TITLES: K

KAAOS IN ECCENTRIS / LIDDIKOATIGHT & LEIF ELGGREN split 7"EP $5.98 Some Place Else

Another cool split 7" offering from Some Place Else. The first side contains a session of Finnish free-noise/grooving improvised momentum from KAAOS IN ECCENTRIS, made up of Some Place Else regulars Niko Skorpio, Ibrahim Terzic, Ovro, and Mockingwyrd. A friendly chugging mass of laptops, bass guitar, synths, and electronic devices slide into a burning soggy groove lit up with crackling tronix. Fun stuff. The flipside has a collaborative effort from renowned Swedish artist Leif Elggren and Japanese outfit LIDDOKAOTIGHT, allegedly recorded via telepathy and utilizing loose musique concrete rambling and crunchy turntable noise to form a nebulous wash of razor distortion and random melodies. Black vinyl, special-size full color sleeve, edition of 500 copies.

KADURA From The Depths of The Other Space CD $11.98 Charnel

Heavy, eastern-influenced psychedelic space rock bliss from Osaka, Japan is dished out on this totally intoxicating full length from Kadura. These cats twist themselves into ghostly shapes powered by mutant Middle Eastern melodies and gassed up tribal-circular percussion that'll have you tranced out in no time. This falls under the Crucial Blast eye based on several factors: From The Depths of The Other Space was released on the crucial Charnel imprint, who trafficked in some of the most potent underground Japanese sounds imported into the USA in the 1990's...this album was one of the few real "psych" albums Charnel put out, but this is definitely not the pastoral, hippie psychedelia you might expect. These eight jams explore darker, more twilight corners of atmospheric trance rock, populated with band leader Atsushi Kobayashi's spectral guitar playing and bleating Zurna (a double reed horn), muscular noise-rock basslines and sheets of sublime feedback, noisy drones, and intense emotional vocal chants that coalesce into almost prog-metal forms. We even hear some Can -style krautrock in here. This is one heavy twilight pulse. Sorta reminds us of a combo of Ghost/Angel N' Heavy Syrup/PSF-Records style Japanese psych, a more subdued, stoned take on Tool-esque prog metal, meandering space-psych, and later Swans? Rad.

KALIBAS Product Of Hard Living CD $11.98 Willowtip
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The debut full length from this Rochester, NY tech grind powerhouse. Ex-members of Lethargy, Agiel, As the World Burns, etc. Flawless songwriting, amazing production, and an all around masterpiece of a deathgrind album. Insane song structures and fretboard acrobatics, bizarre extreme vocals, avant-math freakishness, and full-on blastbeat violence.

KALIBAS / RUNE split CD $12.98 Relapse

Another extreme grindcore gem from Relapse, featuring two artists from the esteemed Willowtip roster. Each band delivers 4 new songs: KALIBAS unleashes a blizzard of modern chaos-grind executed with insane speed and precision, and RUNE lurch through devestating grinding terrain. Kalibas, featuring ex-members of Lethargy, is first on this split. The band released its most recent full-length, Enthusiastic Corruption of the Common Good, just months before this release. KALIBAS, as always, delivers the groceries: lightning-fast,complex guitar riffs, even faster drums and spastic blastbeats, and Patrick Murphy's versatile vocal styling. Kalibas plays a surprisingly melodic brand of technical grind without sounding cheesy. The guitars are impressive with their ability to go from blistering grind to slower parts at the drop of a hat. Expect lots of technical guitar interplay, brutal drums, and an impressive range of screams.Awesome. RUNE's new material can be likened to a cross between NEUROSIS and MORBID ANGEL, titghtly executed epic, post-rock-ish gloom and discordant repetition mixed with hyper technical blasts and chaotic high speed explosions.

KALMEX AND THE RIFFMERCHANTS It Goes To Eleven CD $11.98 Intolerant Messiah

KALMEX AND THE RIFFMERCHANTS (featuring members of Plutocracy, No Less, Agents Of Satan, Emetic and Immortal Fate) twist your mind with a unique style of psychedelic instrumental heavy hardcore. These veterans of the Bay Area hardcore scene are not afraid to let their prog and arena rock influences glow in their twisted heshed-out compositions...imagine mixing AC/DC and Pink Floyd with Cro-Mags, Napalm Death and Mahavishnu Orchestra!!Heavy as fuck, instrumental prog-core with blastbeats and fist-raising, horns-to-the-skies riffage. Or how about this: Imagine Black Flag on acid jamming with Zappa and Beefheart. Twisted instrumental madness from No Less and Agents Of Satan folk." , from Matt Average - Engine/Some Strange Music.
If you're into the heavy prog /blacklight-metal stuff coming out of the extreme hardcore|punk scene (like all of the killer stuff LIFE IS ABUSE Records has been putting out), get this.

KANIBA The Serpent, The Omega And Completion Of The First Circle CD $11.98 Autumn Wind

Kaniba's debut full length The Serpent, The Omega And Completion Of The First Circle comes courtesy of the same label that has provided us with such amazing doses of ambient blackness as the Vomit Orchestra albums and 20.SV. The product of a guy named Erlit, Kaniba is a black metal influenced drone project that was previously called Terrorgoat, under which he released a small mountain of tapes and cd-r releases. This disc is Kaniba's first full album, and it navigates through two monstrous tracks of creeping, crawling blackdrone ambience, each one 36-39 minutes long. A frozen, subterranean realm filled with thick slabs of dense blackened buzz and grinding distortion, ominous piano, blasts of distorted black metal vocals, muffled thuds and thumps, scratching at stone walls, sludgy cavernous drones and monstrous minimalist thrum. Almost like a blacker, bleaker take on ritual drone, like Halo Manash, or a heavier, sludgier Yen Pox, with fragmented rhythms and heavy oildrum beats buried deep in a swirling sea of tar. And it gets really heavy, especially on the second track, when it builds from an almost serene ambient rumble into a roaring wave of distorted dirgedrone and horrific vocals.

KAPOTTE MUZIEK Praag/Rotterdam CD $7.98 Troniks

This CD captures two live performances from the Dutch avant sound/drone collective Kapotte Muziek (featuring Frans De Ward of Beequeen), recorded between 1995 and 1998 (during the period in which they were a trio) in the Netherlands and Czech Republic, and this remains some of the best early recordings from this esteemed outfit. These are lengthy pieces, each one over half an hour long. The first track starts off barely there, a distant slow vibration that gradually comes to the fore, as burning hum, vague shortwave radio voices, the ambient sound of an enclosed space, and concrete sounds come together into a windstorm of crackling drones. The second track, recorded in Rotterdam, was originally intended to be a soundtrack to a film about Ford automobiles for a festival about Detroit/MC5/Mike Kelley and sounds appropriately mechanical, rumbling drones and piercing feedback spikes pulsating beneath relentless clicking and clacking and crackling of plastic machine teeth grinding into place. Definitely the more abrasive of the two sets, but rhythmically entrancing nonetheless.

KARP Mustaches Wild CD $14.98 K Records

Completely CRUCIAL skullcrush heaviness from the almighty Karp! 1994's Mustaches Wild was the Olympia, Washington band's first album, containing 10 songs of dark, ugly, sludgy as hell metal that sounds like a mutant, punkier Melvins. What in the fuck was this slab of low-end crunch doing on K Records, a label known for it's twee, indie-pop sounds? Their debut doesn't have the unstoppably catchy hooks that show up on their later Self Titled and Suplex albums, and guitarist Chris Smith and bassist Jared Warren (who most of ya probably know now as being one half of Big Business and one-fourth of the new Melvins double-drummer lineup) belt out a litany of screeching, creepazoid screams. Drummer Scott Jernigan’s drumming is a force to behold here, super heavy and pummeling, and though the songs aren't as hooky or poppy as the later stuff, songs like "Flourpus" still wrap punishing heavy riffing around a pure pop song structure, with goofy titles and tongue-in-cheek lyrics of songs like "13 Ways To A Cavity", "Baby Bear's Porridge", "Propane Activist", and "Ahh, Flavor!". And check out "Me Big Mouth", totally sounds like an embryonic Big Business!

