TITLES: B

BAAL State Of Aggression CD $7.98 American Line Productions - MEXICAN IMPORT

Full on, super powerful Mexican deathmetal...ripping solos, catchy as hell songcraft, harsh vocals- supreme melodic Deathmetal on par with anything from Gothenburg. Think crunching death a la CENOTAPH with IRON MAIDEN-esque melodic sensibilities anchored by killer riffs.

B. ABUSE Misery Is The Rhythm Of The World CD $11.98 Impure Muzik (French Import)

This German multi-media outfit has been around for over 12 years, but Misery Is The Rhythm Of The World is our introduction to the band. The disc is comprised of 4 epic tracks, each song averaging 10 minutes in length, and the music is an atmospheric style of post-rock influenced hardcore that feels like it references Amebix's gloomy punk as much as it does early Neurosis, the songs shifting from haunting instrumental passages of sad minor chord melodies with film samples or voice recordings similiar to Godspeed You! Black Emperor, with unexpected Faust / kruatrock interludes that that build and explode into crusty metallic dirge. There's alot of melody throughout this album, and the band also incorporates alot of driving, mid-90's style indie/emo elements that I wasn't expecting when I first threw this on. It's a pretty rad combination of Mogwai/GSYBE post rock, Texas Is The Reason/Fingerprint emo, and crushing Neurosis heaviness. Fans of epic post-metal/metallic post-hardcore like Isis, Envy, Neurosis, and Pelican would definitely be into B. Abuse, particularly if you're into the more melodic aspect of those bands. The artwork and lyrics are pretty surreal, all pointing towards some dystopic vision that fits with the dark music.

BACK WHEN Celebration Of Alceste CD $7.98 Imagine It

Before forming into more of spacey, sludgy, mostly instrumental outfit playing sprawling songs somewhere between Cave In and Neurosis, Omaha's Back When began as a ferocious and arty metalcore band, and their debut was this seven song EP that came out in 2003. We picked up some of these for C-Blast when we recently raided Imagine It's back catalog for more The Autumn Project stuff, and I was surprised at how cool and varied this release is. The CD's package has an interesting mix of eerie figure illustrations and dark, ominous background images that look like they came out of a nightmarish children's book; the disc itself reveals lots of crushing, mathy riffage, spastic rhythms, monstrous deathgrowls trading off with manic shrieking, and dissonant guitars that all point to modern ADD inflicted metalcore, as do the song titles like 'I Could See Terminator 2 Really Happening' and 'Mandatory Exodus To Hell'. But there's also alot of deftly handled stylistic shifts that make this more interesting than much of the spazzy metalcore that was coming out around the same time. On songs like 'Stabhead - The Prey Of A Fantasy', Back When create a bleak, dark atmosphere with slow, dissonant doom riffage and huge epic hooks and spacey FX and psychedelic guitar noise that gives way to calm, malevolent instrumental passages and crushing, His Hero Is Gone-esque crust. The wonky spiraling fretboard freakouts and herky-jerky offtime beats on "I Could See 'Terminator 2' Really Happening" signal a mashup of sludgy chaotic metalcore, grinding death metal, and no wave-y hardcore. Opener 'Aphorism on the Existence of Fire' is one of the discs catchiest tunes, a crushing melodic riff and spazzy drumming suddenly parted by a weird, quiet jazzy instrumental part. The whole disc is filled with these clean jazzy interludes which keeps things interesting. All in all, a surprisingly eclectic dose of chaotic metalcore pummel, with weird complex parts a la early Dillenger Escape Plan and Daughter's Canada Songs, and massive atmospheric sludginess a la Old Man Gloom and early Isis.

BAKER, AIDAN Exoskeleton Heart CD-R $8.98 Crucial Bliss

Following up his amazing Periodic disc that was issued through Crucial Bliss two years ago, acclaimed Toronto drone-guitarist Aidan Baker is back with Exoskeleton Heart, his newest entry into our ongoing Crucial Bliss series. And this 2-track, hour long excursion into deep feedback bliss is stunningly beautiful. Split into two halves, "Interior" and "Anterior", Baker once again taps into his visions of the bodycage using only his electric guitar, performed and recorded live; the result is an evocative feedback-heavy dronescape drifting with the gritty hum of the amplifier, layers of shimmering, chiming feedback, crushing distorted ambient dirge that borders on Sunn O)))-levels of sonic weight, and shafts of elegiac melody breaking through the stormclouds of Baker's cavernous rumbling like rays of sunlight. Aidan Baker is without question the North American counterpart to the Tuetonic guitar drones of Troum, and Exoskeleton Heart delivers some of his most massive, meditative, crushing, and beautiful subterranean drift yet. Hell, the final 10 minutes of "Anterior" is without questions one of the most beautiful things we have ever presented through this label, an angelic glacial melody that builds inexorably into a wall of blissed out fuzz a la something you'd expect from Aidan's dronesludge band Nadja. Essential. The disc comes in a full-color signature Crucial Bliss foldover sleeve with the disc affixed to a plastic hub on the interior of the sleeve, and has been pressed in a limited edition of 300 copies.

BAND OF PAIN Que Amiga CD $13.98 Cold Spring (UK import)

Que Amiga is the fifth album from UK cinematic dark ambient master Band of Pain, aka Steve Pittis. Much of this is dark, stately drones and magestic, almost Wagnerian orchestral synthesizers drifting slowly across wide expanses, beautiful and truly epic...but there are also emerging cavernous hums and ghoulish, obscured whispers lurking around hypnotic minimal rhythms formed from taped voices, smeared pop culture detritus, field recordings, and more. An oftentimes gorgeous, sometimes threatening intersection of Andrew Chalk's austere isolationism and Lustmord's nightmare ambience. This would make for a superb soundtrack to a horror film of the eeriest sort, and is essential for fans of, say, Shinjuku Thief. Comes packaged in a nice, ghoulishly designed digipack. Limited edition of 1,000.

BARBARA Peger CD $12.98 Heart & Crossbone (ISRAELI IMPORT)

Heart & Crossbone's fearless leader David Opp is a longtime C-Blast pal, and I've been trying to turn as many people onto the completely fucked up and amazing sounds that he's been releasing, most of which are bands that David actually plays in. Let me tell ya, this dude is out to crush...so far, we've been treated to the twisted drum-chaos and sampler-splatter violence of his Cadaver Eyes project, which consists of David sitting behind a drumkit and whipping up a hurricane of blastbeats, fragmented samples of old death metal albums that have been turned into abstract blasts of downtuned brutality, and glitchy noise; then we were flattened by the convoluted drum-machine dirge experiments of Mildew, which approximates the sound of a malfunctioning Godflesh concert being received by the transmitter on board a deep space freighter. And then there's his actual "band", Barbara, a drums n' bass guitar duo that's just as crushing and contorted as his other projects. Blown out, raw doomy dirge and slowed down, minor key black metal riffs with hysterical screamed vocals and massively distorted instruments. Deformed math rock riffs melting like hot tar over pounding drum solos and rumbling bass feedback, creeping into stretched out spacious atonal doom a la Khanate. Really catchy, melodic riffs pop up outta the sludge here and there. Long, extended slabs of droning feedback erupt into chaotic powerviolence. Tightly played but sprawling noisy sludge metal, like a noise rock Darkthrone meets Man Is The Bastard. Or Lightning Bolt and Godheadsilo trapped in an evil murk filled oubliette. Grinding, crushing, feedback-blasting splattery blackdirge mayhem.

BARBARA A Blessing From The Angel Of Death CD $12.98 Heart And Crossbone Records (Israeli import)

This bass and drums duo recorded this live set in Tel Aviv in 1999, and released it as this full length CD on their own Heart And Crossbones imprint...the recording quality is top notch, in an overblown, loud as fuck blowout, as BARBARA tears through 9 songs of harsh black metal / prog punk brutality, with a crushing bass guitar attack, crusty witch vocals, and fastpaced drumming. Lots of weird math-y breaks amongst jazzy tornado thrash and slow, sludgy dirges. There are a (very) few awesome melodic moments dropped in here and there...hypnotic melodies that drone for a minute before the tweaked angular thrash kicks back in full force. Imagine if RUINS donned corpse paint and started belting out buzzsaw black metal jams a la DARKTHRONE. Heavy, highly syncopated, raw but with excellent musicianship and spastic mindwarping intensity. Awesome.

BARLOW / PETERSEN / WIVINUS The Transparent World CD $10.98 Dark Holler / Hand-Eye Records

The debut from Minneapolis-based instrumental improv trio Barlow/Petersen/Wivinus. "The Transparent World" is effectively the group's first proper release (aside from a live-to-cassette, self-titled CDR limited to 100 copies and released last year on Stick It To The Man/Asymmetry to good responses on both sides of the Atlantic), and contains ten tracks encompassing a wide range of mood, texture and instrumentation. Whereas their earlier disc explored the ether via electric guitars, feedback and the multitude of sounds that can be derived from a variety of effects pedals, "The Transparent World" finds the group working exclusively with acoustic instrumentation to achieve a sonic landscape that is at turns lush and austere, meditative and menacing. All tracks on the disc are improvised at their core and utilize a wide variety of instruments and techniques, creating many sounds not normally associated with "acoustic" recordings. Of course there are guitars (both six- and twelve-string), but often unusually tuned and occasionally bowed. Piano, dulcimer, mandolin (occasionally augmented by e-bow and slide) bowed cymbals, the Freeman Monostring (played with a ballpeen hammer) the "rattletrap," bagpipe chanter and various other peripheral devices are all used to create a very singular and evocative whole. Musically, the disc ranges across a wide variety of styles and influences, but still retains a unified vision and a cohesive sound. Any number of genres can be seen in fleeting glimpses throughout the recordings: menacing blues from the deepest edges of a swamp swimming with spirits and psychosis (as seen in the opening cut, "Buried Under Crows"), avant soundscapes conjuring images of a creaking old house with a will all its own and possible ill intent (the chillingly abrasive "That Night"), long and languid soundtracks toward the horizon at the end of a lengthy and perhaps lucid dream (as exemplified by the echoing piano-laden closing track, "Retribution"). This release rests somewhere between the experimental avant-garde, the darkest psychedelic folk music and the epic 360 degree horizons of pure drone/dream music. Fans of Third Ear Band, Makoto Kawabata's "Inui" project, Six Organs of Admittance and select movie soundtracks will surely find something to appreciate here.

