TITLES: D

DAD THEY BROKE ME s/t CD $11.98 Broke Me Records

Man, we thought the new STUMM CD we just reviewed a few weeks ago was a new low in crawling trance-hate...then we land this full length of disgustingly nihilistic doom-grind from Australia. oof. This thing is a fucking bruiser. From the miserable band name to their grisly tarpit noise rock delivery, this is crushing negative energy from start to finish. DAD THEY BROKE ME are heavy as fuck sludge/noise, sort of running paralell to EYEHATEGOD's feedback-spewing doomcore, but actually more like THE JESUS LIZARD, if THE JESUS LIZARD was a thousand times heavier and slower, throwing in stoned sort-of-blastbeats. The CD starts off with a low, submerged sine/drone and glitchy oscillations, similiar to something from the LOTUS EATERS, and then the band erupts into a noxious, cancerous sludge jam, like UNSANE or ZENI GEVA playing through blown amps on 10 and with a singer who sounds like he's gargling thumbtacks, one of the most anguished and painful death-croaks we've ever heard. Hateful, heavy, NOISY and super-discordant. It gets more angular and antisocial as the songs progress, reminding us more and more of The JESUS LIZARD filtered through a weird "extreme doom" lens. Total speaker melting pummel. Shit gets even darker and doomier as we get into songs like "Through The Cracks" and "Nothing To No One", pure negative energy, like KHANATE gone math rock, or UNEARTHLY TRANCE attacking the Am Rep back catalog, as skuzzy feedback and random anti-guitar noise is slopped everywhere. Fucking crushing.

DALEK From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots LP $11.98 Ipecac

The amazing 2002 full length from avant/hip hop/noise/dub artist Dalek, their first for Ipecac Records, on vinyl. From Filthy Tongue Of Gods And Griots showcases Dalek's incisive, raised-consciousness invocations backed by producer Oktopus' grinding, industrialized grooves and wall of sound assaults that are expertly constructed from shimmery, shoegazey guitar feedback, monstrous dub beats, table and sitar, ominous silence, and slabs of sculpted noise. Dalek's underground hip hop and apocalyptic rhythm constructs could be positioned somewhere near the Def Jux sound (Cannibal Ox / Company Flow) and Techno Animal's brute sonic force, but the way these guys take My Bloody Valentine style guitar noise, drones, and heavy industrial into new rhythmic areas is pretty freakin' unique. Excellent stuff, a must-have if you were into 2005's stunning Abscence album.

DANGLERS / DIEDINHISSUIT split 7" EP $4.98 Primary Thoughts

More frantic post-powerviolence/post-rock expermentalism from Primary Thoughts Records. THE DANGLERS are an instrumental group using contrabass, drums and violin to create a mutated form of instrumental hard free jazz/post-rock. DIEDINHISSUIT on the other hand emit frantic blasts of minimalist grind using only drums and guitar. This Midwestern duo send it chaotic and disjointed. Heartland spazzism.

DARK AGES Twilight Of Europe CD $14.98 Supernal

Twilight Of Europe is an excellent series of grim medieval dronescapes from Roman Saenko (Drudkh,Hate Forest), similiar to Maeror Tri performing at a Rennsaissance Faire, a torch-lit ambience that conjures visions of crumbling village walls and plague-scorched countrysides, thick droning loops filled with church organs, chants, deep subterranean rumbles. Desolate, dreamy, and very very dark. Substantial abyssic atmospherics in the classic Cold Meat Industry vein. From the breath of the Black Plague to the art of the Middle Ages, through to alchemy and the rise and fall of empires, each track sucks you into a bleak corner of European history. Great melancholic Dark Ambient outings mixed with apocalyptic Black Ambient and semi-Neoclassical / Medieval workings. Limited import CD with sepia-toned facsimile of esoteric ancient grimoire pages.

DARSOMBRA Ecdysis CD $13.98 At A Loss

Darsombra is another incarnation of Baltimore's Brian Daniloski, a member of the long-running theatrical noise metal outfit Meatjack, as well as a recent addition to Dadaist math metallers Trephine. Much like Joe Preston's Thrones, Darsombra is just Brian, armed with drum machine, guitar, synths and electronics, and vocals, crafting massive trudge metal anthems and sinister droning currents. The album starts off with a Troum-gone-space-rock vibe, just looped electronics and distant guitar figures cycling in the darkness, but then moves into heavy drum-machine patterns interlocked with crushing guitar riffage and a strangely pseudo-Middle Eastern feel, like an exotic Thrones/Swans fusion with clean anthemic vocals.Ecdysis keeps up this dynamic throughout it's six tracks, shifting between heavy robo indie-metal sludge, spacey guitar-crush space drones, deranged vocal loops, and lots of eerie amp ambience and meandering effects heavy guitar exploration. Very cool stuff, fans of axe-heavy droneologists Sunn O))), Earth, Troum, etc., and Thrones / Black Mayonnaise robotic sludge should check out.

DARSOMBRA Deliriums And Death 3"CD-R $4.98 Public Guilt

Deliriums And Death is another entry in the new 3" CD-R series that Public Guilt has started; we've also listed the awesome new Korperschwache disc in the series in this week's update. This one features two new tracks of super-heavy metallic drone from Brian Daniloski, the former Meatjack member and current Baltimore soundguy at spots like the Ottobar, who has been recording some great ultra-crush guitar meltdowns as Darsombra for a few years now using just guitar, effects pedals, and electronics. The Darsombra album Ecdysis on At A Loss was a killer collection of processed amplifier sludge and dark, droning ambience, sorta in the vein of Thrones and Sunn O))) and the older, more blown-out Growing recordings, but with an alien weirdness that was wholly his own. This EP continues in that vein, opening with the massive inexorable sludge drone and looped powerchord rumble of 'Periphery' which opens into a blazing fiery horizon of cosmic synth sounds, like an ambient metal Kosmiche soundscape. It actually reminds me ALOT of the more ambient parts off of Meatjacks Days Of Fire. The track builds in heaviness and volume before fading out in a smoky haze of electronic drone; this segues straight into 'Eyes In Eyes', a chilling collage formed out of endlessly overdubbed layers of warped manipulated vocal loops and droning feedback pulses, heavy detuned amp rumble and keening unidentifiable cries. A total psychedelic nightmare soundscape. Pretty great! Comes in a three-panel miniature gatefold sleeve screenprinted with cool blotchy artwork designed by Germ? at PowerThroughMetal,and limited to 110 copies.

DARVULIA L'Alliance des Venins CD $13.98 Battlesk'rs

If you've been paying attention to the international black metal scene over the past few years, you've no doubt noticed that France has been cultivating an especially fucked-up, furious identity with bands like Deathspell Omega, Blut Aus Nord, Eikenskaden, Mystic Forest, and Diapsiquir all putting their own, unique stamp on ferocious, discordant black metal. Darvulia is another on the list, a two-piece from Toulouse, France that features ex-members of Fornication and Nuit Noire, and whose second full length L'Alliance des Venins summons a strange, hellish swarm of stumbling, droning black metal that nods to both the weirdness of early Ved Buens Ende and Fleurety, and the raw, pitch-black buzzsaw hatred of Vlad Tepes and Mutiilation. A thick swirling black metal blur of bleak, quirky minor-key riffs and depressing droning arpeggios, throaty, growling vocals, chaotic drumming, strange passages where the band sudddenly stops and shifts into a waltzing post-rockish dirge with messy drumming and discordant, mathy guitars; weird sloppy punk rock mid-tempo parts, and a general hypnotic murkiness that has a similiar diseased, psychedelic vibe as USBM outfits Xasthur and Leviathan. Excellent mystic black metal, with cool almost all-black artwork and interesting imagery. Limited quantities.

DATACLAST / EARWIGS split CD $5.98 Crucial Blast

Synapse-shredding splatter electronics!! Hyperspeed eGrind glitch violence vs. crushing cosmic electronic chaos! New Jersey duo DATACLAST forge an explosive amalgamation of hyperkinetic breaks and blastbeats organically fused to spastic glitch electronica and bestial vocals with their 29 tracks, bringing post-human grind screaming into the 21st Century. DISCORDANCE AXIS hand picked these guys to open their final show, if that tells you anything. For a point of reference, imagine the surgical grindcore of prime CARCASS brutally molested by KID 606, MERZBOW, and AUTECHRE.
And shadowy Northwest decibel merchants EARWIGS follow up a decade long career of twisted electronic noise abstraction with 6 tracks of new material that tanges from evocative shards of crystalline debris to Mecha-inspired blastquakes of apocalyptic throb.

DAUGHTERS Canada Songs CD $10.98 Robotic Empire

Complex, but not "technical", this 10 song debut CD from Providence’s DAUGHTERS is a brilliant new step in the evolution of metal and hardcore, screeching out an insanely heavy blast of prog/punk/grind/metalcore, with razor-sharp drumming, huge breakdowns, nutzoid squiggly speedfreak riffs, shrieking vocals, and an awesome, unexpected melodic edge. After hearing the hype on these guys for a while now, I gotta admit this is really good. Challenging stuff, atonal and crushing and decidedly unfriendly, but catchy and totally engaging. Fans of modern left-field , fucked up grind, HC and metalcore like The Locust, An Albatross, Genghis Tron, Converge, and Lightning Bolt will love this. Comes packaged in a nice CD box cover, with an additional CD sampler featuring a host of Robotic Empire, Metal Blade, and Black Market Activities artists ( Cannibal Corpse, Opeth, Premontions Of War ,The Black Dahlia Murder, etc).

DAUGHTERS Hell Songs CD $13.98 Hydra Head

The gothic metalcore/grind of Daughter's second release is a welcome new direction from the band, infusing their spastic upper-register mathblast with a heavy dose of sweaty Birthday Party n' Jesus Lizard style post punk lost in the throes of demonic metallic possession. I actually like Hell Songs alot more than Canada Songs, as we have actual songs here rather than minute long blasts of controlled chaos, and the whole lurid vibe of this disc makes it a pretty engaging listen. Daughters actually have more in common with fellow Hydra Headers Oxbow and the art-damaged hardcore of Racebannon now, while retaining the upper-fretboard gymnastics, inventive riffing, high pitched guitar squeals, and hyperspeed blastbeats that had everybody flipping out over their EP and first CD. Definitely recommended, one of the coolest non-grind grindcore albums of 2006!