KARP / RYE COALITION split CD $11.98 Troubleman Unlimited

I picked up this old split disc mainly for the Karp tracks, not ever really having heard Rye Coaltion before, and was pleasantly stoked by how solid both bands are on this split. Released way back in 1995 on the Troubleman label, it opens up with five songs from Rye Coalition, who play a manic sort of post-hardcore/noise rock. They kind of remind me what a heavier, fiercer Fugazi with Guy singing woulda sounded like if they had started to cop the dissonant jagged riffs of Shellac as well as some gnarly Jesus Lizard moves. Burly, noisy, frantic noise rock with some brilliant lyrics and surprisingly catchy hooks. Good stuff. After that though, it's all about Karp, those crucial indie-metal goofs from Seattle that bombed our ears back in the 90's with their pummeling Melvins-on-PCP sludge rock, and man do we get a mouthful. Not only are the 2 songs ("Obstacle Corpse" and "Get Your Hands Off My Cake") from the original split 12" included here, but they also tacked on an entire 26 minute live set from Karp as a bonus track. The two studio tracks fucking rock as you'd expect; "Obstacle Corpse" clocks in at just over a minute but clobbers you with some great spastic detuned metal bombast, and "Get Your Hands Off My Cake" is an 11 minute epic with a crushing sludge dirge and waves of feedback peeling back to unleash some amazing pop hooks that wouldn't sound outta place on a Torche album. Karp are a precursor to that band's poppy, catchy thunder metal, so if yer into Torche or even Floor, you should DEFINITELY be checking out everything that Karp put out. Seriously freaking crushing!

KATASTROFIALUE Tuskatakuu 1994-1998 CD $5.98 Crucial Blast

A 36 song semi-discography CD featuring unreleased and out-of-print material from this cult Finnish crustcore band. A must for fans of violent crust,raw-punk, and noisy blown-out thrash! Formed in 1992, the devastating Finnish ensemble KATASTROFIALUE (roughly translated as "Disaster Area") delivered some of the most pulverizing scum-encrusted thrash of the past decade. The band combined an unrelenting early DISCHARGE and SORE THROAT influence with minimalistic (yet BRUTAL) metal stylings, headcrushing speed,and excruciating inhuman vocals. The band excelled at incendiary songwriting and memorable,gritty (yet sometimes beautiful?) atonal riffs laced with acidic vocals that employed their native tongue....expressing nihilistic,transcendentially intelligent and morbid ruminations on life through the lyrics.Awesome,brutal crustcore.This full length semi-discography CD features an unreleased studio album, their tracks from the NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT double CD compilation on CRUCIAL BLAST, more unreleased studio tracks, and their material from the 1994 split 7" with FREAK SHOW."Tuskatakuu '94-'98" comes packaged in a DVD style shrinkwrapped plastic case and features a Glossy booklet with lyrics, Finnish-to-English translations, liner notes, and more.

KATATONIA Discouraged Ones CD $13.98 Century Media
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This is the 1998 album where Sweden's KATATONIA fully evolved from a Paradise Lost / melodic doom-death clone to harbingers of brilliant, massively heavy doom-pop. It's an awesome mixture of The Cure, Pink Floyd, Red House Painters, and crushing, rocking riffs informed by the band's Doom/Death Metal roots. Hypnotic, psychedelic, ultra-melodic and melancholy. In our ongoing quest to locate the heaviest pop albums out there, this one was a must-get.

KATHARSIS Worldwithoutend CD $14.98 Norva Evangelicum Diaboli

Third full length of timewarping black metal from the German kommando cult. We rant alot on here about how much we love black metal that is so terminally fucked up that it becomes psychedelic, either by being ridiculously noisy and distorted and chaotic, or by using/abusing effects to reach extreme levels of hallucinatory atmosphere, or just by writing super weird and confusional songs that achieve a higher level of bizarre blackness. We love that sort of stuff. So here's Katharsis, a band that delivers all of the above in spades, and who have produced one amazingly hellish psychedelic experience with Worldwithoutend. Formed in the early 90's, Katharsis had amassed a considerable discography of demos before they released 2000's 666 and 2003's Kruzifixxion - both of these albums were variations on the early Darkthrone sound, and they excelled at unleashing savage, nearly bassless blasts of buzzswarm ice riffs and shredded blackened shrieks that occasionally used delay and reverb effects. On Worldwithoutend, however, Katharsis took this approach and went completely fucking nuts with it, totally submerging the vocals in effects and pushing their vicious Darkthrone influence all the way into the red, creating a fucked up blackthrash attack with maniacal mindbending vocals that constantly sound like the band is shifting out of phase, flickering in and out of this dimension, which creates an awesome, delusional effect when you're blasting this shit at top volume. The guitar has an awesome razor sharp mid-range attack that slices through everything, and everything just coalesces into a freaked out tangle of angular solos, hyperspeed drumming, a handful of weird Voivodesque riffs, falsetto screams, and malicious ambience, culminating with the epic title track at the album's close, a 16 minute expanse of amazing midtempo blackdirge that twists and writhes through a series of angular riffs and sudden dynamic changes, all the while those skullwarping shrieks and piercing falsetto screams swoop and dive on raw carrion wings. Awesome! Great package too, all red and black and surreal looking with spiky, stylized satanic imagery.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Vvytchdance" (excerpt)

KAYO DOT Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue CD $11.98 Robotic Empire

This eagerly awaited follow up to their critically acclaimed 2003 Tzadik debut Choirs Of The Eye finds them pursuing even more esoteric avenues of avant/pop/chamber/metal majesty. Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is less a collection of individual tracks as it is a shimmering black pool of orchestrated abstraction, the music flowing between lush,epic chamber strings and jazzy horn arrangements through delicate and dreamlike drones to bombastic eruptions of metallic density on par with Khanate to picturesque ambient-pop-noir visions with keening vocals and sweeping cinematic post-rock valleys... Imagine a combination of Neurosis, Tarantula Hawk, Godspeed You Black Emporer, late-era Faith No More, weirdly beautiful pop, extreme doom, and modern avant-garde composition coming together in an utterly unconventional, emotional yet bleak sonic landscape. Amazing. Kayo Dot sound like noone else, and pick up where bands like Iceburn left off, using a diverse palette of sound and skill to form challenging new shapes and textures. Highly recommended.

KAYO DOT Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue 2xLP $19.98 Robotic Empire

Now available as a deluxe gatefold 2xLP edition on black vinyl! A visually arresting vinyl version of this amazing avant-rock experience.
This eagerly awaited follow up to their critically acclaimed 2003 Tzadik debut Choirs Of The Eye finds them pursuing even more esoteric avenues of avant/pop/chamber/metal majesty. Dowsing Anemone With Copper Tongue is less a collection of individual tracks as it is a shimmering black pool of orchestrated abstraction, the music flowing between lush,epic chamber strings and jazzy horn arrangements through delicate and dreamlike drones to bombastic eruptions of metallic density on par with Khanate to picturesque ambient-pop-noir visions with keening vocals and sweeping cinematic post-rock valleys... Imagine a combination of Neurosis, Tarantula Hawk, Godspeed You Black Emporer, late-era Faith No More, weirdly beautiful pop, extreme doom, and modern avant-garde composition coming together in an utterly unconventional, emotional yet bleak sonic landscape. Amazing. Kayo Dot sound like noone else, and pick up where bands like Iceburn left off, using a diverse palette of sound and skill to form challenging new shapes and textures on the heavy music landscape. Highly recommended.

KEN MODE Reprisal CD $14.98 Escape Artist

This Winnipeg band's vicious second album Reprisal is a manic marriage of filthy, antisocial noise rock ripped right out of the Amphetimine Reptile catalog and a turbulent metallic hardcore attack that fuckin' flattens everything in the room whenever I toss this on. If you've been comin' to Crucial Blast with any degree of regularity, you've probably noticed my gushing love of all things 90's noise rock, so naturally i immediately fell in love with KEN Modes' thunderous angular riffing and major bad attitude...I hear shades of Dazzling Killmen, Today is The Day, Unsane and Melvins in here, and they might remind some people of Mastodon as well, if they weren't aware of where Mastodon got their influences from. But this is WAY heavier and way more violent than anything that noise rock ever produced (well, maybe save for Unsane...), all huge percussive rhythms bent outy of shape and intricate, teeth-rattling riffage offset by chiming guitar figures with scathing lyrics informed by Jesse Matthewson's stint in business school, delivered via his savage barking. Business school? Yep, Matthewson studied business while they were putting this album together, and apparently his day to day observations of human douchbagdom in action served as ample inspiration for Reprisal's negatory tuneage. FIle this one next to their noise-rock/metallic 'core peers in Playing Enemy and Keelhaul and get your fucking face kicked in. Recommended!

