TITLES: E

EARLY HUMANS self-titled CD $9.98 Wantage USA

EARLY HUMANS inject some wiry DC hardcore muscle into the Gravity Records sound and pretty it up with post-rock strum and chime. Indeed, this eponymous disc seamlessly combines killer melodic hooks that timewarp me back to 1992, circa Novelty, awesomely pretty piano parts + mathy guitar instrumentals, and wiry fury a la Angel Hair or Antioch Arrow. CD package is totally silkscreened. Tight!

EARTH Extra-Capsular Extraction LP $12.98 Sub Pop

Sub Pop finally got their act together and re-issued this long-outta print, mega influential debut from legendary drone metallers Earth on vinyl. Extra-Capsular's throbbing dirge drone is just as crushing as when it first surfaced in 1991, a towering 32 minute amp trance schooled in the minimalism of Terry Riley and the grim chugalug of Iommi's heaviest metallic riffing. Split into 3 tracks, "A Bureaucratic Desire For Revenge Parts 1 & 2", and "Ouroboros Is Broken", Earth coil their hypnotic serpentine sludge mantra around plodding, elephantine drums, weird jaguar-like screams, huge menacing gong crashes, and transcendental casio drones. Extra-Capsular Extraction features the original Earth lineup of Dylan Carlson on guitar and vocals, Dave Harwell on bass, and Joe Preston of Melvins/Thrones/High On Fire/The Whip on bass and percussion, with appearances from Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and Kelley Canary from Dickless. This slab is an undisputed classic in the drone dirge doom field, a precursor not only to the band's masterpiece Earth 2 which would follow in 1993, but also to the slow motion tectonic heaviosity of bands like Sunn O))), Corrupted, Boris, Khanate, and Pelican. The sleeve for this re-issue has all of the original psychedelic medical imagery and surgical text. Magical, meditative, and bone crushingly heavy. Essential.

EARTH Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method CD $14.98 Southern Lord

The long-awaited new album from seminal drone heavies Earth opens with something akin to a spaghetti western fugue, massive and stretched out, spacey and spacious, a druggy western/post-rock dirge that's dreamy but desolate, ominous and shuffling, a deeply mesmerizing meditation of simple,spare drumming and heavily reverbed, heavy but not "metal", guitars (including lapsteel), all unfolding into a haunted ghost town lament and twangy desert post-rock. Very beautiful and slow and mysterious, like Codeine and Calexico, Low and Sixteen Horsepower, a western Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emporer , that sort of clean, undistorted-but-heavy, emotionally heavy, combined with Ennio Morricone style invocations. Uncoiling melodies dissipate across darkened crimson skies, and mighty swells of instrumental gloom shake under the dust of ages. Listening to this conjures images of scorpions resting on sun baked rocks, of tumbleweeds and rusted out cars, rural decay and wide open skies as far as the eye can see. A whole new type of heavy, droning Americana. Fans of Earth's earlier, heavier drone metal may be baffled by Hex, but for those of us who are just as much in love with Earth's Thrones and Dominions and Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons albums, where Dylan Carlson and company began charting more melodic, post-rock/psychedelic waters, this feels like a natural evolution, a breathtaking new chapter in Earth's storied career, and is just as heavy as anything that has come before. Highly recommended.

EARTH Hibernaculum CD+DVD $15.98 Southern Lord

Hibernaculum is a beautifully packaged new CD/DVD set that continues to explore the incredible country-western post-rock of last years Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method, which took the group in an exciting new direction, sounding like some windswept combination of Low and Ennio Morricone, but still rooted in the spacious drone. On the CD portion of the set, Earth mastermind Dylan Carlson (along with Earth drummer Adrienne Davies, bassist Don Mcgreevy, and an assortment of guest apppearances from Steve Moore, Randall Dunn, and Sunn O)))'s Greg Anderson) re-approaches three classic Earth songs from their earlier drone-metal albums and performs them in the style of Hex, turning the heavy riffage and rumbling amp drones of the originals into stark, twangy epics. If yer a long-time Earth fan like me and dug Hex as much as we did here at C-Blast, hearing the Earth classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" (from 1991's Extra-Capsular Extraction) and "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" (from 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons) refitted as slowly unwinding western epics is pretty breathtaking. There's also "Miami Morning Coming Down", a more obscure Earth track that originally appeared on the 1997 compilation Scatter, which becomes equally desolate and gorgeous. The final track on the CD is a new mix of "A Plague of Angels", a 16-minute twilight desert saga which had been previously released on a super-rare, tour-only split 12" with Sunn O))). It's good to heave that one available on disc since I never had a chance to get close to the vinyl release - it's one of Earth's most beautiful pieces. And I love the instrumentation on all of these interpretations, too; Dylan Carlson's twangy, slow-motion Morricone guitar lines sound even more beautiful and dusty when joined with the sounds of a Hammond organ and trombone. An excellent collection of beautiful, heavy darkness.
Additionally, Hibernaculum includes a DVD disc that makes this even more essential for longtime Earth fans. It's a documentary film titled Within The Drone which was filmed during a European tour with Earth and Sunn O))) in 2006 by noted designer and artist Seldon Hunt. The film contains lots of terrific live footage of Earth in various European cities, intercut with atmospheric scenes from the countryside in winter, and intimate interviews with Dylan Carlson that bring up the band's origins, the inspiration that Indian music and classic minimalists like LaMonte Young have had on Earth, the stylistic shift between Pentastar and Hex, and more. Pretty insightful stuff that reveals alot about Earth that I wasn't aware of, and which also shows Carlson to be a cool, soft-spoken guy that is firmly dedicated to his art.Hibernaculum set comes in a full color double-disc case with a booklet featuring some absolutely gorgeous woodland photography from Seldon Hunt that is a perfect accompaniment to Earth's shimmering, hypnotic instrumentals. Highly recommended!

EARTH Hibernaculum LP $15.98 Southern Lord

Hibernaculum is now available on 180 gram clear vinyl! A beautifully packaged LP that continues to explore the incredible country-western post-rock of last years Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method, which took the group in an exciting new direction, sounding like some windswept combination of Low and Ennio Morricone, but still rooted in the spacious drone. Earth mastermind Dylan Carlson (along with Earth drummer Adrienne Davies, bassist Don Mcgreevy, and an assortment of guest apppearances from Steve Moore, Randall Dunn, and Sunn O)))'s Greg Anderson) re-approaches three classic Earth songs from their earlier drone-metal albums and performs them in the style of Hex, turning the heavy riffage and rumbling amp drones of the originals into stark, twangy epics. If yer a long-time Earth fan like me and dug Hex as much as we did here at C-Blast, hearing the Earth classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" (from 1991's Extra-Capsular Extraction) and "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" (from 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons) refitted as slowly unwinding western epics is pretty breathtaking. There's also "Miami Morning Coming Down", a more obscure Earth track that originally appeared on the 1997 compilation Scatter, which becomes equally desolate and gorgeous. The final track on the LP is a new mix of "A Plague of Angels", a 16-minute twilight desert saga which had been previously released on a super-rare, tour-only split 12" with Sunn O))). It's good to heave that one available on this new LP since I never had a chance to get close to the original vinyl release - it's one of Earth's most beautiful pieces. And I love the instrumentation on all of these interpretations, too; Dylan Carlson's twangy, slow-motion Morricone guitar lines sound even more beautiful and dusty when joined with the sounds of a Hammond organ and trombone. An excellent collection of beautiful, heavy darkness.
The Hibernaculum vinyl comes in a full color, heavy 350g jacket with a full color insert jacket that has all of Seldon Hunt's beautiful photos from the original CD/DVD set. Highly recommended!
MP3 SAMPLE: "Ouroboros Is Broken " (excerpt)

EARTH Legacy of Dissolution CD $13.98 No Quarter

Killer remix album for cult sludge/drone gods Earth features a variety of rethink from some heavy hitting names like Autechre, Mogwai, Jim O'Rourke, Sunn O))), and Russell Haswell. These contributors take the original forms of Earth's slo-mo trance metal, ranging from Mogwai's guitar obliteration and fried electronica infection of "Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine", turning the original into a muggy, melodic post-rock mutation, to Russell Haswell's appropriation of "Tibetan Quaaludies (Waveset Sloth Mix)" which turns into a razorblade powerdrone infinitely more evil than the album version. Autechre's take on "Coda Maestoso In F(Flat) Minor" barely changes the original, instead opting to embellish the track with extremely subtle variations and augmentations, slightly affecting the drums and tweaking the flow with a great deal of reverence. Justin Broadrick (of Godflesh, Jesu, and Final) delivers our favorite remix, an angelic devolvement of "Harvey", turning the song into one of Broadrick's heavenly blasts of chorale-esque dirge sweetness. Other standouts include Sunn O)))'s crushing blackened redux of "Rule The Divine" and Jim O'Rourke's stop n' go post-rock blur of "THrones And Dominions". Pretty essential for Earth fans, we think.

EARTH Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword CD $11.98 Troubleman Unlimited

Ah, Earth. We've watched this legendary iconoclastic dronemetal project evolve from the lumbering amplifier mantras of their 90's catalog into their current incarnation as a kind of windswept, glacially-paced Americana post-rock that has been captured on Earth's amazing Hex and Hibernaculum albums. When the reissue of Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars materialized in 2002, Earth revived itself from years of hibernation and hit the road with guitarist/mastermind Dylan Carlson being accompanied by drummer Adrienne Davies for a tour of the US and Europe, and this 2-track album from 2005 documents a set of in-the-moment performances from Earth from when they cruised through NYC in September of 2002. While some may have been disappointed in the fact that, at the time that this was released, the only new Earth that we were getting at the time was in the shape of live releases, like the Sunn Amps reissue, that doomed release on Autofact, and this particular platter which came out shortly before Hex did. I definitely wasn't complaining though...as a matter of fact, both Sunn Amps and this album are two of my favorite recordings from Dylan Carlson and company - live, his sludgy, leaden dirges really sprawl out, and there is an uncontrolled, electrical quality to live Earth that I really dig. Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword opens with "Dissolution III", a nearly 15-minute solo jam with Dylan strangling his guitar and melting down into a Quaalude feasting, stumbling free-dirge that went down at the WNYU radio station. Sorta sounds like Derek Bailey with massive metal amplification. Then it's off to the title track, a monolithic hour long dirge from a performance at the Knitting Factory, with Davis propelling Carlson's grooving, hypnotic riffage with spare, heavy drumming. This is more like the kind of stuff that Earth was doing on the Pentastar album, heavy and dirgey but really catchy and trance inducing too, a darkly evocative riff winding over and over and around ringing open chords, somewhere in between Tony Iommi and a Crazy Horse jam but slowed way down and basking in a subterranean glow. This disc is an excellent companion piece to Earth's studio catalog, with what is probably the longest Earth jam ever committed to disc!
MP3 SAMPLE: "Living In The Gleam Of An Unsheathed Sword" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Dissolution III" (excerpt)