DAWNBRINGER Sacrament CD $9.98 Twilight Records

When we opened up the huge cardboard box of CDs that just came in from Battle Kommand this week, we were gorging ourselves on all manner of black metal goodness, alot of which we hadn't really heard much of previously. All kinds of killer shit hit our ears, Ruins Of Beverast, Cult Of Daath, and others all shredding us into oblivion. One band that really surprised us, however, was the obscure outfit Dawnbringer, a seemingly studio-only project that has released only a small handful of discs since forming in 1995. The main figure behind Dawnbringer is one Chris Black, also a member of Moto-rippers Superchrist and power metallers Pharoah as well as contributing bass guitar, concepts, and engineering skills for past Nachtmystium recordings; from what we've been able to sort out, Chris is the main creative force behind the band, and is assisted by friends and collaborators in the studio to flesh out his songs. Something of an amalgam of metal styles, Dawnbringer's releases all expertly combine heavy doses of riffing and speedy gallop rhythms right out of the pantheon of 80's metal with strange song structures, raw black metal, odd prog-like flourishes, and most of all an ability to kick out some immensely catchy hooks for just about everything I've ever heard from this project. Old school sounding heavy metal isn't something we usually hear being experimented with, but every Dawnbringer release takes classic sounding, anthemic-as-hell metal and warps it into something exciting and a bit weird. It wasn't always Chris Black's solo project, though...before he took over the name, Dawnbringer was originally conceived as a one-man band for John Weston. Yeah, it's a little confusing for us too. Anyways, Weston started off with the band's first release, the 4-song Sacrament EP that was issued by the now long-gone Pennsylvania label Twilight Records. These four jams pack in a wealth of stellar metal goodness, really raw and gritty, but packed with loads of killer riffs that stick in yer head for days. The confusional vibe starts immediately with the disc's opener, "Rider At The Gate Of Dawn, Part 2", a haunting acoustic lament over spacey psychedelic electronic noises, but then rips into the title track, an unstoppably freaking catchy black/thrash anthem with awesome distorted vocals that sound like they're being shouted out of a megaphone. The rest of the disc continues to blend together early Ulver style black metal with super catchy hooks, blazing blasting drumming, weird sudden detours into sunlit acoustic folk interludes and almost dancey rhythms, and droning strings. It culminates with our fave track on the disc, "In A Handful Of Dust", which begins with another anthemic black metal/heavy metal assault and ragin' Maiden-esque guitar melodies, but then breaks down halfway into an awesome melodic passage that sounds eerily like Fred Myrow's theme from Phantasm. After that, it builds back into the speedy black metal tremolo attack and blazing hard-rock solos, finally dissolving into an acoustic reprise. Man, I cannot get enough of that song. Strange, highly infectious blackened heavy metal, a basement hybrid of Ulver and Blue Oyster Cult and 80's horror movie pop-metal soundtracks and grim, twilight atmospheres basking in the cold glow of flickering streetlights.
The CD is packaged in a slimline case.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Rider At The Gate Of Dawn Part 2" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "In A Handful Of Dust" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Sacrament" (excerpt)

DAWNBRINGER Unbleed CD $12.98 Twilight Records

We've totally become enamoured with the albums and EP's of the somewhat enigmatic heavy metal project Dawnbringer, first hearing them through the new In Sickness And In Dreams album on Battle Kommand and then one by one discovering their older releases, which date back to the mid-90's. We're still kind of unsure what the story is with this band, as some of Dawnbringer's releases are essentially solo projects, but with completely different people involved with each release - the first EP, Sacrament, was basically the brainchild of just one guy, John Weston. After that, Weston would enlist an entire band for Unbleed, which included drummer and vocalist Chris Black, and later on Chris Black would take over the Dawnbringer name completely for the new In Sickness And In Dreams album. It's a little confusing. 1997's Unbleed was the first full length from Dawnbringer, an awesome mixture of prog, black metal, classic heavy metal that totally blew us away! So much of this is super melodic old school heavy metal with a total 80's feel, filled with with ridiculously anthemic Iron Maiden style twin guitar harmonies and awesome riffs that will lodge in your head for days - Dawnbringer have an awesome pop sensibility that, like the masters Iron Maiden, allows them to write unstoppably catchy tunes that most bands would kill to have. Both Weston and Black contribute vocals to the album, and Black's clean vocals are fucking AWESOME, a powerfully deep voice that reminds us of a young James Hetfield when he kicks in on "Untold", which is actually an awesome medley of songs of of the Battle Cry LP from 80's metal legends Omen! Total majestic metal perfection, but Dawnbringer aren't the retro-metal retreaders you might expect, no way - the songs are imaginatively structured, and shredding black metal blastbeats blaze through many of the songs; elsewhere, Dawnbringer use acoustic guitars for some of their solos, unleash awesome prog-rock keyboards, and employ weird production fuckery to create their strange fusion of Scandinavian blackness, 80's NWOBHM, and epic prog that defies catagorization and just completely kicks our ass! Highly recommended!! Awesome progrock style album art from Chris Cooper, too!

MP3 SAMPLE: "To Circadia" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "A Thousand Monarchs" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Untold" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Waterbreath" (excerpt)

DAWNBRINGER In Sickness And In Dreams CD $12.98 Battle Kommand

You may remember from a couple of lists ago that I was going off about how awesome I thought the early discs were from an enigmatic US metal project called Dawnbringer, a studio-only band that started off as one guy's one-man black metal band, morphed into a full band and released a couple of albums, and then turned back into a one-man band again, but this time operated by a totally different guy! Originally the brainchild of John Weston, Dawnbringer has since been handed over to one Chris Black, an occasional contributor to Metal Maniacs magazine and a former member of Nachtmystium, power metallers Pharoaoh, and scuzz-metal band Superchrist. Both the Sacrament and Unbleed CDs that we're now stocking at Crucial Blast delivered an epic, highly melodic and increasingly quirky fusion of black metal, classic 80's style heavy metal, and prog rock - very cool stuff, really catchy but undeniably METAL to the core. Well, Dawnbringer's back, with the project's first new album in seven years. Yep, the last Dawnbringer release was 2000's Catharisis Instinct (which has been out of print and which I still haven't heard), and somewhere along the line has turned into a godly blackened prog-metal machine capable of producing some of the catchiest trad metal tuneage I've heard in ages. This album RULES, for real - featuring a dark, moody album cover depicting a photograph of who I presume is Black along with a booklet full of weird artwork consisting of monstrous figures, images of clocks and doors, and geometric shapes, In Sickness And In Dreams reveals itself as a cryptic metal communique straight from the cortex of Black's epic visions; the disc is almost episodic in how the album's fourteen songs are connected together, almost all of them fall under two minutes in length, and songs flow back and forth into each other which ultimately gives In Sickness And In Dreams the feel of a single epic piece. And these tunes are KILLER, even better than Dawnbringer's terrific Unbleed (which I still think is one of the best neo-"trad" metal albums I own!), fusing incredible hooks and twin axe harmonies on par with the best that the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal had to offer with some scorching Scandinavian blackthrash influence, and vicious black metal trances that remind me of Thralldom. This stuff is SO catchy and weird, striking a perfect balance between the awesome melodic shredding (courtesy of Matt Johnsen, who is the only other person besides Black to contribute to the album) and the Maiden-meets-Dissection blackened thrash fury, and the weird vocal choral parts and King Diamond-esque wailing, sections where a song suddenly just stops and turns into a spacey, synth-backed acoustic jam, parts where a song just abruptly stops, period, and other odd twists and turns. I can't get enough of this disc - it makes me think of Blue Oyster Cult and blackened power metal, Mayhem and Judas Priest, all at the same time. An amazing, super catchy, terminally ferocious genre defying metal attack!

MP3 SAMPLE: "You Get Nothing" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "11:58" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Midnight" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "No Answer" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "There And Back" (excerpt)

DAWNFALL Drei Raume CD $14.98 Supernal

More "black metal" weirdness from the excellent Supernal label, whose latest CDs from Benighted Leams, Meads of Asphodel, Contra Ignem Fatuum, and Dark Ages all grace this week's C-Blast update. Dawnfall is more of the utterly bizarre, stumbling, mind melting "metal" that Supernal specializes in, and this album might just be the weirdest disc that we've gotten from them so far. The album starts off with three 11+ minute epics of twisted, confusing midtempo black metal with beyond-anguished vocals amidst the knotted arrangements of sideways drumming, fuzzed-to-oblivion guitar freakout, Nintendo-ish keyboard squiggle that's all over the freaking place, all colliding into each other, a confusing, hallucinogenic mess. Awesome! Drei Raume continues with weird synthesized harpsichords over blackened electronica, psychedelic vocal/beat abstractions, and warped, warbly synthesizer ambience melted over long drones. The disc ends with a sudden blast of freakish carnival Casio music. Very cool! The whole album kinda reminds us of a black metal Infidel?/Castro!. Sort of.

DAYBREAK / GODSTOMPER Nautical Hyperblast/Scarred For Life LP $11.98 At A Loss

This split LP featuring Baltimore's Daybreak and Cali blasters Godstomper was released in 2000, and listening to this now timewarps me back to the glorious days of 90's powerviolence. Each of these band's stood out from the pack with a quirky, individualistic take on hyperfast hardcore, and this split rocks some of the best stuff either outfit ever recorded. In the case of Daybreak, it's actually one of the only things the band ever recorded; formed in 1997, Daybreak only lasted for a couple years, breaking up sometime around 2000. For the brief period that they were around however, Daybreak were one of the craziest, most manic hardcore bands in the DC/Baltimore area scene, blending together grindcore, thrash, black metal, and West Coast powerviolence with enerjetic yelped vocals and ferocious, sometimes silly lyrics, and also incorporating a hefty dose of melodic hardcore (and even veering into pop-punk territory at times) which made for a really tuneful, weird brand of blastcore. Their side of this split Lp is almost a concept mini-album: it's titled Nautical Hyperblast, all of the songs combine classic hardcore themes with seafarer/pirate imagery, and contains 17 songs with titles like 'Walk The Plank, You Art Rock Bastard', 'White Sails', 'Halifax Harbor', and 'Devoured By Tides', with short snippets of ocean sounds (waves, seagulls, etc) appearing between each song. Their side of the LP jacket also sports an awesome old school painting of a sailor being attacked by a rotten undead corpse rising from the surf. Pretty badass! This side is one of Daybreak's only releases aside from a picture disc 7" and split EP with Ultimate Warriors. Blazing, quirky, seafaring "nautical hyperblast"!
Then there's Godstomper's side...if you know Godstomper, then you'll know what to expect here: stripped down, bass-heavy, heavy as hell fastcore/noisecore, blistering blown out bass guitar riffs and amplifier noise rumbling over chaotic, overcaffienated drumming, with their pissed off, sarcastic lyrics delivered via brutal barking vocals. Despite being just a drums-and-bass guitar duo, Godstomper's duo of brother's Paul and Danny Barfo create a crushing whirlwind of extreme speed violence, channeling Swiss noisegrinders Fear Of God through snotty skate punk vibes and malfunctioning instrument cables, and often breaking off into total improvised blast noise. Their side of this split blazes thru 12 tracks of noisy, crushing, terminally ugly blastcore that kills, and like most Godstomper releases, rocks some bitchin' B&W line art/collage artwork from the Lester Bangs of the crust/grind/noise underground, Sean "Seanocide" Hogan. The record also comes with a large B&W insert sheet with full lyrics and liner notes from each band.