BARONESS First CD
Hyperrealist Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Monstrously epic sounding, thunderous sludge riffs and skillful dual-guitar harmonies come together with ripping d-beat hardcore aggression. Sort of like His Hero Is Gone busting out Fucking Champs-style harmonies? Although these songs all sound pretty apocalyptic, there is a great sense of melody throughout this CD - this stuff is really quite pretty and catchy at times."Tower Falls" has got some awesome anthemic breakdowns and harmonies."Coeur" is the shortest track at just over three minutes, yet still packs in killer memorable riffs and harmonies and odd (but awesome) riffs and chord phrasings. The final track,"Rise", is a monster, starting off with atmospheric finger tapping that stretches for several minutes before turning into a bulldozing sludge dirge . Awesome. Produced by Phillip Cope of KYLESA.

BARONESS First LP
Hyperrealist Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Now available on vinyl, with John Baizley's amazing artwork looking sweet in full-on LP sleeve mode!
Monstrously epic thundersludge riffs and skillful dual-guitar harmonies come together with ripping d-beat hardcore aggression. Sort of like His Hero Is Gone busting out Fucking Champs-style harmonies? Although these songs all sound pretty apocalyptic, there is a great sense of melody throughout this 12" - this stuff is really quite pretty and catchy at times."Tower Falls" has got some awesome anthemic breakdowns and harmonies."Coeur" is the shortest track at just over three minutes, yet still packs in killer memorable riffs and harmonies and odd (but awesome) riffs and chord phrasings. The final track,"Rise", is a monster, starting off with atmospheric finger tapping that stretches for several minutes before turning into a bulldozing sludge dirge . Awesome. Produced by Phillip Cope of KYLESA.

BARONESS Second CD
Hyperrealist Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The second EP from BARONESS delivers more of their righteous and majestic post-crust-metal that we loved so much from their First CD, with technical instrumentals, lengthy psychedelia, and moody RODAN / JUNE OF 44 post-rock interjected with awesome IRON MAIDEN / F**KING CHAMPS level guitar harmonies and crushing tech/sludge/crustcore. Super powerful, and Second also does a good job of capturing the band’s live energy. Killer stuff, BARONESS just keeps getting better and better with each release. And as with their first release, this disc has three songs, clocking in at around 21 minutes. Highly recommended to fans of Isis and Pelican, Disrupt and Neurosis, psychedelic crustcore, punishingly heavy metallic post-rock, stretched-out tarpit sludge, odd meters and complex arrangements and triumphant metal hooks!!

BARONESS Second LP
Hyperrealist Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Vinyl version of this killer epic post-metal-crustcore-rock crusher! Killer presentation - limited edition one sided black vinyl 12" with a stunning skull-illustration etching on the non-playing side from artist John Baizley. Beautiful !!!
The Second EP from BARONESS delivers more of their righteous and majestic post-crust-metal that we loved so much from their First album, with technical instrumentals, lengthy psychedelia, and moody RODAN / JUNE OF 44 post-rock interjected with awesome IRON MAIDEN / F**KING CHAMPS level guitar harmonies and crushing tech/sludge/crustcore. Super powerful, and Second also does a good job of capturing the band’s live energy. Killer stuff, BARONESS just keeps getting better and better with each release. And as with their first release, this disc has three songs, clocking in at around 21 minutes. Highly recommended to fans of Isis and Pelican, Disrupt and Neurosis, psychedelic crustcore, punishingly heavy metallic post-rock, stretched-out tarpit sludge, odd meters and complex arrangements and triumphant metal hooks!!

BARONESS / UNPERSONS A Grey Sigh In A Flower Husk CD $13.98 At A Loss

I've been waiting on this one ever since it was first announced at the end of last year - a split album featuring two bands from Savannah, Georgia, each one in possession of their own unique progressive, crusty metal: Baroness with their epic, melodic crustcore-prog and Unpersons's manic, gloriously weird combination of the Jesus Lizard and metallic pummel. Featuring more amazing artwork from Baroness' John Dyer Baizley, A Grey Sigh In A Flower Husk brings these two together for just over a half-hour of raging power, which begins with two new Baroness tracks that serve as an appetite-whetter for their upcoming album for Relapse. Yeah, there's only two songs from 'em here, but it's almost 18 minutes of music on their half of the split and frankly, both of these songs CRUSH IT. "Teiresias" is the shorter of the two, a mighty riff feast that twists and turns through winding metallic crush and spidery twin-guitar harmonies, which explodes brilliantly and suddenly in the middle of the song with a passage of downtuned sludgy majesty that sounds like The FUcking Champs meets Torche, at least to my overcaffienated brain. Their second track is called "Cavite", and this is Baroness at their sprawling, proggy best, a labyrinth of chugging guitars and Maiden-eqsue harmonies, hypnotic riffchug heard through a cheap microphone which suddenly erupts into panoramic prog-metal, a dreamy middle passage through spacey post-rock, and a freaked-out drum solo. Awesome! These guys take the best elements of The Champs and epic crustlords Tragedy, Neurosis and Mastodon and turn out a mighty metallic assault that continues to kick my ass each time I spin these jams.
So how do Baroness' buddies and fellow Savannah-ites measure up on this shared split? Pretty fuckin' solid, actually. Unpersons have been generally overlooked despite having a couple of releases on Life Is Abuse and At A Loss, but their fusion of Jesus Lizard's manic noise rock and crusty metal is completely crushing, as is displayed with their 4 songs here. The riffs go from hammering sludge to more jagged and jangly chords, and Kylesa drummer Carl McGinley bashes the crap out of his kit, anchoring the band with furious fills and offbeat rhythms. It's the vocals that really set Unpersons apart though, a psychotic mewling meltdown that's very reminsicent of David Yow. Unperson's highlight here is the final track "A Small Gesture, A Thousand Small Happy Gestures (Shone In The Dust)", a lengthy freakout that drops some flattening bomb-string action in amongst their psychotic post-punk flavored heaviness. It's massive neo-noise rock, as unhinged as recent releases from Black Elk and Akimbo, and an excellent companion to Baroness on this split. Highly recommended!!

MP3 SAMPLE: BARONESS "Cavite" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: UNPERSONS "A Thousand Small Happy Gestures (Shone In The Dust)" (excerpt)

BARZEL Shield Of Defense CD $11.98 Topheth Prophet Records (Israeli import)

Zionist power electronics? BARZEL is a self-stated "militant Jewish industrial" outfit, which is an interesting deviation from the sketchy politics of many artists in the power electronics/noise industrial scene. The music on this disc is mostly minimal , rumbling low-frequency noise with equally minimal samples looped over each track.Pretty old school stuff, fans of Survival Unit, Folkstorm, and MZ.412 would like this (if they can get past the politics of Barzel). These 10 tracks rumble along, gritty bulldozing distortion and crude blasts of extreme noise. Shield Of Defense is pure, unadulterated malice. Limited pressing of 500 copies.

BASKET OF DEATH Origami Jigoku CD $11.98 Last House On The Right

A while back, I stumbled across a subterranean art phenomenon called EroGuro online that blew my doors off. Sort of a loosely-defined movement of macabre manga infected with deviant sexual overtones, the "Guro" material that I checked out through a couple of fansites was some of the most extreme, boundary-pushing art I have ever seen. Definitely nothing that timid mainstream anime fans would want to witness, that's for sure. The loose translation of the term "EroGuro" is "erotic grotesque nonsense", but that doesn't even begin to describe the atrocities that are documented in these stories and illustrations: extreme surrealistic sexualized body-destruction, disfiguration, beyond-extreme levels of splatter and gore. Rough, rough stuff, but perversely fascinating, if you have the iron stomach required to explore far out material like this. Enter Japanese duo BASKET OF DEATH, whose new Origami Jigoku disc is a demonic, avant-grind descent into the filthy, gore-caked underworld of "EroGuro" depravity. Musically, the 14 tracks on show here blend together ridiculously fast and damaged drum machine grind with psychedelic Japanese electronic noise, jackhammer industrial rhythms and scum-encrusted gabba beats, disgusting, horrifying samples, crunching sounds of something being eaten, and foul sludgy grooves surfacing in the muck. Imagine the audio equivalent to the Guinea Pig series of underground gore-surrealism film, a gross hybrid of DISGORGE/CATASEXUAL URGE MOTIVATION gore grind, way-fucked drugged deathmetal riffing, DISSECTING TABLE style noise industrial, MASONNA/CCCC/ASTROMERO psych troniks, extreme Japanese splatter pornography, almost BLACK MAYONNAISE-esque fungoid doom crawls, and berserk blasts of gabber/speedcore, all mushed together into a gross, burbling, gorey stew of chopped up limbs and bondage rope and technicolor fluids. Intensely disturbing, absurd, sense blasting psychedelic filth, and definitely NOT for casual grindcore fans. Most of these tracks were actually originally released on an out-of-print CD-R by a tiny gore/noisecore label, and are exhumed here along with 2 additonal tracks. Then there's the booklet, which not only has several seriously disturbing illsutrations and way WAY over-the-top gore lyrics, but also includes a surprisingly extensive glossary list of Japanese terms to aid you in decoding the lyrics. We seriously have to warn you: this is about as extreme, evil, offensive, appaling, and disturbing as it gets, albeit in total cartoony, gore metal manner. Over 18 only!

BASTARD NOISE Recycled Music Series CASSETTE $4.98 RRRecords

This is Bastard Noise's installment in the infamous Recycled Music Series cassette series, circa 2000 from harsh noise label RRRecords. Pretty essential for Bastard Noise/Man Is The Bastard Fans, with Wood and company unleashing a brutal wave of interstellar locust attack and electronic caveman violence that clocks in at over half an hour. Definitely one of the harder recordings BN has beaten us over the skull with as coarse blasts of distortion swirl together with heavy feedback and distorted monstrous vocals. This being a part of RRR's infamous Recycled Music series, Bastard Noise's jam is dubbed over assorted commercial pre-recorded music cassettes that had been traded into the RRRecords shop in Lowell, MA. Each is one of a kind, as the nature of dubbed cassettes allow for glimmers of the original audio content to often bleed into the crushing noise assault that has been dubbed onto the tape. Comes in a handassembled case/sleeve with duct tape scrawled in black marker across the front.

BASTARD NOISE Sound Engine CD
PACrec
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

An ocean of high pitched, eardrum tickling frequencies and cataclysmic ambient horns trumpeting the glacial crawl. Brutal glass winds howl through swarms of chirping circuits. Sound Engine is one of the best discs yet from BASTARD NOISE, cutting through both brutal insectile noise and delicate cosmic constructs with homemade electronics, hand made instruments, and field recordings. Tracks like "Destiny Carved By Internal Failure" take on mechanical kraut-ish celestial manuevers. There are some other faces on this album too, like Chris Dodge's (SPAZZ, EAST WEST BLAST TEST) Jesus Philben contributing to the harsh feedback shriek of "A Pedestal To Support The Invaders", and "Human Denial" sports frightening caveman death vocals from Guilty Connector. The final blast, "Seeding Interstellar Space", wa recorded live on KSPC in 2001, and buzzes the heavens like the beating of monstrous intergalactic cyborg moth wings and surges like rivers of molten distortion. Def one of our fave BASTARD NOISE jams so far. Comes in PACrec brand wallet sleeve. Nice.