MP3 SAMPLE: "The Musk Ox" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Capricorn" (excerpt)

KHANATE Capture/Release CD $14.98 Hydra Head
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Back in stock!
A two-song disc (clocking in at around 45 minutes) from NYC’s lords of mega-depressive spacious dirge, the third CD release from Khanate, featuring Stephen O'Malley ( of SUNNO))) ), bassist James Plotkin ( OLD and Phantomsmasher ), singer Alan Dubin (formerly of OLD), and drummer Tim Wyskida (formerly of BLIND IDIOT GOD). Continuing in the visceral feedback-sludge crush-ocity of CORRUPTED and EYEHATEGOD, Capture/Release also becomes more extended and uses very loud/very soft, distinctly post-rock dynamics to lethal effect. Despite the immense heaviness of Capture/Release, though, these arrangements are clinically assembled and executed, and the result is intricately pieced together, extremely slow and sinister, oxygen-destroying sub-sonic malevolence. And vocalist Alan Dubin inhabits these spaces and silences with his suggestive, cryptic, and wholly poetic lyrics. Amazing stuff, and if you’re a fan of KHANATE’s previous releases, then this is obviously a must-get.

KHANATE Capture/Release LP
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER. Hydra Head

Back in stock!
Here's a gorgeous new vinyl edition of Khanate's Capture/Release, presented on thick Pirates Press wax (black vinyl) and in an awesome new jacket/sleeve design from Stephen O'Malley.
A two-song LP (clocking in at around 45 minutes) from NYC’s lords of mega-depressive spacious dirge, the third release from Khanate, featuring Stephen O'Malley ( of SUNNO))) ), bassist James Plotkin ( OLD and Phantomsmasher ), singer Alan Dubin (formerly of OLD), and drummer Tim Wyskida (formerly of BLIND IDIOT GOD). Continuing in the visceral feedback-sludge crush-ocity of CORRUPTED and EYEHATEGOD, Capture/Release also becomes more extended and uses very loud/very soft, distinctly post-rock dynamics to lethal effect. Despite the immense heaviness of Capture/Release, though, these arrangements are clinically assembled and executed, and the result is intricately pieced together, extremely slow and sinister, oxygen-destroying sub-sonic malevolence. And vocalist Alan Dubin inhabits these spaces and silences with his suggestive, cryptic, and wholly poetic lyrics. Amazing stuff, and if you’re a fan of KHANATE’s previous releases, then this is obviously a must-get.

KHANATE s/t CD $14.98 Southern Lord

Here's the debut album from extreme doom unit Khanate, featuring Steven O'Malley from Sunn O))) and Burning Witch, and James Plotkin of O.L.D. and Phantomsmasher. A continuation of the sort of stretched out sloth-sorcery O'Malley summoned in Burning Witch, these five epics are tortured, ultra slow dirges laced with diseased glitchy electronics and Alan Dubin's completely paranoid vocal menace, moving between murderous whispers and some of the most painful shrieking throat abstraction ever put to tape. These songs reek of madness and urban filth. The riffs are dissonant and pitch-black. The drumming is a beatless anti-pulse, existing solely to punctuate the jet black rivers of negative energy being collectively ejaculated from the eyes of Khanate. Droning, but hardly peaceful or relaxing. Extreme corpse psychedelia rotting in the gutter alongside Esoteric, Corrupted, Eyehategod, Bunkur, Moss.... Devestating.

KHANATE Things Viral CD $14.98 SOuthern Lord

Second emission from NYC conglom Khanate, the extreme doom/post-metal troupe consisting of members of Sunn O))), O.L.D., Atomsmasher, and Blind Idiot God. The doom metal aesthetic gets pushed to it's limit on Things Viral, becoming a sort of graveyard psychedelia. Four tracks, two of which approach twenty minutes each, make up the content of this album, and are altogether slower and even more atonal and ugly than their monolithic eponymous debut. The riffs and beats are even sparser and more harrowing than before, as the plodding drum strikes and crushing guitar chords are released into the air like plague, left to decay and wither into streams of negative feedback before the band lurches back into it's missive, with Alan Dubin's poisoned vocal outrages sounding like bitter profanity spewed from a dying man. Challenging and oxygen-rotting. Truly disturbed downer metal, a filthy death rattle devoid of melody or light. Includes the song "Dead" from the No Joy 12".

KHANATE It's Cold When Birds Fall From The Sky CD $14.98 ArchiveCD
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We were never able to get this disc in the first time it was released back in 2005 on Archive, as it came out in a limited pressing of 500 copies which sold out virtually overnight. People have definitely been wanting to get this though, as we've seen copies from that original pressing go for some pretty ridiculous prices on Ebay. The band and Archive hooked it up though and decided to re-issue It's Cold When Birds Fall From The Sky, this time in a larger pressing (1000 copies), and with a slightly revised, larger 3-panel jacket with a printed vellum strip that comes in a translucent silver static shielding bag. This release looks freaking awesome, and luckily Slimm at Archive opted to put this in a bag with a resealable zipper-lock, so you dont have to destroy the bag to get to the goods like you have to do with so many of these static-shield bags. Thanks man! Anyways, It's Cold When Birds Fall From The Sky is an essential part of the Khanate discog, a collection of live tracks from Khanate that we think sound even more amazing here in the live setting than they do on the original albums. Here, there's an added room ambience and additional effects that make their ultra-glacial, abstract doom metal seem even "thicker", more coagulated than the studio stuff, and Plotkin's bass tones are fucking seismic. The actual tracks on this re-issue are the same as the original, although Plotkin did do some slight remastering. There are three tracks, "Capture" (from the Mercury Lounge in NYC), "Release" (from Nashville), and "Pieces Of Quiet" (from a show in Baltimore that I (Adam) was actually at!). Nearly an hour of pitch-blackened subsonic grave crawl.

KHANATE Live In Stockholm CD $14.98 ArchiveCD
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Another live document from avant-doom abstractionists Khanate, this one a (more or less) brand new, posthumous release that just came out to accompany the reissue of their It's Cold When Birds Fall From The Sky. And just like that disc, this is essential for Khanate fans, a seething, ultra heavy hour-long Khanate set recorded on the 13th of May, 2004 in Stockholm, Sweden. Actually, Live In Stockholm had been available previously, but only as tour-only CD-R release that the band only produced something like 75 copies of, so it's more than likely that most of you Khanate fans didn't get an opportunity to pick this up the first time around. Now it's available in a pressing of 1,000 copies, so hopefully everyone that's suffering from severe Khanate withdrawal since the band broke up can now immerse themselves in multiple doses of professionally-produced live action. The band subtitled this "Speciallowfidelityversion", but it's every bit as heavy and oppressive as their suffocating live performances, each sparse drumbeat dropping like a thunderclap, O'Malley's filthy Sunn tone sucking all of the oxygen out of the room when his subsonic powerchords topple out of the speakercones. Alan Dubin's demonic vocal processing here is some of the vilest we've ever heard from 'em, and after listening to this set, we're even more convinced that Khanate's live recordings are the best representation of their awe-inspiring extreme doom. I mean, the albums are great, and their studio material is some of the most harrowing doom metal ever, but live, holy shit, Khanate are impossibly crushing and evil. The tracks here are "Fields", "Pieces Of Quiet", and "Under Rotting Sky". The package here is laid out similiar to the It's Cold When Birds Fall From The Sky re-issue, a six-panel gatefold jacket featuring starkl images of Khanate live, with the disc attached to the sleeve via a plastic hub; the jacket is then wrapped with a printed velum strip, and is packaged in a resealable silver static shielding bag.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Fields" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Under Rotting Sky" (excerpt)