THE DAY EVERYTHING BECAME NOTHING Le Mort CD $9.98 No Escape

Grind n' roll ! This new CD from Australian splatter technicians The Day Everything Became Nothing begins with some eerie electronic feedback and noise before exploding into excruciatingly rocking grindcore. These guys include members of Fuck...I'm Dead and Blood Duster, which makes sense as TDEBN combine the super downtuned technical grind of Fuck...I'm Dead with the awesome rock and roll grooves of the Duster. It's like the heaviest stoner/garage rock band on earth, playing enormous grooving riffs with ridiculously deep and brutal death/grind vocals and fierce blastbeats and speedy thrash metal. Monster Magnet meets Cannibal Corpse? Sort of similar in that vein to C.S.S.O, who also appear on this weeks list! But not as freaked out and psychedelic..this is wayyy heavier. These guys can definitely play, too, and the album is further strengthened by great production values.Great artwork too.

DAY EVERYTHING BECAME NOTHING, THE Slow Death CD $11.98 No Escape

So catchy, so rocking...it's the new 5 song slab of raging grind n' roll from Aussie derelicts The Day Everything Became Nothing. These guys deal in some of the most rocking,groovy mid-paced grind on the planet, but also throw in all sorts of fucked up stuttering rhythms, broken song structures, ridiculous vocal blurts, We still envision these guys as the heaviest garage rock band on earth, though, and there are definitely some similiarities to C.S.S.O. in the way that TDEBN locks in to those sweat-stained rock riffs tuned to Z. Slow Death By Grinding also features a bitchin' cover of Satyricon's "Fuel For Hatred", as well as a very funny "live" track. Features members of Blood Duster (no strangers to the grind n' roll) and drum machine maniacs Fuck...I'm Dead. Pulverizification !

DAYMARES Can't Get Us All CD $12.98 Selfmadegod

As much as I love listening to hour-long tracks of druggy amp-drone jams and records from blotter-chewing black metal freaks, it can get a little intense sometimes. And one thing that I've discovered in my years of listening to metal, noise, hardcore, psychedelia and other weird musics for hours on end is that are few better palette cleansers for yer eardrums than a meaty serving of riff-heavy, rip-roaring death n' roll. Or rock and roll-juiced death metal. Or death metal-infested rock, or however you want to put it. All I know is that when a band manages to stumble across that perfect connection between balls-out rock and crushing death metal, it's a beautiful thing. Lots of bands make the attempt, but few are as effective as Daymares, a Polish band that has combined the brutal boogie of late-90's Entombed with ironclad riffage a la High On Fire, Motorhead's buzzsaw blues swagger, and a healthy helping of crusty hardcore. Gritty, raw, and fucking catchy, Daymares are that post-nuke bar band at the biker pub out on the edges of the wasteland - snarling, crushing groove death that lodges itself in yer cranium, tracks like "Falling Down" and "Almost There" demanding fist-pumping singalongs no matter where the hell yer at. "I Shit You Not" and it's cowbell and godly riffage make for one of the catchiest tunes on the disc, and "Contact" injects some spacey Monster Magnetism into a churning deathcore beating that recalls the cult DC band Damnation A.D before closing with a wall of tribal toms a la Neurosis. Sure, it's nothing groundbreaking, but I love a killer death n' roll album and Can't Get Us All is a pretty monstrous debut from this band - can't wait to hear more from them. If you're into the stuff that bands like Cursed and Doomriders have been doing recently, too, you should check Daymares out. The case has some neat monochrome artwork that stands out from Selfmadegod's usual computer generated layouts, and it comes in a O-card style sleeve.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Almost There" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "As Bad As It Gets" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Contact" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "I Shit You Not" (excerpt)

DECATUR BLUE DB Sides Soundtrack CD $11.98 Planaria

Nick Pimentel at Planaria assembled this high quality document of the "DB Sides" art show that was curated by DC art collective Decatur Blue...serving as both a catalog of the show, and as a soundtrack featuring exclusive tracks from bands that have performed at the Decatur Blue Art Space, DB Sides is a great snapshot of the DC avant garde/indie scene in swing. Bands included on the comp are Measles Mumps Rubella, Antelope, Pines of Nowhere, Early Humans, (The Sounds of) Kaleidoscope, The Long Goodbye, Canyon, Shortstack, Golden, Qui Vicino, 302Acid, Black Eyes, French Toast, Seven Seventeen, ABCS, Trance and The Arcade, and The Kitchen Sink. The thick booklet features photos of much of the art that appeared in this exhibit. Just reading through this makes us wish we had attended.

DEAD BEAT PROJECT Breaking The Shell CD $12.98 Aesthetic Death

This album is going to surprise anyone expecting a new platter of extreme doom metal from the UK label Aesthetic Death. Not that it would be unfair of you to do...Aesthetic Death has turned out an amazingly heavy bundle of albums, including two cult double-disc sets from the lysergic UK deathdoom entity Esoteric, and albums of pure molten sludge from Wreck Of The Hesperus, Stumm, and Wiljen Wij. Based on that track record and AD boss Stu's reliable nose for uncompromising underground heaviness, I've always taken in his new releases no-questions-asked. But this new disc from the label is certainly a shock...an album of lush, orchestral electronica in the vein of In The Nursery? That's what it appeared to be at first, and the first track "Last Faith" is certainly a moody bit of goth-tinged neo-classical/electronica. Further listening reveals more than just a heavy In The Nursery influence, though...since Dead Beat Project is actually an alter ego of Olivier Goyet, who plays keyboards with the aforementioned doomsters Esoteric, I was anticipating some of the abject sadness that permeates Esoteric's music, and I got it. There's a deep melancholy that courses through the nine tracks on Breaking The Shell, an introspective gloominess that Goyet paints with an array of spacey, prog-rock synthesizers, old-school electronica and trip-hop beats, and other nods to mostly older electronic music. Being a big fan of 80's/early 90's soundtrack music and electro-pop sounds, I really enjoyed this album - tracks like "Split In The Shell (Haunting Fluid)" and "The Reason Of My Soul" combine washes of vintage synthesizers with somewhat more contemporary breakbeats. But then "Alive And Living" appears, and suddenly Goyet moves into a kind of black-industrial doom, filled with menace and plodding dub-style drum hits, which actually sounds alot like an Esoteric song stripped of all guitars and bass and overlaid with symphonic synths. The last track "Moon Eclipse" has a similiar sort of super-slow doom feel, again sounding like a funereal doom song that has been turned into an orchestral trip hop jam. He certainly keeps things interesting on this constantly evolving album, blending together elements of Skinny Puppy style industrial dance music, dark ambient, tribal music, 80's electro, and those subtle shades of Esoteric's crushing doom.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Alive And Living" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Last Faith" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Moon Eclipse" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Silent Stream" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Split In The Shell" (excerpt)

DEAD HUSBANDS Can You Hear It 7"EP $6.98 Dead Mind

This double sided dose of terminal gunk funk from Dutch loop maniacs DEAD HUSBANDS has everything we love about these degenerates: primal industrial beats propelling pools of dreamtime sample loops, growling electronics, cybernetic birdsong, and eerie musicbox melodies across each side of this 7". As with their full length CD on Dead Mind (also reviewed and available from Crucial Blast), Dead Husbands channels the surrealism of Nurse With Wound and smears it all over huge gooey grooves cut from their interpretation of old school Industrial. Scary shit from start to finish, closing in a terrifying blast of plundered orchestral soundtrack music and skipping CD carnage.

DEAD HUSBANDS We Control Tomorrow CD $9.98 Dead Mind

This Dutch group trafficks in minimal, creepy psychedelic loop drones and freeform clatter, over which field recordings and sampled conversation flit in and out of focus. The 15 tracks on this full length drift between eerie hum and melody, and cacophonous drone marches. An interesting and engaging collection of primitive improvised psychedelia and dreamlike minimal dronerock.

DEAD IN THE WATER Less Days Left Until The Final Rest CD $11.98 Thrash And Burn

More spacey, moss-covered Scandinavian doomcrust from Thrash And Burn, the same label that dropped those supremely crushing discs from LÄHDÖN AIKA and ABANDON on us. With a combo of dissonant, gloomy doomage and massive midtempo chug that approximates the sound of mammoth being ridden into battle across the Finnish tundras, DEAD IN THE WATER gather dark clouds in a manner similiar to 90's Holy Terrorizers INTEGRITY and CATHARSIS, but slowed down/gummed up into molasses-oozing sludginess flecked with some moments of beautiful, instrumental post rock interludes. Spaced out Peaceville style crustcore fronted by two singers who trade off on raspy, shredded screaming and deep gorilla demon bellowing, as the music expands into epic dissonance, powered by some bulldozing bass playing with a killer buzzsaw tone, huge drumming, and layered guitars, and every song delivering some unstoppable dark melodic hooks, grim and frostbitten yet majestic. Think of some fusion of DYSTOPIA and TRAGEDY, NEUROSIS and HIS HERO IS GONE, the band members clad in bear pelts and iron, pounding out apocalyptic warnings across a frozen expanse. Less Days is way too brief at just 5 songs/20 minutes, we're def looking forward to a full length from these polar warriors. Seriously heavy. This disc is limited to 509 copies, packaged in a matte finish digi-sleeve with a 4-panel insert.