BASTARD NOISE Three Dollar Date / Microscopic Malediction 3" CD $7.98 Housepig

When I first opened up the package of new treats from Housepig, this little package was at the top of the box, and my first thought was: Bastard Noise Fun Pack! Looking like a little novelty-item blister pack, this is a pro-pressed 3" CD enclosed inside of a red & black painted paper sleeve that holds the disc and a couple of insert sheets, which is then sealed in a plastic sleeve with a little magnifying glass. The 3" CD is a reissue of Bastard Noise's rare 1998 Three Dollar Date 7" on A.I.P.R. Records, and Bastard Noise's side of an obscure split 7" with Hermit. The Three Dollar Date tracks are lobe-liquifying blasts of heavy analog oscillation designs and grim psychedelic glitchdrones. The split EP tracks are crushing, ultra heavy electronic spacescapes and squealing megadistortion mangle, with Wood's monstrous gutteral vocal proclamations. Classic punishing Bastard Noise electronics! The Skull lives! The amazing package replicates the original sleeve art, and the magnifying glass is included so you can read the ridiculously miniature original liner notes. Awesome!! Limited edition of 500. Housepig rules!

BASTARD NOISE / GERRITT split 7" EP $6.98 Misanthropic Agenda

Killer split EP of harsh American electricty, on grey-swirl marble vinyl in an edition of 800. Legendary post-powerviolence tube destructos Bastard Noise lay down "Protozoa Syringe", which is yet another prismatic field recording of swarms of robotic locusts moving through space aggressively. As with most Bastard Noise jams, this one is brutal and clears the shit right out, wrapping itself around our skulls nicely. Gerritt is on the flipside, and raises blisters with 3 succinct jams of acid-trip drone loops and crackling feedback screech. Sorta reminds us of old Earwigs shizz, but way more isolated, and ends on a locked groove that we let run for over 30 minutes before we realized what the fuck was going on. A premium slice of psychotropic urk. Great packaging, the marble wax 7" comes in a clear plastic sleeve with a transparant sticker on the front with artwork and liners. Killer.

BASTARD NOISE / T.E.F. Astronomical Sound Images CD $7.98 PACrec

Brutal galactic shortwave violence and lovely star-fried drones are the fruit of this collaborative full length from Eric Wood of BASTARD NOISE and Kevin Novak of T.E.F. The harsh noise is as brutal as anything prior from BASTARD NOISE, with squalls of piercing feedback and thick, crusty blurts of high volume jet-engine distortion. The onslaught breaks here and there to reveal nearly musical sounds and delicate drift,though...as with all of BASTARD NOISE's stuff, there's alot of dynamic range and skilled sound construction at work here. Astronomical Sound Images lives up to its title with three lengthy tracks of massive deep space roar that shifts and shimmers into crystalline electronics.

BASTARD NOISE / MOZ / HERMIT Collaborative 7" EP $4.98 Balefire Records

This new 7" features 2 tracks,The Moralist Factor parts 1 and 2, resulting from mail collaboration between experimental electronics artists BASTARD NOISE, MOZ, and HERMIT. A dynamic mix of whirr, crystalline drones, and staticky noise abstractions. Sleeve design by Crionic Media. Limited to 300 copies.

BASTARBATION Bastarnation CD-R $9.98 Neus-318 (Japanese import)

A concise assault of spartan oscillator shock from Japan's Bastarbation, Bastarnation shreds through 52 ultra short tracks in 28 minutes, each track running exactly 32 seconds in length. THis is brutal shit....imagine an ADD-afflicted noisecore outfit hijacking blasts of wormy sinewave blurts ripped out of a malfunctioning Atari 2600 mashed with oscillating digital noise, and subsequently spewing them out in short, multi-second bursts. The digital convulsions on this disc are stripped down to a skeletal twitch, like the defleshed bastard offspring of Oscillating Innards and Groyxo style cut-up colliding with a rabies infected copy of the classic robo shoot-em-up Berserker. Harsh! The unmarked disc is packaged in a jewel case with a color cover.

BATHTUB SHITTER Angels Save Us + Mark A Muck CD $11.98 (S)hit Jam Records (Japanese import)

Another killer re-issue of out of print BATHTUB SHITTER vinyl material, this disc collects the Angels Save Us EP and Mark A Muck EP, along with a compilation track from the World Wide Violence 7” EP. Fifteen songs total of brutal and ridiculously catchy (and terminally weird) scat-obsessed grindcore. This stuff is way catchier than it has any right to be. Ripping guitar riffs and lots of charged midtempo thrash riots. Massive classic rock hooks and full-bore blastbeat whirlwinds. Hypnotic drum circle workouts and monster chants. PINK FLOYD-ish psych guitar leads. And those ridiculous cookie monster / electrocuted cheerleader vocal trade-offs that jettison BATHTUB SHITTER into the far realms of grindcore absurdity. The song “Stand By Shit” even has some clean, reverbed BAUHAUS-esque clean vocals! And the Mark A Muck EP starts off with retarded choral voices. These guys rule. It’s like an over-the-top mix of old NAPALM DEATH, BOREDOMS, ANAL CUNT style noisecore, Utterly demented grindcore. Packaged in a 7” style full color jacket, hand-numbered out of 1,000 copies.

BATHTUB SHITTER Wall Of World Is Words CD $14.98 Power It Up (GERMAN IMPORT)

In the entire pantheon of mutant J-grind, there is noone quite like the mighty Bathtub Shitter. Since the last 90's, Bathtub Shitter have developed their shit-obsessed philosophy into something more akin to Zen thought than the adolescent execretory fantasies that you usually find scrawled across the lyric sheets of the gore/splatter grind underground. Or at least my corroded brain has reached the point where their scatological lyrics and mangled English have taken on a more profound meaning since I've been listening to the CD re-issue of their Wall Of World Is Words mini-album from 2000 on repeat all day. C'mon, you can't tell me that there isn't some heavy stuff in lyrics like "...need a gap in the pants / say hello from it / Speak with wind or shit / One word on the world / No need the wall here...". Whether or not you want to attempt to glean hidden meaning in the Shitter's cryptic scat poetry, this 12 song eruption, which originally came into this world as a 10" and subsequently went out of print, features some incredible grindcore destruction with a fresh remastering job and additional bonus tracks, making this pretty crucial for Bathtub Shitter disciples. Wall delivers just over 20 minutes of bizarro blast violence, unleashing blazing cyclones of grindnoise, gloriously heavy mid-tempo thrash parts, and a couple of slooow, dissonant sludgecore dirges, and frequently toss in killer WTF parts like straight-up funk breaks, melodic poppy riffs, fingerpicked classical guitar interludes, etc. Another one of bathtub Shitter's highlights are the amazing, amazingly ridiculous vocals of lead growler Masato Morimoto, who effortlessly switches between deep monstrous growls to hysterical, ultra high pitched squawks, oftentimes in the same verse. Includes covers of Extreme Noise Terror, Scum, and Holy Moses.

BATHTUB SHITTER Dancehall Grind CD (S)hit Jam (JAPANESE IMPORT)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

More Japanese scat-obsessed grind weirdness from Bathtub Shitter! Yep, Dancehall Grind is another installment in the ongoing series of limited-edition CD releases of Bathtub Shitter material that's been released through the band's own (S)hit Jam Records imprint. There's a freaking cult that's formed around these guys, as they are one of the weirdest, heaviest Japanese grind bands in action, and I freaked when we got this disc in. Dancehall Grind is the latest full length from the Shitter, recorded throughout 2004-2005, and rocks 13 songs of brand new material from these pot-hoovering, shit-philosophizing, grinding groove gods as well as a cover of D.R.I.'s "Time Out". The disc opens with a short, goofy, Nintendo-type 8 bit melody, but immediately launches into the Shitter's unique hybrid of crushing, rocking thrash metal and crusty grindcore, like a mutant mishmash of old school Japanese grinders S.O.B. and Boredoms, Brutal Truth and Mr. Bungle, stoner rock and pulverizing Celtic Frost sludge and awesome Exodus thrash. You'd better belive that this thrashes...blazing thrash metal mega-riffs smash into weird yet massive grooves that could almost be described as "funky", jackhammer grind blasts get entangled in bursts of super catchy metallic pop-punk, garage rock licks and slap-funk bass appear over slow sludge metal breakdowns and insane blastbeats. There's the airy fingerpickin' acoustic interlude titled "Shit Drop", and the fucked up closer "Stihs Latem" that has them playing backwards. The 7 minute-plus "Rest In Piss" is a total deathgrind/prog mindmelt, it's convoluted riffs and tempo shifts stretching out far beyond the duration of a typical grind jam, becoming trancelike as the slow, offtime funk-sludge riff alternates with supersonic blastbeats. It's all over the fucking place. And Bathtub Shitter's vocalist Masato Henmarer Morimoto vomits up some of the most insane, ridiculous throat performances possible over the band's chaotic musical arrangements, effortlessly changing up between super-gutteral, lung-busting gorebeast growling, snotty hardcore hollerin', and a freaked-out, impossibly high-pitched shriek that sounds like a hysterical, coked-up anime cheerleader. And it all works so perfectly, the vocals and schizoid grind shifts make this an awesome, comical, ridiculous, rumbling shitstorm of gnarly grind weirdness. The disc comes in an oversized 7" style sleeve with weird, creepy cover art and full lyrics printed on the inside, plus a Bathrub Shitter sticker!

BATHTUB SHITTER Early Yeah(s) CD $12.98 (S)hit Jam (Japanese import)

Totally fucking ridonkulous Japanese grindcore. These guys were one of the funnest, weirdest grind bands to come out of Japan since Unholy Grave, and where the Grave never really managed to eke out any releases of decent recording quality (granted, their low-fi bzzz was a big part of their charm), Bathtub Shitter not only released some solid sounding stuff, but enshrouded their brutal grindcore with total fecal mystique. Yep, we're talking serious scat obsessed grindcore. They make it work, though. Seriously. Musically, this collection will melt your bone structure with a vicious assault of crusty punk beats, tornado grind blasts, bizarre monster/shriek vocal tradeoffs that you gotta hear to believe, and downright catchy tunes from the post-BRUTAL TRUTH / MELT BANANA realm of damaged hyperspeed destruction. Early Yeah(s) is an early discography of the bands recorded output from late 1997 through early 2000, and includes the split 7" tracks with DUDMAN, the Fertilizer 7" EP, the 97+3 Shit Points 7" EP, One Fun 7" EP, their tracks from the Murderous Grind Attack compilation , and 3 unreleased versions of older songs. This beast is limited to 1000 hand numbered copies, and comes packaged in a full color 7" jacket sleeve.

