to a decade now, and their last album came out on the underground metal powerhouse Relapse. But Crumer is also known for his extensive work with heavy, harsh electronic noise, working under his own name as well as with Amazing Grace and American Band. American Bands First Album lays it all out - Crumer is joined by Matt Franco from Air Conditioning on guitar, vocals, and electronics, and Lee Counts on "metal", for this particular group's debut. This is HEAVY STUFF. You know how alot of noise outfits will have a really long, epic piece as their last track on an album? Well, American Band start out with one, the 22 minute "Bone Skirt", a titanic noise wall of churning static, blistering distortion coming in waves, and what we think are monstrous, death metal style roars submerged deep in the metallic hurricane. Could be anything tho I guess...that track is so fucking overloaded that, like all good harsh walls of noise, it starts to mess with your ability to make out details, and the whole experience turns into a whirlpool of melted rust and exploding steel slabs. Great use of feedback on here, too, really textured and menacing sounding, especially when American Band ease up on the vicious noise and settle into one of their super eerie dronescapes, huge open spaces of minimal midnight whirr where you can just make out the terrifying whine of a distant air raid siren. They use similiar dynamics throughout the rest of the album, making this a solidly engaging work of brutal noise sculpture, comparable to what it might sound like if the blastfurnace feedback storms of outfits like Cherry Point and The Rita were offset by drifting Troum style drones. Packaged in a full-color, 4-panel digipack.

MP3 SAMPLE: "First Time In Heels" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Terrified" (excerpt)

AMOEBA MEN Enter The Amoeba Men 7inch EP $4.98 CNP Records

3 song dose of primo RVA acid punk and death disco throb from some SUPPRESSION members. Think neo No Wave, jamming energetic disco rhythms, angular staccato trebly guitar, sped-up monster movie basslines played on keyboards, yelpy vocals, a mutant dance punk riot sometimes dipping into a sort of BUTTHOLE SURFERS stupor. Rad! On black wax in a tight neon sleeve.

AN ALBATROSS Eat Lightning Shit Thunder CD $10.98 Bloodlink

Super brief but high quality "album" from Philly spazztoid blasters An Albatross is now available from Crucial Blast. Uh, better late than never, and if you're into the new wave of art-damaged grindcore that's been ripping shit as of late (Genghis Tron, Daughters, Triumph Of Gnomes, The Locust, etc), well, these guys are tops. Just over 11 minutes in length, An Albatross shred through 10 blasts of catchy as fuck, super spastic and caustic noise-punk mashed with apocalyptic hardcore/grind colliding over the band's signature carnival/Italian prog rock style keyboards. Due to the heavy presence of those freaked out keys, we remmeber AA being tagged as a Locust knock off when this originally came out, but we think they're onto their own thing. Add to that all sorts of weird melodies, dogs barking and growling, and other fucked up sound loops and tape crud and you get a fucking KILLER disc of sci-fi dance thrash that demands repeat spins. Eat Lightning Shit Thunder also has some enhanced CD-ROM live videos too, which is sweet. These guys RIP IT live, as anyone who has witnessed them will tell you. The Crucial Blast gang caught 'em on tour with Melt Banana in 2005 and we thought our heads were going to come clean off.

ANEMONE TUBE Existence CD $12.98 Auf Abwegen (GERMAN IMPORT)

