TITLES: F

FACEDOWNINSHIT Shit Bloody Shit CD $11.98 Crimes AGainstb Humanity

Brutal, fiilth-encrusted stoner blast / doomthrash from North Carolina...I remember seeing these guys play in a kudzu-covered backyard somewhere out in the countryside around Raleigh several years ago while on tour. We were all bulldozed by FACEDOWNINSHIT’s crushing, crusty SABBATH n’ Southern Rock -influenced riffage and gnarly bursts of speedy, destroyed crossover thrash. These guys pick up the torch that fellow North Caroliners COC dropped after Technocracy. It’s not all feral crustcore tho...the band incorporates a NEUROSIS influence with folksy cellos and melancholy, apocalyptic melodies,too. Ugly, majestic dirge-thrash, a black-lung mashup of EYEHATEGOD, NEUROSIS, HIS HERO IS GONE, and LYNYRD SKYNYRD.

FAERIES Riot In The Hive Mind CD $9.98 McCarthyism

Art damaged operatic powerviolence! Skewed anarchist sludge schizophrenia! This is pretty weird stuff,from the band name, to the Mike Patton gone DIY avant-grind, Riot In The Hive Mind is a brilliant, difficult album that combines Melvins -meets- Page 99 chaotic sludge tantrums, damaged melodic dirges that sound like Isis and Jesu drunk and jamming in the basement, spastic howling indie-pop mashed up with gnarly Am Rep noiserock mutations, breakneck machinegun blastbeats, and confrontational surrealist anti-authoritarian commentary. Weird and warped, killer stuff! The CD comes in a 7" sized booklet loaded with bizarre artwork and writing. The psychotic looking bunny on the cover is wonderful. Highly recommended.

FALL OF THE GREY WINGED ONE Aeons Of Dreams CD $14.98 Supernal

Heavy-as-magma powerdrone ooze from Stijn Van Cauter, the same guy behind the funereal ambient doom of Until Death Overtakes Me. Originally released as a CD-R on Stijn's own label in 2002, Aeons Of Dreams has now been re-issued on actual CD, and fans of all things dark, heavy, droney, and noisy need rejoice. Fall Of The Grey Winged One is essentially focused around jet-black veins of buzzsaw drone that Stijn liberates from his bass guitar, and some of the crunchy, blown-speaker rumble on this hour-plus disc massages our lobes perfectly. As each track evolves though, sparkling keyboards appear to hover over the monolithic dirge-noise, haunting strains of cosmic electronics floating through the abyss. On the final track, "Locked", a super slow, plodding industrial rhythm precedes the bass-drones like some ancient behemoth lumbering beneath the earth, while sorrowful organs begin to ooze out some eerie funeral melody. This CD reminds us of Sunn O))) and Earth, obviously...particularly Sunn O)))'s OO Void and Earth's most droniest, 2, largely due to the ultra heavy tectonic amplifier drift that serves as the centerpiece for most of this album. But those bass guitar drones get so blown out, especially on the second track, that it starts to crumble like a mix between the recent meta-metal outings from Skullflower/Mirag, Black Boned Angel, Myrtu, and all of that killer Battlecruiser ambient death drone stuff, and frozen, Cold Meat Industries style death industrial. Totally apocalyptic and subterranean. Recommended!

FAMILY UNDERGROUND Salt Of The Sun CD $14.98 Ikuisuus

An immense new album from the Danish free-drone ensemble Family Underground that invokes an hour long flight through dense fogs of amplifier hum and roar - awesome, consciousness-erasing drift split into three tracks, "Diamond Lust", "Echoes of Green Well", and "Mysterious Invaders", imbued with a weird Lovecraftian sense of cosmic oblivion. Each of these twenty minute tracks whips up a mighty roar of amplifiers that have had their volume knobs cranked all the way up and left to pulse into the darkness while assorted guitars and keyboards lean against walls and equipment, spewing streams of malevolent buzz and ominous drones into the air, everything congealing into a thick wash of electrical buzz, clattery percussion, and doomed chord progressions. Oscillating feedback swoops over gigantic canyons of speaker hiss, and melted riffs rumble out of the haze, becoming distinct for a few moments before becoming swallowed up again in Family Underground's thick aural sludge. Yeah, this album is great, loaded with excellent oozing ambient murk and colossal amp ritual that sounds like it's probably heavily guitar based, and which seeps out of a similiar stoned headspace as outfits like Double Leopards, Mouthus, and Hototogisu, leaning towards the heavier end of the psychedelic free-drone spectrum. And, of course, being an Ikuisuus release, the case for Salt Of The Sun is beautiful to behold, an eight panel digipack with gritty paper textures across the outer panels and a series of crayon root death splashed across the interior, similiar in to the vibrant chaos of Matt Bower's recent artwork.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Diamond Dust" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Echoes Of Green Hell" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Mysterious Invaders" (excerpt)

FANTASTIKOL HOLE The Mathematikol Oil CD $12.98 Basement Apes Industries

We love digital grindcore, but there's really only a few bands that pull off the combo of electronic blastbeats and metallic guitars well. Like our very own Genghis Tron, who bring so many weird and melodic elements to their mutant grindcore programming (and who have pretty much ended up evolving beyond the "grindcore" tag altogether at this point). Or drum-machine grindcore gods Agoraphobic Nosebleed, who were essentially the band that shaped the genre. Or Dataclast (who also released stuff on Crucial Blast...I wasn't kidding when I said we love digital grind!), who splattered their punky Carcass worship with glitchy IDM-isms and avant-electronica cut-up. Well, you can add this French band to the list, as Fantastikol Hole has delivered some of the best electronic grind we've ever heard on The Mathematikol Oil. Thoroughly weird, crushingly heavy, The Fantastikol Hole combine super-heavy death metal guitars, razor sharp machine beats and IDM, bestial vocals, massive deathcore breakdowns, and bizarre, avant garde structures. At times, yeah, we're reminded of Genghis Tron, but where Genghis Tron blends melodic electro blissouts to punishing metalcore freakout, The Fantastikol Hole splices together a brutal hybrid of death n' roll and art-damaged European metalcore with glitchy, Autechre style electronica, post-industrial heaviness, and dissonant noise. It's like a super heavy mashup of Converge, Entombed, Genghis Tron, Autechre, Pig Destroyer, Godflesh, Voivod, and Pan Sonic, reconstituted into a malevolent, fretboard-shredding, fractured grind cyborg. All of the 27 songs clock in at under 2 minutes in length, and despite the crazed energy and experimental forms these guys delve into, there's lots of catchy hooks and cool electronic abstraction and some KILLER production tricks... like the frequency dropout and subsequent electro-death n' roll riff on "Rock And Die, Suffer And Roll" that simply fucking kills. Or the totally sci-fi, psychedelic electronics on "Want To See, Why To Be". Really cool. So obviously, we're recommending this CD to anyone into the whole digital grind sound, and those of you that dig the really fucked cut-up death metal stuff, Faxed Head, Naked City, and other extremely crazed, heavy, experimental takes on death/grind would probably be into this as well.

FAXED HEAD Chiropractic CD $14.98 Web Of Mimicry

Faxed Head is a bonkers avant-garde death metal band from Coalinga, California, whose members are supposedly all survivors of a teenage suicide pact gone awry, leaving them handicapped and mentally warped. The back cover photos of the reconstructed cretins shows the lineup of headless/elongated-neck guitarist Neck Head, plaid-tartan skin-graft victim/wheelchair-bound vocalist McPatrick Head, oddly-handicapped musician Jigsaw Puzzle Head on bass, LaBrea Tar Pits Head on drums, and local mime/metal-detector-operator named Fifth Head providing electronics. The musical spew these guys engage in is as fucked up as their mythology...nine tracks of ferocious, retarded death metal / black metal, primitive and blasting violence with shredding riffs and abrupt cut-and-paste tape editing/splicing, nonsensical wonky rhythms, and ridiculously vomitous death barf. Faxed Head are the only band we can think of that bridges OTT death metal with the costumed art punk scene. Excellent weirdo death metal, def recommended! Features members of Mr. Bungle, Caroliner, and Neil Hamburger.

FEAR OF GOD First EP CD $12.98 E.U. 91 Produzoni

AS influential as Fear Of God has been to the entire field of grindcore/noise/extreme hardcore/death metal, it's a fucking crime that it's been so hard to get your hands on their music; total legends in the grind/noise community, the Swiss band Fear Of God formed in 1987, drawing inspiration from the ultrafast HC of Siege and Larm, the pummeling urban industrial grind of early Swans, the apocalyptic death of Repulsion, and the proto-death metal of Master, added a megaton of distortion and ultra-gruff monstrous vocals, and jacked up the tempo via insane blastbeat drumming to about 1,000 miles per hour detonations of face-shredding ultragrind that borders on pure fucking noise when it's moving at top speed, with bone crushing bulldozer sludge riffs and ripping mid-tempo breakdowns expertly placed to make each song a vicious act of revolutionary violence. Fucking crucial stuff, I remember how insanely brutal and negative Fear Of God sounded the first time that I actually got to hear them. This shit sounds genuinely insane, and established the aesthetic of "noisecore" that bands like Anal Cunt, 7 Minutes Of Nausea, etc., would explore further on. Released on the label run by Giulio from Cripple Bastards, First EP is an official re-issue of Fear Of God's 1st EP that was originally released in 1988 on Temple Of Love Records, with all 21 songs remastered for total obliterating impact, and with a brief radio interview from the same timeperiod tacked on as an added bonus. The disc comes in a cool black and white trifold digipack, with lyrics, liner notes, and new notes written by Fear Of God historian/crust critic extraordinaire Sean Hogan. A crucial document of one of the most influential, groundbreaking bands in extreme music history, no joke.

