TITLES: L

LACK OF ZODIAC s/t 7"EP $5.98 Norway Rat

Following those recent ARABROT releases we've been blasting nonstop, Norway Rat supplies us with more righteous Scandinavian noisepunk aggro with this self-titled slab from LACK OF ZODIAC. This trio works up a frenzy of totally distorted, raw post-hardcore yarl that jams together weird San Diego emo-jangle/ SWELL MAPS buildups into spastic noisy tantrum. We were thinking of DAZZLING KILLMEN, BLACK FLAG, and art-damaged noise rock while this was spinning. Discordant damaged out-core. 5 jams on a black vinyl slab. In a glued pocket 7" sleeve. Killer.

LÄHDÖN AIKA Tuomittu CD $11.98 Thrash And Burn

Mercilessly crushing tundra sludge from Finland that opens with...a musical saw ? Yep, you read that correctly. A saw, with it's sadly eerie, wavering warble played over some ominous Finnish recitation. It's a weirdly pretty prologue, setting up the heavily mournful vibe that cloaks this album. But once the saw's song dies out, LÄHDÖN AIKA hurl themselves into an onslaught of mega heavy, massively downtuned metallic crustcore, with awesome grinding BOLT THROWER style riffs churned out slowly over strangely stumbling tribal drumming and eruptions of gooey Scandanavian hardcore, harsh Finnish-sung bellows, and monstrous doom metal guitars chugging away at repetitious skullcrushing riffs that blossom into passages of epic droning keyboards and some surprisingly catchy riffage. Imagine the progressive crustcore of early NEUROSIS and CHRISTDRIVER combined with grisly GRIEF/ 13 style sludge that ascends into beautiful, epic CULT OF LUNA/ISIS territory. HEAVY stuff. The disc is packaged in a really rad, heavily stylized digipack designed by Zerominded, with striking suicidal death angel/ Robert Rodriguez-esque imagery that makes for an interesting set of visuals to accompany LÄHDÖN AIKA's punishing dirge.

LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR Cannibal Massacre 3 ” CD $9.98 Southern Lord

Here's a welcome new dose of brutal metal from Chi-town's LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR, offering up two new songs produced by Sanford Parker (PELICAN, VENOMOUS CONCEPT, UNEARTHLY TRANCE) along with a music video for LAIR's "The Wolf". Their debut album Carnage, released last year on Southern Lord, was a punishing throwback to the late 80's thrash/crossover/grind scene, mashing together primitive SLAYER-meets-CELTIC FROST thrash with a sludgy HIGH ON FIRE-esque ultraheaviness and utter devotion to Greek mythology !! Features members of PELICAN and avant-grindsters 7,000 DYING RATS. This 3" CD is limited and numbered out of a one-time pressing of 2,000 copies.

LAIR OF THE MINOTAUR Carnage CD $14.98 Southern Lord

The newest edition to the Southern Lord goatfarm! Pure, un-fucked or filtered with, aggressive, heavy as hell METAL!! A lethal fusion of thee old school (destructive thrash like Slayer and Celtic Frost) mixed with the relentless punishment of HIGH ON FIRE . LOTM are a deadly trio dwelling in Chicago hell-bent on reaking massive metallic devastation! Fiends of crushing TRUE METAL, will be treated to a album that imminently induces multiple bang-overs. Features current and ex-members of PELICAN and 7000 DYING RATS.

LAKE OF DRACULA Skeletal Remains CD $15.98 Savage Land

Crucial collection of non-LP material from this short-lived Chicago no wave/noise rock outfit that incited some righteous ear havok back in the mid-90's. Consisting of Weasel Walter (Flying Luttenbachers, XBXRX, Total Shutdown), James Magas (Couch), Heather M. (Scissor Girls), and Al Johnson (US Maple), Lake Of Dracula was only around from 1995 through 1997, and read like a Chi-town no wave supergroup. Skeletal Remains has eighteen tracks that were recorded from 1996-1997, collected here for the first time and beefed up with a remastering job by Weasel, the bulk of the material coming from a blistering radio tape the band recorded in 1997, and augemented by some compilation tracks and the Kill Rock Stars 7". If you didn't catch them the first time around, Lake Of Dracula were an awesome No Wave band that predated the whole No Wave revival thing by a couple of years. The band's killer mix of crazed rockabilly-ish barks, dissonant, spiky guitars, asymmetrical beats, and most impressively, a suitcase full of asskicking hooks was like a power injection of No New York 'tude into a frenzied mix of primordial industrial thud and pummeling tom tom beats, lysergic garage rock, gloomy doomed rockabilly and reverb soaked metallic guitars, dark and damaged and impossibly rocking and catchy, with a weird, seriously dark and gothy steez that still sets these guys apart from any of the bands to follow in their footsteps over a decade later. The booklet includes lots of liner notes and photos and artwork, making this an essential companion to their Skin Graft LP and a rippin' document of one of the best noise rock outfits to emerge from the Chicago underground of the 1990's.