German ambient-industrial project Anemone Tube was formed in 1996 by Stefan Hanser, and has explored a variety of heavy noisescapes and rhythmic blocks of sound; the Tube's modus operandi has always seemed to focus on putting the listener into a state of delirium caused by constantly shifting sounds and tones sourced from assorted organic and synthetic sounds, and this approach has resulted in a stylistically diverse body of work over the years. On the debut full length Existence, a nearly hour-long disc released in a hand-numbered limited edition of 500 copies, Anemone Tube is at it's heaviest, constructing seven bulky tracks that move from gorgeous ambient dronescapes to crushing, loop-heavy walls of distortion and menacing melodic tracers undulating over grinding rhythmic throb, sort of like what I'd expect a collaboration between Wolf Eyes and Maurizio Bianchi to sound like, although you can also draw lines to Throbbing Gristle, SPK, and violent early UK power electronics when tracks like 'Choke Down' and 'The Encounter III" get into full swing and start obliterating speakers with ferocious torrents of factory distortion. I really dig the way that Existence manages to balance the haunting, atmospheric drones and buried deconstructed rhythms with the louder, brutal passages of rumbling machine filth, making this much easier to digest than many of Anemone Tube's peers. Packaged in an elegant jewel case with a large 10-panel booklet glowing in fiery, fractaled reds and oranges, imprinted with mysterious pictograms.

ANCIENT CHINESE SECRET Caveat Emptor LP $11.98 Slap A Ham

Man, that was a dark day when Slap A Ham Records shut down around the turn of the century; throughout the 90's, Slap A Ham was putting out pretty much the most seminal, mindblowing music in the underground extreme hardcore scene, with now-classic releases from bands like Man Is The Bastard, Spazz, Infest, Discordance Axis, Burning Witch, Noothgrush, Melt Banana, Gasp, and a ton of other extreme, unique, insanely heavy bands. Slap A Ham kept getting cooler and weirder as time went on, too, and it's safe for me to say that the label was a huge influence on the formation of Crucial Blast. Luckily for us, right before the label folded, they put out some of their weirdest releases ever, including this amazing one-shot album from Ancient Chinese Secret, the avant-new wave-powerviolence trio of ex-Spazz dude and Slap A Ham owner Chris Dodge himself on bass, vocals, ring modulator, and keyboards, his wife Lydia on vocals and organ, and former Capitalist Casualties drummer Matt Martin on drums, keyboards, and vocals. This is one of those albums that was criminally overlooked when it came out, and was years ahead of it's time. At least I think so. This post-Spazz project was originally monikered Doctor Bombay before the band changed it's name to Ancient Chinese Secret, and blended the high-speed, bass-heavy grindy Hardcore freakouts of Spazz with Lydia's deadpan shouts and a weird mix of cartoon sound effects, trippy tape loops, and spooky electronic noises. When the band goes full tilt, it's like a playful, minimalist speed metal assault. Imagine a psychedelic mix of Melt Banana, Man Is The Bastard, Wall Of Voodoo's percussive New Wave, and NoMeansNo's complex artpunk instrumentation. Thoroughly weird and fast and amazing, with a similiarly bent mindset as Dodge's subsequent work with Dave Witte on the East West Blast Test project. The CD version of this album is now completely out of print, but I managed to obtain a stash of this killer album on vinyl for anyone interested in blowing their minds with some of the craziest out-thrash to emerge from the heyday of the West Coast extreme hardcore movement!

AND SAY WE DID Final Demonstration CD $11.98 Basement Apes Industries (French import)

A couple of years ago Cyril Blandino, former bassist of French post-metalcore destructos Superstatic Revolution, landed in Cleveland after Superstatic toured the US. Repositioning himself musically, Blandino joined a newly formed band called And Say We Did, which evolved into yet another quartet working sans vocals in a heavy, instrumental mode. The band's debut album Final Demonstration was recorded a couple of years ago and finally released in 2005 on French label Basement Apes Industries, but we're just now getting it onto the shelves at Crucial Blast. Glad we did, 'cuz And Say We Did's concise jams are loaded with killer two-guitar noiserock/mathrock riffage and melodic indie jangle that's interspersed with crushing post-hardcore eruptions and precision angles, sorta similiar to our buddies Suzukiton, but with a melodic post-rock vibe that sets in when the band drifts into dreamy guitars and pretty layered melodies. Rad stuff that fans of Don Cabellero, Pelican, Keelhaul, Dysrythmia, and Suzukiton will want to wrap their heads around.