FIELDS OF BLOOD self-titled CD-R $8.98 Outfall Channel

I've gone on at length in these pages about my love for various labels, and the Ohio DIY imprint Outfall Channel has been mentioned more than once whenever I get to gushing about those assorted imprints that I follow with a fevered glee. Run by the two guys behind the free-noise/hardcore band Capital Haemorrhage, Outfall Channel has leaked a pestilent batch of subterranean noise-brut offerings that are all wildly different but all deliver the same level of subsonic punch to my solar plexus that I'm just not gonna find from more "respected" labels on the scene. Shit like Hentai Lacerator and Robert Inhuman is on a whole nother level of raw, and it's zero-bullshit, ecstatic noise violence like that that helps to keep me puffin' along when I'm subjected to the constantly increasing onslaught of pseudo-professionalism in "underground" music that I witness on a daily basis. Where my ranting is leading to is my unfettered love for this little black box called "Fields Of Blood". At first glance, it looks like an arts and crafts project, a 6" x 5" cardboard jewel box, all black, with black ink silkscreened onto it; inside is a nest of straw, painted in hideous black and glued delicately to the inside of the box - on the underside of the lid sits a black disc, attached to the lid by a plastic hub. This is one of the coolest looking handmade packages we've seen in many moons. The point of all of this seems to be rural decay, fields of wheat turning black under a toxic sun, the sky burning red and scorching the ground, and to this end the disc captures a horrific void of ultra low-fi, subsonic dronemetal scum, thick tentacles of blackened guitar/amp dirge rumbling like a cloud of poison over whatever field produced the straw found in this box, electronic skree and tortured vocals burrowing into rotting amplifiers. A missing link between Sunn O)))/Earth dronemetal and savage Broken Flag industrial slop, totally coarse and lobe-massaging skuzz drone- I love this. Heavy, noisy, and not for sissies. I don't have numbers for this release, but based on the ridiculously labor-intensive packaging, I'm guessing that there are severaly limited numbers of this release available.

FIRE IN THE HEAD Come Closer Cut Deeper CD $13.98 Nihilist

God knows there's far too much redundancy and a general lack of self-editing in the power electroncs and harsh noise scenes - as much as I love brutal, violent electronic noise in all of it's various forms and mutations, you've really gotta be doing something interesting nowadays to grab my attention. Every once in awhile though, I'll come across a project like Fire In The Head that breathes some new life into power electronics, here specifically through a wide range of dynamic changes and some surprising, distinctly non-PE cultural references. We listed the latest Fire In The Head disc that came out on NCC a few months ago, and that one was brutal as hell, but here we've got FITH circa 2005, a nine track album released on Nihilist, the label run by Andy Ortmann of Panicsville/Plastic Crimewave Sound. Come Closer Cut Deeper doesn't differ stylistically from The Remedy Has Become The Affliction all that much, but everything I love about FITH is here: blasts of burly distortion rolling out of clouds of reverb, monstrous death metal-esque vocals, ethereal ambience, carefully constructed feedback scultpures, crushing slabs of low-frequency crunch, all produced by FITH's mastermind Michael Page, adorned in gruesome autopsy imagery of sliced-open throats, gore-spattered plasma bags, and corpse limbs ripped out of a Carcass collage. Yeah, this has that same sort of death-metal power electronic vibe that Ichorous sticks his greasy fists into, a furious, seething circuit violence that never feels random, rather a murderous plotted path of psychedelic microphone molestation that threatens/promises to rend your senses when experienced at high volume. And yer gonna win my rusted heart when you drop in a PE interpretation of Cro-Mags "Malfunction" into the fray, which has Page reciting the lyrics from the classic NYHC anthem over one of his vicious bursts of white-hot feedback abuse.

FIRE IN THE HEAD The Remedy Has Become The Affliction CD $11.98 NCC

Up until now I've been more familiar with Michael Page, the figure behind the death electronics outfit Fire In The Head, through his other project Sky Burial. Sky Burial released a self-titled CD-R a while back on Housepig that I thought was fucking great, a heavy, rhythmic dose of formless drone heaviness that channeled as much the UK noise/drone rock vibe of bands like SKullflower, Sunroof, and Vibracathedral Orchestra as it did the rhythmic crush of Godflesh and the abyssal drift of classic dark ambient. With his Fire In The Head project, though, it's a totally different headspace; The Remedy Has Become The Affliction, the latest full-length from the project, rocks an album title and that feels like it belongs to some classic anarcho-punk outfit. That's no accident, as it turns out that several of the artwork pieces that were created for this album are from Gee Vaucher of Crass, and the brutal, scathing Industrial violence on this disc seems to be influenced by the accusatory tone and apocalyptic outlook of anarchist punk while transmitting its nihilistic visions through terrifying collages of strangled feedback and roaring distortion, brain-scraping static frequencies bent into sinister codes, cascading sheet metal, flocks of metallic chirping, brutal distorted vocals, death metal vocals, and charred electronic melodies. What sets Fire In The Head apart from most of his PE peers however is the amount of structure and composition that is contained in each track. Fucking fierce power electronic violence, like a composite of Masonna, Whitehouse, Ramleh and Yen Pox; the disc also includes remixes/reconstructions from Guilty Connector and Hum Of The Druid, as well as an interpretation of the song "Wash" by D.C. post-hardcore legends Swiz !? Released in a full-color digipack in a tiny edition of 300 copies.

FISTULA Idiopathic CD $11.98 Shifty

9 song full length from Ohio's gods of thunder. Awesome crustcore-soaked sludge hate, like HIGH ON FIRE meets DISRUPT. Everything about this album is unhealthy. Their bottom-heavy, suffocating sludge groove is tempered with excruciating vocals and the occasional thrash eruption. FISTULA actually sounds less like a sludge/doom band than they do a grindcore band slowed down to 5rpm. It's that nasty. Much better production than their previous full length and 7" tracks, Idiopathic is an unbelievably heavy, epic, and filthy collection of some of the greatest sludgecore on the planet. And to top it all off, the band closes with a SOUL CRUSHING rendition of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" (you know...the one that Eric Clapton covered and made famous). I've been waiting for a sludgecore/doom band to cover this classic song for years, and FISTULA does it perfectly, turning that ode to narcotics into a barbed-wire covered anthem moving at tarpit speed. Anyone into Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Weedeater, and that crusty, crushing style of downtuned menace will LOVE Fistula's Idiopathic! Features nightmarish cover art from Eric Harrison (GRIEF).

FISTULA For A Better Tomorrow CD $11.98 Corley

After 2 years, the mighty Fistula returns! Following the release of their 2004 split CD with Burmese that came out on Crucial Blast and their appearance at the 2005 installment of the Emissions from the Monolith festival in Ohio, Fistula lost a drummer and entered an extended hiatus while members went on to engage in a bunch of other musical projects (Ultralord, King Travolta, Rue, Kingfiregoat, Son of Jor-El and a shitload of others...). While all of those bands transmitted a variety of gnarly, heavy tuneage, none ever came close to capturing the sheer sonic weight of Fistula. I can't think of another band, aside from Eyehategod of course, that so perfectly fits the term sludge; listening to their Idiopathic and Hymns Of Sumber albums is like having a mudslide sweep over you in geologic time, a negatory onslaught of sludgy riffs tuned to bone-shaking low frequencies, bulldozing over you repeatedly. Might sound like hype, but I still think that Fistula is on the A-list for Heaviest Bands In The Universe. It's quite fucking exciting then to come face to face with Fistula reborn on For A Better Tomorrow, a five-song EP that comes in right at 22 minutes, and which liberates some of the band's most devestating material of their career. Jesus, this thing looks tough; the disc artwork is filled with images of satanic gang signs, brass knuckles and knuckle knives, and a band pic of the Fistula guys looking kinda irritated in some side alley (although if ya look really close through the artwork, you'll also find some cutesy doom drawings from Monarch!'s Michell!). Now featuring former -16- drummer Jason Corley on drums, Fistula sound even more pissed off and murderous than ever: on "Six Hundred And Sixty Six", "The Master" and the title track, they slog through colossal sludge hate, like an bastard spawn of Grief, Crowbar, Melvins, and Eyehategod, as Corley's metronomic pummel and Corey Bing's detuned riff battery suffocates everything in the room and tries to take it out to the alley. But then there's also "Upside Down": one of the reasons why I love Fistula so much is that, on every one of their releases, they manage to break up the hateful, hypnotic slow motion stomp with one song where they a) launch into an awesome speedy crust blast that always reminds me of a more lethargic, doped-up Disrupt, but then abruptly stops and shifts halfway through the song to b) deliver an unfuckingbelieveably soul annihilating hardcore breakdown that sounds like a Cro-Mags riff in heavy gravity. "Upside Down" is where they bust that little party move here, and I dare ya not to start walking through walls and heaving cars through the air when that riff kicks in. Holy shit. Another reason why I love Fistula? Corey Bing's vocals. What the fuck is that dude doing to his throat to produce that shredded snarl? It's an awesome vehicle for Fistula's ridiculously negative, bitter and violent lyrics, and has always sorta reminded me of what it mighta sounded like if Blaine Cook from The Accused had fronted Eyehategod. And just when I thought that my skeletal structure couldn't withstand another one of their lava riffs, they whip out the acoustic guitar for the last song "Friend Of Mine", a Nirvana-esque ode to distrust n' betrayal which is actually pretty creepy when you hear it, and close out the disc in a dark dead stare of contempt. Welcome back, guys!

5IVE Versus CD $10.98 Tortuga

Versus, 5ive's follow up to last year's rad split 12" with Kid 606, is actually just a digital reformatting of the 2 songs that made up the 5ive side ("Reso-I" and "Soma"), with the addition of two excellent remixes from Justin Broadrick (Jesu/Godflesh/Final) that bookend the 5ive tracks. The 5ive originals are mighty instrumental jams, possessed of the same dusty, Morricone-esque spirit as Earth's last two albums that cranking the distortion up when the duo kick into crushing dirge metal mode. The band's seemingly spare guitar/drums two-piece setup is pretty much forgotten by the time they launch into the first devestating riff. The album opens with "Soma Stage 1", the first part of Broadrick's remix, a spacey dirge that has that signature Jesu/bliss feel to it. That's followed by "Reso-I", a heavy and hypnotic slab of western-tinged post-rock with repetitive jangly guitar figures and rolling drums that builds into a massive meditative riff that rolls along on a huge droning groove. The second song, "Soma", is a devestatingly heavy sludge/math/post-rock avalanche that focuses on a wonderfully ominous central riff that builds in intensity until it crumbles into an effects-heavy spaceout. Broadrick's "Soma (Stage 2)" remix wraps Versus up with an eight minute heavy blissout that's worth picking up the disc for on it's own, a beautiful epic riff repeated over and over as continuous layers of backwards swirling keyboards and feedback are added, very Jesu/Mogwai like. Very cool!