EARTH Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons LP $12.98 Sub Pop

Earth's 1996 full length Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons was the last they did for Sub Pop, and was the final studio album from the band before they were resurrected via the Southern Lord/Sunn O))) contingent. It was also their most maligned album, written off as Dylan Carlson's attempt at a more accessible, alt-rock direction for the project in the wake of the beatless drone-Metal heaviosity of Earth's previous albums. And this definitely is an evolution in the band's sound, with a full band backing up Carlson's heavy riffage, and the addition of vocals and a cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Peace In Mississippi". But when absorbed as a single block of sound, Pentastar is also one of Earth's most otherworldly albums, still possessed by the almighty DRONE; just witness the way that the narcoleptic hypno-blues of "High Command" flows seamlessly into the almost Tangerine Dream like drone majesty of "Crooked Axis For String Quartet". Or the sudden Sabbathian riff-trance of "Tallahassee" merging into "Charioteer (Temple Song)" and it's repetitious, haunting raga/folk drone. Even the Hendrix cover is imbued with Earth's mastery of the hypnotic, repetitive riff, turning it into a lumbering slab of fried trance rock, before giving way to the lengthy minimalist piano composition "Sonar And Depth Charge", and finally closing out on "Coda Maestoso In F (flat) Minor", the massive instrumental riff from the album's opening track laced with Hammond-sounding organs and a killer Metal solo. Even though I always did like this album, which I thought was a precursor to the heavy, hypnotic, trancey rock outfits like Pharoah Overlord and Los Natas that would appear several years later, Pentastar does make more sense now when viewed as the lead-up to Earth's awesome Hex album. An underrated classic. This vinyl re-issue comes in a full color jacket with B&W insert sheet.

EARTH Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions 2xLP $15.98 Sub Pop

Vinyl re-issue of the drone metal classic!
One of my all-time favorite Earth albums, Phase 3: Thrones And Dominions is finally back in print after an extended stay in OOP territory. With Phase 3, Earth bridged the glacial amplifier drone of Earth 2 and the heavy hypno-rock of Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons to form a powerful collection of jams, including the joyous ambient sludge-pop of "Harvey" (which is one of my favorite Earth songs EVER!), the hypnotic, monolithic dronemetal of "Tibetan Quaaludes", and the megadistorted, slomo prairie laments of 'Lullaby (take 2:How Dry I Am), 'Song 4', and 'Song 6 (chime)', all of which provides a direct line to the droning Americana that Earth would perfect with Hex. Also on this album is 'Site Specific Carnivorous Occurance', a mighty 9 minute free-drone-rock jam that marries mind-blotting feedback drone with gorgeous exploratory guitar, 'Phase 3: Agni Detonating over the Thar Desert...'s dreamy, miasmic waves of speaker hiss, and the fourteen minute sludge-raga majesty of 'Thrones And Dominions'. Phase 3 is in many ways Earth at it's most melodic, offering up some of the catchiest, most memorable hooks of their existence, riding on top of room-shaking, speaker-rumbling dronesludge. An undeniable classic in the drone Metal pantheon: absolutely, unquestionably essential to fans of Earth and heavy drone rock, period.

EARTH Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars Live CD $13.98 No Quarter

One of the few non-Sub Pop releases from Earth that came out before their resurrection around the turn of the century, Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars documents a live set from Earth recorded in May 1995 at Disobey Club in London which was originally released by Blast First in an edition of 500 copies, which went out of print ages ago. This live set features the Earth duo lineup of Dylan Carlson and Ian Dickson performing "Ripped On Fascist Ideas", a 30 minute odyssey of melodic sludgy guitar riffage, Earth 2 era amplifier rumble, and disembodied Lynyrd Skynyrd "Freebird" motifs filling the air with leaden distortion, which becomes more and more abstract and deconstructed as it grinds on, becoming a massive blur of glacial roar. A holy grail of epic dronemetal.
As havy as that live jam is, though, it's the addition of the four previously unreleased demo tracks from 1990 that make this No Quarter re-issue totally essential to Earth fans. These early demos ("Geometry Of Murder", "German Dental Work", "Divine And Bright", and "Dissolution 1") are from the Carlson/Dave Harwell/Joe Preston (of Thrones/Melvins/Harvey Milk/High On Fire fame!) lineup, and "Divine And Bright" features stoney vocals from Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and wicked shrieks from Kelly Canary. We're HUGE fans of the really early Earth stuff, when they were still really melodic and almost poppy at times, yet freaking incredibly sludgy and heavy and Melvins-like, all super distorted, droning and dirgey, with huge booming slowmo drumming and formless melodic riffage spreading out in all directions, guitars and bass bathed in fuzz, all instrumental except for the aforementioned "Divine And Bright". And like the might Extra Capsular Extraction, these early demo recordings rank as some of our fave Earth recordings ever.

EARTH 2: Special Low Fequency Version 2xLP $15.98 Sub Pop

The long awaited double LP re-issue of Earth's drone metal magnum opus Earth 2, a sprawling, hour-plus long amplifier ritual of the Special Low Frequency Version. This is the album that influenced the genesis of Sunn O))), not to mention the flood of newer heavy ur-metal outfits that have shambled over extended downtuned guitar chords throughout the past decade. This is still the definitive meditation on extended ambient riffage though, with Earth visionary Dylan Carlson combining his winding, downtuned and complex ultra-slow-motion Sabbath riffing with hypnotic cyclical drone cribbed from Terry Riley, Tony Conrad, and other 60's drone minimalists, mighty menacing riffs pulled taffy-like over a swirling, rumbling sea of humming amplifier feedback and distortion. A total classic, essential for fans of heavy dronedom like Phil Niblock, Sunn O))) (who went so far as to refer to themselves as an Earth tribute band back when they were first starting out), Old Man Gloom, Black Boned Angel and Birchville Cat Motel, Fall Of The Grey Winged One, Growing, Maeror Tri and Troum, as well as everyone into the megasludge of Corrupted, older Boris, Thrones, Melvins, Harvey Milk, and Orthodox ! Presented as a double LP vinyl repress. Essential!

EARTHRIDE Vampire Circus CD $14.98 Southern Lord

Hell yeah! OK, EARTHRIDE are local guys (hailing from Frederick, Maryland, which is just a few minutes down the road from Crucial Blast HQ), we've seen 'em numerous times, we had them on our Doom Capital compilation we did back in 2004....needless to say, we're big EARTHRIDE fans, and Vampire Circus just delivers more of the crushing biker doom these guys are such fucking masters of. This album does sound a lot heavier than past stuff though, probably in large part due to the presence of Mike Dean from CORROSION OF CONFORMITY as producer. Featuring members of SPIRIT CARAVAN and INTERNAL VOID, EARTHRIDE is Maryland Doom at its most grungy, dropping dank Black Sabbath meets Lynyrd Skynyrd riffs and fronted by our buddy Dave Sherman, whose gnarly blown-throat growl still resembles Lemmy from MOTORHEAD after smoking a carton of cigs in 20 minutes. Total battering-ram rock. Hell yeah. And dig that killer Hammond organ on "Dirtnap" and "Swamp Witch", courtesy of Mick Schauer from CLUTCH, blasting those tunes with some rich Deep Purple/Edgar Winter vibes. The whole thing reeks of primo 70's dirtbag metal caked in sludge. Totally essential to doom fans and sludge rock cretins.

EARWIGS / SONIC DISORDER The 7" That Fucks Like A 12" 7" EP $8.98 RRRecords

Freaked out noisecore damage straight out of 1995! RRRon gives us all the finger and delivers two sides of heavy noise on a single black 7" with nada on the center labels, so you'll need to be well versed in your junknoise to identify the transgressors in movement here. The A-side rocks "Alien Magnetism" from The Earwigs, the electronic space-noise/vomit goof/oscillator psych beast that has been the product of Bizarre Charlie Alien's warped brain since the dawn of the '90's. Dense, psychedelic distortion flares and rhythmic grinding pulses, like Bastard Noise and the sound effects from the old arcade game Pole Position moving through rivers of syrup. Sonic Disorder follow up on side 2 with a delirious lo-fi collage of broken shortwave signals, kiddie songs sung by goblins, and wormy, mewling feedback and vocal noises. It's actually pretty damn creepy, like listening to the Conet Project if it was beamed in from one of Jan Svankmeyer's bizarre puppet worlds. Yes, this is a 7" EP, but it's packaged in a recycled 12" size sleeve with multiple inserts, hence the higher price for postage. The sleeves are jacked from assorted old LPs and are assembled with duct tape, much like RRR's Recycled Music Series cassettes, and each sleeve is an entirely unique construction. Limited edition of 227 copies.

E.B.S. Destroy Your Enemy LP $7.98 Vicious Interference

OUT OF PRINT.Hailing from Florida, this early 90's band delivered some of the most brutal and overlooked East Coast grind/powerviolence from the past decade, as well as offending everyone with their antagonistic and hateful lyrics. Like it brutal and pissed off? Not for the PC. Think INFEST with GG ALLIN sensibilities. Total hate.

ECSTATIC SUNSHINE s/t CD-R $9.98

A sold-out tour-only CD-R release from Baltimore's Ecstatic Sunshine that we managed to get a very small quantity of for Crucial Blast. I've been in love with this band since I saw them open for Earth about a year ago in Baltimore; just two dudes, Matt Papich and Dustin Wong, playing two guitars through two amps, and soaring through joyous, spazzy, fastpaced guitar instrumentals that remind me of a super catchy indie/hardcore band, like old school Dinosaur Jr. at their poppiest, ripped free from the constraints of a rhythmic backline and jettisoned into the ether, their clean, undistorted guitars interlocking into complex melodic minatures and then untangling again to race off in different directions.
This tour CD-R features a bunch of re-recorded songs off of their "Spiral" CD-R, with titles like "Wavechop", "Crystal In The Sky", "Ramontana", and "Perrier", clockwork jams of beatless melodic 'core and Allman Brothers merging with free-floating SST Records dreams. Packaged in a flashy screenprinted oversize wallet, and hand-numbered out of 50 copies !!!