LAMP OF THE UNIVERSE Earth, Spirit & Sky CD $11.98 Hand/Eye
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Stateside re-issue of the limited LP issued by Germany's September Gurls label in 2005. Lamp Of The Universe is the acid-drone solo project of Craig Williamson, who previously fronted cult New Zealand heavy stoner/psych rawkers Datura. Here, Williamson strikes down a foggy path of mystic Eastern psychedelia that was evident on Datura's killer Vision Of The Celestial album, taking the trip into mellower, more adventurous psych territory. The sitar-heavy, mantra style songs on Earth, Spirit & Sky form a meditative state, blending the aforementioned sitar with tablas, flute, guitars, and dreamy vocals into a blissed out opium cloud of acid folk, sometimes sleepily propulsive post rock/kraut rockish grooves, The Incredible String Band vibes, Spacemen 3 style drones, shades of the folksier stuff from Burning World -era Swans, and Eastern influenced psych. Quite meditative and beautiful. The disc is nicely presented in an "Arigato pak" box. Fire up the incense and lava lamp for this one.

LANYARD Realms 7" EP $4.98 One Percent
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This PA/MD outfit includes alto sax,guitar,bass,theremen,drums, and percussion. Their collective consciousness provides fuel for their powerfully creative and improvisational compositions. Lanyard is a tour de force of instrumental improv post-rock power, and cite John Zorn, Iceburn, and Nels Cline among their influences.

LAP DANCER The Curse Of The Pink Nurse CD-R $8.98 Audiobot

Normally, we'd expect a scorching assault of extreme free-noise or destroyed un-rock from the esteemed Audiobot imprint. Not here, however. This odd CD-R is the latest from the obscure project Lap Dancer, who creates strange soundscape collage and bouts of minimalist splatter-improv from an ensemble of laptop, effects pedals, microphones, samplers, and found sounds. An often hypnotic, mostly unsettling feverdream of musique concrete textures, tone sculptures that will fuck with your inner ear, and even some gorgeous lowercase post-rock melody, the disc does detour halfway through into the challenging tone drones and brutal, sizzling feedback noise of "Vomiting Swarms Of Worms", which serves as the albums centerpiece at an epic 15 minutes in length. This track is far from an unchanging block of distortion, though; over the course of the piece, the artist flows through a series of changes that sees the high pitched sinewaves that begin the track evolve and morph into assorted variations of density and heaviness and warped melody, achieving monstrous physical crunch midway through, and finally settling into a quiet drone the finishes the track. Pretty cool. There are some other noiser, more brutal moments later in the disc, namely the distortion cut-up of "Pulling Out My Eardrums Just To Hear Every Little Sound You Make", but for the most part is an even mix of subdued noise minimalism and brutal free-electronics, closing perfectly with the ghostly piano melody of the final track "The Locked Door". This could easily work as the soundtrack to a particularly nightmarish experimental film, with it's narrative-like flow of urban sounds, indistinguishable voices, violent frequencies, and abstracted melodies. Comes in a screenprinted wallet sleeve, with the disc painted in yellow and red ink splatter.

LARSEN MUSM 2xLP $14.98 Enterruption

Essentially a collection of assorted studio tracks that were originally compiled for a limited edition CDR that was only available on their 2003 US summer tour, MUSM covers everything LARSEN has done between their Rever album (Young God, 2002) and their two records involving Lustmord, Ken Thomas, Jarboe and Julia Kent. This LP version features the entire MUSM album plus more...3 revisited/remastered versions of tracks from the band's first release "No arms. No legs....", "Cartoanimalettimatti", the complete soundtrack for Windsor Mc Cay's short animated movies commisioned by the University of Torino and winner of the "Rimusicazioni - international film fest of new soundtracks for silent movies " award, an odd version of Pink Floyd's "Vegetable Man", and a brand new track recorded at a rehearsal session.
LARSEN summon a mystical European post/art-rock droneology sprouting from the cathartic rushes of adrenalin guitar mayhem of their stunning Michael Gira-produced album Rever, but with a more stripped-down instrumental sound that recalls both thunderous New York avant/noise rock and the monumental 'scapes of GODSPEED YOU! BLACK EMPEROR. Heavy drums rumble deliberately along with tangles of melodic hypno rock that crawl down the walls. Limited edition of 500! This is nicely presented in screen printed covers, includes two lps. One is playable and the other is a double screen printed art piece. Includes some other Larsen artifacts as well.