FLASH BUNNY AND THE SYNCOPATED ELEVATORS ELECTRIC CIRCUS La Zona Franca/Siam Electric Skyline CD $11.98 Audiobot

Get past the complete WTF factor of this Belgian group's name, and you'll have your skull exquisitely basted with some terrific amplifier worship and scruffy feedback float. There are two tracks on this disc, each clocking in at around 15 minutes or so in length; the first achieves a mass of guitar-drone trance and layered feedback/distortion that crosses Earth 2's powergrowl with Hototogisu flavored atonality, rolling along until it smoothes out into an obliterating purr. The second track is a gentler drone hymn that blows away the ashes left from the previous jams immolation...think Mirror, Sunroof, and Troum. A highly recommended document of gorgeous heavy axedrone, for fans of Vibracathedral Orchestra, Sunroof, and psychedelic trance-riffage. Comes in a jewel case with a weird sort of kraft-paper packaging.

FLATLANDS / SUNSHINE REPUBLIC split 12" $12.98 Superfi

An excellent split 12" of European post-metal, this platter offers up two heavy songs from Flatlands, whose lumbering, chugging catchy riffs are offset with noisy flourishes, all of which remind me of both Justin Broadrick's melodic dirges in Jesu and later Godflesh, and the more metallic Dinosaur Jr. stuff met with Cult Of Luna/Isis/Neurosis style heaviness. Stripped down and raw, with the focus on catchy, crushing riffs, Flatlands also go for a more abrasive vocal assault with agonized deathcore screams. Sunshine Republic's side features a single long song of subdued, contemplative drone rock/post rock that falls near House Of Low Culture and Phase 3 Earth, a lonely repetitious reverb heavy guitar melody that builds in volume as the dummer gradually appears, bashing the hell out of his drums in a leviathan march across empty rural fields and down abandoned village streets. Eventually that sad guitar melody disappears in a cloud of howling psychedelic feedback and monstrously downtuned bass guitar and saurian drum pounding destruction that begins to resemble Skullflower's IIIrd Gatekeeper with faint deathcore roaring way off in the distance. Pressed on grey 180 gramme vinyl and presented in a minimalist sleeve with cool layered paper/acetate artwork.

FLESHPRESS I CD $11.98 Shifty

Finnish sludgecore from FLESHPRESS. Five songs in forty minutes, so that should give you an idea of what to expect. Originally released in 2001 on LP by Kult Of Nihilow, US sludge label Shifty has righteously resurrected this exercise in downtuned pain. Opening tracks "Rise Of The Superior" and "All Things Broken" unleash a wave of molasses-slow riffs and diseased vocals broken up by passages of icy space-psychedelia, like Eyehategod at their slowest jamming with Sons Of Otis (or maybe Acid Mothers Temple?). Brutal. "Trust No One - Coming Home" kicks in with Buzzov*en style speed and maintains the hate through a flurry of feedback and razor sharp riffs...while closing tracks "Jumibian Bongoloid" (excellent song title!) and "( )" dig in with humungoid sticky riffs that wrap up this album quite well. The CD comes in a thick sleeve and is polybagged. Total misanthropic noise filtered through 5 mph riffs. Crushing stuff.

FLESHPRESS III CD $13.98 Kult Of Nihilow

I loved the previous two Fleshpress albums, I and Worm Dirges, both of which are still in stock at Crucial Blast and are essential entries in the whole doom/dirge canon. Both of those albums were huge glacial slabs of slow-blooming blackened sludge, like a slower, bleaker version of Eyehategod mixed with icy, cosmic psychedelia, grim and negative and slower than time. Awesome, massive sludge with a toxic uniqueness no other band has possessed. It's taken a while, but I finally got my hands on Fleshpress' III, and it's even more intense, a strangely spacious exercise in misanthropic, textured psych-sludge, with bleak, nihilistic lyrics that read like Mike William's gutter poetry scaled down to haiku-like minimalism, and monstrous molasses riffs and tortured vocals juxtaposed against lengthy passages of heavy, clean guitar chords and spacious, minimal drumming. At times, Flespress almost sound like a darkside Codeine, or some other similiar slow-core band, playing a single ominous riff over and over again before erupting again into a crushing dirge crawl or an eruption of diseased midpaced crustcore; elsewhere, the band drops all forward momentum and spins a tarpit amp drone mantra in the void like a more defined Sunn O))). Just as heavy and oppressive as fellow negative sludge gods Grief, Khanate, Electric Wizard, and Soulpreacher, but Fleshpress are able to balance the sludge with a sort of grim atmospheric beauty that renders their music even more hopeless and twisted. This limited edition CD version of the now out-of-print LP is gorgeously packaged in a fold-out silkscreened carton sleeve that's similiar to the Arigato pak style of case, printed in monochromatic brown and silver metallic ink.

FLESHPRESS Worm Dirges CD $13.98 Kult Ov Nihilow

The first album from Finnish extreme doom merchants Fleshpress. Severely primitive trance-sludge, as heavy as it freakin' comes, each of the two epic jams on Worm Dirges take a simple post-punkish riff, douse it in reverb and gnarly distortion and Eyehategod style vocal hate and repeat it eternally, jamming their sludgy nihilism into infinity as the song eventually breaks down into dreamy, drifting drones. It's like a krautrock take on swampy EHG/Buzzoven sludgecore, with Fleshpress injecting metallic post rock and Troum style dronecore into their hypnotic filth making this an essential dose of extremely heavy doom drone dirge. Comes in a sweet tri-fold card slipcase. Limited edition of 200!

FLEURETY Min Tid Skal Komme CD $13.98 Candlelight

This crucial reissue of Fleurety's debut album from 1995 showcases one of the weirdest of the Norwegian avant-garde "post-black metal" outfits of the 1990's; it's also one of my favorite black metal albums, period. Fleurety was flirting with the avant-garde even as far back as their A Darker Shade of Evil EP from '94, which is also included on this disc, but it was their first full length Min Tid Skal Komme that really delivered a blast of genre-defying imagination from the band. The album was originally released jointly by Aesthetic Death and Misanthropy Records, and only consisted of five songs, although three of 'em exceed 10 minutes in length, making for some pretty epic arrangements, where blazing black metal is fused with an ethereal blend of prog rock, pop, and psychedelia, uniquely atonal solos and folk music, and heavily featuring the bewitching vocals of Norwegian pop singer Marian Aas Hansen. The first track "Fragmenter av en Fortid" starts off with some dreamy acoustic strum, jazzy basslines, and subdued drumming, and then glides into menacing metallic blackness. Marian Aas Hansen's smoky singing turns some of the songs into a sort of blackened Portishead. Radiant major-key pop hooks surface next to ripping black metal shred and shrieking vocals. Fleurety turned into a black metal Rush with their debut, the songs are subversively catchy and textured, yet the whole album is constructed so intricately that multiple listens are required to navigate their songs. The adventurousness of Min Tid Skal Komme is comparable to two other boundery-dissolving black metal albums of the same era, Ulver's Bergtatt and Ved Buens Ende's Written in Waters, at least in spirit. Definitely recommended if yer into the quirky, unusual black metal of Ulver, Arcturus, Dodheimsgard, Solefald, and especially Ved Buens Ende, or even Nachtmystium's neo-psychedelic black metal - this album is one of the best.
In addition, the Candlelight reissue also includes the song "Absence" from the 1995 Blackened compilation, and man this jam SMOKES, starting off like a shredding black metal version of the early 90's alt rock hit "Three Strange Days" by School Of Fish, downshifts into a churning dissonant dirge, and then mutates into a fucked-up outro of abstract orgasmic vocal noises, hypnotic feedback, and heavily processed guitars. And the last three tracks on the disc are the A Darker Shade of Evil 7"; these songs feature somewhat more straightforward riffing and song structures in the traditional Norwegian black metal mode, but the vocals on this recording rank as some of the most insane you'll ever hear, a super high-pitched shriek that sounds more like a screaming bird of prey than anything remotely human.
The reissue boasts beautiful packaging, including a 12-panel poster foldout complete with lyrics, plus sufficiently detailed liners for the included recordings. Again, highly recommended.

FLOOR Dove CD $12.98 No Idea

The mighty behemoth has arisen! FLOOR returns with 34 minutes of bone-crushing, down-tuned mayhem! Enormous walls of chaos smash noise mongrels coast to coast, border to border! Deep within the bombstring assault lies a sweet ear for melody, like a secret coupling of MELVINS and JOY DIVISION. The entire second side of the record is inhabited by "Dove", an eighteen minute torrent, replete with rivers of feedback and the signature FLOOR double guitar stagger and punch. Welcome to FLOOR's legendary, long-lost first album, recorded in 1994, but cryptically, mysteriously never released... until now! Be warned: this is raw and direct, pulverizing and intense, with melodic undertones and a dark groove building and exploding! Your ears will never be the same! The CD version includes a bonus instrumental: one riff, two notes, sixteen minutes. Crushing!!

FLOOR Dove LP $11.98 No Idea

Now available on baby blue swirl vinyl in a limited edition of 279 copies!
The mighty behemoth has arisen! FLOOR returns with 34 minutes of bone-crushing, down-tuned mayhem! Enormous walls of chaos smash noise mongrels coast to coast, border to border! Deep within the bombstring assault lies a sweet ear for melody, like a secret coupling of MELVINS and JOY DIVISION. The entire second side of the record is inhabited by "Dove", an eighteen minute torrent, replete with rivers of feedback and the signature FLOOR double guitar stagger and punch. Welcome to FLOOR's legendary, long-lost first album, recorded in 1994, but cryptically, mysteriously never released... until now! Be warned: this is raw and direct, pulverizing and intense, with melodic undertones and a dark groove building and exploding! Your ears will never be the same! Crushing!!