EEYOW KAROOM Message From The Zodiac CD-R $11.98 Suggestion

Another much-needed dose of brutal distortion blather from that UK fright mutant Eeyow Karoom, whose past power skuzz we've dug mightily, ESPECIALLY when you bring up his mighty hypno skullfuck squad Cosmonauts Hail Satan, whose retarded noise rock trances are frequently blasted here at C-Blast HQ. With Message From The Zodiac, Karoom emits more of the ear destroying feedback skree and death storm that was slathered all over the Aggro Stations series he did(also released on the Suggestion imprint), this time tho revolving around the Zodiac Killer letters. It's fittingly sinister stuff, nine devilish and droning tracks of mean Broken Flag-meets Deathpile style speaker burn encoded in pure malevolence. It's a harrowing 45 minutes of horrific, massively distorted electric gristle, pure cranium shaving shit, with Eeyow's vocal vomit sounding not unlike Rawhead Rex beaming back verbal sleaze from the 26th Century. The killer packaging ties in with the Zodiac theme: an unassuming manila envelope hand-addressed to the Riverside Police Department contains a nice color digipack w/ disc along with a Zodiac badge, copies of some of the Zodiac's letters, and other xeroxed weirdness. Limited to 60 freakin copies, hand numbered!!!! Def for fans of Deathpile, MSBR, Prurient's harsher stuff, old Marax, brutal scum-drones, neighbor-hating feedback combat, etc.

EIKENSKADEN Black Laments Symphony CD $14.98 Chanteloup

More stunning, utterly freaked black metal from the Chanteloup label. Eikenskaden recently released a new full length on Tumult Records, so you know the "weird" factor is going to be high. What you get is a Burzum-esque primitive wall of fuzz blast of ultra-distorted black metal that's super catchy, with a neo-classical approach to melody. A majestic blast of hooky, distortion-overloaded buzz. Very raw, but really melodic.If you dig the Tumult / Moribund brand of warped black metal (Weakling, Leviathan, Draugur, etc), this is right up your alley.

EL BUZZARD Gringa CD $9.98 Electric Human Project

Man, this album sounds raunchy. Total scum-noise-rock with big fat stoner riffs slung all over the joint like beer in barfight, feedback and blown amps ringing out incessently, as the vocalist barks up what little is left of his throat. These cretins will bang out a Melvins / Karp - style two-chord riff over and over and over again till they're spitting up blood, then turn around and throw out brief blurts of bass drones and tape dropouts to make everything sound even more drugged out than it already does. Utterly damaged sludge rock and heroin punk drone filth thats way noisier and way more fucked than what we remember these guys sounding like a few years ago. These tunes are great, a pill-popping art-damaged mess of prime noise rock/Am Rep sluggin'and sticky sludge riffs n' lysergic classic rock moves, like older Today Is The Day and Eyehategod and Karp duking it out over some Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin covers shot through with weird electronics and bits of noise. The blown production on this mother gives it the scuzzy sheen it requires. We love it!

EL BUZZARD Tranquilizante Del Elefante CD $9.98 Electric Human Project

Translated as "Elephant Tranquilizer", Tranquilizante Del Elefante is the second slugfest from scrappy noise thugs EL BUZZARD, which serves up a mere six songs in eleven minutes, which isn't nearly enough for us. I thought their last one, Gringa, was a fucking awesome barrage of filthy lo-fi dropout sludge in the tradition of FLIPPER and early NIRVANA with about 2 tons of extra noise piled on, and this preceding EP is just as good. Featuring former members of seminal Cali hardcore outfit MOHINDER, EL BUZZARD immolate their trails and fuck things up royally with a drugged out take on post-Amphetimine Reptile rock, everything coated in a sheen of distortion scum and feedback, incoherent throat scraping vocals, the really heavy riffs slowed down a la MELVINS but with more in the way of doped effects splattered over everything. The six songs on this EP are smeared in raunchy crush and the production is really raw and dirty in an 80's hardcore way, but it fits perfectly with their stripped down, down and out, burn it all down attitude. It's the kind of anti-feelgood heaviosity formerly peddled by units like JESUS LIZARD, -16-, EYEHATEGOD, early NIRVANA, TODAY IS THE DAY, KARP, UNSANE, et al, but with their own uniquely diseased lurch. I just listened to this 5 times in a row and I still need more. Comes in jewel case packaging with killer artwork from Sfaustina.

ELECTRIC WIZARD Come My Fanatics CD $14.98 Rise Above

In honor of Electric Wizard's recent induction into the Decibel Magazine "Hall Of Fame", which was just awarded to their milestone album Dopethrone from 2000, we've got all of their crucial deluxe re-issues available through Crucial Blast for you doomhounds that are missing these mighty platters from yer library. Repackaged in sweet digipack cases with enhanced and expanded artwork, brand new liner notes, great photos captured during each album's respective era, and bonus tracks, these Electric Wizard reissues are essential for any real fan of dope-huffing, spine crushing British DOOM.
Not surprisingly, you can pretty much trace the arc of Electric Wizard's long and sloooow descent into hellish satano-hippie debauchery just by checking out the album artwork for each of the reissues that Candlelight recently released here in the US. The band's eponymous debut was an extremely heavy, psychedelic offering that was still firmly rooted in the titanic crawl of Cathedral and Sabbath's long shadow. Jumping ahead to Dopethrone, the bong-sucking devil on the album's cover and it's charred palette of black and gold inks perfectly captures the smoking wreckage of the Wizard's ultimate orgy of stoned doom corrosion. In between the two we've got 1997's Come My Fanatics, and the first time I set eyes on this album (when it was originally released over here in the states as a double-disc set with the self-titled debut), I knew that there was going to be dark shit afoot. Set against a backdrop of Aurora Borealis-esque cosmic haze and a single black planet hanging in the sky, a group of seriously sinister looking dudes in cloaks are engaged in something clearly illicit and/or contributing to the downfall of humanity. Open up the album and your eyes are burned through with a diseased-looking tableaux of lava lamp ooze, and the booklet features assorted images of the members of Electric Wizard in varying stages of utter bakeage along with crude drawings of an acid-head Lucifer, a hookah-sucking chick with the Electric Wiz logo crawling outta her nethers...and that's not even getting to the total bad vibes and grindhouse visions of Come My Fanatics lyrics. The music matches the band's darker outlook, Jus Oborn's detuned guitar suddenly sounds way filthier than it did before, the songs are slower, it sounds like the light is being slowly sucked out of their music as each song progresses. There's more effects abuse too, hinting at the pitch-black psych that would fully blossom on Dopethrone..."Wizard In Black" and "Doom Mantia" especially send the Wiz's black tar riffs through a rippling veil of Hawkwind style warpage. Unquestionably essential for Electric Wizard disciples - even though I already had a copy of the original double disc release, I had to pick this up to replace that nearly worn-out copy AND to dig into the two unreleased bonus tracks on this reish, "Demon Lung" and "Return To The Sun Of Nothingness".

MP3 SAMPLE: "Son Of Nothing" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Wizard In Black" (excerpt)

ELECTRIC WIZARD Dopethrone CD $14.98 Rise Above

In honor of Electric Wizard's recent induction into the Decibel Magazine "Hall Of Fame", whioch was awarded to their milestone album Dopethrone from 2000, we've got all of their crucial deluxe re-issues available through Crucial Blast for you doomhounds that are missing these mighty platters from yer library. Repackaged in sweet digipack cases with enhanced and expanded artwork, brand new liner notes, great photos captured during each album's respective era, and bonus tracks, these Electric Wizard reissues are essential for any real fan of dope-huffing, spine crushing British DOOM.
Like a lot of people, Dopethrone was the album that started it all for me. I can't even remember where I first picked up my copy of Dopethrone, but I do remember that it wasn't because I had already heard the band - nope, it was because of the fucking awesome cover art of Lucifer ripping tubes. That kind of experience just doesn't happen enough these days, you know? I'm talking about when you can pick up an album before hearing mp3s or streams of the music, picking it up purely based on how badass it looks and then just getting blown the fuck away because the music is even more killer than the cover. That's what happened when I tossed this into my stereo for the first time - I had just recently been going through a serious Sabbath / doom kick (which seemed to be the spirit of the time, looking back), and was already thirsting for some really gnarly riffage, but I was thoroughly unprepared for how zonked Electric Wizard were going to sound. The "Reefer Madness" style sample and scuzzy bassline that starts off album opener "Vinum Sabbathi" had me hooked from the first, and when Jus Oborn's distorted megaphone vocals and monstrously detuned guitar kicked in alongside Mark Greening's loose, pummeling drumming, man, I knew that this album was going to be magic. The flow of Dopethrone is perfect too, as the album grinds through the massive skull crush singalong of "Funeralopolis", the epic three-part psych scum freakout of "Weird Tales", "I, Witchfinder", and the title track, the trip gets darker and heavier and more fucked up, the riffs taking on a progressively heavier coating of grime and slime, the lyrics, satanic hippie imagery, pulp fantasy literature and 70's splatter/horror flix references becoming more arcane and trippy. "Rise...black amps will tear the sky...feedback will free your mind and set you free." FUCK YEAH. The band's previous albums were heavy as hell, sure, but for Dopethrone, it sounded like someone took Electric Wizard and dunked them in a vat of cooling tar, then releasing them to crawl through the heaviest, most blown-out Sabbath riffage possible. One of the heaviest doom metal albums of all time. Hell, one of the heaviest albums of all time. Essential. Wizard freaks need this for no other reason than it contains the 15 minute long track "Mind Transferral" which was previously only available on the Japanese import.