BATHTUB SHITTER Fertilizer 7" EP
FirstBlood Family Records
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A U.S. repress of the out-of-print grind/noise/bizarro classic. New cover art and extra never before released vinyl tracks. This Japanese band has been building a cult following around their warped, fecal-obsessed aesthetic and fast, wicked crust-filled grindcore.

BATHTUB SHITTER Lifetime Shitlist CD
Shit Jam Records (Japanese import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A whirlwind of scatological grindcrust weirdness. Japanese scat-blasters BATHTUB SHITTER's CD debut full length further develops their debauched obsessions explored on their many 7" releases, with a bizarre and unique style of rocking grind and an awesome, hysterical dual vocal attack that matches monstrous death belches and high-pitched, highly cadenced insane screeching vocals that trade off in a pretty weird, unique way, all backed by some of the greatest, catchiest grind riffs ever, with gigantic grooves and spastic noodling leads and barfing bass rumble and splattered buzzsaw blastbeats and awesome mid-tempo thrash breaks. They even do a WITCHFINDER GENERAL cover. This CD also sports great solid production, something usually missing from bands in this genre. For fans of Melt Banana , Unholy Grave and CSSO and all heavy Japanese speed weirdness!!

BBATHTUB SHITTER 97 + 3 Shit Points 7” EP
Power It Up (German import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We just landed a couple of copies of this out-of-print 7"EP released on the German label Power It Up back in 1999. Only two copies! If you're a regular reader, you'll know that we LOVE Bathtub Shitter and their manic, monstrous shit-obsessed grindcore vision. Totally fucking insane stuff, but with the ability to knock your head off with an unbelieveably catchy, rocked-out riff or bizarre drum-circle freakout with singalong beast-vocals. These songs are actually from the band's 1997 demo, so this is the SHITTER at their inception, with the addition of the three songs that originally appeared on their split 7" with DUDMAN. Utterly weird, crucial Japanese grind!!

BATHTUB SHITTER Skate Of Bulgaria 5" $9.98 Hater Of God

Total warehouse find, we dug up a couple copies of this now out-of-print 5" from our favorite scat-obsessed powergrinders, Bathtub Shitter! released in a limited edition of 500 copies in a thick full-color jacket with creepy cover artwork, this tiny slab of serious grind even comes with a sheet of toilet paper that has the lyrics and liner notes printed in brown ink! This 5" features three tracks: "Skate Of Bulgaria (Single Version)", "A B Shit", and :Re-Shit (Single Version)". If yer a Bathtub Shitter fanatic like us, well, then this is obviously essential; and if yer a fan of blazing, rocking grindcore weirdness, well then you need to check out Bathtub Shitter post haste! We'd recommend starting with the Angels Save Us CD or maybe Dancehall Grind...these guys serve up awesomely catchy and rocking grindcore with loads of midtempo thrash parts, insane riffs, and weird elements thrown in, ridiculous cookie monster / electrocuted cheerleader vocal tradeoffs, and of course, their eternal devotion to shit!

BATHTUB SHITTER Xmas 3"CD $7.98 Tumult

You can bet yer ass that this little 3" disc is going to become part of our holiday tradition here at Crucial Blast. Bathtub Shitter are already one of my favorite Japanese grindcore bands, and for them to release a 3" CD that combines their shit-obsessed lyrics and pummeling, rocking grind with...Christmas ? Come on. There's only three songs here, but the weirdness is fucking overflowing: "Brown Santa (A Cappella Version)" is a bizarre yuletide nursery rhyme "sung" by BT's psychotic vocalist Masato, and you can hear the tumors blossoming on his throat as the dude alternates between his ridiculously deep death growls and those insane high pitched shrieks that make Bathtub Shitter sound like absolutely nobody else. Then comes "Holy Shit", which opens with sleigh bells and more a cappella pig grunts before the band breaks into a beastly pop punk/grind jam, then shifts gears into a goofy casio keyboard bridge before getting fuckin' annihilated again by brutal metallic grindcore. The Shitter wrap things up with a festive rendition of the holiday standard "Little Drummer Boy" that turns the cherished song into a punishing deathdoom dirge. What can I say? As a proud member of the Bathtub Shitter cult, this disc is a must-have for me, and it's a recommended disc for fellow BT freaks. Really, anyone into weirdo Japanese blastery like C.S.S.O., Melt Banana, Unholy Grave, and Gore Beyond Necropsy needs to check these guys out if you havent already, and this 3" is as good a place to start as any!

MP3 SAMPLE: "Brown Santa" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Holy SHit" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Little Drummer Boy" (excerpt)

BATTLE OF MICE A Day Of Nights CD $14.98 Neurot

A Day Of Nights has been out for a little while, but it's taken me awhile to list this in the store 'cuz, well, I've been having a hard time figuring out how to describe this album. Which usually means that we're onto something really cool. Brooklyn-based Battle Of Mice came together just over a year and a half ago, a project formed by Josh Graham from Red Sparowes and Neurosis, Julie Christmas from Made Out Of Babies, and Joe Hamilton from Book Of Knots. They debuted on that terrific Triad three way split (which we have listed as well in this weeks store update), and followed that pretty quickly with A Day Of Nights, an awesome art-metal narrative that appears to chronicle the breakdown of the romantic relationship between members Graham and Christmas in painful, harrowing detail. I haven't heard something this personal and emotionally raw since Swans leader Michael Gira released his solo album Drainland. The music is appropriately grim and emotional, a crushing, sweeping miasma of metallic noir-rock rife with dynamic riffing, dark gloomy melodies, and crushing bouts of doomy sludge, an intense and atmospheric combination of Neurosis urban tribal dirge, Tool's arty alt-metal, the panoramic metalgaze majesty of Red Sparowes, vitriolic breakup letters, screamed accusations, and hallucinatory poetry. So awesome and heartrending and epic, it's unbelievable that this virtually new band could achieve this with thier first album. But it's Julie Christmas' singing that totally elevates A Day Of Nights to pop perfection, her range of vocals here far more diverse than her work with the metallic noiserock of Made Out Of Babies, moving between psychotic paranoid breakdowns, hysterical, violent screaming assaults, almost spoken-word confessions, and soaring singing that sends my heart into my throat every time I listen to this album. Which is alot. Beyond recommended.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Lamb ANd The Labrador" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Salt Bridge" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "At The Base Of The Giant's Throat" (excerpt)

BATTLETORN Evil Chains CD $10.98 Megablade

I will never deny the thrash. My early teenage years were almost exclusively spent blowing my canals out with the cream of the Bay Area crop, and East Coast beasts like Overkill and Nuclear Assault. I don't think that I owned a single piece of clothing that didn't have the DRI logo scrawled somewhere on it in black magic marker. And when crossover hit in the late '80's, it was the first real musical epiphany that I had ever experienced up until that point; the oft-maligned blenderization of thrash metal and hardcore punk was, at the time, the most primal and aggro noise I had come into contact with. Then came the late 90's thrashcore revivial in the underground hardcore punk scene, with the likes of Crucial Unit, What Happens Next,and Municipal Waste unleashing circle pit carnage throughout the DIY punk scene, and I was in total bliss. Throughout all of this, my infatuation with thrash, speed metal, and crossover has never abated, but the past couple of years has been pretty barren for ripping new bands. So when a disc as unapologetically, un-irionically THRASH as Battletorn's debut crossed my path, with it's primitive penciled cover art depicting some kind of cloaked demon ripped right out of a teenage hesher's trapper keeper, I could barely contain myself. Battletorn's blown-out, fierce as fuck thrash attack surprisingly comes from a minimalist, stripped-down lineup of just guitarist, drummer, and singer. Guitarist Omid formerly played bass in legendary DC grind godz Enemy Soil, and he napalms each one of these jams with a whirlwind assault of blurred power chord frenzy. Fellow DC area ex-pat William batters his drum kit into dust, and it's a total trashcan blast. But Battletorn's trump card on Evil Chains is the presence of singer Beverly,whose rapid fire, high pitched yelling is beamed straight out of 1985, hardcore style, and falls somewhere between a feminine version of Jello Biafra, the chirpy, staccato declarations of Melt Banana's Yasuko, and Poly Styrene. And her socially aware but strangely poetic lyrics are way more interesting than what you'd normally expect from this sort of hit-and-run thrashcore. These cats straddle the line between ragged retro Combat Records throwback and modernized hyperspeed urban noise power, and while this is a too-brief disc clocking in at merely 15 minutes in length, the 18 jams captured here are unbeatably ferocious emissions of distorted, gnarly energy.

BBBLOOD The Cosmic Gash CD-R $9.98 Audiobot (Belgian import)

The first five seconds of The Cosmic Gash makes us think we're in for some Loveless meets Japanese noise action, but then our brainplate gets clawed off by Bbblood's massive skree trepanation, and we're left whipped and defeated. This is noxious ear-bleeding death/feedback/violence screaming out of the same bloody maw as those other recent Audiobot jams from Ichorous and Villa Valley that abused us earlier this year, a merciless blizzard of destroyed microphones, metal clang, verbal spunk, cheap stomp box apocalypse and electronic drills, while also sprouting little blossoms of almost-melody and glitched drones out of the jet engine headfuck. Bbblood manages to eke out some of the most cranium splintering, cobra conjuring feedback we've encountered burnt to aluminum on this sucker...gotta recommended this to anyone who feels Borbetomagus is too soft. Comes in a sexy slipcase spattered in pixel spew by Italian beach-dweller Tisbo, in an edition of only 65 copies.

BEARTRAP / CUNTS split CD-R $4.98 Dotsmark (Japanese import)

This private-press Japanese CD-R delivers ridiculously stoopid budget noise violence from the land of the rising sun. BEARTRAP is a drums/guitar/vocals setup that engage in old school blurrr in the AxCx/7 MINUTES OF NAUSEA/early CRIPPLE BASTARDS vein, with tense lo-fi microbursts of improvised grindcore and retarded noise meandering. CUNTS follow with 17 quick eruptions of their bizarre drums and vocals take on improv noisecore. Lo-fidelity as FUCK, and similiar to a BOREDOMS/ANAL CUNT onslaught on a coke binge. Quite satisfying as aural draino. Obviously fans of old school noisecore, Ax/Tion Records blurr, and avant-garde slop noise should take note. The disc is packaged in an appropriate xeroxed foldover sleeve with (surprisingly) plenty o' info and track listings for each band.