FLOOR Floor LP $11.98 No Idea

Here's the vinyl LP version of the godlike slef-titled album from Florida's sludge-pop lords FLOOR, on gorgeous marble colored vinyl. The LP has the same tracks as the CD version, and here's what we had to say about that:
One of our all-time favorite bands here at the BLAST. Florida's FLOOR return after 10 years of exploding eardrums via their patented "bomb string" attack, with 13 songs of immense, ultra down-tuned riffs and earthquake inducing drums with sweet, infectious vocal harmonies. As crushingly heavy as HIGH ON FIRE and NOOTHGRUSH , as beautiful and catchy as MY BLOODY VALENTINE and PINBACK. To date, the heaviest pop album ever recorded. Features members of CAVITY and DOVE. Highly recommended!!!

FLOOR Floor CD $12.98 No Idea

One of our all-time favorite bands here at the BLAST. Florida’s FLOOR return after 10 years of exploding eardrums with the "bomb string", with 13 songs of immense, ultra down-tuned riffs and earthquake inducing drums with sweet, infectious vocal harmonies. As crushingly heavy as HIGH ON FIRE and NOOTHGRUSH , as beautiful and catchy as MY BLOODY VALENTINE and PINBACK. To date, the heaviest pop album ever recorded. Features members of CAVITY and DOVE. Highly recommended.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS, THE Alptraum CD $13.98 Pandemomium

Alptraum is the excellent eight album from Flying Luttenbachers, a completely improvised live assault recorded in the Chicago area from 1999 to 2000 that shows the band in brutal free jazz mode, rather than the free-death metal/black metal/jazz that had been the focus of their previous couple of albums. It's violent hardcore free jazz in the vein of Borbetomagus, John Zorn, and Peter Brotzmann, summoning a mass of mewling satanic worms that crawl inside your head from the lineup of Luttenbachers visionary Weasel Walter on drums and saxophonist Michael Colligan, with upright bassist Kurt Johnson and cellist Frederick Lonberg-Holm alternating on tracks. The group blasts off from the word go, Colligan's sax eliciting cobra charming drones and scalding, upper register skronk runs alongside Weasel Walter's mixture of muscular jazz-improv drumming and combative grindcore blastbeats. However, the 22 minute long "The Green GLow" is the album's centerpiece, an epic creepout possessed by Walter's rumbling percussion and Colligan's fierce blowing, while Lonberg-Holm scrapes massive atonal howls from out of his cello and evokes a Hornbook For Witches atmosphere that makes this one an essential for fans of truly threatening heavy jazz and improv.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Cataclysm CD $15.98 ugEXPLODE
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The latest album in the Luttenbacher's ongoing apocalyptic sci-fi narrative that started way back with 1996's Revenge continues with this meticulously assembled avant prog/grind/thrash/jazz epic. Backed by a formidable lineup that includes shred wizard Mick Barr (Orthrelm/Octis/Ocrilim) on guitar, bassist Mike Green (Burmese), and guitarist Ed Rodriguez (Gorge Trio/Colossamite/Iceburn), Luttenbachers founder and drummer Weasel Walter constructs a technical shred/skronk blast assault that slams insane math-guitar acrobatics and mutant No Wave-meets-death metal heaviness against free jazz percussion and full-on grinding blastbeat marathons, an instrumental chronicle of the massive interstellar battle between the Behemoth and The Void through songs like "Demonic Velocities", "Insektoid Horror", and "Interstellar War". Mick Barr's presence on Cataclysm really adds a whole new shredtastic element to the band too, as he and Rodriguez trade off dizzying fretboard runs scurrying at lightspeed over the epileptic percussion, often reaching a point of axe meltdown where the notes begin to sound like computer glitches. Totally insane, and demanding of several listens just to absorb the detail of the compositions....I've been playing Cataclysm all week and am still just starting to get my head wrapped around it. The disc closes with a rendition of Movement Four of Olivier Messiaen's "L'Ascension" and "Regime Parts 1 & 2", an amazing 15 minute epic of cosmic puzzle destruction. Absolutely essential not only to Luttenbachers fans, but also to anyone even mildly into Mick Barr's godlike guitar playing and brain liquifying apocalyptic prog thrash in general.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Destroy All Music Revisited CD $15.98 Skin Graft

Absolutely essential for fans of hyperactive punk-jazz insanity, Destroy All Music Revisited is the killer re-issue of the Flying Luttenbacher's landmark 1994 album fully re-mastered and extended with seven additional previously unreleased tracks from the same time period. These sessions featured the lethal quintet lineup of renowned jazz saxophonist Ken Vandermark, saxophonist and synth player Chad Organ, guitarist Dylan Posa, Jeb Bishop on trombone, bass, and casio, and of course the mastermind behind the Flying Luttenbachers, drummer Weasel Walter. These recordings are the last that this lineup recorded before Weasel disintegrated the group, later turning the Luttenbachers into the death metal/jazzthrash trio that would record Revenge and Gods Of Chaos. Although Destroy All Music captures the band before Weasel would take it into more metallic territory, this is still some of most incendiary free jazz/no wave/improv thrash you'll ever hear, 74 minutes of fiery free jazz exploration that reaches heights of total ecstatic noise, storms of blastbeats and screaming playful sax blowing, squalls of searing feedback and guitar noise battling reeds and Weasel's chaos clatter attack, hardcore-infected bop, and bursts of bonecrushing distorted noise rock. This deluxe re-issue comes in a full color jewel case which includes an 8-page fold-out booklet that features detailed liner notes, photos, show fliers from the 1993/1994 period, and more.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Live AT WNUR CD $13.98 ugEXPLODE

Luttenbacher's drummer and visionary Weasel Walter just resurrected this incendiary live jam from 1992, the first recorded document of the band and the only recording to feature the Luttenbacher's original lineup of avant-garde jazz vet Hal Russel on tenor sax, Weasel Walter on drums and clarinet, and Chad Organ on tenor sax. These 8 jams are a manic outpouring of loud, squealing sax destruction accompanied by Weasel's spastic punk-jazz drumming that splatters the room with blastbeats and drumkit-falling-down-the-stairs improvisation, hitting every part of the drumkit (including sawblades and other pieces of metal that he attached to the kit) all at once, all the time, an incessant, awesome percussive assault. The sax blowing on this disc is boisterous, joyous honking and gasping, squalls of bleating brass slithering serpentine through the studio and out through your speakers, and among the eruptions of formless sound there are recurring melodic themes that appear and reappear. Heavy shit for real, some of the best, most-fun-to-listen-to brutal free jazz/punk playing I've ever heard. For those of you that like your jazz improv loud, noisy, and burly a la Bormetomagus, Zorn's hardcore influenced stuff, and late 90's Iceburn, you gotta hear this. Pretty funny too, with lots of between-song (and even mid-song) banter, with Russel egging Weasel on during one particularly epileptic blastbeat seizure, and a killer moment where the trio stops suddenly during a song and Weasel asks his bandmates if it's time for his drum solo; upon confirmation, he proceeds to completely freak out on the kit. Awesome. Seriously, there aren't many free jazz albums that I think of as being genuinely "fun" listens, but this one fits the bill. Includes zonked renditions of Albert Ayler's "Witches And Devils" and "Ghosts", too. Booklet contains liner notes from Weasel Walter describing this era of the band.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Retrospektiw IV: 1996-2000 CD $11.98 Mountain

Back in stock! Sixteen brutal twisted skronk-thrash outbursts from FLYING LUTTENBACHERS' late 90's output, including EP, live, unreleased, and compilation jams. Twisted, triumphant free-blast! Weasel Walter and co. smash together elements of grindcore, free improvisation, no-wave, and chaotic jazz into a sonic riot - awesome stuff. Save yourself the headche of tracking down the original 7 inches and comps these tracks appeared on, and grab this anthology of vicious modern improv. The missing link between Peter Brotzmann and Discordance Axis, or Albert Ayler and Immortal ! The booklet features liner notes and source info for each track.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder CD $13.98 ugEXPLODE

A ridiculously awesome progblast sci-fi concept album that chronicles the post-apocalyptic reassembly of all organic matter on Earth into a single gargantuan superpredator, 2003's Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder stands out from the rest of the Luttenbachers discography for a couple of reasons. First off, it's just Weasel Walter here, no band, Weasel flying solo and composing and performing everything on the album. And it's insane to hear how proficient this guy is...Systems Emerge is a series of mind boggling instrumental avant-prog-jazz-blastcore attacks influenced by Xenakis, every track is insanely complicated and noisy, with little bits of fusion, no wave, black metal, Carl Stalling, grindcore, and KK Null-esque guitar noise orchestrated into brutal hyperspeed chaos symphonies. And it culminates with the 23 minute finale 'Rise Of The Iridescent Behemoth', an epic blastscape of lightspeed blastbeats, baroque piano, screeching sax, and a maelstrom of crackling electronics. Mind blowing shit, one of the finest slabs of "brutal prog" ever. Awesome full color molecular packaging design from Weasel, with a booklet that folds out into a poster insert.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder LP $11.98 ugEXPLODE

Awesome looking LP vinyl version of the Luttenbacher's sprawling 2003 concept album!
A ridiculously awesome progblast sci-fi concept album that chronicles the post-apocalyptic reassembly of all organic matter on Earth into a single gargantuan superpredator, 2003's Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder stands out from the rest of the Luttenbachers discography for a couple of reasons. First off, it's just Weasel Walter here, no band, Weasel flying solo and composing and performing everything on the album. And it's insane to hear how proficient this guy is...Systems Emerge is a series of mind boggling instrumental avant-prog-jazz-blastcore attacks influenced by Xenakis, every track is insanely complicated and noisy, with little bits of fusion, no wave, black metal, Carl Stalling, grindcore, and KK Null-esque guitar noise orchestrated into brutal hyperspeed chaos symphonies. And it culminates with the 23 minute finale 'Rise Of The Iridescent Behemoth', an epic blastscape of lightspeed blastbeats, baroque piano, screeching sax, and a maelstrom of crackling electronics. Mind blowing shit, one of the finest slabs of "brutal prog" ever. Awesome full color molecular packaging design from Weasel, with a booklet that folds out into a poster insert.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS The Void CD $13.98 ugEXPLODE