MP3 SAMPLE: "We Hate You" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Barbarian" (excerpt)

ELECTRIC WIZARD Electric Wizard CD $14.98 Rise Above

In honor of Electric Wizard's recent induction into the Decibel Magazine "Hall Of Fame", which was just awarded to their milestone album Dopethrone from 2000, we've got all of their crucial deluxe re-issues available through Crucial Blast for you doomhounds that are missing these mighty platters from yer library. Repackaged in sweet digipack cases with enhanced and expanded artwork, brand new liner notes, great photos captured during each album's respective era, and bonus tracks, these Electric Wizard reissues are essential for any real fan of dope-huffing, spine crushing British DOOM.
Originally released in 1995, Electric Wizard's self-titled debut emerged from the pit with an elephantine heaviness that was pretty well unmatched. Available here in the States as a double CD along with 1997's Come My Fanatics, Electric Wizard is finally available as a standalone album in a sweet digipack with all of of Dave Patchett's amazing psychedelic artwork, and with two previously unavailable bonus tracks, "Illimitable Nebulie" and "Mourning Prayer Part 1" from the unreleased Doom Chapter demo. While their debut wasn't nearly as wrecked and planet-crushing as their classic Dopethrone album, this is still a devestating dose of superheavy stoner doom, running the stoned science fiction visions and Lovecraftian nightmares of band leader Jus Oborn through cosmic post-Sabbath stomp and blue-collar nihilism ("But look around you, what have you got / no hope, no future, no fuckin' job..."). Absolute crushing hippie doom from the darkside. Essential.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Devil's Bride" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Mourning Prayer" (excerpt)

ELECTRIC WIZARD Pre-Electric Wizard: 1989-1994 Eternal/Thy Grief Eternal/Lord Of Putrefaction CD $14.98 Rise Above

In honor of Electric Wizard's recent induction into the Decibel Magazine "Hall Of Fame", which was just awarded to their milestone album Dopethrone from 2000, we've got all of their crucial deluxe re-issues available through Crucial Blast for you doomhounds that are missing these mighty platters from yer library. Repackaged in sweet digipack cases with enhanced and expanded artwork, brand new liner notes, great photos captured during each album's respective era, and bonus tracks, these Electric Wizard reissues are essential for any real fan of dope-huffing, spine crushing British DOOM.
It's not really an Electric Wiz album, but Pre-Electric Wizard 1989-1994 is nonetheless a crucial document that fans of the band are going to find pretty indispensible. ESPECIALLY if you were really into the early 90's/Peaceville/UK crust movement that spawned some of the gnarliest doom/sludge metal sounds ever. The music on this disc comes from just that era for the most part, and documents the rare recordings of the three bands that EW mainman Justin Oborn played in and which sowed the seeds that would eventually grow into the satanic drug doom majesty of Electric Wizard.
The saga starts way back in 1989 with Lord Of Putrefaction, a gang of British metal kids fronted by a young Justin Oborn and inspired by bands like Carcass, Celtic Frost, Bolt Thrower, and Napalm Death. The only official Lord Of Putrefaction release was a split album with Mortal Remains on Nuclear Gore Records, and the four tracks from that release are presented here, murky, muddy psychedelic deathsludge with freaked out guitar leads streaking across lethargic death metal syrup, deep grunted vocals, lots of FX on everything. These songs are AWESOME, ultra heavy drug doom a la Disembowelment and Winter.
Lord Of Putrefaction went through a number of linuep changes though, and eventually changed it's name to Thy Grief Eternal, with the three members of LOP shifting gears and switching to an even slower style of doom. Their only recordings were found on the On Blackened Wings demo, and these three tracks are total doom-death, ultra heavy, ultra slow funereal sludge crawl a la Thergothon, insanely heavy with Oborn's vocals less fucked-up and trippy than with his previous band, but still serving up a monstrous mindbending doom assault.
Again, as the three band members from Lord Of Putrefaction and Thy Grief Eternal continues to develop their sound, they opted to change their name yet again, this time to the simpler Eternal. And it's here that the band seems to have upped their intake of mind-altering drugs and Sabbath LPs, creating a brand of grooving, gnarly doom directly descended from Sabbath but heavier, darker, laced with horror movie samples and trippy psychedelia and shifts into bonecrushing riffage, setting the stage for what would become Electric Wizard. Eternal released a demo in 1993 called Lucifer's Children, and it's a direct link to Electric Wizard's self-titled debut, stomping Sabbath worship all the way (there's even a cover of "Electric Funeral" here), and with the sixteen minute space-doom epic "Chrono-Naut" that would later become an Electric Wizard song.
Obviously essential to Electric Wizard fans and extreme doom diehards, packaged in a slick digipack with a booklet loaded with photos, old flyers, liner notes, demo cover artwork, and more!

MP3 SAMPLE: LORD OF PUTREFACTION "Wings Over A Black Funeral" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: THY GRIEF ETERNAL "Swathed In Black" (excerpt)

ELECTRIC WIZARD Supercoven CD $14.98 Southern Lord
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

One of our favorite doom metal bands ever. Crucial early release from the 'WIZ for any of you who haven't picked up this lysergic doom dose dating back to 1998. A cosmic blast of shambling stoner crush, psychedelic and pitch-black, the title track is a masterpiece in the modern Doom Metal canon, total lumbering majesty that stretches out into a free form psych jam, only to followed by one of the WIZARD's most lethal riffs in "Burnout", a riot-inducing biker-psych-doom rave up. Fukkin essential. This version of Supercoven was reissued and remastered by Southern Lord, with two bonus tracks added on, "Wizards Of Gore" from their ultra-rare Live '71 1994 Demo, and their theme song "Electric Wizard" recorded live in Holland. 50+ minutes of raw, mindbending brutal Doom !!!

ELECTRO QUARTERSTAFF Gretzky CD $11.98 Willowtip

The debut album of wildy fucked-up pinball dizziness from the all-instrumental triple-guitar shred ensemble Electro Quarterstaff! That's right, bub, Winnipeg's Electro Quarterstaff employ three axemen in their ranks, along with a drummer who sounds like he's been snorting No-Doz for the past week straight, and there's not a bassist or vocalist in sight. Who needs 'em when Gretzky is all about the shred, the three guitarists spitting off slippery, labyrinthine riffs, 1000mph runs up and down the fretboard, and pinch harmonics everywhere, the different guitar parts layered and intertwined with each other over a blasting, stop-on-a-dime drummer rolling out all kinds of crushing thrash metal drive and complex polyrhythms. An obvious comparison would be The Fucking Champs, but this is like The Fucking Champs combined with Morbid Angel, Gorguts, and early Metallica, the sound of old school thrash being torn apart by the octopoidal tentacles of some tech-prog-shred monstrosity. But even with songs that are made up of countless epic riffs and constantly changing sections, Electro Quarterstaff also know how to keep it catchy and rockin'. Surrounded by the awesome psychedelic paintings of Blaine Throttle, Gretzky also has the Champs-y habit of giving their songs goofy, amusing titles ("The Right To Arm Bears", "Eyepatch Romance", "Something's Awry In The Hetfield Of Dreams"). As complex and tech as this album is, I love how rooted this is in classic Thrash Metal. Those total Bay Area style riffs that serve as the meat of the Quarterstaff's shred tapestries make this an one of my fave instrumental Metal albums, right up there with Suzukiton's Service repair Handbook, Behold...The Arctopus' Nano-Nucleonic, and Hematovore's debut.

ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS The Calocybe Collection CD $14.98 Glass Throat

This is the debut full length from Chet Scott (who is behind one of our favorite drone/kraut/psych/folk outfits, RUHR HUNTER ) and James Woodhead, going under the moniker ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS. Six tracks of haunting, lovely psychedelic drone-folk and epic funeral acoustic strum. Imagine Ennio Marricone's gloomy spaghetti western strings mixed with Alexandro Jodorowsky film score music, or a Victorian-era PINK FLOYD collaboration with a band of woodland gypsies, performing acoustic funeral doom! Hazy strum and string hum floats over environmental recordings of birdsong and chimes, while eerie, moss covered woodland drones build from piano, flutes, throat singing, dulcimer, and more, conjuring images of vast forests of fog-shrouded mushrooms.
Now to the packaging...Glass Throat has designed a beautiful, slightly oversized 6" x 6" gatefold CD package for this (and all of their other new and upcoming releases) that's somewhere between a gatefold CD digipack sleeve type thing, and an LP gatefold sleeve. It folds out to three panels with the disc held inside on a rubber hub. The inner panels are covered in beautifully drawn mushrooms in a dusky woodland scene. This sleeve design and format is quite awesome !

ELMA Reciprocity CD-R $8.98 Neus-318

More all-devouring Japanese harsh noise cut-up, this time from the Tottori-based project Elma. Reciprocity is a 2-track private press CD-r from the intriguing Neus-318 label that we just stumbled across, who have released a sizeable catalog of skull scrambling digital noise carnage and computer drone. Elma definitely falls on the noisier end of that spectrum, with each of the 20+ minute tracks on this disc spewing out a richly detailed vortex of squiggly distortion and granular laser blasts that's as harsh and brutal as any of Merzbow's loudest laptop work. Elma's noise constructs move from dense walls of distortion to dynamic flanger attacks stabbing fields of silence. A solid blast of psychedelic noise punishment that fans of Merzbow, Incapacitants, and the neo-blast of Groyxo will dig. Comes in a jewel case with color cover.

ELODEA Cataclysmic CD $11.98 Basement Apes Industries

Charred, massive dirge-sludge pummel from Slovenia that only occasionally uses the dynamic post-rock trappings typical of most post-NEUROSIS outfits, and instead goes straight for an wickedly doomy, epic trudge rooted just as firmly in the radioactive soil of apocalyptic crustcore. In that sense, this is alot like earlier NEUROSIS, but a bit sludgier and dronier and more straightforward melodically, as ELODEA raise their monumental riffs towards the heavens and wrap them in mathy, melodic guitar lines and heavily layered, almost shoegazey guitars, sometimes speeding up into crushing midtempo parts, sometimes slowing down into syrupy stretches of haunted doom. The few times that ELODEA does move away from the chugging, oppressive heaviness, like in the "Kubernetes vs Qubernetes", they conjure up some really pretty shoegazer textures that almost sound like missing fragments of THE CURE's Disintegration trapped in a miasma of suffocating lava metal. A highlight of the album though is the title track "Cataclysmic", a melancholy guitar/electronics bliss out over the sounds of crashing surf that's dropped right in the middle of the disc. The songs are lengthy exercises averaging 8 minutes in length, with six tracks spread out over 44 minutes.

ELOE OMOE s/t 12" $11.98 Infrasound

I've been cracking my neck to Eloe Omoe consistently ever since we got their brutastic Marauders album on Animal Disguise in stock a coupla months ago. Dishing out a kind of crushing, virtually formless improvised power-sludge, equal parts free jazz, noise rock, and death sludge, the Boston-based duo of bassist Sam Rowell and drummer Tim Leanse whip up these awesome, unnamed monstrosities of spastic uber-detuned bass guitar bleargh and octopoidal free drumming that achieves some beautifully cacophonous heights. Jazzbos might recognize the band name, 'cuz Leanse and Rowell are paying homage to reed player Omoe that did time in Sun Ra's Arkestra, and they pursue a likeminded sense of total freedom, but here it's through a freed river of gooey, garbled metalloid unriffs and splattery drumming. I thought that Marauders sounded like indie-metal monsters Godheadsilo tuning up and freaking out on malfunctioning equipment endlessly, and this self-titled 12" EP achieves the same effect. Released prior to Marauders, we've just gotten some of this crushing platter in for you free-sludge/brown noise freeks, with five tracks labeled by what town it was recorded in, about 20 minutes or so of heavy earthquake jamming, Sam splattering her awesome bass guitar goo and rattling ribcages, drums tumbling down an endless flight of stairs, all captured live with a murky, low fi recording that that turns their already-blown arrhythmic squonk into an even more amophous blob of black tar. Awesome.