ANDY ORTMANN / JOHN WIESE Recorder Out Of Tune CD $12.98 Nihilist Records

The monstrous electronic fug of this collaborative release is initally hinted at by the low-contrast, grey and black layout of the CD package, with a grimm looking photo of the perps on the front cover and illustrations of some sort of Lovecraftian organic horror on the interior booklet. Anyone familiar with John Wiese's work, both with Bastard Noise and solo, or through his collaborations with Sunn O))) and Cattle Decapitation, recognizes that this guy is a master sculptor of total earshred electronics, constructing some of the most brutal tone collages this side of the Pacific. On Recorder Out Of Tune, Wiese teams up with his buddy and Panicsville visionary Andy Ortmann for a 22 minute blast of heavy unease culled from creepy electronic tones and brief, brutal blasts of overmodulated feedback that are collaged together with field recordings, studio weirdness, fractal vomit vocals, partially glimpsed snippets of death metal transmissions, improv clatter, and dark, droning soundscapes. It's definitely a soundtrack for bad dreams and night sweats, like Nurse With Wound and Lustmord scraping metal chairs across your ceiling at 2am in the morning and spinning the dial through a range of AM radio frequencies being beamed out of Hell. A different sort of take on surreal horror electronics. Recommended.

ANGELIC PROCESS And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey CD-R $9.98 Decaying Sun

It's good to see this one available again for anyone that missed it the first time around. Which is probably pretty much everyone who has just gotten into The Angelic Process in the past couple of years, as the original release of And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey was issued right here on Crucial Blast back in 2001, on a tiny micro-edition cassette that was part of batch of tapes we busted out at the time (other tapes that came out alongside the Angelic Process tape included stuff from noise/ambient projects Never Presence Forever and Belltone Suicide, now long sold out.) And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey was the band's first full length, darker and moodier than their later, more melodic walls of distortion that the project would erect with Coma Waering and Weighing Souls With Sand, but the dense layers of distortion and feedback, anguished screams totally obfuscated by noise, dark apocalyptic dirge metal riffs, simple yet pounding tribal drumming, emotionally devestated melodic hooks, and an almost Merzbowian level of feedback skree pour forth from this disc, proving that it really was a forerunner to the current wave of distortion-surfing sludge/pop/dream outfits like Goslings and Nadja. Ultra blown out and massive, like Neurosis and Jesu and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless melted together and shot back out through a jet engine, a swirling roar that we called "an avalanche of black sugar" back in the day, and that still holds up now. Now remastered, this new version features two bonus tracks ("Hang Him Higher" and "Cages Of Blood And Bone"), comes in a slimline case with new artwork and an ink-stamped disc face. Recommended.

ANGELIC PROCESS Sigh CD-R $9.98 Decaying Sun

There's been a flurry of activity lately around the duo The Angelic Process, with last year's acclaimed Coma Waering CD on the UK label Paradigms turning alot of people on to the dense, crushing metalbliss that Kris Angylus has been creating since the early part of the decade. Then there's the new album Weighing Souls With Sand which just came out on Profound Lore not too long ago and which earned them a spot as our featured new release when it came out...that disc has been garnering all kinds of great reviews, deserved it too, as it saw Angylus and MDragynfly delivering their most focused and powerful music yet, a massive wall of gorgeous synthesizers, howling melodic vocals, saturated distortion, and utterly heavenly feedback scorched through by pummeling tribal rhythms and brutal, percussive metallic riffing a la Godflesh and Neurosis. Absolutely amazing stuff at the crest of the current wave of evocative, melodic dream-metal, right up there with their peers in Nadja, Goslings, and Jesu. With all of the increased interest in The Angelic Process, Kris has saw fit to issue short-run, CD-R releases of assorted older TAP recordings through the band's own Decaying Sun imprint; alot of this material dates back several years, as the project has been recording and releasing material since 2001. The previously unreleased 2004 EP Sigh is one such CD-R, a 4-track, 23-minute disc in a slimline case with a full color insert sheet, featuring four exclusive tracks: "Sigh", "Trance To The Sun", "Mouvement – With Mouthfulls Of Blood", and "The Black Ark", all a continuation of the band's wall-of-fuzz dronemetal with the addition of sampled cello and drum programming further fleshing out their sound. Recommended.