KHLYST Chaos Is My Name CD $13.98 Hydra Head

Khlyst is the formidable pairing of avant-guitarist/electronics alchemist James Plotkin and vocalist Runhild Gammelsæter, who was the legendary throat behind the pre-Burning Witch doom project Thorr’s Hammer, and has appeared more recently as a Sunn O))) collaborator. Needless to say, when I first heard that these two legendary figures in the avant-metal underground were going to be teaming up for this project, I was both stoked and really curious as to what form their collaboration would take. Chaos Is My Name turns out to be an unnerving flight through a weird, virulent nightmarescape etched in inky-black ambience and some nasty improvisational moves that takes the spastic post-production edit aesthetic of Plotkin's Atomsmasher/Phantomsmasher project into some hellish subterannean void.
Chaos Is My Name is divided into 8 untitled chapters, and is the sort of album that is impossible to effectively absorb without sitting down and listening to it from start to finish, preferably in a completely unlit room where Khlyst's hallucinogenic narrative can fully take shape. Each chapter is constructed from studio recordings that have been edited and manipulated after the fact into a creaking, shadowy soundfield of heavy distorted improvised rock riffage, crushing free improv drumming, and icy metallic dronefields. When Plotkin's guitar appears, it's a murderous presence, unleashing these weirdly overmodulated, almost-blues-rock solos and deformed sludge metal riffs that stutter and stumble, colliding with frenetic free-jazz drumming and sparse, stretched-apart, Khanate-esque beats. These burly free/sludge/skronk assaults flow into electronic ambient passages that are etched with metal scrapings and siren wails. Through this gluey, mutant improvscape stalks Gammelsæter, with one of the most terrifying throat exorcisms I've ever heard, her formless vocalizing sounding like an ancient witch out of your worst childhood nightmare, uttering utterly unnerving cackles, psychotic gasping, and insanely monstrous demonic roars, with some rare moments of eerie, haunting singing that adds even more dread to Khlyst's atmosphere. This is intensely fucked up, bad-dream music, a totally captivating and challenging descent into abyssal power-improv that ranks as some of Plotkin's most inspired work to date. It makes me think of some sort of bizarre cross between This Heat's tape manipulation, the occcult dark ambient of Shinjuku Thief, Khanate's decayed doom, and that killer improv disc that Plotkin recently did with Tim Wyskida on Archive, but wreathed in black smoke and taking place in the catacombs beneath some ancient structure. Fkkn awesome. Packaged in a stunning gatefold digipack with artwork by Stephen Kasner. Highly recommended!

KID 606 / 5IVE CONTINUUM RESEARCH PROJECT split 12" LP $13.98 Tortuga

This pairing makes alot sense once you've heard it. Sort of. Expecting a blast of shredded drill n' bass from the Kid from his side of this gorgeous 12" (we'll get to that in a sec), we instead get a very pretty , post-rocky ambient dreamscape with the opening track "Audition", ultra lush and drifting, sort of like Yume Bitsu or similiar dronepop. Really cool, and makes for an effective segueway between the two bands. That's followed by the spacey but grinding pep-squad techno-noise of "Titanium" and the righteously funky/catchy My Bloody Valentine-in-a-junkyard queasy dreamgrit of "Whatwentwrong".
5IVE's side delivers two epic songs of their excellent heavy psychedelic crush. Here, their mighty drum & guitar crunch takes the drone rock of Pentastar:In The Style Of Demons/Phase 3 -era Earth, makes it wayy heavier, and twists it into dynamic, dusty, western-sounding instrumentals, alternating twangy, bluesy guitars and jangly psychedelia with explosive doom metal heaviness. I'm not kidding about the "western" sounding parts, either. Pretty killer.
Lengthy,too...between KID 606 and 5IVE, you have over 30 minutes of music on this 12".
And I'm loving the packaging on this. Aaron at Hydra Head designed it, so it's great, but there is something about the colors on this thing that just look particularly fucking awesome. I've been entranced by this all day. Super vibrant pastel trees layered high contrast on top of each other, with great colored wax to boot... we have copies on both pink vinyl and blue !! Apparently this isnt coming out on CD either, so if you're a fan of either Kid 606 or 5IVE, this one comes very highly recommended.

KILLER BUG Beyond The Valley Of The Tapes 2xCD $13.98 Troniks

Holy shit, the extreme feedback garble and blobs of distorto power carnage on this double disc set are melting the backs of my eyeballs. Troniks has assembled this definitive collection of recorded work from Kazumoto Endo's mid-90's harsh noise project, before he went "solo" and began releasing stuff under his own name, most of which has been out of print for ages and is re-mastered for this release. KILLER BUG released a stack of cassettes and vinyl from 1994-1995, all of which was extremely high quality, genre-defining stuff from what some would call the "second wave" of Japanese noise, alongside folks like Pain Jerk, etc. Many cassette-release KILLER BUG tracks were epic storms ranging from 19 to 30 minutes in length, but Endo brought structure and dynamics to his fast paced noise assaults as he sculpts whiplash inducing explosions of electronic chaos from effects pedals,etc...but also with space and texture that just makes this stuff that much more brutal. High energy stuff, for sure. 140 minutes of braindrill, including the Vaginal Disco cs (originally released on Mother Savage Noise Productions 1995), Brutal Rainbow cs (Noise 1995), Cunt Explosion 7" (Releasing Eskimo 1995), Your Wife is Mine 7" (Self Abuse Records 1995), and lots more. Booklet has welcome track info/details. Definitely recommended to fans of sick pedal crunching harsh Japanese noise.

KILLING SPREE, THE s/t 7" $5.98 Rimbaud

Heavy 3 song EP from this Belfast, Ireland trio that welds discordant Am Rep noise to largely instrumental, crunchy constructions of energetic math rock. The spiteful bellows that pops up sporadically veer these jams into rad Shellac-goes-hardcore territory, mean take-no-shit angular tantrums with loads of weird time changes and unexpected, abrupt shifts. These guys are pretty tightly wound, even when they meander into some looser post-rock territory, but mostly this EP delivers some mighty abrasive hardcore math/noise rock goodness. Pressed in an edition of 500 hand numbered copies, in a nicely silkscreened sleeve.

KINETIX Selected E_Missions CD $9.98 Small Voices

Selected E_Missions presents a collection of glitchy, minimal digital dronescapes, dotted by micro-noise granular grit and low-frequency blips/hum. Super minimal glacial drone glitch, all crackling, icy soundfields and cold ambient washes, like field recordings from the vacant hull of a spaceship. Evocative, gorgeous microdrift. This stuff is more pronounced than, say, Francisco Lopez, more like the Vs. Silence work of Crawl Unit , or Sleep Research Facility at it's most understated...but this is still total headphone music. Kinetix is the glitch/drone persona of Gianluca Becuzzi, who has been dealing in abstract electronics since the early 1980's. This CD collects material written and recorded between 2000 and 2003, made up of six tracks, each one identified by a graphic symbol. Packaged in a sleek, minimalist white digipack.

KISS THE ANUS OF A BLACK CAT Turn Hegel On His Head 7" EP $5.98 Implied Sound

Public Guilt's Implied Sound 7" imprint is back with a new vinyl offering, on creamy white vinyl no less, this time from the provacatively named Belgian dark-folk outfit Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat, led by the dark visions of multi-instrumentalist Stef Irritant. You could call this apocalyptic folk, I suppose, as Kiss The Anus... has a creepy vibe similiar to Current 93 and Stef does have a delivery similiar to David Tibet, but I'm also reminded of later Swans, Alethes' moss-encrusted woodland buzz, and the witchy forest folk of Comus too, as acoustic guitars strum beautifully gloomy chords and eerie melodies waft like incense smoke over the buzzing drone of strings and bells while primitive tribal percussion thumping in the background. The first song is "Turned Hegel On His Head", an intoxicating folk jam swirl that references the German philosopher, slow motion drumming tumbling around the humming electronics and singing. The b-side is the response, "Turning Hagel On His Head", a backwards shifting series of chants and acoustic melody that gradually explodes in a crushing wall of distortion. Complimented by the artwork of Kristof Meers from his series, "the Inversion Of Hierarchy" and pressed on white vinyl.

KITES Superior Moon 3" CD $7.98 Mountain Collective

A twenty minute 'lil 3" disc of atmospheric mutoid-theremin/oscillator swirl, all played on homemade instruments, unfurling deep groaning loops and buzzing almost-melodies that reaches an almost meditative state of machine hypnosis, before Kite's head guy Christopher Forgues shears your skull off with blasts of sputtering heavy noise destruction and ear piercing feedback tones. Sounds range from planet-smashing psychedelic amp trance freakout, hardcore RRR style noise, to broken beat mutant electronica that sounds like millions of baby squidlings swimming through your brain. Very cool! COmes in a 3" full color wallet.