EMIL BEAULIEAU America's Greatest Living Noise Artist VHS VIDEOCASSETTE $10.98 RRRecords

Crucial DIY videocassette document from RRR featuring over an hour of live and studio footage of Emil Beaulieau, the nom de plume of RRR founder Ron Lessard. If you don't know, Ron is one of the most imporatn figures in the American noise underground, whose RRRecords has been an ongoing source for the most potent underground sonics since starting in 1980. Anyways, this tape was a must-get for us, as we were witness to one of Emil's joyous sets several years ago at a noise festival in Providence, RI, one of the most purely entertaining "noise" performances I'd ever seen. Beaulieau's weapon of choice is the Minutoli,a mutant customized 4-armed turntable that he uses to project extra-harsh blasts of chaotic screech and trashed-vinyl roar and building-collapsing locked grooves ripped from records that he presses specifically for his live performances, treated slabs of vinyl that have been sanded,melted,drilled,painted,abused...and when he really gets going with the Minutoli , it's like having your head trapped inside of a cement mixer while a dance party is being crammed right up your ass. Totally fucked, spastic turntable apocalypse that's matched with Beaulieau's trademark stand-up comedy/performance art delivery, genuinely funny and weird as he banters with the crowd, attacks his gear from different angles, bobbing and weaving and violently slapping multiple tone arms onto vinyl and generally freaking out. High-adrenaline doofus obliteration, total genius and genuinely "America's greatest living noise artist"! This tape has excerpts from several performances, ranging from multi-camera pro shot footage to camcorder shots of Emil in action. Comes packaged in a hardshell plastic case with full sleeve art. Awesome !! NTSC / North American video systems only, no PAL !

EMIL BEAULIEAU Emil Beaulieau Has A Relapse CD-R $9.98 RRRecords

"The sound of worms as they bore into your head, yeearrgghhh!" That's how loveable noise wizard/turntable butcher Emil Beaulieau introduces this album of death metal/grindcore/harsh noise remixes, and it's pretty incredible shit. I've been digging the recent rash of "remix" albums from Hydra Head that feature an assortment of avant-electronics artists reshaping original music from bands like KNUT, ISIS, and AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED, with the general focus being less on any sort of traditional version of the "remix", and more on the electronics-based artists shaping the raw materials of these metal bands, the riffs and distortion and heaviness, into something totally new and alien. Well, this hour long disc is the grandaddy of that avant-noise/extreme metal remix album aesthetic. Emil Beaulieau Has A Relapse was recorded back in 1997 and commissioned by Relapse Records to feature Emil Beaulieau attacking and reshaping an assortment of nine different bands on the Relapse roster. I'm not sure exactly what the story is behind this, but for whatever reason, Relapse rejected the finished album. Luckily, it's been kept in print through RRRecords though, and it's a good thing for anyone into the realm of extreme metallic heaviness fused to ear shredding noise...this album freaking kills. The general idea is pretty simple: Beaulieau shreds apart original songs from Anal Cunt, Mortician, Brutal Truth, Merzbow, Masonna, Bastard Noise, Exit-13, Deceased, and Neurosis, mutilating each band's song with his instrument of choice, the legendary Minutilo, the four-armed record player that Emil uses to create on-the-spot locked grooves that sound like concrete blocks rubbing up against your eardrums, while he chops up and reassembles segments of song and individual riffs and beats and vocals into unrecognizable blasts of glitched out mutant metal collage. None of the tracks are titled, each one is identified only by the original artist, and I dare you to figure out what songs were used. Emil turns ANAL CUNT's noisecore blast into chirpy chipmunk punk and drowns them in a sea of shrill feedback. Bands like EXIT-13 and MORTICIAN are chopped up and slathered in oceans of white noise, their chugging death/grind stretched out like razor wire. The BRUTAL TRUTH remix starts off with an almost funky industrial breakbeat before it collapses into high speed glitchy grindcore cut-up that reminds me of JESUS OF NAZARETH, or maybe a rawer, more barbaric PHANTOMSMASHER. The NEUROSIS remix is an impressively caustic, glitched-to-oblivion apocalyptic dirge that opens up in the middle to reveal a crackling funeral fugue before being swept up again in an electrified hellstorm, the result sounding almost like blurred isolationist black metal or THE ANGELIC PROCESS' dark, beautiful smears of hiss. Emil's reworking of the MERZBOW, BASTARD NOISE and MASONNA pieces pile on even more distortion and locked-groove abuse, making those tracks even more spastic and heavy than their original configuration. But the DECEASED remix on here is by far my favorite, a 10 minute epic that loops a recurring clean, melodic guitar arpeggio over manically spliced-together overmodulated death metal that somehow turns into a WHITEHOUSE-meets-Krautrock style ultra noisy, hypnotic rhythmic jam. Awesome! This is an excellent collection of industrialized metallic rethink that was way ahead of it's time, and still posesses the power to deflesh on the spot. Definitely one of my favorite Emil Beaulieau releases ever!!! Comes packaged in the RRR style xerox-mutated sealed wallet sleeve, the silver disc blank except for a small colored label affixed to the top. Highly recommended !!!!

EMIL BEAULIEAU / BAAL BAAL remixes Emil Beaulieau: Fortean Times CD-R $9.98 RRRecords

BAAL's thunderously loud reworks of loveable noise wizard Emil Beaulieau start this disc off with super brutal blocks of infernal white noise and throbbing distortion overload, sounding like the Earth's shuddering death spasm as it's caught in the traction of an interplanetary death ray, as panicky, broken voice transmissions come in from deep space warning us of impending annihilation. The first track delivers these heavy bursts of freeform electronic violence intercut with tape recordings of somebody's extremely pissed off neighbor screaming threats, and this style of brutal and aggressive cut-up continues through the first half of the disc. The final two tracks, however, are 11+ minute collages of BAAL's screeching electronic power spliced with lopsided rhythmic robot-toy marches that being to mind Dutch loop punks DEAD HUSBANDS on a heavy power electronics bender. The whole album is pretty engaging and dynamic, the tracks constantly change form and swoop through an industrial, Tetsuo style dreamscape. The CD-R comes packaged in the signature RRR style xerox-mutated sealed wallet sleeve, the silver disc completely blank save for a single small abstract label affixed to the top.

ENCOMIAST Espera CD $11.98 H/S Recordings

Ever since seeing ENCOMIAST live a few years ago and getting turned on to their CD releases, they have remained one of our favorite drone/ambient outfits for the attention to detail and tension-building structures that permeate their performances and releases. ENCOMIAST’s 2003 full length Espera offers seven of the drone outfits bleakest and most glacial ambience yet, finding Ross Hagen and company building exquisite ambient drones and icy humming like wind coursing through an abandoned underground factory, filled with rich layers of reverb-saturated synth burn and ominous metallic echoes decaying into darkness. Dense and threatening and beautiful. Another reason we love ENCOMIAST so much is the use of flute. While not as omnipresent on this album, track seven, “Kannelyre”, showcases Megan Garland’s flute playing which adds a new level of frozen majesty to these deep-floating cavern drones. Excellent. For fans of Lustmord, Robert Rich, and Raison D’Etre, the Aural Hypnox family of ritual cave drones, as well as the ambient drift of LULL and SLEEP RESEARCH FACILITY.

ENVENOMIST Abyssal Siege CD $7.98 Troniks

Envenomist is another alter ego for David Reed, whose ambient deathdrone work with Luasa Raelon has been lauded in the halls of C-Blast for awhile now. Abyssal Siege is the first 'real' CD from Envenomist after a rash of tapes and CD-R releases, and is divided into four tracks that average about nine minutes each. Much like Luasa Raelon, the sound here is heavy, deep, cold, black drone, the drifting of glacial minor key synthesizer fugues and majestic bass-heavy drones that seep across the bottom of deep sea canyons and through enormous cavern systems below the Earth's surface. The menacing squid tentacles that creep across the sleeve's cover and track titles like 'Ensnarled', 'Siege', and 'Titans' evoke Lovecraftian visions of ancient horrors sleeping and dreaming beneath the surface, but Envenomist's black drone is more minimalist than the heavy ritual drone of Aural Hypnox artists, who evoke those same types of images. But the final track 'Titans' is a real crusher, a grim dronescape of distorted synth riff heavy enough to sound like doom metal guitars floating over an icy waste of metallic whirr, monolithic prayer bowl tones, and dying machine pulses. Makes me think of a synthetic version of early Earth dronemetal mixed with Lustmord's classic dark isolationism. Awesome. COmes packaged in a trademark Troniks wallet sleeve.

ENCOMIAST Winter's End CD $11.98 Lens

Winter’s Enbd is the 2001 debut from ENCOMIAST, one of our favorite drone-ambient outfits. Firmly situated next to mid-90’s dronescapers like Robert Rich, LUSTMORD, and Thomas Koner, this is supreme glacial isolationism, super slow moving melodic repetition buried and drifting, with wordless vocals floating through the ether. Ominous and beautiful and brooding, formed almost exclusively from richly textured layers of icy synthesizers. Like the title suggests, these dronescapes imagine dark, wintry wastes and frozen cave chambers, with minimalist melodies hanging suspended like icicles over the crawling fog of deep tones. Monastic chants drift through “If I Dream I Have You”, and “Without Fear Of Wind Or Vertigo” exposes minimal piano and soaring female vocals. Ancient organs keen sadly in the shadows. Gorgeous.

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN TRAITORS Discography CD $11.98 Shove

Italian import discography/anthology CD of hyperpolitical speedthrash/post-rock/screamy hardcore action from this short-lived late 90's Pennsylvania outfit. Culled from the bands 7" EPs (including splits with KWISATZ HADERACH and ORCHID ) as well as comp tracks, you get fourteen tracks of insane hardcore, brutal blastbeat action, tribal percussion workouts, ominous jangly instrumentals, unnerving electronic noise, and fronted by one of the most sicko singers we've ever heard...seriously, the guy's voice is at the bleeding point start-to-finish, totally shredded. Disharmonic and technical, kids used to call this "emoviolence". Yeah, dumb, but this shit rages nonetheless. There's even a killer cover of SABBATH's "Paranoid" at the end as a hidden track, and it CRUSHES.