BEATEN BACK TO PURE The Burning South CD
This Dark Reign
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Crushin' southern fried doomcore meets ripping powerviolence textures and psychedelic Southern biker rock, bringing the swamp crunch like fellow warty sludgesters Cavity and Eyehategod and Weedeater and injecting it with killer classic metal riffs and MC5 strenght hooks and miles of grime and grease. This is more adventurous than their previous biker-sludge albums on UK label Retribute, which were freaking awesome in their own right, brutal and ultra heavy with lots of speedy stoner thrash to accentuate their slow-as-fuck doomsludge crawls...but The Burning South gets down with all sorts of new spins, via dark sung vocals and eerie psychedelic clean-guitar instrumentals, acoustic guitar strum and samples and feedback clouds, progressive bits and punishing dissonant riffing and RIGHTEOUS dual-guitar harmonies. Awesome! We def think that fans of Alabama Thunderpussy and Weedeater and Suplecs and Eyehategod will eat this up.

BEATEN BACK TO PURE Southern Apocalypse CD $11.98 Retribute Records (UK import)

The debut full length from VA Beach’s BEATEN BACK TO PURE. 6 hateful tracks of demonic stoner crust boogie. Gritty, grisly, and totally southern fried (fans of WEEDATER and EYEHATEGOD, take note!!). More up-tempo than most of their peers, BEATEN BACK TO PURE really are the new face of Southern Rock, all greasy riffs, monstrous vocals, and crushing rock perfect for a motorcycle ride straight into Hell. Produced by Steve Austin (TODAY IS THE DAY). Freakin’ abrasive southern metal.

BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning LP $15.98 Epicene Sound System

Boss vinyl manifestation of the labyrinthine EP these cats dropped on Troubleman Unlimited about a year ago, issued by our buddies at Epicene Sound System on white wax. BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS conjure three dizzying explosions of tech-metal shredtasticness that are highlighted by Colin Marston (also of Crucial Blast dadaist ambient-metal-clatter duo INFIDEL?/CASTRO! as well as DYSRYTHMIA and BYLA) and his virtuoso Warr tap-guitar skills, which is shit must to be heard/seen to be believed...hyper-speed prog runs and lightspeed guitar tapping are shot out faster than your ears can follow, with jazz-informed composition and complexity getting down with straight thrash metal insanity, further bolstered by a display of insane octopoidal drumming that tumbles out of jams entitled Exospacial Psionic Aura, Estrogen/Pathogen Exchange Program, Sensory Amusia, and an ambient jazzy bliss out that surfaces in the middle of the EP that'll flip your wig. Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning is all instrumental and all epic, swarming over your eardrums like the nexus of progressive ATHEIST/MESHUGGAH/CYNIC tech and the kind of underground, hyperactive avant-shred that you get from ADD-addled nuts like ORTHRELM (who just did a split CD single on Crucial Blast with BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS), NAKED CITY, and MELT BANANA. Housed on a one-sided vinyl 12" in a limited edition of 500 copies, on white vinyl with the other side sporting a silkscreened image.

BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning CD $13.98 Black Market Activities

Reissued by Black Market Activities, this CD version of the labyrinthine EP that these cats originally dropped on Troubleman Unlimited conjures three dizzying explosions of tech-metal shredtasticness highlighted by the presence of shredmaster Colin Marston, who is also a member of the Dadaist ambient-metal-clatter duo Infidel?/Castro! as well as Dysrhythmia and Byla. Colin's virtuoso Warr tap-guitar skills is shit that must to be heard/seen to be believed...hyper-speed prog runs and lightspeed guitar tapping are shot out faster than your ears can follow, with jazz-informed composition and complexity getting down with straight thrash metal insanity, further bolstered by a display of insane octopoidal drumming that tumbles out of jams like "Estrogen/Pathogen Exchange Program", "Sensory Amusia", and an ambient jazzy bliss out that surfaces in the middle of "Exospacial Psionic Aura" that'll flip your wig. All instrumental and all epic, swarming over your eardrums like the nexus of progressive Atheist/Meshuggah/Cynic tech and the kind of underground, hyperactive avant-shred that you get from ADD-addled nuts like Orthrelm (who shared that split CD single with Behold...The Arctopus on Crucial Blast), Naked City, and Melt Banana. Along with the tracks from the original Nano-Nucleonic Cyborg Summoning EP, they've also included the jams from the Arctopocalypse Now... Warmageddon Later 3" CD that came out on Epicene years ago, and some live tracks, totalling close to an hour of music.

BEIP I Like Penis 3" CD-R At War With False Noise (UK IMPORT)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Infuckingsane cult noisecore from this one-woman Finnish project! What? That's the word, at least. As much as we fucking LOVE noisecore, the crazier and more brain damaged and out of control the better, it's impossible to stay abreast of all of the noisecore bands that have sprouted up over the years. The very nature of the form has permitted a deluge of bands aping the seminal sounds of Anal Cunt, Fear Of God, the Gerogerigegege, and Sore Throat, some of 'em genius, most not. So we get very stoked when we discover a comepletely fucked up noisecore band that we've never heard of before, that actually shows us something new. The latest carton of earbleed orgasm from At War With False Noise provided just such an experience, via this teensy 3" CD-R that houses a re-issued EP from a Finnish girl called Beip titled I Like Penis. Any thoughts of good taste should have disappeared right out the window as soon as we started talking about noisecore to begin with, you know? This recording came out in 2003, and according to the info on the jacket consists of 56 "songs". The whole thing is only 9 minutes and is presented as one long track, so what yer getting is a stream of stop/start eruptions of blastbeats, mongoloid improvised drumming, vacuum cleaner guitar noise and the occasional twisted sludge riff with the most horrific high pitched female screaming ever run through a bank of effects! Fucking out-of-control brutal blurr overload, seriously warped - there aren't any added dimensions to this, it's just brain scrambling NOISE GRIND of the highest order. If you worship at the burnt altar of groups like Brigada Do Odio, 7 Minutes Of Nausea, PTAO, None Of Your Fucking Business, Minch, World, Sissy Spacek, Gerogerigegege, Aunt Mary, and other purveyors of total outsider sickoid blur, yer going to trip out on this. Allegedly, this was actually recorded and "produced" by Mikko Aspa of Finnish noise machine Grunt, post-black metallers Deathspell Omega, and deathsludge outfit Fleshpress! Only 100 copies were made, packaged in a little full-color sleeve tucked in a pink Cromatico wraparound sheet.

BELOW THE SOUND More Like A Gunshot Than A Car Wreck CD $5.98 Berserker Records

Desert thunder never sounded so good. BELOW THE SOUND emerge from the dust of New Mexico with a 7 track attack of stripped-down precision thud punk. High powered hooks, angular fuzz, and venomous lyrics all further entrench this trio in the guts of the current scud rock movement. Biting, catchy, and lethal, this recalls the minimalist power of the MINUTEMEN merged with NAKED RAYGUN's anthemic 'core and Am Rep noise.

BENEATH THE FROZEN SOIL / NEGATIVE REACTION split CD $11.98 Total Rust (Israel)

Here's another crusher from the Total Rust vaults, a full length split CD between the blackened melodic doom of Sweden's Beneath The Frozen Soil and old-school sludge thugs Negative Reaction. It's rare that I get in any cool split albums anymore, as the ones that do pop up tend to be fairly haphazardly constructed affairs, but this one really works. Both bands compliment each other's style, and you really get a "state of the scene" report from the crusty underbelley of the sludge/doom underground on this disc. Beneath The Frozen Soil start things off with five songs of grim, raw deathdoom with a heavy My Dying Bride influence - ultra heavy, desolate dirges with harsh vocals and a filthy, raw recording quality. Sometimes the songs break off into morose passages of gloomy chamber-rock with cello, keyboards, and piano, or they pick up the pace with some slightly trickier riffing, but BTFS always come back to the doom in the end. Heavy duty epic crustiness that takes me back to the glory days of Peaceville while putting their own spin on the sound with some pretty cool song arrangements, loads of downer atmosphere, and a bass tone that sounds like there is some kind of machinery buzzing in the background through all of the songs.
And then it's time for Negative Reaction to show up and deliver a serious helping of bonecrushing slo-mo hatred. Why don't these guys get more love? Seriously, people. Negative Reaction has been kicking around for close to 20 years now, and they are still little more than a footnote in the oral history of the American sludgecore underground. I dunno, I've been down for their brand of monotonous (and I mean that lovingly, guys) Celtic Frost-inspired riff battery for ages - this shit is just so heavy - just check out the timeless riff on "Shroud" . Ugh. I feel like I'm being slowly buried in molasses when I listen to their four songs on this split. And all of 'em crush, too, with a brutal bass-heavy production that rattles yer ribs, and singer Ken E. Bones wickedly gnarly shrieks. Great stuff, super heavy and very hypnotic.
MP3 SAMPLE: BENEATH THE FROZEN SOIL "Preludium"(excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: BENEATH THE FROZEN SOIL "The TIme Is Now" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: NEGATIVE REACTION "Shroud" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: NEGATIVE REACTION "Wish You Were Dead" (excerpt)

BENEATH THE LAKE Inside Passage CD $14.98 Glass Throat Records

We've actually had this in stock for awhile, but for some reason never added it to the webstore. Inside Passage is the debut full length from drone outfit Beneath The Lake, a duo comprised of Nicolas Lampert (of death-drone-metal squad Noisegate ) and Dave Canterbury, and on this album explore deep, subterranean drone ambient bliss heavily inspired by bleak, natural landscapes and wildlife. Heavily layered and quite dense, Beneath The Lake use guitar, cello, field recordings of whales and wind and owls, sound processors and more to form huge rumbling, shimmering drones and organic hum as their sounds drift in and out of the drift, sweeping lush walls of sound and bleak, sparse sonic sketches. Hauntingly beautiful. I loved this album so much after first hearing it that Beneath The Lake were one of the first artists we contacted to contribute to the Record Of Shadows Infinite compilation released on Crucial Blast in 2004.

BENEATH THE LAKE Silent Uprising CD $14.98 Glass Throat Recordings

A truly stunning follow up to their debut 2002 "Inside Passage" offering! "Silent Uprising" features five flowing & meditative compositions clocking in at 70+ minutes. A demanding engagement from drifting drone composers Nicolas Lampert & Dave Canterbury. An alchemical mixture of lulling musical melodies & dense cinematic environments. BENEATH THE LAKE embrace a forlorn melancholia of haunting, whispering memories & organic soundscapes. A beautiful album with a distant hope, forged through nature's sadness... THIS IS EPIC DRONE BLISS!!! Comes packaged in a gorgeous oversized gatefold CD sleeve, professionally printed and covered in somber, earthy browns/greys and woodland/urban decay imagery.