K.K. NULL Ergosphere CD $13.98 Blossoming Noise

During his Russian solo tour in October 2005, legendary noise-guitarist and Zeni Geva frontman K.K. Null recorded this massive live album at the Moscow Palace Of Youth and the Festival Hea Uus Heli in Estonia; split into two parts, Ergosphere begins suddenly as a blast of fractaled computer noise and amplified, bass-heavy machine hum that streaks loudly across the heavens. Over the course of the nearly hour long album, Null summons constantly shifting forms of these massive vibrations and weaves into them shards of eerie 8-bit melody and ferocious video game soundtrack meltdowns, razor-sharp strands of staticky electronic glitches, demonic witch screams, brutally loud jet blasts of manipulated flanger distortion, and gorgeous gossamer globes of feedback that float through the air. Null somehow turns his seemingly random effects-based guitar noise and electronic waves into crushing, sometimes actually grooving abstract glitch feasts that border on the outright melodic. That first half of the disc is really aggressive and heavy and abstract, yet turns out to be some of the "catchiest" K.K. Null noisescapes we've heard, surfacing some almost techno-esque rhythms, Skullflowerish bursts of feedback, and heavy droning pulses. Pretty damn cool. On the other hand, "Ergosphere Part 2", the recordings manufactured from the Estonian festival performance, stand in contrast as it begins almost subdued, with a light fall of delicate chime tones and fragile static descending over whirling, softly oscillating tones. But things definitely get louder and heavier pretty quickly, as low frequency engine roars begin to rev up beneath the surface, creepy atonal drones begin swirling around, and the sounds of demonically possessed tape-heads speeding up and devouring melted audio cassette bounce around the massive chamber housing Ergosphere. Eventually, Null subjects you to an even more sinister strafing of Industrial creep than what came before, the final segment of the peformance capturing a furious storm of sheet metal clang, malfunctioning computer moans, and heavy strobing lightning charging everything around it. Excellent. Terrific album art, too, combining carefully divided track markers and lots of white space with sugarshock images of what looks like orchid macrophotography.

MP3 SAMPLE: "1.1" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "1.8" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "2.1" (excerpt)

K.K. NULL Prime Radiant CD $12.98 Blossoming Noise

This new full length from K.K. Null has 11 tracks of dynamic electronic structures that , at least for some of the music, features live recordings of Null in Switzerland,France, and Japan that has been morphed and mutated in the studio.Prime Radiant is filled with Null's chattering robo-glitch spasms, sine-wave splatter,and intricate spirals of fractal-like electronic drones and bleeps, and some rhythmic tracks that lean more towards structured electronica than anything we've heard from him in the past...albeit an utterly buzarre, futuristic,synthoid version, like house music as played by cyborgs. And another track features some whirring drones over a tribalesque beat that sounds really freaking neat.

K.K. NULL Sonic Action VHS VIDEOCASSETTE $9.98 RRRecords

Yeah, that's right, on videocassette. Released by RRRon over at RRRecords. And nothing fancy here, either...what you get is no-nonsense, single-camera shot video of a crucial live action from the master of metaloid robo guitar, K.K. Null, who non-noiseniks might know from his legendary planet-smashing math metal trio Zeni Geva. Null's set here seems to be from the stage of some huge rock club, but it's just him, long hair and sleeveless t-shirt, metal as fuck, abusing his audience with a ferocious blast of assaultive feedback improv, cyborg delay loops, groaning melodies, and lots of sublime sonic "WTF?" moments. High points of the set include: Null flailing and headbanging around the stage like a member of Slayer, Null flipping his guitar over mid-noiseblast and screaming hysterically into his pickups, Null using a metal slide to make his guitar sound like one of the chicks from the original Evil Dead...man, it's enough to make me cry. I'm a hugungous fan of K.K. Null's extreme guitar abstraction, and I feel that he's one of the more overlooked and underappreciated heads in the field of serious guitar exploration, so overloading my eye-and-earsockets with a full set of ear scorching Nulltronix n' total Null guitarnoise makes my freaking week. Viewing this video document, it's astounding to witness the sheer overload this guy can create with just one guitar and his effects. No idea of when this is from, but I am assuming the performance is from the early-to-mid 90's when Null was still working with the electric guitar, before he totally unplugged and developed his purely effects-box driven "Nulltronics" aesthetic. The set clocks in at just over 20 minutes long. Comes in a plastic snapcase with full cover sleeve. For North American VHS systems only! NO PAL !

K.K. NULL / MOZ split CD $12.98 Crionic Mind
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Limited edition of 500. K.K. NULL presents five new tracks of frenetic electronics and rhythmic experiments, ranging from cacophonous to an almost tribal atmosphere. Ever evolving within a sphere of obscure tension the details reveal themselves with a stalwart elegance. MOZ delivers 6 tracks of socially introspective Death Industrial and Dark Ambient. Drifting slabs contrast sharply with vitriolic sonics to render this misshapen pillar of sobering electronics. KK Null begins with 9+ minutes of bizarre Japanese power electronics, complete with a background loop that nearly resembles a beat beneath fluttering noises and panning sweeps of electronic mayhem. This sets the tone, as most pieces seem to utilize either lightly distorted rhythms or rhythmic loops, along with more random layers and chaotic harshness. However, this is not as aggressive as the description may sound, it's what might be called "easy listening power electronics". The recording on this set of tracks is clear as day, with easily audible details. Excellent stuff that continues to establish his vision alongside fellow Japanese extreme abstractionist Merzbow masonna and Incapacitants. Moz unleashes some godly ambience. Beginning with an immense track of low bass rumblings, followed by a composition full of thin digital blips and crunching loops, Moz is a master at creating unsettling repetitive atmospheres. Musical synth tones appear on "Funeral Procession", another quiet track with plenty of space; while "Imperialism" gets quite harsh with lots of distortion and hissing, loud volume clouding indecipherable samples.

KNIVES Switchblade Princess 7"EP $6.98 Troniks

Ultra brutal noise from Phil Blankenship of THE CHERRY POINT and LHD, and Jon Borges of PEDESTRIAN DEPOSIT. Tar black distortion waves crashing on grimy skull shores. A steady relentless stream of monolithic low end crackle and rumble spiked with vicious jagged feedback bursts and blasted,corrupted audio punishment. Limited to 333 copies in minimal, all-black construction paper sleeve.

KK NULL / OVO split 3" CD $9.98 Sunship
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A weird but effective pairing of legendary Japanese boise guitarist K.K. Null (of Zeni Geva fame) and Italian no-wave/improv sludge combo Ovo. Null's piece, "Protostar", is an awesome, intricate electronic blipscape of disembodied space-rock synthesizers, heavy electronic Anime demon-voice fluctuations, and hyperspeed fractal carnage. Sort of sounds like Zombi jamming in the middle of an exploding starship in an old 80's video game. Very cool. Ovo's half of this lil' disc features two tracks remixed by Miniwagonwheel, who we aren't familiar with; the result of their collaboration is pretty freaking awesome though. The first Ovo track "Claws" is mutated into an eruption of spastic, glitched out dancefloor industrial that becomes a stomping techno-dirge out of a futuristic cartoon soundtrack. The second, "Tails", sounds more like the Ovo we are familiar with, a messy, rhythmic no-wave sludge/grind seizure with squonky saxophone, damaged Melvinsy riffs, and singer Stefania's weird mewling vocals, ending in a locked groove loop of plodding, doomy sludgecore dirge and droning free-jazz noise. Served in a terminally cute 3" package with Stefania's hand-scrawled artwork of a chopped up girl.

KNELL, THE Harm CD $12.98 Total Rust

It took 'em almost ten years to do so, but the Israeli deathdoomsters The Knell finally released their first album Harm through the super-cool doom metal label Total Rust, also based in Israel. Harm was mastered by Greg Chandler from Esoteric, and that band is actually a decent starting point for describing The Knell's dense death-doom...the songs aren't nearly as long as you might imagine, with most of 'em coming in around 8 minutes, but the rumbling, glacial dirges and deep growling roars are wreathed in reverb and rumbling synthesizers, giving Harm a similiar psychedelic lava flow as Esoteric's monolithic early albums while sometimes breaking into atmospheric acoustic passages. The real influence here though is classic early 90's British death/doom like My Dying Bride and Anathema, and these guys have taken that sound and slowed it down, sucked whatever light might have been left in it, and lumber forth with a monochromatic massiveness that sounds like they are trying to eat the stars. Saurian, somber downer doom of the heaviest sort, built for fans of the aforementioned deathdoom pioneers as well as misery merchants like Pantheist and My Shameful. Limited edition of 1000 copies, another winner from Total Rust.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Black Veil And Promise" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Encounter Of Flames" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Jerusalem Frost" (excerpt)

KNORMALITIES volume 1 compilation 7"EP $6.98 Dephine Knormal Musik
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

First in Moe! Staiano's killer 7" compilation series that focuses on the best in out-there, noisy prog,improv/out-jazz,and avant pop. Volume one,originally released back in 1998, features exclusive tracks from VACUUM TREE HEAD (killer freejazzpunkthrash), FLYING LUTTENBACHERS (the masters, with their free-jazz lineup), MONO PAUSE (percussion heavy spy-fi rock that combines tribal percussion a la early SWANS with an almost RESIDENTS type influence), MELT BANANA (hell yeah!), MOLECULES (with one of their best songs ever, "Blah"), MOE! STAIANO (with "Chased By Bats In Vats", a crunchy found-item percussion jam), and Japanese prog-skronk heroes/gods RUINS, with their "Hard Rock" medley (attacking riffs from AEROSMITH, LED ZEPPELIN, IRON BUTTERFLY, and more)! On black vinyl, limited and hand numbered to 1100 copies.This rules HARD.