DEAD MACHINES Mystery Of The Fall Off Islands: Part Two CD-R $8.98 Carbon
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The duo of WOLF EYES' John Olson and WOODEN WAND AND THE VANISHING VOICE's Tovah O'Rourke emit 7 untitled jams of richly textured, fried out tapescapes that map out the mythical Fall Off Islands. This disc collects impressively detailed field recordings of totally mutant electronic terrain, as icy metallic winds blow harsh over jagged steel mountain formations, the chirping of cyborg birds echoing from the distance. Crystalline sinewaves and crackling feedback shards sit charged in mid-air, transmitting threatening electrified hum direct from speaker to nervous system. Excellent improvised electronic carnage, packaged in a simple/effective full color wallet sleeve.

DEAD RAVEN CHOIR Selenoclast Wolves CD $11.98 God Is Myth

Smolken and Dead Raven Choir return after a period of time spent on his Wolfmangler project, with this new (and apparently final) foray into rustic, blackened folk music. The first half of Selenoclast Wolves consists of six new songs of skeletal, minimal folk with ghostly black metal undercurrents, eerie piano notes drifting over the ominous bowing of the cello and Smolken's sinister whispering, as dark abstract guitar notes plucked and scraped from the instrument, hanging and decaying into the air. Beautiful and autumnal in their starkness, these songs fall like dead leaves and trace wispy lines from Leonard Cohen and Current 93 to Appalachian folk and the frost of Burzumic black metal.
The second half of this CD contains the entire Lesbian Corpse Wolves album, which was released on CD-R a few years ago in an excruciatingly limited edition of 30 copies. Here it is again, and these songs are some of our favorite ever from Smolken and DRC. The Lesbian Corpse Wolves songs feature the writings of Rainer Maria Rilke delivered over dark, cobwebbed folk strum and Smolken's detuned, Jandek-meets-black metal acoustic guitar plunking backed by dramatic piano and cello. Smolken is joined by Matt Rosin (vocals and piano) and Emily Salvatierra (vocals) on this recording, and all three vocalists handle different parts of different songs and occasionally engage in breathtaking harmonies. Shadowy and gorgeous avant-nocturnal-folk. Highly recommended.

DEADWOOD 8 19 CD $11.98 Cold Spring

Another outstanding black/noise ritual from Cold Spring, following up that punishing Goatvargr disc I was raving about last month. I'm hoping that Cold Spring continues to explore this black metal/power electronics/death industrial vibe that infects both Goatvargr's album and this new one from Deadwood. But where Goatvargr's disc was a demonic tangle of post-industrial black-electronics and crushing breakbeat hatred, this Swedish project invokes a more hypnotic, rhythmic atmosphere. Deadwood is a Swedish project featuring a member of the satanic Black Metal act Blodulv, and this debut full length has six lengthy tracks of ominous low-frequency hypno-distortion-drone and disquieting death ambience. It draws from the grim electronic well of Grey Wolves and Mz.412 while injecting the dead pulsations with a distinctly black metal vibe. These grinding black-noise mantras are augmented by heavy, percussive loops and fragments of acerbic harsh noise, and feature an unsettling vocal performance that ranges from indecipherable muttering in some of the subdued tracks, to caustic black metal style shrieks over some of the heavier, noisier sections. An utterly blackened, bleak, abyssal album of hypnotic necro-trance, like the blurry ambience of Xasthur combined with En Nihil's blocks of rhythmic distortion. Or a black metal Wolf Eyes stuck in an eternal locked groove. Grinding, horrific, tranced out menace. The fifth track, "Wither Sith", actually sounds like Swiss turntablist Strotter Inst. using a scratched up black metal record to create one of his rubbery turntable drones, forming an otherworldly soundscape of tolling bells, a mesmerizing amplified crackle that could either be a needle locked in worn out vinyl grooves or a raging bonfire in the middle of the wilderness, and distorted demonic howls. Pretty amazing, and even more surprising is how hypnotic and restrained the album becomes as you follow it's flow of repeato filth, despite the inexorable, grinding heaviness. Highly recommended.

DEANO MERINO Baby Crocodiles CD $4.98 Dual Plover

I sort of ended up with a stack of these CDs by accident, as quirky bedroom pop obviously falls outside of the general metallurgic scope here at Crucial Blast, but despite that I gotta say that Deano Marino's baby Crocodiles is one of the cooler lo-fi/weirdo pop albums I've heard lately. And certainly one of the catchiest. Deano Marino is just one dude, armed with a guitar, serious chops, killer quirky lyrics and an upbeat outsider vibe, along with some bona fide 80's dance pop casios and drum machines. The CD opens with "Axolotl", probably the catchiest song on the album, a short little pop tune with a genuinely awesome hook and hazy acid guitars. After this, Merino moves from psychedelic pop to squalls of guitar noise, multiple drum machines scuttling over top of one another, gorgeous reverb-soaked surf instrumentals, with every song holding at it's center a great pop hook despite the weird instrumentation and spacey effects that are prominent throughtout the album. Fans of early Ween, Guided By Voices, Half Japanese, Sebadoh, and other closet pop artisans should check this out. Packaged in a swank Dual Plover gatefold sleeve with felt lining.

DEATHPILE Ne Plus Ultra CD $9.98 RRR

Released in a limited edition of 500 copies, Deathpile's 1997 entry in the infamous PURE Series is a piercing, psychedelic assault of power electronic death. Headed by Jonathan Canady (also of Blunt Force Trauma), the nine tracks of Ne Plus Ultra are dense, crushing walls of electronic distortion swarming with detailed noise and layers upon layers of harsh swirling feedback, volcanic surges of buzz, garbled shortwave static, and horrific distorted vocals and high pitched whistles. Packaged in the trademark RRR/PURE style wallet sleeve with xerox-damaged collage artwork.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS / TRAVIS RYAN split CD-R $5.98 Chrome Peeler

One of the more interesting pairings of harsh, electronic horror, upstart noise duo Death By A Thousand Cuts team up with Cattle Decapitation vocalist Travis Ryan to transmit an hour of grim, nightmarish drone noise. Travis Ryan's four tracks open the disc with an edgy, paranoid ambience that mixes environmental buzzes and electronic hum with blurry theremin melodies and hushed buzzsaw tones, evoking the faint but discernible hum of electricity you feel when standing at the edge of an urban landscape in the middle of the night. Occasionally Ryan's droning dread lurches into a staticky overload that recalls the chopped up circuit burn of John Wiese, but more often drifts through a halogen-lit dreamworld similiar to a grittier, urban take on Glass Throat Records atmospherics.
The other side of this split is haunted by Death By A Thousand Cut's nightmarish free electronic designs. DBAC's industrial hallucinations are conjured from noxious bass sinewaves and cloudy keyboard drones, curling upwards out of metal-on-metal carnage and blasts of laser-beam effects pedal violence, and the music becomes strangely beautiful, especially with the cosmic, Troum-meets-Bastard Noise insectoid frequencies of the final track "Approach Of The Black Claw". The disc is a professionally printed CD-R with track listings and info on the CD face, and comes packaged in a handmade, spraypainted CD wallet with a full color xerox horror sticker sealing the sleeve shut. Limited edition of 300.

DEATHPILE G.R. CD $13.98 Hospital Productions

The first actual Deathpile full length in years, this is one of the most ridiculously sinister and over the top P.E. releases we've heard yet, not that that is much of a surprise with this being a Hospital Productions release, who have been consistently documenting the most anti-social and aggro elements of the current "noise" scene. Here, Hospital unleashes Deathpile's conceptual G.R.,which chronologically focuses on the Green River Murders in Seattle from the 1980's from a first-person point of view. Deathpile rolls out a barrage of blackened, crackling, burbling Power Electronics, blownout synth crunch, and grisly ambient atmosphere while near-hysterical vocals and (excellently utilized) audio samples map out the psychological terrain of the Green River Killer. Harsh stuff, totally creepy and sadistic and absurd listening. Definitely not casual listening by any means, but fans of Prurient, Grey Wolves, and Brighter Death Now should definitely check this out.

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Kenose CD $14.98 Southern Lord
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We'd been hearing all sorts of cool shit about this album for a while, and man, does this not disappoint. This French outfit deliver some of the weirdest, heaviest, most hallucinogenic black metal we've heard since first getting turned onto Blut Aus Nord. Over the course of this 37 minute album (the follow up to their ground-breaking Si Monumentum Requires, Circumspice album), Deathspell Omega warps classic black metal shapes into hellish progressive new forms while maintaining an unrelentingly grim and brutal assault. Three tracks of unique, intense outsider blast, with ghostly post-rock spaces and nightmarish ambience building into blasts of buzzing superdistorted minor-key black metal holocaust, insane squalls of blastbeats and creep groans,intoxicated woozy riffing and blood curdling psychedelic drones, unearthly industrial dirge pulsations, haunted melodic arpeggios,total necro attacks, interdimensional doom crawls, a totally hallucinatory and nightmarish assault of psychotropic blackened extremism with moments of unbelieveable beauty. Absolutely fucking awesome, blending powerful avant rock ideas with vicious back metal ferocity. Fans of Ved Buens Ende, Blut Aus Nord, and Enslaved will blow their freaking tops over Kenose. Southern Lord recreated the original releases impressive Digipack packaging design with thick-azz 40-page booklet of creepily beautiful artwork, Biblical texts, and stunning religio-philosophical thought. Highly recommended.