2004's The Void is another concept album from The Flying Luttenbachers, one which continues to follow Weasel Walter's ongoing saga of post-apocalyptic robot civilizations and predatory planetoids. Following up te Xenakis-inspired Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder, which Weasel composed and performed all by himself, The Void now finds him transplanted to the Bay Area and joined by Gorge Trio guitarist (and former Iceburn member) Ed Rodriquez and Burmese bassist Mike Green. Back with a full band lineup, the Luttenbachers sound veers away from the clinical hypercomposition of the previous album, and back to the frantic, visceral sound of the 'Satanic power-trio' Luttenbachers that was responsible for the seminal 90's albums Revenge and Gods Of Chaos. Opening with a glitchy musique concrete intro, the band launches into seven instrumental sections entitled 'The Void', racing through brutal minimalist blasts of grim, dissonant no wave fused to black metal, blasting drums, and complex arrangements. Rodriquez emits spiky, pointilist feedback squeals and attacks, while Green lays down doomy, plodding basslines that make this one of the darkest Luttenbachers albums yet. The final track is the only non-'Void' track, titled 'Sword of Atheism', a harrowing drone/dirge that erupts into ultra heavy chaotic drumming, churning bass thunder and slicing no wave riffs. I love it when Luttenbachers kicks into "thrash mode", and this album is the band at their thrashiest and most feral. Killer shit, and a crucial entry in the Luttenbacher's monstrous discography. The Void comes in a full color case with four-panel booklet.

FLYING LUTTENBACHERS The Void LP $11.98 ugEXPLODE

LP vinyl version of the Luttenbacher's 2004 full length.
2004's The Void is another concept album from The Flying Luttenbachers, one which continues to follow Weasel Walter's ongoing saga of post-apocalyptic robot civilizations and predatory planetoids. Following up te Xenakis-inspired Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder, which Weasel composed and performed all by himself, The Void now finds him transplanted to the Bay Area and joined by Gorge Trio guitarist (and former Iceburn member) Ed Rodriquez and Burmese bassist Mike Green. Back with a full band lineup, the Luttenbachers sound veers away from the clinical hypercomposition of the previous album, and back to the frantic, visceral sound of the 'Satanic power-trio' Luttenbachers that was responsible for the seminal 90's albums Revenge and Gods Of Chaos. Opening with a glitchy musique concrete intro, the band launches into seven instrumental sections entitled 'The Void', racing through brutal minimalist blasts of grim, dissonant no wave fused to black metal, blasting drums, and complex arrangements. Rodriquez emits spiky, pointilist feedback squeals and attacks, while Green lays down doomy, plodding basslines that make this one of the darkest Luttenbachers albums yet. The final track is the only non-'Void' track, titled 'Sword of Atheism', a harrowing drone/dirge that erupts into ultra heavy chaotic drumming, churning bass thunder and slicing no wave riffs. I love it when Luttenbachers kicks into "thrash mode", and this album is the band at their thrashiest and most feral. Killer shit, and a crucial entry in the Luttenbacher's monstrous discography. The Void comes in a full color case with four-panel booklet.

FLYING WORKER Collection 3" CD $8.98 Electric Human Project

This neat little 3" CD collects the demo and three 7" EP's this French band released before breaking up. Chaotic, brutal, but eerily melodic and epic. Dramatic metallic riffing, ferocious blastbeats, cool little percussion breaks, monstrous vocals, jangly, quiet post-rock/indie parts, blooping and swooshing electronics, all building into crushing crescendos...really good stuff! Discordant but catchy. We only have three of these in stock, so act fast.Packaged in slimline jewel case.

FOETOPSY Bizarre Gynecology 7" EP $4.98 Murder The World

Sicker, faster than before...this new EP shreds thru grinding, blurring deathblast and devastating chaotic breakdowns. The most extreme blasting hyper-brutal death metal imaginable! Features Jesse from Screaming Afterbirth (United Guttural Records) and Jon Engman (Brodequin) on drums.Imagine BRODEQUIN, EMNITY, MENTAL HORROR and INTERNAL SUFFERING jamming together at the same time in one room.

FOETOPSY Dyspartum CD $9.98 Barbarian

Ultra grind, blurr speed and devastating breakdowns. Combining Euro-grind and NYDM-esque breaks, this bands flattens anything in it's path. Features Jesse from Screaming Afterbirth (United Guttural Records) and Jon Engman (Brodequin) on drums. Guest vocals by Neil from Dyscracia. 21 tracks of extreme blasting hyper-brutal death metal. Imagine BRODEQUIN, EMNITY, MENTAL HORROR and INTERNAL SUFFERING jamming together at the same time in one room.

FOOTBALL RABBIT Walking Cross-Lots CD $9.98 Animal Disguise

An industrial math rock/prog rock/black metal/post rock collage that features Dominick Fernow of Prurient on guitar? You'd better believe it. We managed to get ahold of just a few copies of this nearly out-of-print CD from 2002, and it's a scorching pastiche of heavy instrumentals that slither from dusky western fugues to rampaging chug-a-lug thrash metal and blasts of robotic basement Black Metal, to unexpectedly pretty n' dreamy soundtrack popscapes and swells of shoegazeresque melody, with lots of weird metallic riffs appearing all over the place. And the cold, electronic sound of the drumming, courtesy of drummer Kris Lapke (also of psych-sludgesters Furisubi), is apparently the result of his playing on small drum machine pads that have been run through an amplifier, the clinical, powerful tones of which further add to the general film score vibe that grips this disc. It's a pretty killer dose of imagined cinematic sonics, but filtered through that general Providence weirdness and seemingly infected with equal doses of Don Caballero, early 90's metal LP's, and Therapy?; walk around with this accompanying your day and you'll feel damn near unstoppable. Limited edition of 500, hand numbered, with silk screened covers by Neil Burke.

FOOT VILLAGE World Fanatasy 10" $12.98 Not Not Fun
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Talk about high energy! Members of LA psych/noise blasters Rainbow Blanket, Rose For Bohdan, and Gang Wizard formulate seven knockout jams of kinetic communal drum corps/post-punk/free beat action for FOOT VILLAGE. You read right - this is a primarily all-drums blowout, lots and lots of drums, with coed gang vocals clueing you in to their joyous fury...part mass percussion squad, part agitprop punk cheer-squad thunder, World Fantasy is a euphoric convergence of marching tribal snares, immensely meat-moving beats, BRUTAL whirlwind drum racket, and fiesty chants from the FV quartet. Tight! When they get nuts, it turns into a wall of spastic drumming noise that'll blow your hair back. This has been mastered LOUDLY by Pete Swanson from D. YELLOW SWANS, features a remix by Pete, and being another sweet Not Not Fun jam, has been beautifully packaged in a silkscreen-shock MEGAheavy cardboard sleeve with the sonics pressed on white wax, quite nice.

FORGOTTEN WOODS Race Of Cain CD $14.98 20 Buck Spin

Brand new album from the reunited cult Norwegian black metal crew Forgotten Woods, their first new stuff in 10 years and their first for new label 20 Buck Spin who apparently has designs to re-release the band's back catalog. Pretty strange stuff here, the band formed back in 1991 and so are part of that whole original wave of frostbitten Scandi-BM, but from what we've heard, Forgotten Woods has always been one of the weirder bands to emerge from that scene. Race Of Cain certainly looks strange, the 6-panel digipack mysteriously decorated with old sepia-tinged photographs of a young girl in a clown costume, little children seemingly at Sunday school, a drawing from Lewis Carroll's Alice In Wonderland, and drawings of the reproductive cycle of the housefly. Their music is even stranger...at it's core, Forgotten Woods play a really raw, noisy and aggro take on old school black metal that's definitely reminiscent of Burzum, with exquisitely mangy drumming and a guitar tone so baked in mid-range that it makes our teeth rattle...but they're also really psychedelic, suddenly throwing in quietly somber and immensely beautiful guitar instrumentals that drown you in reverb and dark melodies, or suddenly loosing weird effects on their scorching midtempo black metal that seems to make everything sound out of phase. Most of the songs lumber along at a midtempo pace, and there's a couple parts where they almost sound like a really buzzy, gnarly 70's boogie-metal outfit, like on "One Day". And then there's "The Principle And The Whip", an amazingly beautiful and super catchy song with softly sung female vocals that sounds more like some old dreamy indie rock outfit than anything remotely black metal...yet Forgotten Woods drape so much Luciferian imagery and utterly charred buzz across this album that you can't call it anything but black metal. The last track "Third Eye (New Creature)" is really dramatic, starting off as a grim blast of thrashy black metal with scathing lyrics admonishing herd-think in all of it's forms, and then it fades out into a lengthy segment from the long running evangelical radio show Talk Back With Bob Larson, where the host carries on an ongoing argument with a guest who extolls his beliefs in Social Darwinism. It's a heady, heated conversation that lasts for 7 minutes or so, and then suddenly the band kick back in with a fucking AWESOME riff and crushing rock beat, sounding like some beastly stoner rock outfit being blasted out of a man-sized transistor radio. Nice! Race Of Cain is right up there with other proponents of free-thinking weirdo black metal like Sigh, Tjolgtjar, Benighted Leams, Ved Buens Ende, and Fluerety, and fellow fans of arty yet shredding blackness need to check these guys out! Highly recommended.

MP3 SAMPLE: "A Landmine Reprisal " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "One Day " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Principle And The Whip " (excerpt)

400 BLOWS Angels Trumpets And Devils Trombones CD $13.98 GSL

The anxiously awaited new full length from LA's 400 BLOWS. Ignore the hype: these guys offer up a potent brand of stripped down, minimalist, mathy punk sludge, equal parts modern LA punk, Wire, and Eyehategod, all rapid sideways drumming, perforating atonal guitar, and singer Skot's sneering nasal assault. This new shit is way catchier than previous releases; a bunch of songs on Angel's Trumpets... almost sound like sing-songy schoolyard taunts, but with crushing axe riffage,obviously. A bruising follow up to Black Rainbow.