KNORMALITIES volume 2 compilation 7"EP $6.98 Dephine Knormal Musik

Second in this killer 7" avantprogpunkjazzpop comp series from percussion sorcerer Moe! Staiano. On Volume 2, Moe! has assembled a lengthy track from Swiss outfit ALBOTH! (piano-heavy NAKED CITY -esque post-industrial jazzcore post-rock with gorgeous,chilling bent vocal harmonies, originally released on the CD-only French album Ecco La Fiera on Sonore), NELS CLINE (ex-GERALDINE FIBBERS, and one of the greatest out-guitarists on the planet, here working with Carla Bozulich on a thrashy guitar noise eruption),, and the Bay Area's massive MOE!KESTRA, featuring a 16-piece version of the ensemble doing an ear-splitting cover of THE EX 's Godgloeiendeeteringklootzak. Limited to 595 copies, hand numbered on grey colored vinyl. Released in 2000. Crucial.

KNORMALITIES volume 3 compilation 7"EP $8.98 Dephine Knormal Musik

Long awaited third installment in this excellent avantprogpunkjazzpop compilation series, released in spring of 2005 (keep 'em coming, Moe!). This slab features AWESOME exclusive songs from THE EX (with "Giant"), CHEER-ACCIDENT (with "The Stars", a gloriously beautiful number, these guys are right up there with DEERHOOF in terms of avant pop godliness), SLEEPYTIME GORILLA MUSEUM (with a massive rendition of THIS HEAT 's "S.P.Q.R."), and VOODOO MUZAK (with "Ibanen Dake", another killer percussion heavy jazz/post rock/drum n' bass workout from these guys, featuring former GOD / LAIKA drummer Lou Ciccotelli). Crucial. Every song is a winner. This is a limited edition, hand numbered 7" out of 1030 copies on orange coloured vinyl, with cover artwork by Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum,Tin Hat Trio,Two Foot Yard, etc. member). Recommended.

KNURL Nervescrap CD $9.98 RRRecords

Legendary, seminal full length disc from Canadian junk-metal noise conjurer KNURL was released back in 1994, and remains one of the most rock-solid exercises in dense feedback sculpture ever released. Issued as part of the infamous PURE Series, Nervescrap was the debut release from Toronto-based artist Alan Bloor, who would go on to release over twenty albums internationally and collaborate with Thurston Moore, Aube, and Jim O'Rourke. Nervescrap is pure primal scream though, a prescient blast of extreme distortion cut-up and collapsing walls of dense metallic feedback beneath which detailed wormy forms and nebulous nuclear pulses can be heard....these nine tracks are a clear precursor to the modern stiletto-eating scum oceans of THE CHERRY POINT and THE RITA. This disc is a classic in the ego-obliterating heavy noise pantheon; fans of any of the aforementioned need grab this yesterday. Packaged in a minimalist PURE style xerox-wrecked wallet sleeve.

KNURL Scyamine CD $7.98 Troniks

A relentlessly crushing new one from legendary Toronto harsh noise sculptor Alan Bloor, following our review of the crucial Nervscrap disc in our last store update. Scyamine inexorably bludgeons us with seven tracks of burly, heavy churn that Bloor conjured live from an instrument built out of stainless steel plates and welded to a framework of cold-rolled steel flat bar and tubing. The instrument was then "played" with angle-iron, hand files, and metal bars of various sizes, the resulting reverberations jammed through a plethora of effects to form his dense waves of distorted metal storm. Vague rhythms appear out of the roaring feedback and fast paced distortion inferno, and high pitched harmonies coalesce briefly before being devoured again by Knurl's annihilating rrrrooooaarrr. The ultimate in speaker-blowing hardcore/scrap metal/blast furnace heaviosity. Absolutely fkkn essential for fans of harsh n' brootal noise! Packaged in a signature Troniks wallet sleeve. Bone crushing!

KNURL Vermifuge CD $7.98 Troniks

Fans of 90's harsh noise are most likely pretty familiar with the Canadian project Knurl; since beginning in 1994, Knurl's Alan Bloor has produced a massive body of work focusing on amplified metals to create his crushing industrial noisescapes. Bloor's method of recording a variety of metal pieces ranging from machine parts to sheet metal to spring coils to form massive walls of coarse drone has set him apart from the rest of the "harsh noise" underground, and I've found his recordings to often be just as hypnotic as they are brutally heavy. Vermifuge is his latest, recorded in early 2007 and produced solely by a 3 foot diameter pavement saw blade. You'd expect a limited number of sounds to be able to be generated from a single object like this, but the six track on this disc reveal a staggering soundscape of metallic ripples and crushing waves of super-amplified rumble, sending up huge jets of black feedback into the sky and unleashing gigantic noise walls that perpetually crumble and rebuild. Industrial drones don't get much heavier than this. Recommended to fans of heavy wall-of-noise a la The Rita, Cherry Point, Sewer Election, and the general Troniks aesthetic. The disc comes in the signature Troniks B&W wallet sleeve.

KNUT Alter CD $13.98 Hydra Head

We really dig Hydra Head's approach to their remix releases. Where most project like this tend to be filled with only partially-realized experiments and throwaway tracks, the remix albums from Isis and Agoraphobic Nosebleed were both imaginative collections of sonic rethink that usually ended up with the remixes sounding absolutely nothing like the original source material. Here, Knut is added to the series with Alter, a 14 track full length album of electro/avant metalcore transmutation featuring a roster of electronics artists that Knut hand picked for this project. The lineup is pretty formidible, with Dalek, Dither, Justin Broadrick, Mick Harris, Ad's, Spectre, Oren Ambarchi / Robin Fox / Anthony Pateras, KK Null, Francisco Lopez, Asmus Tietchens, Lucas Tamarit with Julien Sauser, Lad & Andres, Seth Svollensen, and Ontayso all drawing from Knut's four Hydra Head albums and reconfiguring Knut's precise riff-bludgeoning into even harsher, more hypnotic forms. Highly recommended, one of the best collections of post-Godflesh industroid hypno-metal to emerge recently.

KNUT Terraformer CD $13.98 Hydra Head

Swiss outfit Knut return with this 12 track album of punishing, mid-tempo post-metalcore designs. We love these guys; their combination of hypnotic, almost Godflesh-informed trance-riffing and spastic/disciplined math metal freakouts is godlike, and things get even better with this new album. The monstrously downtuned and chugging guitar army that powered their excellent Bastardiser and Challenger albums on Hydra Head are still here, a thunderous bulldozing wave filled with choppy math metal riffs and minimalist dirge, sludgy Neurosis/Isis-isms, and loads of angular polyrhythmic percussion, but Knut also brings even more of the indie rock/post rock melody and song forms that they've been flirting with for the past decade...lots of segues and breaks into major key dronings and glitchy electronic ambience and creepy, monochrome musique concrete. Excellent shit, one of the best bands in the avant-metalcore field. 12 new songs, about 45 minutes of crucial crush.

KOPP, HERMANN Nekronology: Music From Nekromantik, Der Todesking, and Nekromantik 2 CD $12.98 Red Stream

For anyone that immersed themselves in the grey-market underground cult video scene in the 90's, Jorg Buttgereit's infamous Nekromantik and Der Todesking films were some of the most whispered-about, feared movies of the time. It took me years to finally see 'em, and anyone that has knows that Buttgeriet's extreme visions have the power to knock the wind out of you with his scenes of extreme graphic violence and far-fringe taboo subject matter. Essentially art-house ultra-splatter flicks, the movies were deeply enhanced by the haunting scores of composer Hermann Kopp that created the dreamlike ambience in each of Buttgeriet's films. Amazingly, a collection of musical selections from Buttgeriet's three key films was finally released by none other than Red Stream, a label that I'm normally used to seeing rewarped black metal and funeral doom from, but they hooked up with the underground horror magazine Ultra Violent to present this excellent collection of Hermann Kopp's work. This disc spans Kopp's scores for Nekromantik (1987), Der Todesking (1989), Nekromantik 2 (1990), and a smattering of bonus tracks; the selections all have a dreary, mournful vibe, heavy with quavering violins and lush Moog synths, frequently merging together into something resembling a slow motion funeral march. Sounds of bubbling liquids and crazed muttering are combined with doomed keyboard lamentations and wistful musicbox melodies. As nightmarish and grotesque as the images in those films are, it's the oftentimes beautiful and nostalgiac quality to the music that gave them their haunting power that lingers with you for days after seeing them.