DEATHROES Hate Fuck CD $7.98 Troniks

Troniks unleashes another black-noise monstrosity from this newish duo, made up of Ryan Jencks from Sixes (who creates some mighty skull-scraping death squeal on his own) and Gerrit Wittmer collaborating together on epic tracks of grinding, pitch black industrial waste. You might know Gerrit as the head of Misanthropic Agenda as well as an active solo artist with past collaborations with Sunn O))), John Wiese, and Yellow Swans under his belt, and his high-end feedback fluctations merge with Sixes-style grit nicely. We're talking mega heavy electronic filth, sometimes morphing into a hellish cauldron of bestial roars bellowing from huge Cthulian beasts, or else appearing as the terrifying fluttering and screech of swarms of carnvorous insect life moveing through a tropical deathpit. Heavy strobing kill-drone crawling out of this pit. These guys are pulling no punches with calling their debut disc Hate Fuck, which pretty well sums up the ultra malevolent tone of these three tracks as their evil, psychedelic electronics flood over you. Comes in a vile looking wallet sleeve. Recommended to drug addicted feedback guzzlers who feast on Devilock, Sixes, Total, and Cherry Point on a regular basis.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Track One" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Track Three" (excerpt)

DECEASED The Radiation Years CD $11.98 Cursed

Virginia's Deceased started out as a VOIVOD-worshipping deathmetal outfit before transforming into a throwback to '80s speed/thrash metal, with denim-clad dual guitarists unleashing awesome MAIDEN-esque harmonies, and singer/drummer King Fowley belting out his horror-film fueled visions of apocalypse and zombie horror with a voice uncannily reminiscent of VENOM’s Cronos, all the while maintaining the brutality and technicality of modern death metal. Awesome stuff, and there is no denying that DECEASED are one of the pioneering forces behind Death Metal as we know it. Deceased's legendary BIRTH BY RADIATION (1988) and NUCLEAR EXORCIST (1989) demos set the standard for metal bands worldwide, and Cursed Productions presents these diabolical recordings, plus four previously unavailable bonus tracks, completely remastered by the band. Deceased exists here as they did in 1988-89 as a fusion between Voivod-style technical speed metal and the wave of neo-death bands like Kreator, Sodom and Destruction. Racing verses and anthemic choruses match a smugly precise sense of rhythmic conclusion and vocals in a hoarse voice chant over the fluttering punctuation of drumming. While these songs have individual riffs and transitions that stand up to the best in the genre, the second demo and more recent work reveal how Deceased have improved in assembling these pieces into songs. Included after both demos is live material from 1998 which shows the band at the height of their efficiency shaping streamlined versions of older works into a style of more varied technique and great flexibility. Even for those who are not Deceased fans, this release provides an insight into the primordial elements from which death metal arose.

DECEMBER 23RD Concrete Facelift CD-R $8.98 Audiobot

An excellent skull-damaging feedback rampage from the Texan FX-pedalist December 23rd that starts off with an overmodulated Tori Amos sample and then launches into an hour long sculpture of severe psychedelic distortion-n'-feedback mass. Heavy, harsh as hell furnace blast is interjected with sickening metal-on-metal clang and brutal, scraping flanger textures. Like much of the other heavier electronics releases on Audiobot, this is embedded deep in squeal/gore/splatterpunk aesthetic with tracks titled "Mausoleum Death Sleep", "Malevolent Graves", "Street Trash Moshpit", and "Sick Cult". Total mind blot overload in the grand tradition of Oscillating Innards, The Rita, Ichorous, and Incapacitants, with glimmers of melody and rhythm buried deep beneath an ocean of scorched electronics. The disc itself is painted with neon-green and black spraypaint, and is encapsulated in a brilliant wallet sleeve splattered with gross, gorgeous pixel-vomit artwork.

DECOMPOSING SERENITY Let Us Show You How To Draw Blood CD $9.98 Deepsend

Blazing Australian noisegrind! This semi-discography CD from DECOMPOSING SERENITY collects forty tracks of EP and demo recordings circa 1995-2002 from this one-man bedroom blast project.The earlier material isn't as downright weird as later EP's and splits (see DC's splits with MORTUARY HACKING SESSION and SUGAR PLUM FAIRY for extreme art-damaged splattergrind insanity), but still delivers a fucked up shitstorm of retarded riffing, hyperspeed drum-machine beats, ludicrous nonsensical vocal acrobatics,and gunked up noisecore/funk/grind/rock/harsh noise chaos splattered with gristle and lightspeed drum machines and delivered in succinct minute-long bursts. Recommended if you're a fan of ridiculously brutal,absurd microgrind (Agoraphobic Nosebleed,Dataclast,Contrastic,etc) and 90's noisecore stuff like early CRIPPLE BASTARDS,AC,7000 DYING RATS,FINAL EXIT, etc etc.

DECOMPOSING SERENITY We'll Sleep When You're Dead (Maybe) CD $9.98 Last House On The Right

We'll Sleep When you Are Dead collects the last two 7" EPs from this psychotic, baby doll obsessed grindcore project operated by sole proprietor Witter, before "disbanding" sometime in . The "...At Last The Dolls Are Broken" EP and the "Corpse Juice And Lavander Kisses" EP, for 17 tracks in all of brutal, brain damaged blast. Remastered for relatively clearer sound, these songs are like a whirlwind pukefest of avant-garde freeform beast vocals that sound akin to a starving badger stuffed in a potato sack and forced to sing for a casio and drummachine fueled, retarded guitar shredding, primitive bedroom deathmetal version of Naked City doing german goregrind covers a la Last Days Of Humanity and Cock And Ball Torture, with downright funky beats and basslines and catchy tunes. The disc also contains bonus mpeg footage showing how the scorched-doll artwork and cover was designed. All of the Decomposing Serenity releases sported Witter's unique altered/deformed little-girl doll artwork, so this added bit is a pretty interesting background on the aesthetic of this cult bizarro grind project.

DECOMPOSING SERENITY / MORTUARY HACKING SESSION split CD $11.98 Vomit Noise
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Psychotic avant-cybersplatter goreblast for extreme scum freaks. A twisted tagteam of psychedelic vomit grind !!!! DECOMPOSING SERENITY deliver 5 tracks of audio scum, MHS offer up 7. All will clean the snot right out of your ear canals.DECOMPOSING SERENITY start off with a raw, heavy and grooving grind sludge pummel. Brain damaged blastbeats, evil neanderthal riffs, and monstrous vocals along with some totally left field stuff thrown in for the next time you want to re-organize your innards. Unorthodox, post-modern gore grind maximalism.If you dig it sick and weird, lick it up. MORTUARY HACKING SESSION follow up with a similiar level of vulgar intensity, battering you with an onslaught of irradiated old school death metal riffs, only to quickly disentegrate into new realms of retarded sonic perversion as wretched gory vocals and high-frequency gremlin-squeal mix with super catchy melodic solos,techno/house beats, creeped out electronics , and some harmonica (?!) A psychedelic dose of lysergic bowel blast. Again, pushing the bounderies of the gore/grind schematic so far out into left field it's ridiculous.

DECOMPOSING SERENITY / SUGAR PLUM FAIRY split CD $11.98 Vomit Noise

DECOMPOSING SERENITY plow through 6 tracks of gory gutmunching grind weirdness, with spazztoid drum programming, zomboid toilet grunts and corpse-chatter, and gnarly brain-damaged chug riffage. SUGAR PLUM FAIRY follow up with 6 blasts of freaked out synths, pong-bleeps, chugging cannabalistic grind with gutblasting vocals, demented casio beats and danceable vomit pop. Utterly twisted, and very catchy. Mutant bedroom grind for audio filth freaks.

DEEP BLUE, THE Antartic Abyss CD $11.98 Church Within

OK, these guys sound alot like Sleep. ALOT. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that they sound alot like Om, the post-Sleep power duo of Al Cisneros and Chris Hakius, 'cuz Deep Blue do a similiar drone-chord pound over Tibetan chanting thing. Of course, Deep Blue are a guitar/bass/drums trio, so the sound is more downtuned and crunchy and sludgy, but if there was ever a need to hear what Om would sound like as a full band, then Deep Blue are here to serve. That said, this is an excellent slab o' hypnotic trance sludge, coming at us from another new favorite label, The Church Within. Specializing in progressive, psychedelic-tinged doom and sludge, The Deep Blue fit right in with the melodic progressive sludge of Tekhton and the druggy tectonic dirge of Spancer. Split into two tracks, The Antartic Abyss (sic) features "Under The Ice: The Resurrection" and "Haunted Tide: The Freezing Storm", each roughly 13 minutes long, mighty hypno doom mantras of syrupy riffage and trippy chanting about ancient Lovecraftian ocean tyrants rising from beneath ice floes. Being a huge fan of both droning hypnotic riffage and ancient Lovecraftian beasts awakening from the ocean floor, I don't give a shit how indebted to Sleep/Om these guys are, this disc rules me.

DEEP TURTLE Turkele CD $7.98 Zerga

Deep Turtle have been one of those bands that people have always recommended that I check out, but for one reason or another I have never had a chance to actually get my hands on any of their releases, until now. I finally managed to get in touch with the Finnish label Zerga while we were working on getting the new CD from Finnish glitch/improv/prog crushers Kroko, and found out that they also had some copies of the 2003 mini-album from Deep Turtle, Turkele, still available! Very stoked that we finally got ahold of this, as Deep Turtle's crazy pop/prog/hardcore is everything I had hoped it would be. Their music is a heavy, super melodic mutant hardcore punk that moves from mega catchy and almost ska-like at times, to furious pummeling thrash, mixed up with jazzy musicianship, latin rhythms, hints of Eastern Eauropean folk music, and total symphonic prog experimentalism, with crazy complex drumming and powerful bass playing that often switches suddenly into a sort of ridiculously complex, stop/start punk-prog that reminds me of Ruins or Lightning Bolt. Deep Turtle are amazingly adept at combining their insane arrangements with total pop hooks that will glue themselves to your head. All of the lyrics/singing on this disc are in Spanish, which just adds to the weirdness. Seven songs in 23 minutes, highly recommended! Packaged in a full color wallet sleeve.

DEEP WOUND Almost Complete CD $15.98 Baked Goods

Back in stock! We blew through a bunch of these a few months ago, it went out of print temporarily, and is now repressed!
You wanna talk about a Holy Grail? A proper re-issue of the Deep Wound jams is something that I've been impatiently waiting for since the dawn of my descent into weirdo tuneage. The terminally shady German label Lost & Found had issued some Deep Wound material back in the mid-90's, but that import-only release became just as fkkn obscure, barely making it into the catalogs of US hardcore distros at the time. So years pass and in the midst of the revival of all things Dinosaur Jr we are finally treated to a complete..ahem...Almost Complete collection of Deep Wound's hardcore microblasts. The band was/is first and foremost legendary as the pre-Dino Jr gig of J Mascis and Lou Barlow from when the dudes were in high school, the band lasting from 1982-1984, and which led Mascis and Barlow to form the greatest heavy indie rock band ever. Released via Mascis' own Baked Goods imprint, Almost Complete is 27 songs long, capturing the band's self-titled 7" single on Radiobeat from 1983, the two tracks from the 1984 compilation LP Bands That Could Be God, 12 songs off their self-released American Style cassette from 1982, and three songs from an early practice tape featuring a different singer. But Deep Wound is also legendary for essentially laying down the core template for what would become grindcore...essentially an attempt to ape Discharge, the band managed to cut the brakelines and play at brutal, hypersonic speeds, not only becoming one of New England's first hardcore bands, but totally dusting the X-Claim bands like SSD, FU's, Jerry's Kids, etc., that made up the Boston HC scene, pre-dating Siege's Drop Dead by a good year or two, turning what were otherwise 1-2-3-4 hardcore rants into blasting chunks of reckless, 60 second, anti-social end-of-your-rope fury. And check out 'Let's Go To The Mall', a seven minute free-noise-punk jam that wouldn't sound outta place nowadays next to the drooling out punk of Violent Students and Pissed Jeans. Fuck man, Napalm Death themselves cite this as a key influence on the formation of their sound. Can't recommend this one enough, an essential document of primal US hardcore genius. Comes in a great-looking digipack designed by Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O)))/Khanate) using original band flyers and photos from Deep Wound's brief but explosive reign. Devestating !!!