BENIGHTED LEAMS Ferly Centesms CD $15.98 Supernal Music (UK import)

Wow, this is some fucked up black metal weirdness. It's hard to pinpoint exactly why Benighted Leams sounds so totally alien the first time you listen to it. Maybe it's the seemingly broken structures, as if the reverb-heavy music was pulled apart and then put back together with bad glue. Or possibly it's the bizarre beats, which really don't seem to follow any obvious rhythm. Ferly Centesms is definitely surreal, though, and quite freaking awesome, like a seriously damaged combo of old Voivod, the weirdest, most necro lo-fi black metal imaginable, and some stumbling, drum-machine driven math rock band. On HEAVY drugs. Benighted Leams will blaze through some sideways blasting, then settle into creepy ambience with random sounding muttering far off in the background. Elsewhere, the music chugs along in a funeral dirge reminscent of Bethlehem or Skepticism, and will just come to a sudden halt. Killer outsider-black metal weirdness!

BETHELL ep1 CD-R $5.98 Epicene Replica

A fucking amazing 20-"song" private-press CD of totally fucked free-death/grind noise/noise pop from this seriously obscure Ohio project, issued on the always-confounding Epicene Sound Replica imprint. Each track is an explosion of lo-fi, multi-tracked guitar noise and retarded/jumbled hyperspeed shred metal buried in a shitstorm of crumbling distortion, with weirdly pretty pop hooks crawling out from under the relentless wall of urk and fucked up grindcore vocal vomit. Imagine Masonna and Hanatarashi and Faxed Head and Galaxy 500 all playing at the same time, with the session recorded on a disintegrating 4-track, a white-hot gob of insane, gibbering grind blur and psychedelic death metal noise. Totally fucking excellent. Comes in a simple red/black xerox wallet sleeve.

BETTER TO SEE YOU WITH, THE s/t CD $9.98 Celestial Gang

These cats have the auspicious honor of being the first non-Silentist release on Mark Burden's Celestial Gang label. They certainly fit though, with a demented, psychedelic grindcore quality akin to the neo-classical avant-blast of Burden's Silentist project. Portland's The Better To See You With are a much noisier deal though, blazing through twelve tracks in twelve minutes, a furious freaked out blast of devolved grindcore being tossed down the stairs and filtered through contempo No Wave/Skin Graft sensibilities and a bunch of malfunctioning instruments. Condensed thrash assaults suddenly fall apart into freeform amp noise/cable buzz improv jams, and barely any riff lacks a feedback tracer, the tinny guitars slicing air like razor wire while the singer wails and howls, sometimes birthing a series of stoned chants. And yet there are hooks and raging riffs in the midst of all of this. Did I just hear a sax? Imagine a napalm-blasted AIDS Wolf suddenly going grindcore, and you're close. Even the artwork on the gatefold CD jacket is completely acid damaged. Awesome damaged hardcore/free/grind weirdness.

BIANCHI, MAURIZIO & TH26 Arkaeo Planum CD $12.98 Small Voices (Italy)

One of Maurizio Bianchi's more recent collaborative works, Arkaeo Planum is the combined vision of Bianchi and the somewhat obscure Italian dark-electronics outfit TH26. Packaged in an eyecatching jacket that features great abstract imagery from the p3 Studio, this album captures the legendary Italian industrial soundscaper in a much more rhythmic mode than what I had been expecting; Bianchi, whose 80's recordings had him positioned right alongside the likes of Ramleh and Whitehouse as one of the early Industrial scene's most intense visionaries, here continues to construct the deep, black drone fields and almost liturgical organ pieces that he has been working with since becoming active again earlier this decade. But working with TH26, the group weaves an evocative tapestry of bleak, urban wastelands and ghostly electrical frequencies, filled with gooey, fractured slow-motion breakbeats that crawl and stutter through Maurizio's chilling synthesizer drones and his frequently beautiful organ meditations. Arkaeo Planum is also intensely detailed and textural, with some brilliant layering of piano, beats, and crackling static pulses appearing throughout the album. It's a strangely grim and entrancing piece of music that feels fully like a Bianchi work, cold and forbidding, but TH26's contribution of mutant IDM skitter and heavy breakbeats really makes the material stand out from the rest of Bianchi's collaborations.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Arkaeo Planum" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "MB Sorrow" (excerpt)

BIBLICAL PROOF OF UFOS self-titled CD Super-Fi Records (UK import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This Hollywood-via-Cleveland outfit debuts here with majestic instrumental math/stoner/rock. Drummer Mike Peffer, who played on Filter's megahit "Hey Man, Nice Shot", pins down the impeccable rhythm section alongside bassist Ray Piller, and guitarists Ron Kretsch and Scott Silverman weave in and out of complex rock forms like Rush's Alex Lifeson jamming with KEELHAUL. Many tracks feature heavy, stoned metallic riffing and whispering, fusion-jazz breaks, again recalling Keelhaul (circa their II album) with no vocals, as well as the angularity of Slint and Don Cabellero, but with an intense melodic and progressive voice all of their own. Recommended for fans of Karma To Burn, Slint, Melvins, Queens Of The Stone Age, and angular melodic post/stoner/math rock.

BIG BUSINESS Head For The Shallow CD $13.98 Hydra Head Records

Hard rocking, bass-thug thrash from this duo of Jared from KARP / THE WHIP and TIGHT BROS, and Coady from the MURDER CITY DEVILS. You can definitely hear the KARP lineage here, but KARP if they were doing HIGH ON FIRE covers with sort-of 80's metal type vocals. That idea might sound weird, but on CD it rocks harder than fuck. This album is seriously badass. Head For The Shallow kicks you in the face with a stomping mix of massive growling bass guitar and hyperkinetic drumming with those vocals, powerful and clean but slightly gruff, sort of like a higher-pitch Lemmy, but with a couple of AWESOME harmonies and effects that come from out of nowhere. And the sound is big, full, which you don’t normally hear with bass/drums duos like this. It's a wall of riff and rock and catchy hooks, really energetic and jacked up and over the top! For everyone that wept over the loss of THE WHIP and KARP, you must get this immediately! Plus, we’ve heard that Hydra Head is supposed to be releasing a CD of unreleased THE WHIP studio stuff in the near future!

BIG CITY ORCHESTRA Instructions For Use CD $9.98 Pure/RRRecords

Sample- based plunderphonic noise comedy and other strange soundworks from the legendary BCO. This San Francisco native delivers dense swirling tones, stolen cultural detritus, jarring blippage and screech, harsh ambience, and surrealist electronic musique concrete. Outstanding damaged collage noise.

BILE Camp Blood CD $13.98 No Escape (Australian import)

Here's another killer new release from Aussie grind label No Escape, who have become one of our favorite labels in the grind/vomit/death/splatter scene. No Escape has been steadily releasing a stream of creatively designed, ridiculously brutal albums and EPs that range from the crushing grind n' roll of THE DAY EVERYTHING BECAME NOTHING and the drum-machine fueled hyperdeath of FUCK...I'M DEAD, to the ripping old school razorblast of NEUROPATHIA. Their CDs have excellent visual design, which is pretty rare in death/grind circles, and everything we've gotten our hands on from No Escape to date has knocked our freaking socks off!
Camp Blood, from Dutch goregrind neanderthals BILE, is a ridiculously downtuned,totally over-the-top grind rock / splatter sludge concept album based on the Jason Voorhees / Camp Crystal Lake mythos from the legendary Friday The 13th series, taken to fucking absurd extremes. These guys pay homage to the saga with thirteen blasts of bonecrushing, simplistic rock riffs, barbaric blastbeats, n' guitars and bass tuned to dropped G. Seriously. The guitars are so heavy on Camp Blood, it's retarded...like CROWBAR, FLOOR, and MORTICIAN, it sounds like BILE's instruments are tuned so monstrously low, that the guitar strings are just going to flop off of the fretboard. The end result makes BILE's primitive punk rock riffs sound like a building falling on your head. Imagine a zomboid combination of MORTICIAN and sludge beasts FISTULA, and you'll have an approximate idea of what these guys are doing. Thirteen odes to the Voorhees legacy, with appropriately unsubtle lyrics. Massively pitch-shifted vocals that alternately sound like a warthog puking and a sports announcer having his face ripped off.

BILL SKINS FIFTH self-titled CD $11.98 Fuck Yoga

A pretty strange album from Macedonia of all places (which was previously a part of Yugoslavia, if yer geography is rusty), sent to us by Fuck Yoga Records. The bizarre name is a reference to Silence Of The Lambs, and these guys aren't the only band to use it: some quick google scanning turned up a Texan harsh noise outfit from the early '90s that had members of Black Leather Jesus and a funk-punk band from Oregon who both used the same name. The Macedonian Bill Skins Fifth is neither harsh power electronics nor Faith No More-influenced rap gunk, however. Rather, these weirdos cobble together a chaotic, fucked-up mess of neurotic metalcore, jazz, mathy indie rock, and melodic post-hardcore that's pretty damn experimental and disjointed but actually manages to keep me interested in spite of it schizo patchwork of dissonant metallic hardcore somewhere in between older Converge and Botch colliding head-on with jangly angular guitars, pop hooks, Primus-y basslines, and full on blasts of free jazz. I think there's some kind of concept at work here, with the series of illustrations in the booklet and the abstract personal lyrics seeming to tie into an ongoing story the band is telling with this album, but I'm not too sure. In any case, this is some cool, damaged metalcore weirdness, that's for sure.