ENEMA SYRINGE Screaming Fish 7" $7.98 Borft

Second vinyl report of great analog synth murk and dadaist beamings from this longrunning cult noise project from Sweden. The A side has "Screaming Fish", a loopy blast of abrasive electronic cricket chirp and fucked up vocal chop that creeps near Bastard Noise style circuit war, albeit more hallucinogenic...and "Fyra Ara", a fun blurt of female vocal cut-up. The B side sports "305AN PA Vastra Sjukhemmet", with it's bleeping electronics, phaser beats, bizarre man-rants, and droning buzzing synthesizers. Cool Euro post-industrial weirdness. Released in an edition of 250 numbered copies.

ENEWETAK Easyrider Sessions 7" EP $4.98 BukBuk

Out Of Print.Crushing out of print EP from Orange County's ENEWETAK, with 6 tracks of harley riding, whiskey swilling, SABBATH worshipping metalcore / crust / rock. Damn heavy, with huge roaring grooves and ferocious vocals.

ENGINE KID Angel Wings CD $14.98 Revelation

ENGINE KID was an early 90's "post hardcore" band from Seattle who, aside from playing and releasing some of the best music to emerge from those weird post-hardcore days, also featured a young Greg Anderson on vocals and guitar, who of course would go on to start Southern Lord Records and play in bands like SUNN O))),GOATSNAKE,THORR'S HAMMER, and BURNING WITCH. The KID always seemed to be lumped in with the likes of QUICKSAND and INTO ANOTHER, which they certainly do share some sonic lineage with, but listening to Angel Wings again with about thriteen years of perspective shows us that this is actually something of a predecessor to the mighty indie metal of the past few years, a la PELICAN, ISIS, OLD MAN GLOOM, etc. There are some anthemic, catchy as hell hooks and choruses here, for sure, and the song "Windsheild" is a classic in the post-hardcore field...but these melodic parts are balanced with almost SLINT-like post rock dynamics, and HUGE, HEAVY sludgy metallic riffs, beautiful and pulverizing, like a cross between ISIS and TEXAS IS THE REASON, often injecting aggressive rock and jazzy instrumentation into their sound. The song "Anchor" even starts off with Scottish bagpipes before unwinding an eerie CODEINE -ish passage and building into a heavy HELMET percussive riff. Hell, the song "Stitches" is another masterpiece, with it's sadly gorgeous unfolding heaviness similiar to JESU... It's awesome to revisit albums like this and realize how fucking cool and weird and crushing this music is. So yeah, if you haven't checked this album out, and the idea of a band that reminds us of ISIS, TEXAS IS THE REASON, old HELMET, SLINT, JESU, and CODEINE all in the same breath sounds cool to you, grab this!! Highly recommended.

EN.JOYABLE Isitindia CD-R $4.98 MT6

Baltimore's MT6 Records takes a break from documenting the Baltimore freak scene and gets international with this electro/mongo/punk/noise band from Kursk, Russia. MT6 packed this CD-R with two versions of the album, one sung in Russian and the other sung in English. The tunes are a disorientating collage of strange experimental post-punk ranting over a tuba/bass/drums n' keyboards/computer framework with dueling male and female Russian cheer squad vocals. Sort of like a Russian cross between Swiss avant pop mutants Les Halmas, Le Tigre, and The Stranglers on a sugar binge. Anarchic new wave cheese slathered over opinionated lyrics and noisy weirdness. This fits well with the MT6 mutant-lofi-pop aesthetic. COmes packaged in a cardstock wallet with inserts in a mylar sleeve.

EN NIHIL Blood Dreams CD $9.98 RRRecords

A totally soul-crushing disc, EN NIHIL's third full length Blood Dreams is a series of 4 epic and inexorable distortion loops that are so heavy and monolithic and bass heavy that I could almost smell the smoke coming out of my stereo. This album is easily one of the most horrific titles in RRR's PURE series, ultra brutal industrial noise that evokes the sense of being slowly crushed in some leviathan machine gears while the endlessly repeating distortion loops resonate around your mashed skull like throbbing, hellish techno beats. 46 minutes of utterly grim, lightless, awesome mind-wiping trance annihilation. EN NIHIL also released the legendary Death Keeps CD on death metal imprint Red Stream, which might give you an idea as to just how oppressive and heavy EN NIHIL is. Packaged in the PURE Series style of xerox-damaged wallet sleeve.

ENSEPULCHRED The Night Our Rituals Blackened The Stars CD $11.98 Autopsy Kitchen

Another strange foray into outsider black metal weirdness from the same label that brought us excellent recent releases from Stalaggh and Silencer; this new disc is the debut from Ensepulchered, an atmospheric basement BM outfit who were formerly called The Blood Of Transylvania and who had released a bunch of sub-underground CD-Rs prior to changing their name and hooking up with Autopsy Kitchen. Looking at the case, there's no doubt that this is going to contain some strange, dramatic BM action...the booklet cover features Ensepulchred's wicked logo over a blurred classical painting, and the fog-enshrouded landscape and 19th century photo in the booklet are just as blurry and indistinct, like gauzy images from a dream. The song titles are equally dramatic: "Graves Upturned", "Embrace Your Decaying Children And Weep", "Along Paths Where The Infected Lurk". All very fitting for Ensepulchred's highly individualistic take on symphonic blackened dread, which is a sort of weird, wandering, low-fi electro-black metal with ghoulish, electronically distorted vocals and ambient, atmospheric keyboards WAY UP in the mix, the guitar almost non-existent, rendered a far-off, distorted drone that sounds like it's being run through a wall of effects to the point where it's really indistinguishable from the keyboards. It really sounds like the band is made up of just keyboards, tinny drum machine, processed distorted noise buzzing off of everything, and those weird, phased vocals, the keyboard acting as the lead instrument with great, grim hooks. The combination makes Ensepulchred sound almost like some gloomy 80's post-punk/goth outfit unearthed from a dank tomb, like a bizarre, raw Fields Of The Nephilim with damaged black metal vocals and blastbeats. Definitely something different, this album has continued to grow on me all week.

ENTENTE CORDIALE 100 yrs CD-R $8.98 Carbon

More formless, heavy amp-drone jams from the Rochester-based group Entente Cordiale. 100 yrs is made up of two long, untitled tracks...the first features a gradually building storm of shambling free-guitar-noise, lots of mangled, howling feedback, and loud vibratory drones emitting from the amplifiers. The second track works up some great, shimmery feedback textures into almost My Bloody Valentine style blobs of wobbly, melodic pink noise before lumbering into a crushing horizontal dirge with two drummers pounding away under waves of amplifier chant. I love it when formless guitar noise and feedback rock creeps into that sugary territory between mid-90's Skullflower and MBV's Loveless, and this track delivers. Loud, lo-fi, melted drone-rock with three guitars that draws from the whole amp sludge/Skullflower/Earth 2 legacy...I can never get enough of this stuff. 34 minutes of pure guitar damage. Comes packaged in a heavy watercolor paper sleeve with blue and silver artwork screenprinted onto it.

ENTENTE CORDIALE 1904 CD-R $8.98 Carbon

This single-track, 23 minute disc contains some excellent, gluey, guitar-based improvised drones that sort of bridge the gap between Earth 2 and the celestial sludgy krautrock of SKULLFLOWER's Orange Canyon Mind, with thick rumbling feedback dripping slowly over swells of repetitious chords and peals of strangled guitar strings. ENTENTE CORDIALE rarely employ any actual melodies in this recording, but those that do appear, surface only momentarily before they are dragged back down beneath the mighty amplifier hum. The Rochester, NY based group uses 3 guitars and an army of distortion pedals to erect 1904, and it's a solid monument of amp worship along the lines of early EARTH, VIBRACATHEDRRAL ORCHESTRA, FULCI, and SKULLFLOWER. The unmarked disc is packaged in a minimal but nice looking cardstock wallet in a resealable plastic sleeve.

ENTENTE CORDIALE The Recognition Of Common Interests CD $11.98 Carbon

Rochester free-rockers Entente Cordiale return with their first "real" CD after a couple of CD-R releases that were well received over here at Crucial Blast HQ. Exploring themes of alliance and collaboration, Entente Cordiale (named after a historical agreement created between the English and the French at the dawn of the 20th century) craft a nearly 50-minute jam that while broken up into seperate tracks, seems to flow together as one huge organic piece. At first, this feels like the quieter side of members Joe Tunis and Chris Reeg, whose other band Crush The Junta just came out with a hefty new CD-R of improvised free-rock sludge that buried me beneath a heavy blanket of distorted goop. Here they are joined by Will Veeder (also of Hinkley, Torpedoes, and Muler), and the first track, "An UNderstanding Is Met", is a fragile, drifting tangle of folky guitar strum and clanging pipe chimes, almost like the Dead C lazily playing on the backporch of some country farm, idyllic and folky and dreamy. But when the second track "Roots" emerges, the guitars take on a darker hue, the strings suddenly detuning and coiling up like serpents, scraping fretboard growls sliding across the neck of the guitars, fluttering heavy synthesizer electronics buzzing ominously beneath Entente Cordiale's deformed blues licks and buzzing amplifiers. The following tracks continue in a similiar vein, sparse guitar lines repeated ad infinitum over buzzing synths and droning melodica, distorted mangled riffage clawing it's way through clouds of thick feedback, quietly pretty passages of amp hum and simple strummed chords, occasionally dipping into pools of Earth-y guitar rumble and raucous skree. It's the last five minutes of the album, however, on the last track "How Long Can It Hold", where the band cuts loose and whips up a scorching tempest of noisy guitar racket and reverberating speaker float. While not as "heavy" as their previous CD-Rs, The Recognition Of Common Interests still occupies that hazy realm between Iversen/Bjerga's trippy guitar-based improv, The Dead C at their most formless, and occasionally, the deep rumble of Earth's 2. Simple but effective packaging in a heavy mylar sleeve that holds the disc in a professionally printed card sleeve.

MP3 SAMPLE: "An Understanding Is Met" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "How Long Can It Hold" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Influence And Control" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Roots" (excerpt)

ENVY Angel's Curse Whispered in the Edge of Despair CD $13.98 HGFact

5 song CD from this AMAZING Japanese band, who have been around for almost 15 years and are just now beginning to get noticed here in the US. Actually, they'll probably be all over the place in the near future, as it appears post-rock imprint Temporary Residence Limited (Mono, Explosions In The Sky, Bellini) has signed Envy for their upcoming 2006 full length. Excellent. SO here we are with this MCD from a few years ago, and is filled with their ultra powerful combination of beautiful, anthemic indie rock and crushing metallic hardcore, moving between emotional, intense melodic, jangly, pretty passages and bombastic heaviness, like Mogwai if they were a mid-90's "screamo" band, and with noisy, swirling Sonic Youth-ish guitars, a maximum melodic noise wall, and technical, brutal song structures sort of like Botch, but WAY heavier, and WAY more intense and beautiful and EPIC than that comparison might suggest. The singing on this switches back and forth from teeth-gritting screaming, full on ferocity, to passionately sung clean vocals. It's AWESOME stuff.