ANGELIC PROCESS We All Die Laughing CD-R
Decaying Sun
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We All Die Laughing is the third in a series of CD-Rs released through Decaying Sun, the tiny imprint operated by the members of the ambient metal duo The Angelic Process. Documenting their recorded material leading up to the Coma Waering CD on Paradigms and the new full length album Weighing Souls With Sand on Profound Lord, the Decaying Sun CD-Rs feature Angelic Process material recorded since the beginning of the decade when the band first formed. We All Die Laughing was released towards the end of 2006, and actually contains songs that would go on to be re-recorded for their Profound Lore album; the versions here are similiar but a bit more stripped down and restrained, though no less powerful. The other songs on this disc are in the same vein, and fans of Weighing Souls With Sand are sure to love this material just as much. The songs exclusive to this disc include "Bleedbeliever", "Mouvement - Soleil Et Noir", "How To Build A Time Machine", and "Mouvement - Every City Is A Prison" - all are monolithic blasts of beautiful distortion and feedback, massive tribal drumbeats and psychedelic Gothic atmosphere, and ultra crushing melodic metal riffage with those signature howling vocals buried way back in the sea of fuzz and swirling noise, like Neurosis and Godflesh mashed together into a towering wall of dreampop mightiness. There's actually a handful of parts on We All Die Laughing where TAP back off of the wall of noise and reveal some surprisingly quiet passages of minimal droning ambience which make for some of The Angelic Processes' most fragile moments, almost sounding like Troum at times. Like the other two discs in the Decaying Sun series, this comes in a slimline case with full color artwork and the disc itself printed in green ink.

ANGELIC PROCESS, THE Coma Waering CD
Paradigms (UK import)
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It had been a couple of years since we had heard anything from The Angelic Process, the ambient drone-metal project of Kris Angelyus whose ...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey was released on cassette through Crucial Blast back in 2001. Obviously, we were big fans of Angelic's blissed out maelstrom of layered My Bloody Valentine guitars blasted at hurricane levels of volume and density...so we were HUGELY stoked when we found out that UK imprint Paradigms were going to re-release Coma Waering, the second full length album from The Angelic Process! This album was originally self-released in 2003 in an extremely small edition and didn't circulate much, which was a shame as The Angelic Process's astral 'gaze was definitely ahead of the pack. But here it is again, released in a limited edition of 750 copies, a solar blast of awe inspiring shoegazer bliss clad in massive swirling distortion as epic swells and majestic melodies soar through the squall, like a crushingly heavy version of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless meeting Akira Yamaoka's Silent Hill game scores in a glacial wash of Merbowian fuzz. Awesome! Fans of Jesu, Loveless, Sunn O))) and similiar dense heaviness will love this. Again, this is a limited edition of 750 copies, and is packaged in Paradigm's signature card sleeve that comes sealed in a hand-stamped presentation envelope and wallet. Highly recommended!