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Birds Call Home Their Dead CD $19.98 Celebrate Psi Phenomena (NEW ZEALAND IMPORT)

Another new full length from New Zealand's Birchville Cat Motel, released simultaneously with that killer Bird Sister Blasphemy disc, the first ever BCM entry into mastermind Campbell Kneale's avant-noise-metal sublabel Battlecruiser. These two releases compliment each other, but where the sister disc Bird Sister Blasphemy takes Birchville Cat Motel's transcendant drone rock and runs 20,000 volts of black electricity into the tracks, turning his hypnotic, repetitious riff constructs into redlining blasts of metallic feedback violence, this album came out on Kneale's primary label Celebrate Psi Phenomena and showcases the cosmic, krauty, but no less heavy, side of Birchville Cat Motel. The disc opens with a monolithic slab of cosmic drone rock with the nearly half-hour title track, starting off with sheets of quietly shimmering and swelling keyboards, changing ever so slowly as little electronic organ sounds begin to appear and vibrate aloingside deep, growling guitar drones...after a couple of minutes, a drum beat begins to appear, way off in the distance at first but consistently becoming louder and closer, a shuffling, offtime motorik beat pulsing in the swirling cloud of drone. The keyboard melody sounds like the keys from The Who's "Baba O'Reilley" run through a bank of effects, chopped up and spinning through the cosmos while BCM's squalls of free-flying electronics and pounding ur-riffage explodes into a heavily distorted blast of celestial crunch; all the while, that unchanging drumbeat pounds away in the back incessantly throughout the track, turning this into a monstrous cosmic noise-rock drone jam, equal parts Skullflower and Circle and Hawkwind before it disintegrates into the blissed out storm of psychedelic high-end skree, chirping bird songs, lush low-end amplifier feedback, and swirls of buzzing, whooshing FX. If you liked BCM's Screamformelongbeach, this has that same kind of brutal, propulsive power. Massive.
The second track is "Kissing Dragon", and is a comparitively brief piece of shimmery reverential feedback and raga-esque drones that becomes entertwined with a beautiful, vaguely Occidental melody. A beautiful drone interlude offsetting the hugeness of the other two tracks.
And then the third track appears, "Her Anger Is Limitless", which is another nearly half hour jam and which had originally appeared as a super limited tour CD-R. This one is as huge and enveloping as the first, but the waves of sound are completely amorphous here, a constantly shifting pool of processed vocal sounds and heavy flickering beams of feedback, what sound like heavy droning guitars being played back on malfunctioning tape heads, their buzzing growl slurred and melting, and then all of a sudden the song EXPLODES four minutes in and reveals itself as a mighty metallic shoegazer dirge, like Loveless but way heavier, Skullflower meets My Bloody Valentine, woozy guitars and grinding bassline and pounding subterranean rhythm heard as a low rumble beneath the bludgeoning blissful white-hot noise. WOW. Simply amazing. You shouldn't even have to think twice about picking this album up if you're a Birchville fan. The guy never disappoints us. Limited edition as usual, and it comes in an awesome huge 8-panel gatefold digipack, with those cool wallpaper swirls that have branded the Celebrate Psi Phenomena releases for years spread out across the outside of the case, but the inside features some really pretty photographs along with minimal liner notes, the disc itself attached to the case by a foam hub in the center of one of the panels.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Birds Call Home Their Dead" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Her Anger Is Limitless" (excerpt)

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Bird Sister Blasphemy CD $13.98 Battlecruiser/Celebrate Psi Phenomena (NEW ZEALAND IMPORT)

Another new release from Battlecruiser, Campbell Kneale's awesome out-metal sublabel offshoot of his Celebrate Psi Phenomena. It's been awhile since we last got any new Battlecruiser jams in, which in the past have included releases from Black Boned Angel and Mirag, but the rusted gears of the Battlecruiser have once again lurched forward to grind out this new nearly half-hour disc from Birchville Cat Motel. Birchville? What is Kneale's normally transcendant dronerock project doing here on Battlecruiser? Well, check out the other new Birchville CD that just came out and which is also listed in this weeks update, and you'll see that Birchville Cat Motel has been working the metallic mojo overtime to produce these two latest works. Bird Sister Blasphemy is the nightshade companion piece to the full length Birds Call Home Their Dead, with four tracks of relentlessly hypnotic blackness that shred you vertically from the beginning of the disc opener "Powder Slave". The first couple of seconds of "Powder Slave" taunt you with some grim drifting drone right before the band surges into a redlining locked groove of frenetic bass guitar and propulsive rock drumming, plowing through thick clouds of Skullflowery feedback and screeching guitar solos, whooshing phaser FX and chaotic keyboards, a ripping space-metal hypno jam that threatens to go on for eternity. It doesn't though, instead it suddenly segues into the incredibly harsh and violent wall of black metal buzzsaw drone of "Tonal Fire Antichrist", buried beneath an ocean of white noise and fluttering electronics. Sounds like Skullflower's Tribulation meets one of those black metal Jazkammer jams, ultra hot and blown out and bordering on pure blazing skree. Track three, "Piss Perfume Overkill", is a creepy, pulsating black-space-drone buzzscape, drowning in layers of fried out powerchords and searing synthetic horns, thick blots of skuzzy feedback, wavering haunted house keyboards and rumbling amplifier cones, grim and threatening and hypnotic, and underscored by a ruthless propulsive drum loop. Finally, the title track shows up and closes the disc out with a super-blown-out wash of black hole guitar and weird rolling tribal drums, everything swirling in a whirlpool around and round, totally shredding and violent until it dissipates into a cloud of drifting feedback fragments, wind chimes, and ghostly monk chanting. Another great release both from Birchville and Battlecruiser, with a similiar vibe as the recent Skullflower and Mirag stuff, charred storms of corruscating guitar drone concealing hidden bits of melody. Awesome. Comes in the trademark Battlecruiser black sleeve printed in silver ink.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Powder Slave" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Tonal Fire Antichrist" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Bird Sister Blasphemy" (excerpt)

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Our Love Will Destroy The World CD
PseudoArcana (New Zealand import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Opening with the hideous heavy skree and stumbling, black metallish blastbeats of "Heavens Flaming Horse", Our Love Will Destroy The World is yet another killer, heavier blast from New Zealand's Campbell Kneale, materializing here under the Birchville Cat Motel moniker. This full length CD features the 2 epic tracks from BCM's Screamformelongbeach 3" CD that had been released by back in 2003, accompanied by 3 new tracks of siesmic drone rock/metal moves that aren't nearly as brutally heavy as his recent Black Boned ANgel work, but will regardless be highly satisfying for metallic drone junkies as tracks like "Lay Thy Hatred Down" and "Our Love Will Destroy The World" releases powerful lava streams of melodic feedback, very reminiscent at times of the early 90's drone rock of Jesus & Mary Chain and My Bloody Valentine, but filtered through the freeformosity of the Dead C and strapped to the back of some supremely heavy, monolithic n' propulsive dirges. The whole disc bathes you in a tidal wave of ecstatic guitar sound and heavy pulse metal. Awesome. Packaged in a full color gatefold wallet sleeve.

BISHONEN IDOLPOP GENOCAUST s/t 3" CD-R
Sleepaway
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Ridiculous, ear scrambling computer-generated noisecore meets ultra-cheesy Nintendo/J-pop style melodies...this will either drive you completely out of your mind, or you'll groove on this duo's hyperactive synthesizer pop attack that sounds like Dance Dance Revolution overdosing on meth and careening out of control. The poppy parts are actually pretty damn infectious despite the ultra lo-fi recording, alot of this sounds like the saccharine J-pop stuff you'd hear in an anime soundtrack, but it never lasts for too long as each song blasts off into mindless digital blastbeats and noise. This shit is out of it's mind, and sounds like overcaffienated Commodore 64 mutants Lotus teaming up with computer grinders Dataclast to score a Robotech episode. Eight songs in eight minutes, on a 3" CD-R packaged in crude megaman art and handwritten liners.

BISON Earthbound CD $11.98 Forest (Canada)

If your band is ever struggling for a name, and the music that you play is even remotely heavy, I recommend looking to large land mammals for inspiration. There's no shortage of large game out there to tap into, and band names like Black Elk and Mastodon have got to be some of the coolest monikers in recent history. The American Bison is the largest land mammal in North America, it's a pretty formidible looking animal, and the name just kinda rolls off yer tongue - so it kinda surprised me that noone had claimed the name before now. It certainly fits this buncha Canuck crushers though. Bison is a new band out of Vancouver, Canada that was formed by James "Gnarwell" Fallwell, who had previously been a member of S.T.R.E.E.T.S. (which stood for Skateboarding Totally Rules Everything Else Totally Sucks), a Vancouver thrash punk band that channeled Suicidal Tendencies style skatethrash and Thin Lizzy inspired guitar heroics, professed their love of 70's krautrock and Hawkwind, and put their records in beautifully crude psychedelic album covers. S.T.R.E.E.T.S. broke up not too long ago after generating a small buzz in the underground, but Fallwell couldn't keep quiet for long. Bison came together and this half-hour debut shows a band that is already quickly reaching mastery of the riff, dropping huge, galloping Sabbath-on-crack riffage on a pounding rhythm section and sounding like a punkier High On Fire with sweet twin guitar harmonies a la Thin Lizzy. Mystical beer-soaked lyrics evoke white wizards, aliens, revolution in the streets and the "Stokasaurus", and songs like "The Curse" sound like what Queens Of The Stone Age might sound like if Matt Pike was at the helm. Total thunder. The disc comes in a bright yellow digipack with rad lysergic artwork.

BJERGA/IVERSEN Cosmic Surgery CD-R $6.98 Housepig

The prolific Norwegian ampdrone-improv duo of Sindre Bjerga and Jan Iversen have been cranking out super limited CD-Rs hand over fist lately; amazingly enough considering their output, everything I've listened to so far from them has been pretty great. Working from the raw materials of rumbling, amplified guitar noise and manipulated electronics, their releases have mostly consisted of live, in-the-moment recordings that capture them summoning up huge room-filling clouds of heavy free-drone that frequently form into Earth 2-esque slabs of crushing subsonic amp drone. Cosmic Surgery is part of the latest batch of CD-Rs from Housepig, and comes in a creepy, skull-covered envelope printed by Seattle lino-block artist Nic Schmidt that also includes a silkscreened foldout insert. For close to half an hour, the disc unfolds three tracks that reveal stygian, paranoid crypt-drones, sheets of sizzling electronic tracers, and those deep, rumbling waves of distorted guitar feedback that we love so much. Bjerga /Iversen create a psychedelic, abstract soundworld that shares properties with everything from charred electronic ambience, chorales of damned eyeless monastics and the clang of a deformed grandfather clock ("Transmitting Into The Void") to glitchy circuit crackles sparking over dense slabs of organic freeform dronedoom ("A Condensed History Of Failure") to damaged tendrils of grinding loops of pneumatic Industrial death skuzz heard through the veil of a heavily medicated state of consciousness ("Beauty Spot"). Limited edition of 100 copies.

BLACK BONED ANGEL Bliss And Void Inseperable CD $13.98 20 Buck Spin

Way beyond heavy, Campbell Kneale of Birchville Cat Motel resurfaces with his Black Boned Angel project, returning with this single track disc, a megalithic river of ambient death stretching across the abyss at over an hour in length. "Bliss And Void, Inseperable" opens with distant reverberations that at first sound like they could the thunderclaps of an encroaching storm crawling sluggishly across a dead grey sky, but then transmogrifies into the plodding crash of a mountain-sized gong being rung by the hand of god as streams of austere feedback pour from out of the blackened earth. For an incredibly grim eighteen minutes, the feedback drones hum and shimmer, until finally a massive doom riff surfaces, crawling along glacially, a meeting of Skullflower and Corrupted and one hundred satanic monks chanting in unison. Towards the end, BBA's ultradoom dirge dissipates into an eerie feedback-and-piano figure that closes out the track in a mist of transcendental amplifier choir. Utterly monolithic and amazing, by far the heaviest slab of ambient doom from BBA. The packaging is a killer black-on-black gatefold sleeve, beautiful! Extremely recommended!