ENVY All The Footprints You've Ever Left And The Fear Expecting Ahead CD $16.98 HGFact

The third full length from Japanese band Envy, who have been blowing our minds lately with their amazing combination of brooding, epic heavy post-rock and crushing hardcore might, but wayyy melodic and catchy and BEAUTIFUL, with amazing heartbreaking hooks and heartfelt sung vocals and jangly guitars that build into explosive, BRUTALLY heavy intensity, like Mogwai meets Botch meets the best indie rock band in the world, chaotic and ferocious and wholly unique. Envy are masters of building layers of melody over the course of their songs and then blowing the whole thing up with blistering hardcore fury, an eruption of passion and noise and intensity. The songs are lengthy, most are over six minutes, with quiet, sometimes extensive breakdowns, building expertly into their emotional hurricanes filled with exasperation and strapping riffs. So excellent ! Features enhanced video content .

ENVY From Here To Eternity CD $16.98 HGFact

Envy's debut full length !! We've totally fallen in love with Envy. More than likely, alot of people are going to follow suit soon, once these guys become more well known here in the US. This music is so incredibly emotional and passionate and beautiful, it can't remain off the radar the way it has for the past decade these guys have been playing. Envy play a sort of hybrid of emotive, epic post-rock, and BRUTAL, chaotic hardcore, which has found them lumped in with the whole "screamo" scene for the past 10 years, but that really doesn't do them justice. Actually, Envy has evolved into something more along the lines of Isis and Mogwai, we've always thought of them as sort of a weird mix of Mogwai's heavy post-rock buildups, and the complex/chaotic crushingness of Botch's We Are The Romans. Aural saturation to serene moments. This first album is a bit rawer and more "hardcore" than later stuff, but it still has that dynamic, passionate explosiveness to it. Theres even some speedy Japanese hardcore punks blasts on here that aren't as apparent on later albums. Crucial !!

ENVY The Eyes Of A Single Eared Prophet CD $13.98 HGFact

Heres another 5 song CD from our new favorite metallic Japanese post-rock-chaotic-hardcore band, Envy!!! Envy has become one of the foremost dominant hardcore/"screamo" bands in Japan, a status that has been forged through the past 11 years with a consistently evolving sound. The result is a passionately epic journey through brutal intensity and serene beauty, with densely layered guitars and bass creating quiet, intricate elegence and vocals that range from larynx-shredding power to softly-sung with lyrics entirely in Japanese. A powerful combination of beautiful, anthemic indie rock and crushing metallic hardcore, moving between emotional, intense melodic, jangly, pretty passages and bombastic heaviness, like Mogwai if they were a mid-90's "screamo" band, and with noisy, swirling Sonic Youth/MBV-ish guitars, a maximum melodic noise wall, and technical, brutal song structures sort of like Botch, but WAY heavier, and WAY more intense and beautiful and EPIC than that comparison might suggest. The singing on this switches back and forth from teeth-gritting screaming, full on ferocity, to passionately sung clean vocals. It's AWESOME stuff.

ESB / FANTASTIKOL HOLE split CD $11.98 Zas

A vicious double-shot of French avant-grind! We were already fans of The Fantastikol Hole, a drummachine-powered outfit that mashes insanely complex and jagged grindcore with equally confounding digital rhythms, massive blastbeat action, and a fractured IDM vibe that is somewhat comparable to the kind of fucked-up electronica beats that Genghis Tron employed on Dead Mountain Mouth. Fantastikol Hole's Mathematikol Oil album is in our opinion one of the best "drum machine grind" albums ever, right up there with machine augemented faves like Genghis Tron, Wadge, and Agoraphobic Nosebleed; if you're a fan of weird, schizophrenic, futuristic-sounding grindcore, you seriously need to check that one out. So here we are with this new split album which features a whopping 17 tracks from the 'Hole, all of em new and exclusive, and just as awesome sounding as their album. Blistering neo-grind metal, with angular meaty riffing and bestial shrieks/distorto roars trading off, is torn apart and stapled back together with glitchy fractured beats, passages of almost total silence suddenly welling up out of a blasting math grind tornado, abrasive electronic textures, breakbeats, weird dissonant rock riffing, bits of French cafe music, samples of mysterious wind instruments, and weird unidentifiable percussive noises. Seriously weird and megaheavy and surreal, like Genghis Tron, Pig Destroyer, and Antigama mashed together with random transmissions of French pop and IDM and old hip hop 12"s into a super heavy and ultra damaged cyclone of electro blastcore violence.
How were ESB going to match up to the bizarreness and brutality of The Fantastikol Hole? Not too shabby, actually. Hadn't heard these guys before this split, but we definitely dug their freaked out version of chaotic grindcore, which manages to sound like they take influence from both 90's powerviolence and epic French post-hardcore. Yeah, that might seem weird, but their songs (12 of 'em to be exact) manage to pack in an interesting combination of brutal HC damage a la Infest and Crossed Out with majestic, melodic parts that remind us of bands like Gantz, Amanda Woodward, Cortez, and Envy. Cortez sort of did the same thing, blending brutal grindy HC with epic, brooding heaviness, but ESB are way more ragged and thrashy and savage sounding, while throwing in the odd electronic noise track, sudden departures into French pop, and alien sounding electronic textures into the mix to keep things interesting.

MP3 SAMPLE: "David Koresh " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Save The Liar " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Zoukez! " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Oll Kayo " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Another Passage " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Ulysse Lizard " (excerpt)

ESOTERIC Epistemological Despondancy 2xCD $18.98 Aesthetic Death
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The hard-to-find 1994 debut release., a spirit-devouring double album from UK extreme doom / drone destroyers ESOTERIC. The one band that challenged ELECTRIC WIZARD to the dopethrone. Essential for fans of Sunn O)) and khanate, as well as the reverb nightmares of Skepticism and the hateful trudge of burning witch. Self-described as "dark, vicarious, pernicious, sinister, hateful, drug influenced, tortured, philosophical and barbaric doom". Two double cds of ultra depressive, dirgey, near ambient drones via subterranean Doom Metal. A murky morass of slow motion riffs, amphibious guitar solos and tortured cries. But also strangely beautiful, at times recalling the lugubrious soundscapes of Labradford or Magnog. Metal for the drone set, perhaps? While at least well known enough in their home, the UK, to merit a "fuck you" on the thanks list to the Electric Wizard album, in stoner-rock lovin' America they seem destined to be overlooked--due to their brutally uncommercial sound, their ultra-positive drug stance, and their apparent disinterest in allowing anyone to buy their music. A total redefinement of extreme heaviness and slowness.

ESOTERIC The Pernicious Enigma 2xCD $19.98 Aesthetic Death

115 minutes. 2 CDs. The 1997 soul-destroying double album from UK extreme doom destroyers ESOTERIC. Self-described as "dark, vicarious, pernicious, sinister, hateful, drug influenced, tortured, philosophical and barbaric doom" (they're not kidding), these cats lay down two full length CDs of super depressed, dirge, ultradrone doom. Extreme slo-mo riffs emerge from the void, murky subsonic solos cut through pure blackness, and tortured vocals drift behind the gargantuan glacial ambience. Brutal, yet sublimely drifting, like a blackened, carnivorous incarnation of Labradford’s beautiful post-rock drone, but ultimately falling closer to the diseased doom of Burning Witch, Disembowelment, Khanate, and Sunn O))).

ESPECIALLY LIKELY SLOTH Round The Corner Fudge Is Made CD $10.98 Audio Savant

You want bizarre? We've been seriously looking forward to this, the 10-year anniversary retrospective CD of cult avant-munchkin cut-up from ESPECIALLY LIKELY SLOTH, the long running solo project from Jason Walton of Nothing/Agalloch/Sculptured and Audio Savant Records. When composing and performing ESPECIALLY LIKELY SLOTH's insane music, Walton claims to come under the possession of an eight-year old mentally handicapped child named Chris Cobb who has taken over Walton's personality to sing the perils of a new era of Hell. When you hear this, you won't doubt it. ESPECIALLY LIKELY SLOTH is a car-wreck of saturday morning cartoon Casio synths, smurf-dance beats, helium eating circus buzz,movie and television samples, cassette noise carnage, brain damaged pop punk and saccharine chipmunk metal, and totally unclassifiable,indescribable weirdness that will either have you rolling on the floor in paroxysms of sugar shock, or scrambling for the nearest egg beater to go to work on your grey matter. The lyrics are absurd, but awkwardly clever, and the singing is a mix of Walton/Cobb's stream-of-consciousness squeaky toddler voice, gleeful hyperspeed chipmunk vocals and munchkin scat singing, and growly muppet vocals, like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street. Seriously. But this is all held together with ridiculously complex arrangements, stop-on-a-dime time changes, and skilled musicianship. It's funny, and totally silly, but Walton obviously put a lot of care and attention to detail when he constructed these epileptic pop fits, making it a complete, albeit ridiculous, listen. We suppose you could compare this to early Mr. Bungle meets The Danielson Famile, or Kids Of Whitney High forming a casio dance/pop punk/speed metal band, but that still won't give you a clue as to how completely, wonderfully fucked up this is. Titles like "Don"t Wake The Sleeping Bags", "That's Not My Stomach (I Don't Like Your Stomach At All)", "Carrion Luggage In My Closet" or lyrics like "Let's Put The X in BMX" only scrape the surface of the absurdist nature of the Especially Likely Sloth experience. And some of these melodies will haunt you for days, it's that disturbingly catchy. A magnificent, vivid explosion of imagination that will perplex and confuse most people. For us, it's one of the most enthusiastic and wonderful damaged pop collections we have in our CD racks. Serving as an early discography of sorts, this CD collects twenty tracks from cassettes released on the Wheelchair Full Of Old Men label from the late 90's. Highly recommended, but only to those interested in totally bizarre outsider pop!