DE NOVISSIMIS s/t CD-R $5.98 Ming

Extreme doom fans, alert! De Novissimis is a Irish (at least, we're pretty sure they're Irish) five-piece who traffic in a totally grotesque, diseased brand of doom-grind that's not too far removed from the same gutter that you would find outfits like Goatsblood, Bunkur, or Catacombs. This private press CD-R boasts a single, almost half-hour long track of grueling sludge that is centered around several key riffs, mostly delivered at a saurian trudge as the droning, downtuned guitars bang out a simple 4 chord dirge for minutes on end while the dueling vocalists trade off deep, bellowing death roars and screeching vomit squeals. It's not completely stuck in magma mode, though....occasionally De Novissimis will suddenly explode into a flurry of extremely noisy and chaotic grindcore, or a quieter, post-rocky passage, before falling back into the black maw of their demonically glacial doom. This is mind-numbingly heavy shit that will send your skull to your knees repeatedly. Fans of the doomcrust stuff that's been oozing out of Baltimore over the past couple of years (Wake Up On Fire, Moonshine, etc.) would lose their minds over this. Packaged in a simple, xeroxed brown sleeve.

DENTIST / CORTISOL Only Meat Israel CD $11.98 Northern Bitch

Further proving our staunch belief that French Canadians are consistently producing some of the most whacked out metal on the planet at the moment, comes this split CD entitled Only Meat Israel featuring Montreal grindcore trio Dentist and C-Blast faves and terminal art-doom weirdos Cortisol back to back. Wait a sec...Dentist? Complete with umlauts over the "i"? Had to hope that al of their songs were going to be conceptually based around that most dreaded of professions, but it's hard to tell what the hell they're actually about, with songs titled "Suicide Sheeps", "March Of The MILF", and "No Pain, No Sandwich". Dentist's music is weird, crushing grind, a mashup of Infest and extreme sludgecore, goofball Meatmen style hardcore, bizarre samples, and weird rhythmic breakdowns. Kinda have the same vibe as fellow Canucks Fuck The Facts, tho Dentist are way sillier. Hell yeah, their 9 songs freaking crush! This split album turns even more confusional when we realize that the members of Dentist are also the members of Cortisol, making the former an alter-ego of the latter. When the Cortisol tracks kick in with their 3 long tracks though, things turn deadly serious, starting with the morose crust-doom blast of "Hog Tied 2k6". They continue to carve out an abstract, angular form of extreme doom metal, super slooow and complex, with almost math-rock-type riffs frozen to a dead crawl, their grinding glacial riffs littered with odd electronic noises and ghoulish screeching vocals, like a rotted out hybrid of Khanate and Harvey Milk. "Mobile Myth" devolves a crushing angular dirge into a mist of finely ground glass, and the closer "Evening Wrench Map" goes out on a somewhat melodic monster of a riff riding on a bashing drum assault. So you get two faces of the same band, one an absurdist ultragrind outfit and the other one of the heaviest, most abstracted math-sludge bands on the planet, combined for one serious dose of fucked up heaviness!

MP3 SAMPLE: DENTIST "49 Old Circles" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: DENTIST "No Pain, No Sandwich" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: CORTISOL "Evening Wrench Map" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: CORTISOL "Mobile Myth" (excerpt)

DER DRAAIGITAAR Der Feuerwehrschlauchanschlub Ist Kaputt CD-R $11.98 Audiobot

Der Feuerwehrschlauchanschlub Ist Kaputt is a fifteen minute assault of fried guitar noise from the DER DRAAIGITAAR quartet, beginning with low ambient axe tones and gradually building into colossal sheets of manic feedback and buzzing slo-mo amplifier drones. Skull melting guitar ritual and reverb orgy. Released as part of Audiobot’s on-going Improvised Music Series, Der Feuerwehrschlauchanschlub Ist Kaputt is on an orange-black silkscreened CD-R that is mounted onto a larger silkscreened carbboard slat heatsealed in a plastic sleeve, and is limited to 100 copies. Very nice. Definitely recommended for heads tapped into the harsher guitar noise / amp drone strains.

DESENSITIZED ROBOTS Space CD-R $5.98 Balefire

Positively somnambulant. This hand-assembled, short-run disc self-released by the Baltimore duo Desensitized Robots (featuring Ryan Copeland of A)Torture Mechanism) features a single track entitled "Space" that stretches horizontally for close to 10 minutes, a disorientating wave of vinyl crackle, buried voices and a totally creepy vocal chant, oscillating drones and shimmering chimes. Imagine POPUL VUH's Bruder des Schattens clawing it's way through a vaporous cloud of NEGATIVELAND-esque plundered dialogue and hazy ghosts of A.M. pop radio transmissions. Hauntingly melodic psyche/dronepop wrapped up in a delicate, dreamlike fug. The disc comes in a handassembled wallet with neato acetate/computer graphics/graffiti artwork.

DESOLATEVOID Self Medicated Psycho Therapy CD $10.98 Crimes Against Humanity

This weird, ultraheavy hybrid of crustcore, death metal, and swampy sludgecore comes off like a more death metal version of Soilent Green, although without the complex, angular riffing that Soilent Green is known for... and then mixed in with powerful High On Fire -style black-toothed sludge rock, Eyehategod's drugged dirge nihilism,, and blasts of ferocious D-beat speedcore. This stuff is crusty and utterly mangled, ugly as sin and without anything that could be confused as melody. Sloppy and raw as befits this type of scum grind, these eight tunes are loaded with stoned grooving riffage and a fucking weird vocal assault that sometimes sounds like the singer is swallowing the mic and shaking it like a pittbull, a bizarre maniacal shriek/growl combo that sounds totally inhuman. Nasty!

DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS s/t CD $10.98 Creepy Dog Eyes

We've got 5 copies of this full length debut from Destructo Swarmbots, and once they're gone, that's it. This 8 song full length is a grating collection of chaotic guitar noise and buzzing electronic bombardment, way more abrasive and cranium-cleansing than their new 3" on Public Guilt. Some pretty melodies surface here and there, only to be engulfed again in pulsating harsh static and apocalyptic low-frequency noise and epic beast-rising-from-the-sea riffs. Sort of like K.K. Null , but way more frenzied and bombed out and violent, with none of the micro-robotic order Null brings to his guitar-generated soundscapes.

DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS The Mountain 3" CD $8.98 Public Guilt

The duo of Mike Mare and James O'rian are back, this time with a 3 song 3" CD that foregoes the blistering riffs,feedback, and noise apocalypse of their self-titled album, this time creating dark, beautiful droning mini-epics, almost like a "heavier" Labradford or a less ominous SUNN O))). Subtle ambient landscapes emerge beneath expansive sheets of atmospheric drones and gorgeous melodies, "post-rock" ish sheets of instrumental bliss, and eerie hums. Really great stuff, all generated by guitar and bass, but densely layered to the point where instrumentation is impossible to pick out. The one-sheet states a comparison to Orthrelm and Frippertronics, which isn't far off the mark...complex and engaging drone bliss and dissonant structures that come together as a cohesive monolith. This little 3" CD comes packaged in a standard jewel case, which is a welcome change from the standard little wallet these things usually come in. Highly recommended.

DESTRUCTO SWARMBOTS Clear Light CD $11.98 Public Guilt

Headed by master droneologist Mike Mare, the Destructo Swarmbots are back with their third disc, the follow-up to the excellent Mountain 3" CD that came out on Public Guilt a couple of years ago. Mike is probably better known for his involvement as a touring member with avant hiphop masters DÄLEK and his excellent remix work for everyone from Genghis Tron to Isis to DÄLEK, but for the past several years, he has also been creating some amazing and beautiful heavy dronescapes with his amorphous collective Destructo Swarmbots. I remember the first time that I saw the Swarmbots play, in Baltimore at the Talking Head right around the time that their 3" CD came out; they were touring as a duo, and conjured these huge walls of distorted rumble and smeared melodic textures from damaged guitars and electronics that shook the entire building. That set was one of the most deafening performances that I've ever heard at that club, a total crushing power-drone assault that dominated the room for nearly half an hour. On disc, however, Destructo Swarmbots are a gentler beast, still immensely heavy, but also more meditative and droning, and on Clear Light, Mare is flying solo as he sculpts some of his most isolationist droneworks yet. Clear Light's fold-out booklet and case depict some sort of abstract light textures, which could be anything from distorted beams of sunlight viewed from the bottom of a pond, to nebulous bodies of light glowing in deep space, and these abstracted visuals are pretty effective at capturing the shapeless glacial ambience that the album navigates through. The disc is split into four long tracks, opening with the 39-minute epic "Banta", a monstrous gleaming driftscape of slowly blossoming washes of heavy distorted feedback and fuzzy amplifier buzz coursing out across the heavens, while mournful minor key synths and strains of wah-pedal whoosh streak through the layers of buzz and drone, ending in a flurry of melted melodies. A gorgeous and hypnotic buzzscape of bowed and sustained guitars and bass, quite Troum-esque, but with the addition of some heavier bottom-end and distortion. The following track "Phases" barely reaches the 5-minute mark, but shifts the album suddenly into a dark field of screaming acid-guitar leads peeled off over an oozing drone pulse and sheets of shimmering starlit keyboards. "Fireberry" is another dark cavescape of droning low end feedback and shimmering chords with a minimal percussive loop and chant-like tones floating through the blackness. "Sipping on the Fog" closes the album with a distant, grinding distorted sludge riff buried in synth drone and chiming guitar notes, part Sunn O))) dirge and part Kranky Records dreamfloat. A totally solid exercise in heavy, guitar-based ambience, the Swarmbots have certainly headed into a darker direction with this album, advisable to those of you into Troum and Maeror Tri's amp hymns, the evocative guitar rumble of early Earth, Aidan Baker's solo stuff, and subterranean cosmic music.