BLACK BONED ANGEL Eternal Hunger CD
Battlecruiser (New Zealand import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A brand new, 20 minute disc from Campbell Kneale's mega drone sludge beast, Black Boned Angel! Staring off with about a minute of churning, molten bass distortion and high register, piercing feedback tones, Kneale then swoops in with a monolithic reptilian riff that lumbers across a starlit waste like some ancient Cthulian form. The guitar tone on Eternal Hunger is a terrifying carnivorous, speaker shredding buzz, so thick and deep and downtuned that it rattles your ribcage, backed with spacious, sparse earthshaking drum thunder, a bestial subharmonic mantra that is the closest that Black Boned Angel has yet come to dredging up the gnarly void between Corrupted's Paso Inferior, Keiji Haino, and Sunn O)))'s OO Void. Then, abiut 10 minutes in, a repetive piano melody surfaces, reminiscent of some minimal John Carpenter horror movie theme, repeating over and over for a couple of moments, before the guitars and drums crash back in, but this time with a gloriously melodic, beautiful riff, over a bed of heavenly droning pipe organs, streaming down like faint arcs of sunlight at the bottom of a deep impenetrable cave, like an even more epic Jesu, but cloaked in darkness and despair. Then, just after a few minutes, the riff shuts down, and an extended series of tolling bells, conjured straight off of the beginning of Black Sabbath, enveloping you in pure dread. This is the second actual CD release (following the equally bone crushing Black Temple Carved In Smoke CD from Mirag) on Campbell Kneale's re-tooled Battlecruiser imprint, packahed in a killer black wallet sleeve imprinted in silver ink. Highly recommended.

BLACK BONED ANGEL SuperEclipse CD digipack
20 Buck Spin
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The debut release from new avant-heavy imprint 20 Buck Spin (Pentagram , anyone?) unloads a 3 part earthquake in the form of BLACK BONED ANGEL, the sub-harmonic drone alter ego of New Zealand drone favorite Campbell Kneale, a.k.a. BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL and head of Celebrate Psi Phenomenon. Now, comparisons to SUNN O))) would be inevitable, if only due to the limited number of artists working in this spectrum, but Supereclipse could really only be compared to that band's Flight Of The Behemoth, all sawtooth drone and bestial speaker hum. BLACK BONED ANGEL actually leans more towards the Tony Conrad / John Cale / Theatre Of Eternal Music end of the "drone" sphere, and the transcendental feedback wash of Skullflower. That's not to say that SUNN O))) fans and doom/drone heads won't lose their minds over this-they most definitely will; there is just a lot more to Supereclipse than free-feedback and detuned metal guitar. It's more like SKULLFLOWER moving at a glacially slow pace, nightmarish and black as midnight, but with a monstrous undercurrent of melody.
Black Boned Angel traffics in pulverizing low-end dirge-drone, absolutely pitch black stuff, but remains anchored to Campbell Kneale's shimmering skree-drone, free-noise aesthetic, with thunderous, high-end chord progressions seeping over the horizon like an apocalypse, as the earth shakes from monumental tremors. There is CORRUPTED -esque ultraslow drumming and ghostly shades of rhythm and vocal incantations glimpsed from behind the suffocating thrum, which add an incredibly epic feel to these 3 pieces. By now, you should know if this is up yopur alley or not; extreme doom freaks and drone heads are going to LOSE THEIR MINDS over this. Supereclipse comes in a nice black digipack with white print and clear tray, with the mandate "Transcendence Can Only Be reached At Maximum Volume" clearly stated on the interior.

BLACK COBRA Bestial CD $13.98 At A Loss

Black Cobra's ass crushing debut drops ten tons of mighty sludge on your skull using just a drums and guitar setup. Not many duos could pull off something this heavy with that kind of palette, but Black Cobra features ex-dudes from low-frequency violators Cavity and 16 (Jason and Rafael, respectively), so we're talking masters of controlled crunch here, and thanks to some seriously downtuned guitar and monolithic drumming, there is no lack of serious low end and bone crushing HEAVY. Apparently this originally took shape as a tape-swapping exercise via mail, with infrequent jam sessions during family visits in Miami over the course of four years, resulting in this eleven song album of ultra-distorto sludgecore that lumbers along a mutant hybrid of old Floor and Karp thrashing out on some sticky, droning, Matt Pike/Sleep/HOF -style riffage. SWEET. Massive hooks, crazed dinosaur-stomp drumming, squealing feedback, hypnotic song structures, all communicated via a nuclear strength doomcore rawk assault. Recommended!!

BLACK COBRA Bestial LP (BLUE VINYL) $12.98 At A Loss

Black Cobra's ass crushing debut drops ten tons of mighty sludge on your skull using just a drums and guitar setup. Not many duos could pull off something this heavy with that kind of palette, but Black Cobra features ex-dudes from low-frequency violators Cavity and 16 (Jason and Rafael, respectively), so we're talking masters of controlled crunch here, and thanks to some seriously downtuned guitar and monolithic drumming, there is no lack of serious low end and bone crushing HEAVY. Apparently this originally took shape as a tape-swapping exercise via mail, with infrequent jam sessions during family visits in Miami over the course of four years, resulting in this eleven song album of ultra-distorto sludgecore that lumbers along a mutant hybrid of old Floor and Karp thrashing out on some sticky, droning, Matt Pike/Sleep/HOF -style riffage. SWEET. Massive hooks, crazed dinosaur-stomp drumming, squealing feedback, hypnotic song structures, all communicated via a nuclear strength doomcore rawk assault. Recommended!!

BLACK EYE RIOT / CHARGER split 7" EP $7.98 Calculon Records (UK IMPORT)

One brutal platter of sludgecore brutality, served on transparent red vinyl courtesy of the UK imprint Calculon! Black Eye Riot were a band that we'd heard about previously through Terrorizer and a couple of other prominent metal magazines, but hadn't actually gotten the chance to hear 'em up until now. Man, are these guys ferocious! Featuring members of Acrimony, Iron Monkey, Helvis, and Dukes Of Nothing, BER are like a sludgemetal soundtrack to a stabbing, ripping through two ultra negative tracks ("Bitch Slap" and "Battered By Elephants"), a super harsh and aggro hybrid of crusty hardcore punk and dissonant wah-freakout sludge, like a mashup of Eyehategod, garage rock guitars, and Discharge with fucking murderous dual vocalists trading off between gruff hardcore shouts and feral screams. Fucking awesome! Charger appears on the B-side with "The Amputee", opening with a syrupy blob of sampled music and noise before raging through the song proper, another monstrous jam meshing violent hardcore with saurian sludge riffs, a totally damaged number that reminds us of an even more fucked up Fistula before the band devolves into a skull stomping dirge that gradually melts down into diseased feedback. Pressed on transparent red vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies.

BLACK ELK s/t CD $11.98 Crucial Blast

I stumbled across these guys online totally by accident, and immediately fell under their weird spell after hearing these songs on their website. Black Elk's heavy, manic sludgy rock assault smashed into my skull like some sort of conglom of carnivorous DIY hardcore, noise rock, and metal. This eponymous album is equal parts primo Pacific Northwest sludginess a la Karp, Melvins, and early Soundgarden (back when they were one of the heaviest sludge bands to emerge from the post-punk 80's), weird angular noise rock like something that Am Rep might have puked up back in '91, but meaner and heavier, and the distinctive snarl of Die Kruezen, all distilled into a goatheaded psychedelic backwoods dance party that has risen to a freakin' fever pitch and which threatens to leave you in a bag by the river when it's all said and done. Total fucking crush. Produced by Mike Lastra at Smegma Studios (EARTH, THRONES, JACKIE O MOTHERFUCKER).

BLACK HOLE GENERATOR Black Karma CD $11.98 Ars Magna

A killer debut from the Norwegian duo Black Hole Generator, comprised of vocalist/bassist/programmer Bjørnar Nilsen of Vulture Industries and and guitarusr Dreggen, also of Deathcon, Aeturnus, and Cult Of Catharsis. Black Karma is a nightmarish flight of supersonic heaviness, an industrialized, futuristic black metal vision transmitted from some Rene Laloux-style post-apocalyptic otherworld, with six tracks of frozen, ferocious technical riffing, bizarre atmospheric breaks filled with tinkling piano notes, beautiful classical guitar, strains of cello strings, subtle keyboard flourishes, crawling sludge marches, bound together by insane elaborate song arrangements and punctuated with unexpected stops and tempo shifts. The death-infected terrain of a far off world that's illustrated through the booklet's awesome pen-and-ink drawings comes to life in tracks like "The Age Of Anxiety", where programmed electronic drums release ferocious machinegun blastbeats strafing the grim atmosphere, and majestically monstrous black riffs descend from smog-choked skies. Nilsen's vocal delivery adds much to the insane, technoid vibe of Black Karma, emitting searing apocalyptic hallucinations through a litany of sickening choked screams and weird clean chanting vocals. Awesome stuff, almost like Ministry gone black metal, and which takes the electronically-enhanced post-BM blast violence of bands like Thorns, Dødheimsgard, Aborym, and Anaal Nathrakh, and bends it into a warped new form of blackened frenzy. Recommended!

BLACK MANTA Fuck Them All But Six CD $11.98 Psychedoomelic Records (Hungarian import)

Black Manta, Maryland's own H.P. Lovecraft-obsessed, old school doom metal meets biker-rock on PCP riff-thugs! The Manta rise with this brief (at just over 20 minutes long) but pulverizing CD on Hungarian doom imprint Psychedoomelic and unleash seven burly,blown-out doomrock anthems, complete with legendary drummer Joe Hasselvander (PENTAGRAM), drugged out Jim Morrison and the gnarliest bass tone on earth. While there is some crushing slow parts here and there throughout the CD, Fuck Them All But Six puts the emphasis on the "bomb rock" (their term), maintaining a brutal mid-tempo bulldozer pace, which fans of fellow Maryland doomsters Earthride, Life Beyond, Wretched, and War Injun will love. Earth shaking, monstrous rock!

BLACK MAYONNAISE Ttssattsr CD $14.98 Emperor Jones

Black Mayonnaise is one of the first really weird, underground "bands" that we really got into back in the early 9