FRIENDS FOREVER / ZOMBIE ZOMBIE split 7" EP $5.98 Nothing Gets Worse Than This

A ghoulish Halloween themed 7" platter with Friends Forever getting weird with three improvised tracks that have them making werewolf sounds over primitive drumbeats, haunted house effects, and a pulsating bassline. Zombie Zombie drop two untitled halloween noise rock jams, with cobwebbed Castlevania keyboards, distorted yelps, and manic freeform hardcore weirdness collapsing into a pile of limbs and skulls.

FRODE GJERSTAD / LASSE MARHAUG Red Edge CD $11.98 Carbon

Back in stock!
Om Red Edge, Norwegian underground jazz legend Frode Gjerstad teamed up with aggro noise/laptop conjurer Lasse Marhaug (Jazzkammer, Origami Republika, DEL) for a crushing bout of live electronic noise quake and powerful free jazz. Frode Gjerstad's free sax work streaks neon/chrome tracers across Marhaug's rumbling, dynamo distortion crunch and static squeak. Gjerstad has a heavy resume, playing with the likes of Peter Brotzmann, Evan Parker, and Sabeer Mateen, amongst others, and his emotive/violent squelch n' melody interplays well with the sometimes subtle, often blistering deep-earth drones, space glitch, and crackling thunder of Marhaug's electronic onslaught. At times Red Edge has the noir feel of a William Gibson novel, perfectly fusing the melodic saxophone runs with circuit-driven filth. A smokin' fusion of heavy jazz improv and brutal electronic noise.

FROM THE ASHES Mind Vortex CD $9.98 Acoustic Trauma

Totally out of fucking control Swedish grindcore! 23 blasts of raw face-shredding violence that averages about a minute each. Awesome monstrous/screaming vocal attacks, diseased bass guitar breaks, murderous crustcore rampage, insanoid blastbeat tornados, ridiculously hyperspeed tremelo picking, catchy as fuck hooks. Raging shit. Comparable to the early stuff from fellow Swedes NASUM, and def for fans of superfast, super-pissed off grind/crust/thrash like Phobia, Hail Of Rage,Drop Dead, Gadget, Sayyadina, Disrupt, d-beats and blastbeats, studded grindcore punishment.

FUCKED UP Epics In Minutes CD $13.98 Deranged

Man, this band has been getting a LOT of hype lately. I'm a HUGE fan of this sort of ripping old school hardcore punk, but over the past few years, I've fell out of touch with that scene due largely to the fact that there just didn't seem to be anything new happening. The last band that really stoked me on hardcore like this was 9 Shocks Terror, but noone else has really carried the torch since. Well, when I first heard Fucked Up online recently, it was the craziest blast of fucking straight up HARDCORE that I've heard in ages, and I had to track down everything they had in print. For those of you that are unfamiliar with Fucked Up, they are a 5-piece from Toronto, Canada, whose fast and raw early 80's style hardcore punk channels Negative Approach and Black Flag through old Dangerhouse Records style LA punk and an apparent love of psychedelic rock and other musical references that I wouldn't expect to ever hear from a band playing this sort of fucking ferocious old school HC. Their songs feature an awesome blown out guitar tone and a unique strumming style that adds all sorts of melodic flourishes that remind me of Husker Du at times, although Fucked Up don't sound anything like Husker Du. This is, however, brutal and seriously fucking catchy tuneage with some of the best songwriting I've ever heard from a hardcore outfit, and the weird elements that pop up in their songs make this music even more awesome, with speedy thrashers turning into extended Krautrock jams, and trumpets appearing from out of nowhere, and amplifiers pushed to the breaking point with some really imaginative use of feedback as part of the songs. So yeah, the music is fucking incredible, hands down the most potent hardcore punk I've heard in years. On top of that, Fucked Up have this confrontational, intellectual undertone that is really cool and thought provoking, which materializes with their mixing of fascist imagery with leftist anarchist punk, their cutting and sarcastic yet cognizant interviews and press statements (which seems to have gotten them alot of heat from the punk scene), and their ability to totally clown the conventions of underground music in all of it's guises. So far, I'm convinced that this band is total genius, and this music could save hardcore from the bloated, cash-hungry joke that it's become over the past decade. Fucking CRUCIAL. Epics In Minutes collects their 7" vinyl tracks along with previously unreleased mixes, demo tracks and part of a radio set, and the booklet contains liner notes, photos, and flyers. Highly recommended, and if you're even remotely into hardcore punk, you need to get this right fucking NOW.

FUCKED UP Dance Of Death 7" EP $6.98 Deranged

Fucking AWESOME 5th EP from Toronto's Fucked Up, who combine the power of the past 30 years of raw hardcore punk with mystical undercurrents, incisive political and social commentary, and some subtle but fucking amazing psych/kraut influences. Dance Of Death contains some of their most potent rock-hued hardcore punk cut to wax...the armageddon anthem "Dance Of Death" lobs some righteous lyrics over a mid tempo crusher while the B side track "ZeZoZose" is a speedier, gnarlier thrasher , accompanied by those burly vocals and awesome feedback. Like the "Police" 7", this is Fucked Up channeling their more straightforward, crushing LA punk meets Negative Approach/Black Flag vibes. Crucial potent hardcore! The EP comes in a glossy black and white sleeve with lots of cool skeleton drawings.

FUCKED UP Dangerous Fumes 7" EP $6.98 Deranged

One of a couple recent singles released in anticipation of Fucked Up's debut album Hidden World, this exclusive 2 songer has the charged mid-tempo hardcore anthem "Dangerous Fumes" and the ultra melodic "Teenage Problems", which is my fave Fucked Up jam to date, def one of their catchiest songs ever, and with taboo lyrics that are sure to stir up more of the controversy and mystery that seems to enshroud this arcane/mystic hardcore squad. Fkkn killer.

FUCKED UP Generations CASSETTE $8.98 Deranged
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This weird, awesome mix tape compiled by members of Toronto hardcore outsiders Fucked Up is a 90-minute hodge podge of unreleased demo tracks, live jams, alternate takes and practive recordings, cover songs, jamming weirdness, interviews, radio goofs, unreleased songs from FU-related bands Pink Eye, Urban Blight, and Career Suicide, and a bunch of other random sound. This is supposed to be first in a series of cassette only releases from Fucked Up, and is an often hysterically funny glimpse into the band, their musical interests, and the Toronto hardcore scene that they are a part of. Manufactured on a professionally made cassette with xerox cover w/ extensive liners.

FUCKED UP Litany 7" EP $5.98 Havoc

This is the re-issue of the original Litany EP from 2003 that appeared on Test Pattern Records from controversial thrashers Fucked Up, who combine the power of the past 30 years of raw hardcore punk with mystical undercurrents, incisive political and social commentary, and some subtle but fucking amazing psych/kraut influences. This particular record contains four blasts of their more straightforward heavy, speedy, catchy as fuck hardcore punk, "Litany", "Colour Removal", "Reset The Ride", and "What Could Have Been", complete with killer spiteful lyrics. Fucked Up's stripped down approach belies some truly berserk guitar playing though, and as always there are several currents of complex thought running through the music, text, and artwork captured on this document. Sonically, these ragers channel everything from early 80's HC circa Negative Approach and Black Flag to New Wave, distilling their influences and energies into pure circle pit magick. The 7" comes packaged in a poster sleeve that folds out to display a killer piece of collage art.

FUCKED UP Police 7" EP $6.98 Deranged

Crucial second EP from Toronto's controversial Fucked Up, who combine the power of the 30 year hardcore legacy with mystical undercurrents, incisive political and social commentary, and some subtle but fucking amazing psych/kraut influences. This has one of their burliest crushers, "Police", and contains pure condensed hardcore punk power a la Negative Approach/Black Flag/Germs, with ultra catchy guitar hooks, gnarly vocals, and oceans of police-hating venom. The psych elements aren't unleashed on this EP, instead containing some of their best hard rock riffs strapped to the back of rampaging hardcore. Comes packaged in a glued-pocket sleeve with glossy black and white insert pasted together Crass style.

FUCKED UP Triumph Of Life 7" EP $5.98 Jade Tree

Fucked Up's opening salvo for their new label Jade Tree starts off with "Triumph For Life", a completely different studio version of the impossibly catchy leadoff track from the album, and it's one of their most epic jams yet at six minutes long, with an Oi!-style hook that jams itself in your brain, and encoded lyrics that take days to break. The b-side has "Neat Parts", another massive rager with melodic, anthemic guitar lines n' unstoppable riffs, and one of the best rhythm sections happening in hardcore right now. Raging, intelligent, mystical hardcore. Presented in a full color sleeve on pink vinyl.

FUCKED UP Year Of The Pig 12" $11.99 Whats Your Rupture?

A brand new barnburner of a 12" from the Toronto hardcore provocateurs, Year Of The Pig features two lengthy jams totalling more than 30 minutes of music from Fucked Up, that finally sees them pushing into the full-bore psychedelic/prog hardcore realm that I've been waiting to hear ever since I started buggin' out over their 7" singles a year and a half ago. This record is the first in a planned series that are gonna be based on the Chinese Zodiac; for their contribution, Fucked Up took the theme and applied it to the title track, an 18-minute, 34-second epic masterpiece addressing the plight of sex workers in Canada via some richly evocative, spiteful lyrics. The song starts off with lush Hammond organs played by Deadly Snakes’ Max Danger over a jazzy piano vamp and angelic vocals from Toronto singer Jennifer Castle, winds through raging thrashpunk and hypnotic Krautrock like a fusion of Poison Idea, Neu! and Pink Floyd with an adrenaline-spiking hand drum freakout rising up seven minutes in, and fuses all of these elements together at the songs end into a crushing climactic close. The other side features “The Black Hats”, not quite as long but just as powerful, a fierce motorik-hardcore jam that rides out a Hawkwind style riff to infinity over chainsaw thrash tempos and apocalyptic declarations from Pink Eyes putting us all on notice. Limited edition.