DEVILLOCK These Graves CD $7.98 Troniks

Killer four track full length of dense drone-noise from Justin Meyers (who also operates the Tone Filth record/cassette noise label as well as PANTHER SKULL). Using squashed organ drones, fried tape erosion, and piercing electronics, Meyers assembles dark, thunderous slow motion waves of distortion murk that are filled with decomposing intricacies. Excellent stuff that recalls Andrew Chalk, Hive Mind, Skullflower, and Graveyards. Matthew St. Germain (Freedom From) guests on bass, and Pete Swanson of YELLOW SWANS mastered the whole affair. An edition of 1000 housed in a printed slipcase.

DIAGNOSE: LEBENSGEFAHR Transformalin CD $11.98 Autopsy Kitchen

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

When Nattramn of Swedish black metallers Silencer ended that project and became institutionalized in a mental hospital several years ago, he left behind one of the weirdest, most personal expressions of mental anguish to come from the black metal scene, the Death - Pierce me album from 2001, a harrowing combination of shredded, noisy BM and Nattramn's singularly unique vocals that are still some of the most tortured, high pitched vocalizations you'll ever hear, a weeping shriek that disturbs to the core. Silencer's legacy, although obscure, was nonetheless recognized by fans of severe black metal weirdness, and many of us wondered if we'd ever hear another Silencer album. Well, Nattramn ended up leaving the mental institution he was in, and with a backstory that alleges that part of his rehabilitation was the creation of a new body of music work, he's back with a completely new project called Diagnose: Lebensgefahr and a debut album Transformalin. You can't call this black metal, that's for sure...there's a black metal influence to Diagnose: Lebensgefahr, but Nattramn's new muse appears to be a wholesale plundering of assorted Industrial, techno, ambient, and other electronic forms, in the process creating a kind of weird black-industrial electro-drone fusion that's tough to compare to anything else. The idea here is that this is an audio portrait of Nattramn's struggle with mental disease, and it certainly transports you through a ever-shifting realm of terminal unease, filled with gritty synthesizer drift and gauzy, old-timey marching songs layered over brutal industrial beats and deranged spoken-word declarations, droning machine noise and grinding loops. Diagnose: Lebensgefahr isn't as over the top as Silencer, but there's a similiar vibe that things are wrong here, a deeply disturbing atmosphere which makes this album pretty compelling. Parts of Transformalin remind me of both MZ.412 and Godflesh, but much of the album is so wildly abstract that it's more like a damaged version of black ambient than anything, a buzzing electrical presence glowing under yellow sanatorium lights. The third track “Flaggan På Halv Stång I Drömmens Västergård” invokes the icy drift of Lustmord or Troum, and “Tillsammans Men Ensam I Stillhetens Kapell” is a billowy cloud of white hiss and buried half-melodies that remind me of something from Tim Hecker, but darker, bleaker, the stuff of bad dreams, beautiful and threatening. The album's standout might be “The Last Breath Of Tellus”, which opens with a gorgeous wave of angelic voices surging through a veil of fuzz like a blackened Fennesz piece - it's exquisitely beautiful, until a diseased percussive loop enters and turns the track into a throbbing, malevolent techno-industrial jam. The more adventurous explorers out there who delve into the weirdest corners of post-black metal experimentation may well find this to be a fascinating followup to Silencer's suicidal disintegration. Highly recommended.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Last Breath Of Tellus" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: " Nani Versus Apati" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Transformalin" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Upon The High Horse" (excerpt)

DIAL Distance Runner CD $13.98 Cede

Awesome psychedelic skulldrill noise rock damage from Jacqui Ham, who had previously been a member of cult no-wave outfit Ut. Ut was a historically significant NY/London trio that recorded 4 albums for Blast First back in the mid-to-late 80s, and counted bands like Sonic Youth among their fans. Jacqui is joined by Rob Smith (guitar & drum machine) and Dom Weeks (bass & electronics) on Distance Runner, the second full length from the ensemble (following their Infraction album, which we listed in the last Crucial Blast webstore update), and this shit is some of the ugliest/most life affirming basement grunt since prime Dead C, documenting the beauty inherent in crystalline, fractured guitar tones and feedback buildup. Throughout these 14 songs, the band moves between blurry free noise rituals, Skullflower-esque drone rock, and drum-machine powered noise rock weirdness. Dial is a real basement mutant, dealing out murky post-no-wave nightmares. Some of the quieter moments drift off into an almost psychedelic folk area while being accompanied by a quietly blasting drum machine that sounds like a giant centipede skittering along cement walls. Theres also a bit of that weird overmodulated robo noise rock from their previous album that reminds us of a combination of early Big Black and Siltbreeze Records style noise. The rehearsal quality recording on Distance Runner adds loads of skuzzy atmosphere.

DIAL Infraction CD $13.98 Cede
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We managed to get ahold of only a handful of copies of this obscure/rare release from post-No Wave noise outfit Dial, and we're unsure if this is something we'll be able to re-stock. Infraction is the 1997 debut album from Dial, a trio featuring Jacqui Ham (vocals, guitar) from the historic/cult NYC no-wave group Ut, who counted members of Sonic Youth among their fans back in the late 70's. Dial definitely has some of that atonal No Wave bleat, but this is something even uglier, a dank-basement invocation of Big Black-via-Siltbreeze Records noise smear, like Dead C having a collective nervous breakdown over a shambling drum machine while Jacgui's icy howls sound like some narcotized chanteuse. The band recorded this album onto cassette, and it's lo-fi as hell, the music softened of all of it's edges and muffled, making the songs sound way evil and blown, guitars being molested offscreen, cable buzz snaking around the edges of the songs, filling the room with dread. Totally murky noise rock and improvised, sludgy splat, great shit.

DIAMATREGON Blasphemy For Satan CD $13.98 Tumult

These French black metallers deliver a ripping, filthy blast of chaotic, skull scraping black metal with Blasphemy For Satan, one of the more intense black metal offerings we just took in from the Tumult back catalog. Sort of similiar to a rawer, more aggressive old Gorgoroth or a faster Vlad Tepes that's been coated in white noise, Diamatregon keep it in the red, their songs ultra saturated in distortion, generally delivered at 1000 mph blasts but occasionally breaking down into a crushing midtempo part or flatlining into crawling sludge. But Diamatregon are also masters of melody, with awesome hooks behind every song making their satanic noisy BM way catchier than you would expect. There's a killer hyperspeed cover of Misfit's "Death Comes Ripping" towards the end, right before the band sinks into an epic 17-minute jam called "The Beast Is Dead" that takes the band through passages of psychedelic drones and Sabbath riffage, weird samples and harsh noise, stumbling noise-doom and black metal marches. The whole album is 45 minutes long, a highly recommended slab of super-catchy, convoluted black metal weirdness and intensity packaged in a bright black and red case.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Blasphemy For Satan" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Mystic Death" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Vaticannihilation" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Beast Is Dead" (excerpt)

DIAPSIQUIR Virus S.T.N. CD $12.98 Necrocosm

It took multiple spins of Virus S.T.N. to even begin to get a grasp of what is going on with France's Diapsiquir. The sophomore album from the eclectic post-black metal surrealists is so intricately assembled and disorientating, it is impossible to absorb everything that is going on here in just one sitting. Beginning with the CD package, it's difficult to guess what this is going to sound like: the cover sports a collage of photographs capturing blips of urban contamination and the Diapsiquir logo, which is an awesome-looking, heavily stylized design based on the classic "goat of mendes" image, with the outer ring of the logo inscribed in the words "Seringue Absorption Torture Alienation Nihilisme" (forming the acronym SATAN). Definitely has a black metal vibe, albeit an extremely stylized one. But as soon as the eerie beats and classical sampling of opening track "Incubation" starts the album off, you know this is going to be anything but traditional black metal. Distant, ambient synths and sampled string sections play a recognizeable classical melody over dubby, staticky trip-hop beats and abrasive industrial samplers, the beats constantly shifting as far-off black metal riffs and distant sounds of children screaming appear alongside deep, raspy, sort-of spoken vocals. It's more like an apocalyptic avant-garde trip-hop jam than anything closely resembling black metal. But then "Venin Intemporel, Rouille Universelle, Satan" appears, the title roughly translated as "Timeless Venom, Universal Rust, Satan", opening with a weirdly atonal black metal riff and what sounds like a combination of blasting drum programming and live drumming, as multiple vocalists screech and howl and rant over the percussive thrash before the song turns into a tripped out dirge with glitchy electronic noise layered over another eerie, discordant riff and time-delayed vocals. Then, halfway through the track, it turns into a surreal mashup of Voivod style riffs, crushing breakbeats, damaged French folk music, squawking shrieks trading off with electronically processed vocals and a sort of rhythmic speaking that almost sounds like some kind of mutant French hip hop? Yeah. And it all totally works, because somehow the members of Diapsiquir manage to make their maniacal cacophony extremely evil sounding, imbued with a gleeful misanthropy that seeps from their disorientating song structures. It's even stranger when I saw that Diapsiquir is actually just a duo of a guy named VulgR and Toxik Harmst, who is probably more well known as the guitarist for blasphemous French black metallers Arkhon Infaustus. And this is rooted in black metal...but the vision of black metal here is the industrialized black metal of the grim, post-armageddon urban wastelands inhabited by the likes of Aborym, Mysticum and Dödheimsgard, but even more fucked up and avant-garde and drug-addled, every song a carefully constructed, blackened fever dream of pounding techno beats and grinding Industrial rhythms, powerful, dissonant black/thrash riffs, avant-garde jazz, appropriated themes from both The Godfather and Scarface film scores, hallucinatory electronics, and sudden shifts in style mid-song and weird spoken word parts and tuneless howling. Even the production style of Virus S.T.N. is twisted, using strange mixing techniques and production tricks that sound like they were lifted from an avant-hip hop record. Completely confounding, dreamlike industrial/electro/black metal strangeness; the closest comparison that I can come up with for Virus S.T.N. is a drugged up, black metal Boredoms, or maybe a satanic, breakbeat-heavy fusion of Aborym, Genghis Tron, Mr. Bungle and old-school technical death/thrash, but even weirder than those comparisons would ever suggest, and fully immersed in Diapsiquir's bizarre, satanic urban imagery. It's a fascinating, hypnotic album that demands repeated exploration. Highly recommended to adventurers in the field of futuristic occult metal and psychedelic electro-black metal.