KOROVAKILL Waterhells CD $11.98 Red Stream

This 2001 album from the Austrian weirdo metal troupe Korovakill turned up when we recently raided Red Stream's back catalog. The band's third full length, Waterhells is the first release after the band changed their name from Korva, and is a continuation of their bizarre, theatrical metal with operatic female singing and a male vocalist whose deep, heavily-accented baritone singing reaches ridiculous levels of melodramatic Gothiness, baroque waltzing black metal, spacey keyboards, nightmare carnival music, and bits of electronica and psychedelia. Waterhells also revolves around a dreamlike narrative involving drowning fishermen, but the lyrics are so surreal and stream-of-consciousness that I just ended up losing myself in their strange orchestral psych-metal. I'm surprised it took me this long to get turned onto this band, 'cuz their genre-hopping and unabashed weirdness is right up my alley. The metallic elements here remind me of both Arcturus and Sigh, but there are also parts that remind me of Tom Waits, or martial Industrial ambience, or some fucked up goth rock band, and throughout all of this Korovakill actually manages to keep things pretty catchy and engaging. Crazy, art-damaged black metal prog-goth-rock weirdness that'll satiate anyone who cannot get enough Arcturus-style weirdness in their life.

KORPERSCHWACHE A Mountain of Skulls for the Clueless Cowboy 3"CD-R $4.98 Public Guilt

It's been a little while since the black engine last emitted any new rumblings, but we're getting ready to ride a surge of fresh amplifier rot from Korperschwache, the crushing drone/feedback/noise metal avatar of Texas-based noisehead Roy K. Phelps. Phelps is a dedicated droneologist and junk noise virtuoso who had previously been creating screwed up noise rock under the name Autodidact, running the terrific and sorely-missed label Monotremata, and running the show over at Dead Angel, one of the longest running webzines dedicated to weird, noisy music, and his Korperschwache project has been his primary musical outlet for the past couple of years. A Mountain of Skulls for the Clueless Cowboy features a single 20 minute track encoded onto a little 3" CD-R as part of a new, limited edition 3" series on Public Guilt (see also the new 3" from Darsombra listed elsewhere in this weeks update), and housed in a tiny poster foldout cover, A Mountain of Skulls for the Clueless Cowboy releases a river of thick, Stygian amplifier drone and feedback over a pounding drum machine that bashes out militaristic beats in odd time signatures. It's super hypnotic and heavy as hell, with thick waves of guitar noise and rich feedback flowing over you, and horrific blackened howls slithering through the sludge. If yer at all familiar with the early 90's guitar-noise onslaughts that were emanating from the Headdirt label that was operated by Godflesh's Justin Broadrick, and Skullflower in particular (who released a couple of crucial albums on Headdirt), well, that's where Korperschwache is coming from, but with an additional crust of unhealthy black metal influence that points to both Burzum's nocturnal fuzz and the abstract murk of Abruptum. I have a long-running love for Korperschwache, as the release of several Korper CD-Rs on our Crucial Bliss imprint will attest to, and this latest dose is just as great and corroded and tranceadelic as the now out-of-print Temple Of The Devil Kitty and Voice Of The Ouroboros discs that came out back in 2005. Public Guilt compares this to a mix of Skullflower, Godflesh, and Burzum, and that's pretty apt. Apparently all of the Public Guilt 3" CD-Rs are coming out in pressings of 110 copies, including this one. Highly recommended.

KORPERSCHWACHE Ritual Of The Ouroboros CD-R $7.98 Crucial Bliss

Korperschwache returns! The Texan black-industrial drone-sludge project of RKF, who is also the mastermind behind the longrunning out-music webzine Dead Angel and the sadly defunct avant-rock label Monotremata, is back with not one, but two new discs of damaged black-metal infected drone rock, hot on the heels of that 3" CD-R that Public Guilt released at the beginning of the summer . Since the mid-90's, Korperschwache has been issuing fairly obscure but solidly heavy doses of blackened noise rock, or noisy abstract black metal, depending on your point of view, mostly through small-run cassettes and cd-rs on a myriad of labels. More recently, RKF and his trusty pile of smoking amplifiers and damaged drum machines have been constructing a trilogy of cd-rs entitled Ouroboros for our Crucial Bliss imprint, which began with the Voice Of The Ouroboros disc which came out on Crucial Bliss over a year and a half ago. It's taken me awhile for a multitide of reasons - well, mainly just because we're perpetually swamped here at Crucial Blast - but we've finally issued these last two chapters in this trilogy, the Sacrifice... and Ritual... discs, and each one emits a bleak, suffocating fog of stuttering drum machines, Skullflowery feedback dirge, weird cackling goblin vocals, layers of fuzz and grit, distortion and buzzing speakers, all offered up in tribute to the great serpent.
Ritual Of The Ourobros only has four tracks compared to the thirteen of Sacrifice..., but each of these runs from 7 to 20 minutes in length, huge spawling epics of swirling black guitar drone and IIIrd Gatekeeper style riffage, with pulsating drum machines throbbing and clattering away like machines ticking underneath layers of grime and factory noise and beautiful feedback. The first track "Ouroboros: first lesson: our eternal salvation (in the beginning there was the Serpent)" - quite the mouthful, there - is the longest piece, 20 minutes in length, a slow droning ambient dirge, like a buzzy, noisy basement black metal band melting their demos down into a shimmery Loveless style wash of floating feedback and simplistic, two-note basslines. It's one of my favorite Korperschwache tracks so far, and definitely one of the prettiest and most hypnotic. After that is "first invocation of the Ouoroboros: Behold, I set before you the way of life, and the way of death", and it's even slower and druggier than the previous song, a minimal black dirge, heavy feedback hanging like lead in the air, the drum machine beats doused in glue and struggling to push themselves forward through the thick miasma of amp hum and droning strings, like playing an Abruptum record and dragging your hand on it, slurring and slowing the evil blacknoise into a syrupy crawl.
But then everything becomes a bit more aggressive with the third track "Ouroboros: second lesson: the serpent's warning", as the drum machine locks in on a funky, heavy breakbeat off in the distance, and anguished howling vocals can be heard pouring out of the wall of feedback. The beats on this track remind me of the fucked-up funky vibe that previous Korperschwache releases have had, like what you might expect if Abruptum was scoring the theme music for Miami Vice. And again, there's a almost melodic hook that surfaces later on, a simple catchy bass riff that suddenly turns the piece into an ominous, rocking blacknoise drone rock jam. Killer! Finally, "Ouroboros: blessing: all things shall be destroyed (death is the only answer)" appears to close out the album, the shortest track on the disc (relatively speaking) at only seven minutes, but it's an awesome, trancey slab of dreamy heavy feedback, huge guitar riffs floating in the ether and twisting around each other, overdriven amplifiers vibrating at high volume and dripping rivers of buzz over cascading powerchords; it reminds me of Skullflower, which is of course a great thing, but darker and blurrier, with weird pulsating rhythms hidden deep inside the swirl of guitar noise. An absolutely beautiful closer to this disc. Like the other two entries in the trilogy, Ritual Of The Ouroboros is a grim, gauzy blast of slow moving hypno drone rock fused with abstract black metal, existing at the edges of the stygian intersection between Skullflower, Burzum, Abruptum, and Godflesh. Out of all three of the discs though, Ritual... is the most Skullflowery, noisy and hypnotic but definitely catchy at times. Packaged in an oversized sleeve with the disc attached on a plastic hub, in a limited edition of 150 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: " Ouroboros: blessing: all things shall be destroyed (death is the only answer)" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: " Ouroboros: first lesson: our eternal salvation (in the beginning there was the Serpent)" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: " Ouroboros: second lesson: the serpent's warning" (excerpt)