FUCK...I'M DEAD Gore Grind Thrash Attack Live DVD+CD $19.98 No Escape

Wow, I never expected to see a full-blown, professionally filmed live concert DVD from those mutant Aussie grinders Fuck...I'm Dead, but here it is, the awesome looking Gore Grind Thrash Attack Live , which not only contains a DVD with multiple performances from the band, but like that Botch DVD/CD set that came out late last year also has an additional CD that has the entire Arthouse performance for yer listening pleasure. Now, since this is an Australian release, the DVD is in the PAL format, which means that it won't play on standard NTSC format DVD players; however, it is all-region, which means that you can play it on any computer that has an all-region DVD player.
If your not familiar with the awesomely-named Fuck...I'm Dead, they're a trio from Melbourne, Australia made up of bass player Tom Raetz, guitarist/drum programmer Dave Hill (also of groove-grinders The Day Everything Became Nothing), and gut-grunter Jay Jones, and their awesome, over-the-top digitally enhanced grindcore is mixed with ridiculously sick comedic song titles like "Anal Abattoir", "Barefoot And Shitfaced", and "Army of Hermaphrodites". They remind me of the Meatmen, if the Meatmen had actually been an insanely complex, epic splattergrind outfit dressed up in dress shirts, black ties, and blood-smeared smocks when they perform live, powered by inhumanly fast, brainmelting drum machine programming and with a thoroughly charnel sense of humor. As silly as their song titles and lyrics can be though, the music is vicious, sort of like the thrash-metal inflected grind of Pig Destroyer crossed with Carcass' dissonant riffs, technical melodic death metal and confounding angular sludge breakdowns. And the drum programming is some of the best ever, ultra fast and brutal and machinelike, and sometimes fucked up with glitchy programming tricks and lightspeed blastbeats tempos. Seriously awesome.
What surprised me so much about Gore Grind Thrash Attack Live is how No Escape went all-out with the presentation for this set. Now, we're big fans of No Escape, they have a killer roster of some of the best splatterific death/grind/sludge outfits in the world, coupled with what are easily the highest quality design sensibilities in the underground gore/grind scene, but I'm still really impressed with how they put this set together. The DVD's centerpiece is the 26-song set filmed at the Arthouse in Melbourne in 2005 - the performance is tight, the crowd is completely berzerk, and the sound quality is amazing, as is the film quality; the performance was captured using 4 cameras and professionally edited together. As high quality a live concert DVD as you'd find on any of the big metal labels. In addition, they've included their set from the Australian "Metal For The Brain" Festival from 2003, a crazed set from Perth in 2005, and footage of the band performing on a boat in Sydney Harbor in 2005! And as stated previously, there's the entire Arthouse set included as a bonus audio CD to be relived in all of it's gory glory as a live album. Needless to say, this is pretty essential for Fuck...I'm Dead fans.

FUCK...I'M DEAD / ENGORGED split CD $9.98 No Escape

Aussie grinders FUCK...I'M DEAD serve 8 new tracks of manic grind with excellent drum programming that reaches literally inhuman speeds, and guitars delivering a flurry of frenzied riff structures, with vocals ranging from spastic high screams to deep guttural roars. ENGORGED bring 5 new tracks of world dominating carnage, with extreme grindcore anthems like Alien Contamination and , with riffs pulled from old school thrash breaking up the monstrous grind. An excellent grindcore split.

FUCKING CHAMPS, THE Some Swords 7" $7.98 Galaxia
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

And here's another old, hard-to-find 7" that we've unearthed, the awesome 1995 Some Swords EP from San Francisco math-metal instrumentalists The Fucking Champs. Of course, this is from before they added the "Fucking", so it's just The Champs here, but the harmonized, prog inflected math-metal is definitely in full effect. Powered by the triumphant double-guitar attack of Josh Smith and Tim Green (formerly of Nation Of Ulysses) and powered by the driving, chugging rhythms of Tim Soete, this EP has the songs "Some Swords" (one of their only songs that features vocals!), "Andres Segovia Interests Me", "Eat My Fuck", and "I Love The Spirit World And I Love Your Father", a couple of which would show up later on as more fleshed out versions on their crucial III album. But even here at the beginning the shit was rippin', a rawer version of their Iron Maiden/math rock fusion, with plenty of convoluted song structures and time signatures to herald what these guys would be doing a couple years later. Massive. Comes in a full-color glued jacket.

FUCKING CHAMPS,THE VI CD $15.98 Drag City

It's been four long years since math-metallers The Fucking Champs last rocked us with V (not including their collaborations with buddies and fellow instrumentalists Trans Am under the Fucking Am/Trans Champs banners), and man are we ready for a new Champs album. During that time the Champs went through a lineup change, replacing founding guitarist Josh Smith with Phil Manley from Trans Am, but they haven't lost any of their chops and ability to craft utterly anthemic hooks in the interim. Sure, VI doesn't break any radical new ground, but that's ok by me as their dual guitar harmonies and mindbending melodic shredding shoots straight into the freaking stratosphere on this new platter. Of course, there's all of the other Champsian flourishes that I love: the tongue-in-cheek song titles, the awesome 80's style promo shots, the general sense of fun that infects all of their tunes, perfectly balanced with the band's execution of total whiplash. VI is unapologetically prog-rock too, so what ya get are jams like the chugging, Queen-esque opener "The Lodge", the gleaming, lighthearted axe acrobatics of "That Crystal Behind You (Are You Channeling?)", "Champs Fanfare", and with sometimes triple-harmonized guitars ascending to the heavens, and the awesome time signature-shifting workout "Play on Words", riding on the Champs stripped down, bassless metal attack that mutates the most awesome elements of ...And Justice for All era Metallica, early Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, and Carcass into majestic harmonies and megacatchy mathy headbanger anthems perfect for serious basement beer action and blacklight cosmic flights. The Champs chill out on a couple of tracks too, though; "Play on Words" wanders through a minute-and-a-half drift of meandering acoustic strings; spacey keyboards surge on "Insomnia"; "Dolores Park" blossoms into a gorgeous Zeppelin blissout of lush strings, dreamy mellotron and folky A.M. radio melodies; a brief, guitar-only metal rendition of the early 19th century Christian hymn "Abide With Me"; and comedian Neil Hamburger appears with a "guest vocal" on "Fozzy Goes to Africa", but blink and you'll miss him. Yeah, VI is everything I want in a Champs album.

FUCKING CHAMPS,THE VI LP (180 gram) $16.98 Drag City

It's been four long years since math-metallers The Fucking Champs last rocked us with V (not counting their collaborations with buddies and fellow instrumentalists Trans Am under the Fucking Am/Trans Champs banners), and man are we ready for a new Champs album. During that time the Champs went through a lineup change, replacing founding guitarist Josh Smith with Phil Manley from Trans Am, but they haven't lost any of their chops and ability to craft utterly anthemic hooks in the interim. Sure, VI doesn't break any radical new ground, but that's ok by me as their dual guitar harmonies and mindbending melodic shredding shoots straight into the freaking stratosphere on this new platter. Of course, there's all of the other Champsian flourishes that I love: the tongue-in-cheek song titles, the awesome 80's style promo shots, the general sense of fun that infects all of their tunes, perfectly balanced with the band's execution of total whiplash. VI is unapologetically prog-rock too, so what ya get are jams like the chugging, Queen-esque opener "The Lodge", the gleaming, lighthearted axe acrobatics of "That Crystal Behind You (Are You Channeling?)", "Champs Fanfare", and with sometimes triple-harmonized guitars ascending to the heavens, and the awesome time signature-shifting workout "Play on Words", riding on the Champs stripped down, bassless metal attack that mutates the most awesome elements of ...And Justice for All era Metallica, early Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, and Carcass into majestic harmonies and megacatchy mathy headbanger anthems perfect for serious basement beer action and blacklight cosmic flights. The Champs chill out on a couple of tracks too, though; "Play on Words" wanders through a minute-and-a-half drift of meandering acoustic strings; spacey keyboards surge on "Insomnia"; "Dolores Park" blossoms into a gorgeous Zeppelin blissout of lush strings, dreamy mellotron and folky A.M. radio melodies; a brief, guitar-only metal rendition of the early 19th century Christian hymn "Abide With Me"; and comedian Neil Hamburger appears with a "guest vocal" on "Fozzy Goes to Africa", but blink and you'll miss him. Yeah, VI is everything I want in a Champs album.
This limited-edition vinyl version of VI comes on high quality 180 gram black vinyl in a full color jacket with printed inner sleeve.

FUCK THE FACTS Backstabber Etiquette CD $10.98 GrindIt

Nepean's FUCK THE FACTS have released a fairly raging album in Backstabber Etiquette, a noisy and mutant excursion into shred-acious chaos grind with off the HOOK female vocals ! The atmosphere here is pissed off and ragged. Powered by vicious, rabies-infected female vocals, ridiculous drum machine blasts, live drumming chaos, huge catchy hooks, total noise whiteouts, monstrous chugging deathslop riffs, this is absolute outsider grind wipeout. Imagine a mix of DILLENGER ESCAPE PLAN style fretboard gymnastics, ultra vicious blasting noise/grindcore like UNHOLY GRAVE , and dreamy melodic noise/psych breaks. Like a crustier, bloody-nosed GENGHIS TRON populated by the guys from DISRUPT, MORTICIAN and INTO THE MOAT, on crack.