ANGELIC PROCESS, THE Weighing Souls With Sand CD $13.98 Profound Lore
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The long awaited new album from one of my favorite ambient bliss-metal outfits ever! Weighing Souls is the first new full-length album from The Angelic Process in something like four years; their Coma Waering CD that came out on Paradigms in 2006 was actually a re-issue of a CD-R that The Angelic Process founder K. Angylus recorded back in 2002; prior to that, the project had released the super-limited 2001 cassette ...And Your Blood Is Full Of Honey right here on Crucial Blast. Needless to say, we've all been waiting for awhile now for new music from the band, which grew into a duo a coupla years back when K. (who handles the guitars, vocals, drums, and electronic blastwalls) was joined by a lady named M. Dragynfly, who plays bass as well as contributing additional vocals and electronic textures, further filling out the band's blissed-out, widescreen dronemetal sound. Weighing Souls With Sand seems to frame a narrative about death, loss, despair, and self-realization, and I gotta say that this album sees the band perfecting everything that I've ever loved about this band. Each of the ten songs here are achingly beautiful monoliths of heartrending melody, radiating out of dense walls of fuzzed out, simple but crushing metallic riffs. Those guitars are so processed and ultra blown out and distorted that they reach the point of becoming a massive ball of white light, suffocating and celestial, through which the strained melodic singing and keening wails, all equally distorted and obfuscated by white noise, appear soaring through the wall of lush fuzz. The drums somehow sound gigantic and primordial, like tribal war beats thundering across vast canyons. They also cut through the wall-of-sound with occasional passages of restrained, almost mechanical drumming and quieter ambient drones, before exploding back into the oceans of heavenly buzz. It's like the ritualistic dirge of Neurosis filtered through My Bloody Valentines' Loveless and Merzbowian levels of white noise. Along with likeminded bliss blasters The Goslings, Nadja, and Jesu, The Angelic Process are creating some of my favorite music being made currently, carving intense beauty out of corrosive noise and distortion. Weighing comes in a gorgeous digipack case illustrated with beautiful burning imagery designed by the band. Highly highly recommended.

ANGEL'IN HEAVY SYRUP IV CD Monotremata Records
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Angel'in Heavy Syrup are four women from the land o' the rising sun who play like a bizarre cross between the Cocteau Twin s and the Butthole Surfers having weirdsex in the bathroom of a jazz lounge in Osaka. Sorta. Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- one of Japan's finest psychedelic rock bands ( and possibly one of the best bands of any kind in the world) -- return with a full-length album of all new material. The current lineup consists of vocalist/bassist Mineko Itakura and guitarist Mine Nakao, both of whom have appeared on all of the band's albums, and guitarist Fusao Toda, who joined the band in time for the second album. Naoko Otani provided drums on the album. This all-girl trio lays down some heavy duty, riffalicious, totally mesmerizing underground psychedelic rock bliss with GORGEOUS ethereal female vocals and a distinct Japanese delivery. Hands down, one of our ALL TIME favorite albums ever!!!! So, you wonder, what do they sound like? Well, that's a good question... describing them is easier said than done. Take the aforementioned psych bands of the flower-power era, mix in a large dose of folk juju, sprinkle on a smidge of free jazz, then season liberally with influences like the Butthole Surfers, John Coltrane, and various noise artists. Garnish with unexpected time changes, odd meters, impeccable technical skill (Fusao and Mine could play rings around nearly all the "hot" guitarists in American and European circles, and Mineko is not only an amazing bassist but one of finest singers in Japan) and lots of exotic-looking flowers.
Angel'in Heavy Syrup were formed in Osaka, Japan in 1990, and they are possibly the greatest band in the world. On their psychedelic side they are nfluenced by the likes of Gong, 50 Foot Hose, and Amon Duul, but they are definitely influenced by more recent, noisy contemporaries such as Hijokaidan and Masonna as well. Morita Doji, a Japanese pop-folk singer of the 70s and 80s, has also had a big impact upon them. Now defunct out-music label Monotremata Records (one of the great underrated labels of the last few years) graciously made this album domestically available in conjunction with the album's simultaneous release in Japan by legendary avant-garde label Alchemy Records. From the first blast of reverb-heavy psychedelic noise at the beginning of "First Love" to the fading burst of Echoplex that closes "Fate," the six lengthy songs on this album rank among the band's best work. All three of the musicians are in fine form here, with strong songs and stellar playing making this one of their best releases to date. To top it off, the deluxe packaging of the CD (with a sixteen-page booklet and artwork by Masahiko Ohno, guitarist of Solmania and Alchemy's lead designer) make this a highly attractive release - and for the first time, the band's lyrics are printed in English. One of the greatest late night / early morning crash-out albums ever created. Seriously.