KORPERSCHWACHE Sacrifice Of The Ouroboros CD-R $7.98 Crucial Bliss

A brand new seventy-three minute disc from Korperschwache, the Texan black-industrial drone-sludge project of RKF who is the mastermind behind the longrunning out-music webzine Dead Angel and the sadly defunct avant-rock label Monotremata. Since the mid-90's, Korperschwache has been issuing fairly obscure but solidly heavy doses of blackened noise rock, or noisy abstract black metal, depending on your point of view, mostly through small-run cassettes and cd-rs on a myriad of labels. More recently, RKF and his trusty pile of smoking amplifiers and damaged drum machines have been constructing a trilogy of cd-rs entitled Ouroboros for our Crucial Bliss imprint, which began with the Voice Of The Ouroboros disc which came out on Crucial Bliss over a year and a half ago. It's taken me awhile for a multitide of reasons - well, mainly just because we're perpetually swamped here at Crucial Blast - but we've finally issued these last two chapters in this trilogy, the Sacrifice... and Ritual... discs, and each one emits a bleak, suffocating fog of stuttering drum machines, Skullflowery feedback dirge, weird cackling goblin vocals, layers of fuzz and grit, distortion and buzzing speakers, all offered up in tribute to the great serpent. Sacrifice Of The Ourobros contains 13 tracks of this grim and grisly blackened hypno drone rock that resides somewhere at the stygian intersection between Skullflower, Burzum, Abruptum, and Godflesh. It's pretty frightening stuff, heavy and trancey and very noisy, and strangely catchy at times...on this particular disc, Korperschwache's decision to name each one of these tracks after a different girl's name ("Jessica", "Lori", "Julie", "Sabrina") adds an additional creepout quality to his skulking, psychotic buzz rituals. Packaged in an oversized sleeve with the disc attached on a plastic hub, in a limited edition of 150 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Christy" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Jessica" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Velma" (excerpt)

KOTKAVUORI, TAPIO Terra Hyperborea CD $11.98 Some Place Else

I have to admit, the more mystical concepts behind Terra Hyperborea are a bit lost on me, even after reading the liner notes included with this disc. From what I can gather, Tapio Kotkavuori is a “Magister of the Temple of Set”, and is heavily involved in “Northern Magic” and has also authored several books on the subject. These recordings are, according to Kotkavuori', “sound-magical Workings” that were recorded in 2001. All of that aside, what you get with Terra Hyperborea is grim, evocative ethno ambient of the highest order. Most of these recordings revolve around resonant drones formed from prayer bowls and didgeridoos, as well as found objects, cultural detritus, rainsticks, bells, synthesizers, and human voice. These dronescapes are both organic and electric, wholly trance inducing and hypnotic as they drift eerily. The didgeridoo is the primary instrument on this album, which easily sets it apart from most “dark ambient” and dronescapes. The droning buzz of the didgeridoo is mostly distant and subtle, but creates a haunting effect that’s extremely powerful. Now, we’re huge fans of all things dark ambient and drone-like here at Crucial Blast, but it’s not that often that an album in this genre comes along and really offers up something different that we haven’t heard before. This is great stuff, as good as the equally interesting and creative releases on Aural Hypnox that we’ve recently discovered. Terra Hyperborea is highly recommended to dark ambient, ethno-ambient, and drone fans. Really high quality ambient drift. The disc also contains a nearly eight minute video for “Underground Tunnels”, filmed in black and white and featuring images of the Finnish countryside and earth-magic rituals.

KOURGANE Bunker Bato Club CD $11.98 Amanita

Kourgane are a French band on the Amanita label, which would lead you to believe that they are probably trafficking in that sort of terminally weird noisy math rock that Amanita tends to specialize in. And you'd at least be partially correct in the assumption, as Kourgane are indeed quite angular and mathy. But they are also really jazzy and heavy, kinda tapping into the whole hardcore-jazz-core sound of bands like Alboth!, Zu, Ruins, and NoMeansNo, and are apparently influenced a bit by the Swiss avant jazz/rock trio GOZ of Kermeur. Bits of No Wave, weird psychedelic interludes, manic percussion blasts, stumbling yet amazingly catchy hooks, aqueous modulated vocals, and other weirdness creep into the mix too. And then there are all of the images of naked human-like beings with deer heads, surreal song titles, and similiarly wigged out imagery at play here. And a singer who sometimes breaks away from his burly, gruff shouts to start singing like a really really drunk, French version of Louis Armstrong. What to make of it? This is an amazing little mini-album, barely 25 minutes long, but we've become completely enamoured of Kourgane's distinctly French, and thoroughly weird pagan woodland hallucinations that remind us of some strange French out-jazz mesh of Shellac, Ruins, and Melvins. Amanita presents this in a neat jacket that's quite unlike anything they've done before, a four-panel matte-paper wallet that has glossy full color artwork the aforementioned deer and deer-men, and the back of the jacket is embossed in red ink.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Guernica" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Schizophrenic Outsider" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Tourelle" (excerpt)

KRAQHAAS (CRACKHOUSE) Hoop CD-R $8.98 Mandragora

Erik Amlee's CRACKHOUSE, one of the few US groups to be able to effectively channel the bad vibe feedback of primo UK offenders RAMLEH and SKULLFLOWER through guitar distorto overload, blasted tape loops and noise, and thug-mud drumming, reunited briefly and put the resulting live offensive to tape via this private-press document. You get 76 minutes of disembodied amplifier powerdrone, neanderthal drumming, and a thick stream of negative psych jetting from the collected amps of these noise trogs, recorded live in El Lago, TX, on December 28th, 1990. Some distinctly western guitar motifs surface from the murk, and these moments are sublime. Twelve rites in all are housed on this disc, which comes packaged in a neat looking cardstock wallet sleeve. HEAVY.

KROKO Rabia CD $13.98 Zerga

When I stumbled across a blurb online from the Zerga label describing Rabia as "horror ambient grind jazz core", I knew we had to check this out. Hailing from Finland, and featuring members of jazz-prog-pop-thrashers Deep Turtle, the all-instrumental trio Kroko travel the outer fringes of heavy noise/sludge rock, complex avant-jazz, improv, and "Zeuhl" influenced prog. Much of what makes this album so otherworldy sounding is the manner in which the members of Kroko use percussion, bass guitar, cassettes, and minidisc recorder to take different recordings of musical peices recorded live at different locations/performances, and then edit it all back together through different stereo channels. This method is similiar to the post-performance chaos editing employed by Aufgehoben, but Kroko's music ends up in a different realm, flowing through a series of different textures and terrain... Rabia drifts from dreamy free-improv reminiscent of Nels Cline and haunting guitar work that recalls Bill Frisell's more subdued playing in Naked City, to weird glitchy sound collage, to heavy, explosive Melvins-meets-Ruins riffage and clouds of blasting distorted noise. But the final 9 minute track "Exorcism And Relief" is the killer..., opening with a skull-caving, Melvins style sludge crawl that spews crushing downtuned riffage that squashes you flat under a orgy of squiggly electronics and frenzied octopoidal free-jazz drumming before it flatlines into a beautiful wash of glitchy tidal drones, sounds of running water, and chirping birdsong. Awesome.

KYLIE MINOISE VS. TETSUO s/t CD-R $5.98 At War With False Noise

More skull-shredding, low-fi free noise armageddon from Scotland via the AWWFN imprint, in the form of a degenerate mob action between Glasgow's Kylie Minoise and Tetsuo. The crude black metal iconography on the disc sleeve points towards the wax-blowing violence at play here, and it's a brief but powerful shot that opens with Kylie Minoise blowing amps with "Small Red Chunks Of Tongue", a heavy, savage whiteout that nods towards Masonna and Violent Onsen Geisha while retaining a heavy scum punk ethos. Then the disc moves to a two-part improv collaboration/ feedback battle with Tetsuo titled "Naked Bathtub Samurai Aktion", mashing together ultra-harsh throat abstractions with clangorous guitar noise and squiggles of squealing feedback; it eventually morphs into deformed beatless sludge riffing and thunderous cement mixer distortion and unhinged vocals, finally returning to a blown out deathstorm of formless metal riffs and floating amp crud. Tetsuo are on their own for the last track "Ninho-Giri", another minimalist improv vocals n' drums punk/skum/noise freakout that will blow all of the shit out of your system by the time it hits the 10 minute mark. These guys take the Hanatarash/Gerogerigegege/noisecore destruction ride like nobody's business. Packaged in a handassembled wallet sleeve, hand numbered edition of 120.