ESTRADASPHERE Palace Of Mirrors CD $13.98 The End

Out of the recent new releases on the The End that have been dishing out confounding, progressive post-Bungle/Naked City genre mashup avant-heaviness (Stolen Babies, Unexpect, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum), Estradaspheres latest is arguably the easiest to wrap your head around. It also achieves an almost symphonic hugeness. That's because as crazed as Estradaspehere get with the construction of their pan-genre compositions, they also have a terrific knack for melody and hooks, and this album is loaded with 'em. This is also Estradasphere's first completely instrumental album since losing their singer, and I think it works great...their appeal is in the rollercoaster ride of eclectic musical styles that transport you to an alternate universe where the A.M. radio dial is still in full effect and is ruled by a virtuosic sextet that is equal parts crushing thrash metal outfit, 60's film score design team, prog rock band, jazz ensemble, and Eastern European chamber folk group. The thirteen tracks on Palace Of Mirrors use a variety of instrumentation (violins, upright bass, accordian, organ, Japanese shamisen, electronics, and more) and carefully splice together complex, densely assembled compositons of easy listening strings and orchestral pop merged with Romanian gypsy tunes and bombastic death metal drumming ("A Corporate Merger"), hard edged 70's funk intertwined with proggy sludge metal riffs, utterly infectious Beach Boys style surf-pop melodies and psychedelic Industrial pulses, circus music and an awesome 70's spy music/ western pastiche played on traditional Japanese shamisen alongside folksy violin and mouth harp ("Those Who Know"), every song a wildly unpredictable and hyperimaginative soundtrack. A freaking amazing album, def in the vein of Secret Chiefs 3, John Zorn, Naked City, Mr. Bungle but way more, uh, listenable, and is one of the best avant-fusion albums I've heard for 2006. Highly recommended.

ETERNAL BLADE, THE s/t CD $11.98 Demysterris

Full on bombastic French symphonic electro-black metal a la Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, with the added bonus of baroque-meets-early 20th century classical-meets-A.M. easy listening sap, Ren Faire female harmonies, ridiculous Castlevania/Legend Of Zelda nintendotronic keyboard melodies, and sweeping technical axe shred with awesome 80's style, Steve Vai,pop-metal eruptions. Weird, super majestic and atmospheric, and it's sort of a concept album with Chinese mythology themes and named after a Tsui Hark film! It's pretty amazing that this massive, weird black metal/prog/classical/pop opera is the product of just two French guys. Pretty cool!

ETERNAL ELYSIUM Share CD $12.98 Meteor City

Psychedelic stoner disco metal? $20 says that there's more than a couple of you guys out there that at this moment are ready to punch me right in the mouth for letting that sequence of words tumble out of my skull. But I can't think of a better way to describe the awesomeness of the song "Movements And Vibes" and it's five minutes of throbbing, disco-ball spinning, fucking ridiculously catchy blending of heavy stoner riffage and 70's dancefloor action. For real, that song alone had me picking this album up immediately. It's as zonked and perfect as anything off of Sigh's Imaginary Sonicscape, so fucking catchy and infectious, like KISS' disco foray "I Was Made For Loving You" fused to the dopest 80's doom metal imaginable. Holy SHIT. And while that tune is the only foray into doomed dopehuffing disco on the power trio's second album for Meteor City Share, Japanese hippie metallers Eternal Elysium continue to pile on both the weirdness and the heavy, from "Machine"'s hard-chargin' buzzsaw rawk and demonic dripping alien vocals, to the sprawling 9-minute free-jamming and cosmic doom of "Waiting For The Sun" that gets split with some lead guitarwork that reminds me of Leslie West. "Dogma" drops a bizarre gang chorus of "Hi de hi de ho"s in between some tribal psych-rock groovin' over funky conga drums. And the album closes out with a wacked out ambient drone-n-howl piece called "Fairies Never Sleep". EE's bread and butter is heavy (and I mean HEAVY) 70's psych metal with nods to Deep Purple, Black Sabbath, and Japanese psych bands like Flower Travellin' Band and guided by Yukito Okazaki's soaring soulful vocals, but what makes their take on stoner doom so damn infectious is the way they flex their x-factor muscle (every Japanese band's got one...) and drop in a lot of stuff you hardly ever hear doom bands do: damaged garage rock, mutant new wave moves, ass ripping funk, a coupla hooks that sound like they coulda been lifted from one of those paisley alt-rock bands from 1992, and, uh, disco. Granted, Eternal Elysium aren't as balls-out loopy as Sigh can be, but Share is nevertheless some seriously tweaked stuff that fans of Church Of Misery, Electric Wizard, Boris, and yes, Sigh (we're talking their psych rock turn on Sonicscape, here) will most likely flip out over. Highly recommended!!!

MP3 SAMPLE: "Dogma" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Movements And Vibes" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "No Answer" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Schizy" (excerpt)

ETERNAL ELYSIUM Spiritualized D CD $12.98 Meteor City

Just grabbed the last few copies of this now out-of-print stoner/psych/metal freakout! Spiritualized D was the first domestic release for Eternal Elysium, a trio of Sabbath-worshipping, longhaired Japanese hippie metallers that bring the fucking monster riffage with this 9 song album. Though this disc is completely consumed by heavy-duty pot fumes, it's not just about the 70's acid metal revival - Eternal Elysium combine the sounds of classic Japanese 1970's psychedelia a la Flower Travellin' Band, Japanese psych rippers White Heaven, awesome New Wave Of British heavy Metal axework (indeed, the disc includes Eternal Elysium's crushin' cover of Iron Maiden's "Innocent Exile" that originally appeared on Meteor City's Maiden tribute compilation, and which sounds very little like the original!), Santana, and massive doom metal riffage a la Saint Vitus n' Trouble with their Deep Purple/Cream/Black Sabbath power blues worship and come out on the other end with one hell of a crushing psych album, fronted by Yukito Okazaki's soaring pipes! Fans of Monster Magnet's Spine Of God, Kyuss, Church Of Misery, Boris in boogie mode, and even Electric Wizard will bug out over Eternal Elysium if you haven't heard 'em yet...this shit is ridiculously heavy, think Melvins heavy, but super trippy and "out", with bell sounds and swing jazz and reggae passages and weird echo effects and electronic noises cutting though their thick dope haze, all wrapped up with awesome songwriting that makes every freaking song stick in yer head for weeks. Holy shit, do I love these guys. And check out the final unlisted track, a fifteen-minute-plus instrumental free folk/psych jam in the vein of Ghost or Taj Mahal Travellers, raising a dreamy mist of zonked out temple bells, wind chimes, tablas, matsuribue, and didjeridoo that closes the album out in a smoke wreathed zoneout. Man, this seriously recommended to anyone into super-heavy psychedelia and the most swingin' drugdoom, BUT we were only able to get a mere six copies of this awesome album, the last copies available, so if you need this classic disc as bad as we did, move fast!

MP3 SAMPLE: "Faithful '99" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Easy Goin'" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Trick Or Steal" (excerpt)

ET SANS Par noussss touss les trous de vos crânes! CD $9.98 Alien8

The Montreal all-star quintet of ET SANS (Roger T. Craig of Le Fly Pan Am, Alexander St-Onge of Shalabi Effect, Felix Morel of Le Fly Pan Am, Sophie Trudeau of Godspeed You! Black Emporer and A Silver Mt. Zion, and Stephen De Oliveira) follows up their debut on Locust with this seamless intertwining of avant-psychedelic-pop with noise, minimal post-industrial electronics, and 70's kraut rock influences. These four untitled songs swirl from gentle, whispered vocals blending with cut-up/spliced tape edits and electronic drone, to the Suicide-meets-Xenakis electronic crackle and chaos of the second track, to the beautiful, cinematic, ultra lush pulse, tactile whispered vocals, and harp-like strum-chirp of the third track, and closing with the stunning fourth song that spikes splintered electronics and spliced vocals with motorik rhythms. Sweet. This is some extremely out-there, yet amazingly easy on the ears avant pop that we can't recommend highly enough, ESPECIALLY to any of you who can't get enough of the amazing stuff coming out of the Montreal experimental indie scene. This album is sooo beautiful. Packaged in a vividly illustrated gatefold package.

EURICH Discography 1994-1996 CD $11.98 Coaxt

This CD discography has all 16 songs from the brief existence of EURICH, a trio out of Charleston, South Carolina in the mid 90’s. I always passed up on checking these guys out while they were around, as I had incorrectly assumed that they were along the lines of much of the pretentious, screamy hardcore coming out of the East Coast around that time, most of which pretty much bored me back then. But this stuff is actually really good, much better than I expected, and I wished I could have heard them sooner....it's definitely "screamy", with high pitched shrieks making up most of the vocal attack, but it works well with the music, which reminds me of a weird cross between SUPERCHUNK / DC area indie rock circa-1994, and INFEST style powerviolence!! Really melodic, crunchy indie guitar pop that takes off into high speed blastbeat mode, catchy and discordant and furious and ultrafast...awesome!This discography collects their tracks off of the Fragil Records compilation 7", the "South East Hardcore, Fuck Yeah" 7" comp, the "Israfel" comp, "Unified Field Theory" 7", their self-titled 7", the "Wood Panel Racer Wagon With Mags" comp, and an unreleased 4 track song prior to breaking up. Paul Giglotti did the classy artwork. Good stuff!

EVERLOVELY LIGHTNINGHEART Cusp CD $13.98 Hydra Head

Everlovely Lightningheart's Cusp is a stunning work of lilting drone/folk and psychic amplifier power and evocative improv from this LA based performace/installation/music collective. Consisting of one 45 minute track, this starts out as a beautiful piano ballad that decays into subtly shifting scenes that will fully possess you. A feedbacking metallic power drone falls away, revealing a crushingly beautiful strummed free-folk melody. Free-floating electronic shimmer explodes into chaotic, tribal percussion jams. Heart rending Rhodes piano lines are situated against ghostly chamber string, chimes, and grey washes of rainy day drones. Very, very beautiful. We were completely sucked into this landscape of delicate sound narrative, drawing out dreamlike sonics from dust, leaves, blood, photo chemicals, rust, various metal objects, a tunnel, a barn, a monastery, a booby trap, various moldy basements, water, explosives, tarot cards, an iron bison, the Los Angeles basin, the Mojave desert, a cat, a deer, potassium cyanide, mass confusion, a friendship, and a piano on fire in the middle of the street. It's like a journey through early morning urban landscapes accompanied by a particularly melancholy Sunburned Hand of the Man (or Shalabi Effect at their quietest) with incandescent peals of amplifier feedback streaking across the sky. Presented in a striking gatefold sleeve with animal collage artwork, and is accompanied by a hand-sewn booklet. Highly recommended.

EVIL MOISTURE / MACRONYMPHA The Tentacles Of The Octopus CD $9.98 RRRecords