ANIMUS Poems For The Aching, Swords For The Infuriated CD $12.98 Ars Magna

This album had already been highly recommended to me by fellow fans of the more blown-out, distorted and abstracted strains of black metal, but I was still pretty amazed when I finally sat down and listened to Poems For The Aching, Swords For The Infuriated, the stunning debut full length from the Israeli one-man black metal band Animus. This project is shrouded in mystery, no track titles, the songs instead identified by numbers, the sole member choosing anonymity, and no lyrics...the booket itself contains only some arcane writing and minimal woodcut art. This sense of mystery extends even moreso across the music - with six tracks running just a total of 50 minutes, Animus crafts a majestic brand of epic yet introspective black metal dronebliss; while the raw materials are what I was expecting from a denizen of the loner black metal realm, the dark and ominous minor key melodies, brittle guitars pushed through extreme levels of distortion, and bleak, minimalist song structures, etc., Animus nevertheless creates a unique and entrancing cloud of dreamlike black buzz that is almost painfully beautiful. Like "Part 3", which drowns a heartbreakingly gorgeous melody in a pool of trebly distortion and Animus' sandpaper death-croak, a sorrowful dreampop lullaby buried in white noise and amp hiss. Or "Part 4" and it's repetitive, soaring melodic hook gliding over a black surface of Burzumic fuzz and cavernous reverb and pulsing drum machine blasts swallowed up in the swirling fog. Animus mostly crawls along at a slow, dirgey pace though, a murky midtempo trudge, sometimes sounding like a fuzz drenched, more melodic version of Skepticism. This album has some of the catchiest, most melodic black metal dirge ever, it's as bleak and depressing and trance inducing as Xasthur, but those melodic hooks have more in common with the more recent Drudkh releases, Velvet Cacoon's dreamy hiss, and some wraithlike version of shoegaze summoned up from black corners. Highly recommended.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Part 3" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Part 5" (excerpt)

ANOTHER KIND OF DEATH No Signal CD $11.98 Red CObalt Industries (Japanese import)

Hailing from Spain, ANOTHER KIND OF DEATH dishes out awesome crushing technical metalcore/grind that taps into a weird evilness through the singers monstrous gutteral rasp and the band's frequent descents into apocalyptic/cosmic noise-dirges, while throwing in some killer melodic post-hardcore hooks (imagine a brutally heavy BOTCH/CONVERGE hybrid suddenly taking a left turn into TEXAS IS THE REASON-esque rock), somber piano melodies, post-rock dynamics, and other cool weirdness. Fans of stuff like CONVERGE, MAJORITY RULE, and AS THE SUN SETS would dig this, as the riffs are mega heavy and infected with that kind of keening high-end guitar assault...but ANOTHER KIND OF DEATH definitely has their own unique, bent take on the chaotic metalcore sound. Crackling electronic drones rise to the surface, stop-on-a-dime drumming nails each song to the floor, spastic splattery noise freakouts achive liftoff, and some AWESOME unexpected production tricks (tape dropouts, found sounds spliced into the songs, swampy sound washouts,etc) all do much to elevate this above the tedium of modern metalcore. These guys sort of remind us of a crusty death-metal incarnation of CAVE IN, or a more experimental BOTCH. This album could easily have fit on the stellar Radar Swarm label, with their smart, artsy European metalcore vibes, and Red Cobalt is clearly getting off to a great start with a band and album of this caliber. Very recommended to anyone into the general sounds we outlined. No Signal is really freaking good.

ANTIGAMA Intellect Made Us Blind CD $11.98 SelfMadeGod (Polish import)