FUCK THE FACTS Collection Of Splits 2002-2004 CD $14.98 Great White North

As prolific as these Canadian avant-grinders have been over the past decade, a collection of assorted odds and ends like this is pretty essential. This particular compendium of split CD and EP material from Fuck The Facts almost didn't happen though - Collection Of Splits 2002-2004 was originally released on the label Great White North in 2006 but the label ended up folding literally days after the disc's release, leaving only a small pressing floating around and making the disc not too easy to locate. Another label stepped in though, and Galy is now presenting this new reissue, which collects all of Fuck The Fact's tracks from the splits with Subcut, Sergent Slaughter, Feeble Minded, and Sylvester Staline, 21 songs of insane weirdo grind in all. Fans of warped grind owe it to themselves to check Fuck The Facts out...even though they've been touring all over the place since their last album (and first for Relapse Records) came out, and FTF have been deluging the underground grind/noise scene with releases since forming in 1997, it seems like they are still off of the radar of a lot of grind fans. Which is weird, 'cuz Fuck The Facts are every bit as crushing and mindscrambling as their fellow techblasters Cephalic Carnage, with crazy pinball-wipeout fretboard runs and intricate time signatures that will knock you crosseyed, while keeping their grind assault raw and crusty. Awesome stuff, but Fuck The Facts blow us away even more whenever they pretty much jettison the realm of grindcore altogther and head off into their unique world of weirdness, like with "Ventriloquist Complex" which opens with jazz-infused guitars and bubbling bass lines spliced with chugging death metal before the second half suddenly turns into a breathtaking grindcore-pop wall of melody. Or the cover of Godflesh's "Devestator" that is reworked into a cacophonous din of free noise and buried dirge metal. Or the monstrous syrup roars and glacial clang of "Merdarahta", which borders on old school Death Industrial. Or the 8-bit techno-grind/casio cartoon seizure of "Whisper Dependancy (Video Game Version)". Utterly fucked up and amazing sounding. Fuck The Facts are also masters of writing incredibly catchy riffs, and these EP tracks are filled with them, super melodic riffs and hooks that border on pop at times, kinda reminding me of Genghis Tron the way that they create these awesome melodies out of blasts of corruscating grindcore. The CD also includes an enhanced CD-ROM section that allows you to access another 19 (!) tracks from assorted rare CDR releases and unreleased stuff, a video for the song "Medicated Like A Motherfucker", and a photo gallery.

MP3 SAMPLE: "No One Remembered Who Started" (excerpt)

FUCK THE FACTS Discoing The Dead CD $13.98 Black Hole
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The debut full length from the Canadian grind inferno. A blender mash of obscure film samples, bossa nova beats, nucleat blast crust/thrash riffs and skin-flaying blastbeats, eardrum puncturing noise and electronics, and monstrous multifaceted vocals shrieking at the speed of light. Really catchy, inventive grind, that throws lots of "non grind" elements (clean guitars, experimental electronics, disco samples, mutated pop-punk riffs,etc) into the mix. When it's brutal, it's devestating, and when it's catchy, it'll infect your brain. Comparable to AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED meets EXIT 13 maybe? But not really...FUCK THE FACTS have their own unique thing going on, and rate as one of my favorite bands in the current grindcore scene.

FUCK THE FACTS Legacy Of Hopelessness CD $12.98 Ghetto Blaster
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Wow! This is by far the best stuff yet from experimental Canadian grinders FUCK THE FACTS, boasting much-improved production over their previous lo-fi releases, and an overall more cohesive approach to their wacked out, female-fronted (her vocals are MONSTROUS) electroavantgrindcrust cyclone assault. On this all-too-brief 6 song/10+ minute CD, FUCK THE FACTS blends together moody dirge-sludge a la GODFLESH / ISIS , bizarre electronic fractal blips and feedback, 8-bit techno and breakbeats, morose post-industrial goth pop, melodic Swedish deathmetal, jazzy interludes, and ferocious grindcore mixed with spastic fret-shredding tech metal into a whiplash inducing whirlwind of grind troniks and epic crustiness. Sweet!! This is def our fave release from these guys to date, way more focused and brutal and catchy and AWESOME. A show with these guys and Genghis Tron would shear our heads off. We need to hear more of this stuff!

FUCK THE FACTS Mullet Fever CD $11.98 Sonic Deadline

An excellent 41-track disc that collects the out of print Mullet Fever CD-R and the Four0ninE 3" CD-R, both from 2001. Canadian experimental blasters FUCK THE FACTS have issued a ton of CDs, vinyl, tapes, and CD-Rs over the past six years, and while their brutal, punky deathgrind has gotten tighter and more focused with subsequent releases, they have always managed to infect their short songs with a genuinely bent playfulness that has spastic noise-grind assaults and insane fretboard shredding butting up against all kinds of weird KING MISSILE-esque indie rock passages, random samples, jazzy interludes, some AMAZING ambient electronic pop, harsh noise/vocal obliteration exercises, hip-hop, techno, irreverent "Master Of Puppets" cut-up experiments, crude sing-alongs, and lots LOTS more, almost every song throwing some stylistic curveball or breaking off into mangled weirdness, a blazing surrealist grind offensive. I'm a huge fan of everything that FUCK THE FACTS has released, but this material is hands-down some of my favorite music from their career. Recommended for fans of grindcore fringe destroyers like GENGHIS TRON, DISCORDANCE AXIS, BRUTAL TRUTH, EXIT-13, HEWHOCORRUPTS, SWARRRM, etc. It's an enhanced CD-ROm too, which includes a nicely assembled batch of extras ranging from a live music video, to unreleased FTF tracks, biography, and photo gallery. Cool full color booklet design as well.

FUEHLER Fuehler CD $12.98 Amanita

Here's the sole, quite hard-to-find, self-titled 1996 full length album from this little-known German trio, who (for whatever reason) totally fell off the radar after this was released. This is one of those albums that only a few people have had a chance to check out, and the band didn't last for very long apparently once this was released. It's a shame, because Fuehler is hands-down a masterpiece of metallic post-rock / instrumental metal, years before bands like Pelican and Isis and the like would take form. It's difficult to say just how hard this album RULES. Sort of like a more melodic, accessible (but no less complex) Don Caballero, but more epic sounding, as hypnotic drones and Glenn Branca-ish sheets of guitar noise blends with sweeping, droning metal, the sinlge-note drones of Tony Conrad, the hypno-rock bliss of Circle, the dynamics of Slint, and the angular heaviness of Voivod's prog metal. Fuehler still sounds as incredibly imaginative and fresh as it did when it was released, and we highly recommend it to anyone into post-rock, metallic post-rock, whatever...if you're into stuff like Switchblade, Mogwai, Isis, Pelican, Mare, Slint, etc., we can't imagine you not loving Fuehler. As some have said, "jaw droppingly brilliant".

FULCI Dead Lights Red Sky CD-R $7.98 Crucial Bliss

The first recorded offering from twilight-psyche dronerock duo FULCI. Deep, rumbling, and eternal speaker-buzz worship, wrapped around lumbering riffs drunk on cough syrup and shimmering distortion overload. Howling feedback mantras repeated ad infinitum. Major key rustic lullabies are reduced to primal string scraping drones that climb over mountains of echoing hum. Intensely melodic and repetitious, like SKULLFLOWER covering EARTH's 2 in an old, empty farmhouse. FULCI is Eric Crowe (formerly of Social Infestation, currently of Marax) and Adam Wright. Former members of Leviathan A.D. and The Bodybag Romance assisted on bass and drums, respectively. Mastered by Scott Hull at Visceral Sound.

FUNERALIUM self-titled CD $13.98 Total Rust

If extremely bleak, corroded doom metal is your preferred audio damage, then I highly suggest you begin checking out the Total Rust catalog, pronto. I dicsovered this Israeli based label at the beginning of the summer when the label head Gad contacted me about stocking his releases through Crucial Blast...and it only took a few minutes of perusing the Total Rust website to realize that this label is indeed putting out the ultra-heavy stuff. Releases from long-time sludgecore faves Negative Reaction and newcomers Mourning Dawn and The Knell had me instantly drooling for Total Rust's entire catalog, and I've been discovering some amazing new stuff like Funeralium. This French band has members of Mourning Dawn and old schoolers Ataraxie, but the sound here is way more stripped down and nasty than either of those outfits...no, Funeralium are extreme doom of the most tortured type, and their six-song, 76 minute debut CD on Total Rust is all lumbering, ultra-bleak steez that's one of the more psychotic sounding takes on extreme doom since Khanate hung up their straitjackets. Funeralium's mangled doom riffs are stretched waaay out over plodding drum strikes, lush buzzing powerchords hanging in the dank between the super slow motion dirge beats while the singer "Marquis" spewing hysterical wailing screams and deep, ogrish grunts. Funeralium's use of feedback is pretty inspired as well, with killer strains of amplifier howl summoned from their cabinets and forged into sheets of ominous drone that floats wraithlike alongside their pounding, depressing dirge doom. It's those crazed, freaked out and expressive vocals that really set this apart though, sounding genuinely tormented, like the demented howls and weeping of a schizophrenic mental patient locked away in a padded cell. Imagine the unhinged suicidal screamathons of Striborg or Abruptum combined with a devestating extreme doom assualt a la Burning Witch, Thorr's Hammer, Moss, Khanate, or Thergothon. Crushing, droning, skullmelting heaviness that batters you into a trance with it's nearly 20-minute song lengths and minimalistic, repetitive riffing, using some interesting breaks into passages of clean guitars and abstract riffs stripped of any distortion, which accentuate the bulldozing heaviness when the serious riffage kicks in. Comes with a thick 16 page booklet filled with lyrics (which will ruin yer day, believe me) and strange, subtly creepy artwork.

MP3 SAMPLE: "First Symptoms" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Let People Die" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Light Crisis" (excerpt)

FUNERARIUM Noces Chimiques CD $11.98 Demysterris

Fucked up symphonic French black metal from FUNERARIUM, opening up with majestic epic riffs and soaring melodic synths,insane cackling vocals, and shades of brutal death metal riffing, similiar to CRADLE OF FILTH but more baroque, but as things progress, all sorts of electronic noises and breakbeats and industrial rhythms start creeping in, neo-classical ambience and video game bleeps on top of the hyperspeed symphonic blasting, plus shoegazey guitar parts, weird drowning-goblin vocal noise effects ...and on top of all of that, there are a couple points in Noces Chimiques where the hyperblast black metal suddenly morphs into full on power metal territory, total Dragonforce/Blind Guardian grapefuit-clutching vocals and all, with massively catchy riffs and hooks. A weird mix, but we've gotta admit that it works when these guys drop it on us. Def not for black metal purists, but those of us into epic electro-BM with an Iron Maiden fixation certainly dig this. CD also features enhanced CD-ROM content, including a music video for "Raperta Sapienta" that has FUNERARIUM blasting away in the middle of the woods.