DIMLAIA s/t CD $12.98 Life Is Abuse

Featuring Carl Auge from HIS HERO IS GONE on bass and vocals, Bay Area outfit DIMLAIA surface with this debut full length album that starts off in an air-raid, apocalyptic crustcore vein, but quickly moves into a sort of grim,baroque post-metal that makes us think of Neurosis and Tragedy meeting with Temporary Residence records style cinematic instrumentals, and an early-90's, AFGHAN WHIGS-ish brand of dark indie rock that really sets this apart from anything else happening right now at the intersection of crusty dirge metal and expansive instrumental rock. The real killer here is the 4th track, "Goodnight Sweet Ghost", which starts off with that instrumental slo-burn, but then sinks into a heart rending lament with sadly sweet singing from Kristen Deets (who reminds us a little of SCRAWL's Marcy Mays), wrapped around a haunting hook and building into a wash of heavy guitars and hopelessness and monstrous deathmetal vocals buried in the swirl, like a lost song from the AFGHAN WHIGS Gentleman run through heavy,crushing NEUROSIS amps. Beautiful! The rest of this self-titled album moves through similiar waters, with jangly instrumental buildups that release into tense, noisy dirges, equal parts Neurosis and Godspeed You! Black Emporer, beautiful and dark and dramatic, evoking twilight skylines and urban decay and rainy streets at dusk. Some songs have additional cello accompaniment by members of AMBER ASYLUM. Tremendous.

DIMLAIA / SWARRRM split 10" $12.98 Superfi

Seriously can't get enough of Swarrrm, the Japanese indie/grind/noise/pop outfit that we listed as a Featured Release at Crucial Blast several months ago when we got their Nise Kyuseishu Domo CD in stock. Pair 'em up with the moody post-rock/crustcore of Dimlaia, as Superfi Records has done with this killer 10" split, and we're freakin' ecstatic. The Swarrrm side has three new jams of ultra chaotic, ultra melodic insanity that fuses jarring grindcore textures a la a mix of Discordance Axis and Brutal Truth, with epic indie-guitar hooks that continue to remind us of a combination of old Dinosaur Jr., Mono's lonely crescendos, and Envy, complete with singer Hidaka's shrieking, crazed, incomprehensible demon-possession vocals that often break down into fits of coughing, a seemingly drunken emotional breakdown over a crushing art-grind assault. Awesome, powerful stuff, so beautiful and catchy as killer jangly melodies are matched up with total manic blastbeat drumming and shredded electronic noise.
The Dimlaia side is a bit heavier and more Neurosis-esque than the stuff we heard on their full length album on Life Is Abuse, but still manages to effectively bridge the gap between the gloomy crust/metal of Dimlaia bassist Carl Auge's former band His Hero Is Gone, and grandiose Temporary Residence style post-rock. The sole track on their side of this 10" is called "A Light In August", mixing an almost Codeine style slow-core melody with surging, heavy distorted guitars and electronic drones that hum endlessly in the background. It's a richly detailed song, and fans of artful, post-Neurosis heaviness will love it. The record is pressed on thick solid white vinyl, and is presented in a beautiful gatefold jacket illustrated with watercolor paintings from Auge.

DINOSAUR JR Beyond CD $13.98 Fat Possum

I still can't believe that this is actually sitting here in my hands. Dinosaur Jr. is one of my all-time favorite bands, and when the band reunited with the original SST-era lineup a few years ago, I thought I was dreaming. Sure, I saw Dino Jr. back in the 90's, but that was with the Green Mind lineup, which we all know was pretty much Masic running Dinosaur Jr. as an overblown solo project. I never got to see 'em with Lou Barlow and Murph in the band, and we all know that it was the first three albums that really ruled, when the band tapped into their crushing hybrid of post-punk, Mascis' weird take on country rock, crunchy metal riffs, hardcore, and psychedelia. So here we have Dinosaur Jr. back together again with the original lineup, and anybody that's seen 'em on their comeback tours can attest that these guys still have it, belting out an earbleeding set that sounds like they never left. I've seen 'em twice since they've gotten back together, and both shows were near-religious experiences for me. So of course when Dino announced that they had a brand new album in the works, my expectations were really on fire. What in the hell was new music from these guys going to sound like, after all of these years and all of the whack drama that has gone down with Barlow and Masic over the years. I think alot of people were honestly shocked when Beyond came out earlier this year and fucking straight-up timewarped us back to, well, not quite classic Dinosaur Jr., but definitely something close. That's not to say that I don't think that Beyond is awesome; it most definitely is. But it sounds more like Green Mind/Where You Been era Dino than any of the first three SST albums, which is what alot of us were secretly hoping for...you know, like they were going to come out with You're Living All Over Me Part II. But they didn't, and I can honestly say that I'm totally in love with the album that they did come out with. Beyond has everything I love about mid-era Dino, the majestic pop songs hidden underneath some pretty mighty riffage, J.'s soaring solos that are still totally unmatched, the chugging metallic crunch of songs like "Pick Me Up" and "It's Me"...and then there are the two songs that Lou Barlow wrote and sings on, "Back to Your Heart" and "Lightning Bulb", both terrific. I don't know what else to say about this album...if you're a Dinosaur Jr. fan, espcially one from back in the day, this might affect you as deeply as it did me. It's certainly the best album the band has released since Bug, and by any standard, it kicks the shit out of anything calling itself "indie rock" nowadays. Highly, highly recommended.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Almost Ready" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "I Got Lost" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "It's Me" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Pick Me Up" (excerpt)

DINOSAUR JR. Green Mind LP $18.98 Rhino

Personally, there's no other vinyl re-issue that I have been anticipating as eagerly as this new Rhino re-issue of Dinosaur Jr.'s Green Mind. This was the first album of Dinosaur Jr.'s that I had ever heard, and from the first notes of opener "The Wagon", I was hooked for life. Originally released back in 1991, Green Mind was the band's debut album for major label Sire after a trio of classic, seminal records on SST. "The Wagon" itself is one of Dinosaur Jr.'s all time greatest songs, a ferociously upbeat metallic indie pop crusher with one of the greatest pop hooks of all time, gobs of massive distortion, and a joyously crushing extended solo from J. Mascis. The songs that follow include the amazing Neil Young-esque damaged folk rock of "Puke + Cry", the metallic indie pop chugger "Water", and a shitload of joyous, epic melodic guitar soloing that remains unrivaled to this day, combined with an awesome mutation that combines grungy metallic riffing, emotive indie pop, spurts of raging hardcore, and bombastic classic rock. One of my all time favorite albums, perfectly connecting heavy guitar destruction with noisy post-punk playing and a pure pop heart. Yes, this is pretty pricey, but it's on high quality 180 gram remastered vinyl, and as a diehard Dino fan, I think it's worth every penny. Highly recommended.

DINOSAUR JR. Where You Been LP $18.98 Rhino

Listening to this new vinyl re-issue of Dinosaur Jr.'s amazing Where You Been immediately transports me back to 1993, when Dino Jr. was my favorite band in the world and an entire summer was spent playing this album nonstop. Where You Been was the perfect soundtrack to rural teenage yearning and stoned slackerdom, with more than one long night spent blasting the cassette out of a beat up boombox in the middle of some field under the stars. Then, the first time I ever got to see Dino Jr. live was on the tour for this album, and I can still say that it was one of the most ecstatic musical moments I have ever had in my life, getting blasted by J Mascis' soaring, freaked out guitar shredding in an open field with several thousand other slobs, the band looking like they were 20 feet tall on that stage, bashing out a blisteringly loud and heavy assault of indie metal anthems stretching back to Your're Living All Over Me. Total bliss. Now, while Green Mind and Bug were (and always will be) my favorite Dinosaur Jr. albums, I was still completely and totally in love with Where You Been when this came out. J.'s guitar heroics are more focused and overtly melodic here, and the riffs on this album are some of the catchiest and most accessible the band have ever executed. Songs like "What Else Is New" perfectly combine glorious indie pop with 70's rock balladry , complete with orchestral strings and pounding tympani drums, while "On The Way" leads a wah-drenched hardcore punk charge with fuzzed-to-oblivion psych leads and an obliterting pop hook. "Not The Same" closes out side 1 with a soul crushingly beautiful, reverb heavy folk rock lament with J. channeling Neil Young. "Drawerings" features the albums best moment of crushing heaviosity, with a monstrous chugging metal riff popping up suddenly in the middle of a bed of pure guitar pop. Mascis and company then plow into a wall of dense guitar noise pop/hardcore power with more scorching solos in "Hide". All of these songs are amazingly catchy, and speaker shreddingly loud, the entire album is a fucking MIGHTY blast of hardcore punk, sludgy metal, classic rock, indie pop, and country/folk. Still one of my favorite bands ever, and one of my fave albums from them. Totally essential. This re-issue is on thick, high quality 180g remastered Vinyl. Kinda pricey, yes, but those are the knocks when dealing with vinyl re-issues from a release licensed from Warner Brothers.

DISASSOCIATE Symbols, Signals & Noise LP $9.98 Devestating Soundworks

One of my favorite albums of all time! Man, it's seriously hard for me not to gush about how awesome I think this album is, but Symbols, Signals, And Noise has got to be one of the most ferocious, crushing, and adventuorus crustcore albums ever released. Formed in 1992, Disassociate merged ridiculously brutal metallic hardcore, grind, Discharge-style thrash, sludge, weird samples and swirling spacey electronic noise into a nuclear assault that to this day is impossible to compare to any other band. Live, they were a like an LSD fueled psychotropic blast vision, setting up multiple TV sets on stage that transmitted strobing images of neon pot leafs and pentagrams, and the band would sometimes come out in luchador masks or other headgear. Disassociate's burly dreadlocked singer Ralphie Boy possessed one of the most monstrous grindcore roars ever, too. I've seen these guys a bunch, and every show had them storming through walls of chaotic blastbeats, ripping thrash and doomy sludge. So awesome. Yet as blasting and brutal and sludgy as Disassociate got, they were also one of the catchiest grindcore bands ever, which is exemplified with their 1998 full-length Symbols, Signals & Noise. Hands down one of my favorite albums ever, this fifteen-track rager is right up there with Brutal Truth's best in terms of catchiness, heaviness, and experimentation that completely works. These songs are immense: "Blood In My Eye" has one of the most infectious breakdown riffs of all time, and a grooving chorus that is instantly unforgettable, and elsewhere the band launches into ultra catchy hardcore punk that has some of the greatest hooks you'll ever hear from a grind band. The last track on the album is a contorted dum n' bass remix of "Blood In My Eye", and i