This Polish grindcore band has been getting a lot of attention lately, after releasing the excellent Zeroland album last year and the recent announcement of their signing with Relapse Records for their next full length. As far as I'm concerned, all of the hype surrounding ANTIGAMA is justified, 'cuz Zeroland was one of the most ferocious, forward-thinking grind blasts of 2005, a heavy as hell mutation of precision grindpunk and mechanized metal fused to a thoroughly creepy mixture of futuristic sound collage and dark ambience. While we're anxiously waiting for their follow-up to Zeroland, Selfmadegod Records has stepped in with this new re-issue of the debut album from ANTIGAMA, Intellect Made Us Blind, originally released back in 2001. This album is, as one would expect, a slightly rawer incarnation of the band's mechanoid grind sound, but these songs are just as fucked up and bizarre as anything the band is doing now, making this pretty essential for anyone who fell under the spell of Zeroland. The band unleashes an avalanche of relentless blastbeats and burly grindpunk riffage that tap into the same rabid bloodstream as late-era BRUTAL TRUTH, majorly heavy shit, but Intellect Made Us Blind really messes with your neurons when the band makes their sudden left turns into punishing GODFLESH-esque dirge, freeform tribal-industrial trance, and transmissions of steel sheets of electronic ambience. With their more recent, goth-mecha-avant-grind material being my introduction to ANTIGAMA, I really wasn't expecting their early material to be this terminally badass and weird, but it is. Sometimes the massive percussive riffage and industrial metal rhythms remind me of a crustier version of what FEAR FACTORY was doing on their first album, but this is way more fucked, a schizoid dystopian urban grind nightmare illustrated with bizarre, seemingly stream-of-consciousness lyrics. An awesome debut, highly recommended, especially if you were as big a fan of ANTIGAMA's Zeroland album as we are!

ANTIGAMA Zeroland CD $11.98 Self Made God (Polish import)

Looking at the packaging on this CD, it would be easy to assume that this might contain some sort of psychedelic techno if it weren't for the Selfmadegod Records logo on the back of the case. What this is, is one of the best grindcore releases of 2005, a superb new blast of futurist grind violence from Poland that sounds to my ears like a modern day VOIVOD gone grind, or maybe Diatribes-era NAPALM DEATH meets NASUM meets SKINNY PUPPY...spewing out streams of speed of light blastbeats, disharmonic ultra-polyrhythmic deathcore, psychedelic electronic noise and chilling industrial loops...skull cracking and fucking machine-tight grind in the vein of NASUM combined with cleverly assembled avant/cyber/electronic sections and that ANTIGAMA style of massive dissonant guitars. Zeroland, despite its experimental leanings and odd time signatures flirting with the boundries of free jazz and extreme noise, is surprisingly accessible and catchy, and I love it. The vocals here are an effective mixture of clean, heavily processed and spacey clean vocals and brootal deathgrunt, coming off as a weird SKINNY PUPPY/NASUM electro-goth-sickness n' gorilla tantrum tradeoff...the singer's morbid moan is truly weird and awesome, unlike anything I've ever heard from a band that spits out this much blastbeat. And,When the band isn't blasting through their insane cyber/DISCORDANCE AXIS/GODFLESH/VOIVOD mashup, their melting brainpaste with stuff like "Starshit" (a harrowing piece of extreme psychedelic vocal noise) and the massive closer "Zeroland", with it's 9 minutes of sinister fuzzed-out sample collage spoolling off into an ambient blackness while subtle clicks and cuts dance around far-off feedback screams. Fuck yeah. Seriously, this is HIGHLY recommended to fans of primo adventure grind (i.e., BRUTAL TRUTH, GORGUTS, PIG DESTROYER) and all forms of avant-blast.

ANTIGAMA / DRUGS OF FAITH split 3"CD $8.98 Selfmadegod (Poland)

Two of grindcore's most forward-moving units come together on this blazing split 3" CD, packaged in a full-size jewel case decorated with awesome apocalyptic imagery of blood-spattered, twilight sunsets and comic book style zomboid legions - fuck, this looks killer! Antigama from Poland deliver three new songs that herald their upcoming Resonance album on Relapse, and they are all some of the raddest tunes these guys have put forth yet: "Herd" is a churning blast of vicious grindcore with stuttering, atonal breakdowns and monstrous roaring vocals, kinda like Napalm Death's mid-90's stuff but enhanced by electronic textures. "Gift" opens with some sickening polyrhythmic drumming and spastic guitar chug that reminds me of some of Candiria's whacked out tribal freakouts, but then shifts into a warped deathgrind dirge with processed vocals and fucked up electronic trickery. And "Zombi" is a cover of the classic Goblin theme from the original Dawn of The Dead...holy shit, does this rule, Antigama do a virtually picture-perfect rendition of Goblin's original funk/prog peice, the creepy choir vocals, spacey keyboards and jagged disco synths and rolling bass drumming is all there, but the guitars are beefed up and metallized. One of the best covers of a Goblin tune I've ever heard. If you're as big of a fan of Antigama's futuristic, digitally-mutated grindcore as we are, then you've gotta hear this.
And then comes Drugs Of Faith, the bonecrushing power trio fronted by Rich Johnson of DC grind legends Enemy Soil...their last CD on Selfmadegod was an awesome debut from the band, a politically-charged blast of vitriol fueled by a blenderized assault of atonal noise rock, hardcore punk, and straight-up grindcore. The three jams on this disc continue in that vein: "Churchianity" delivers one of the nastiest anti-organized religion rants ever over a ferocious attack of chest rattling buzzsaw bass guitar, catchy thrash riffage, and chaotic drumming. "Memoranda" is another brutalizing statement with veiled references to Tony Blair's involvement in US foreign policy, conveyed through a furious dissonant dirge that lumbers at a punishing mid-tempo pace before exploding into serrated guitar noise and blastbeats. And "Phantom" closes the disc with an apocalyptic blizzard of sludgy Am Rep noise rock sludge, visions of blackened skies, and frantic grinding blasts. It's like Drugs Of Faith somehow channeled Napalm Death and Unsane into a tightly focused eruption of dissonant crush. So awesome !!!
Instead of splitting each band's songs into two halves, this split CD alternates between the band's songs, which makes this an even more disorientating assault. An awesome matchup from two of my favorite grind bands around, and highly recommended !!!

ANUBIS RISING Funerary Preamble CD $11.98 Uncouth Industries

This is a posthumous discography from short-lived Southern California art-sludge outfit Anubis Rising (whose members can now be found in Intronaut). These guys surprised the hell out of us with this bizarre and enigmatic tuneage that merges spacey electric basement indie psych rock (w/ a totally black-neon 80's vibe) to crushing death ooze that pilfers from the combined sludgecore/black metal/dronecore/math-death playbook. Comparisons can be drawn to the melodic heaviness of bands like Isis, Pelican, Neurosis, and Buried Inside, but there's alot more going on here like weirdly effects-overload stoner doom and mindmelt space rockiness, spasms of lopsided death metal chaos, SoCal prog rock, and other weirdness. The meat of their matter is in the breathtaking, tragic sounding melodies of the lighter psychedelic pop parts, clean guitars bathed in reverb and watery effects and sometimes strummed on acoustic guitars with lightly sung vocal harmonies, and structured around proggy forms and bold durations which eventually erupt into huge metallic crescendos. My grey matter keeps projecting visions of Dinosaur Jr.'s eponymous debut being covered by Opeth meets Mastodon-gone-funeral-doom meets Eyehategod meets a dark Goblin/Pink Floyd hybrid, with neurotic post-hardcore seizures mangled by vicious V.O.D.-esque (circa Still) metalcore and ripping thrash metal hallucinations come screaming out of feedback/tape-splice mudbaths and ambient dronescapes and sweet jangly rock. Battle ready dual-axe harmonies dominate old-school Metallica / Fucking Champs style all throughout this mother, too. The vocals are just as textured, switching between blackened screams and clean crooning and brutal crusty bellowing. Track two, "Firmamentum", is worth the price alone with its memorable somber psychedelic pop verses melting down into a majestic melodic mega-tar-metal dirge, like Eyehategod and Swallow The Sun and Skepticism mashed together in an echo chamber with some poor lysergic bastards on the run from the Paisley 80's. Awesome. I wish these guys could have maintained, as this is truly original stuff, a weird epic cinematic melodic prog metal drone tech dream that fries us every time this