LAY, JOSH Blood In The Dark 2 x CASSETTE $11.98 Nurse Etiquette
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One-half of Cadaver In Drag adds another slab to his exponentially increasing discography of cassettes - this guy is a one-man deathdrone machine, and this latest double cassette Blood In The Dark brings the heavy doomdrone drift with four sides of colossal floating metal dirge and high volume amplifier crud best devoured at the highest volume possible. Each of the tapes is a C20, so each of the four tracks is a 10 minute monster: "Death Is My God" unleashes an ambient doom metal dirge as heavy as anything from Black Boned Angel or Sunn O))), and "Broken Futures" infests yer room with a creeping subsonic sinewave that wraps around your spinal column like some black mutant worm. Great stuff, top notch tape skum from one of the only dudes melding Midwestern distortion abuse and black metal/doom tropes at this level of black horror. Comes in a double-cassette case with hand-numbered j-card sleeve, limited to only 77 copies and completely sold out from everywhere but here.

LHD Limbs Of The Fawn CD $12.98 Misanthropic Agenda

"Los Angeles harsh city crust" is what the duo of Phil Blankenship and John Wiese call themselves, under the name LHD. On Limbs Of The Fawn, that translates as a nuclear blast of brutal, abrasive distortion-wall that sounds alot (as you might expect) like Blankenship's Cherry Point project with the addition of severe high-frequency feedback cut-up from Wiese. There's no point in making this easily digestible for anyone that doesn't already have a serious wall-noise habit, which is why Limbs is a single 36-minute vortex of fastpaced distortion blast, furious lashings of feedback skree whipping across a blackened sea of ear-destroying amplifier crust, with virtually no dynamics. And who fuckin' needs 'em. I don't listen to discs like Limbs Of The Fawn to engage in structure or songform; I dose myself on half-hour blocks of violent audio filth like this to wipe my mind out, to let it drown in a storm of microscopic accidental detail offered by the two artists in psychic tandem with one another, and crushing speaker crunch and monstrous inhuman roars thundering across a nightmarishly hostile soundscape that I suspect comes pretty close to what the final days of this planet are gonna sound like, but it's actually after repeated listens that this discs hallucinogenic properties become apparent: hidden voices and melodies buried deep in the filth, barely perceptible except on the periphery of your hearing, ghostly missives rising out of a nuclear holocaust. This is psychedelia for the endtimes if ever there was any, pure mind blot presented lovingly in a black six-panel digipack.

LAY, JOSH All Of My Dreams Are Dead CASSETTE $4.98 No Horse Shit

Pretty new but already sold out from the label, which is pretty inevitable when yer tape is released in a run of only 29 freaking copies, this two-track c24 cassette contains two 12-minute tracks of blackened, druggy sludgenoise from 1/2 of the noise rock outfit Cadaver In Drag, John Lay. The a-side track is "Forgotten Grave", which oozes a prehistoric slug trail of subterranean beats trapped in cooling amber and crushing scraping feedback dripping from mangled guitar strings. Diseased shrieking vocals emerge from the muck, and the whole ordeal sounds like an Abruptum jam ground up with chunks of concrete and poured out of a blown amplifier. The second side hosts "Door to God", which shifts between destroyed guitar distortion and filthy, black snarl and raw murky electronics, again sounding like an even more abstract mutation of Abruptum or Stalagggh until Lay flatlines into a creepy gitchscape that finishes the track.

LEE MILLER Futility Of Language CD $11.98 Musically Incorrect

Brutal but melodic hypno drone crunch from LEE MILLER, an ultraheavy Finnish/American trio that features Janne Peltomaki, who used to play drums in heavy space/kraut faves CIRCLE (as well as PAINE and STALWART), guitarist Jyrki Laiho ( currently in CIRCLE and STALWART), and guitarist Jordan Mamone (of NYC noise rock outfit ALGER HISS ). With The Futility Of Language, the newer, heavier leanings of CIRCLE meet headon with Mamone's NY noise sensibilities, resulting in 9 glorious tracks of potent,repetitive CIRCLE -esque hypno-riffage bound in bloody-fisted, New York City noise (think early SWANS and COP SHOOT COP) and dense guitar overload a la RHYS CHATHAM / GLENN BRANCA. Brutally heavy, throbbing destucto dronerock powered by gigungous guitar riffage and circular rhythms, with weird, creepy vocals that remind me of some weird mix of SWANS' M. Gira , and SKINNY PUPPY. There are some quieter, drony parts, and much of this is sans vocals, but it's all about the pummeling hypnotic riffs. Ya gotta get this if you're into the heavier CIRCLE stuff, and fellow fans of Euro hypno violence (think COSMONAUTS HAIL SATAN and BRAINBOMBS ) will love this too.

LE FORBICI DI MANITU Tagliare 2xCD $10.98 Small Voices

This long-running Italian avant-pop sextet celebrates twenty years of sonic disturbances in the Italian DIY experimental underground with this double disc collection of original material and remixes. The first disc features twelve LE FORBICI DI MANITU songs, which sort of remind us of an very weird 80's new wave band with a singer that sounds sort of like an Italian David Bowie, playing really catchy, weird, totally-pop songs (with lyrics sung in English) that have been warped and splattered with electronic noise and twisted into odd (and sometime bombastic) prog-rock shapes. There's lots of flute and keyboards and other unexpected instrumentation being used on all of these songs,too, and everything sounds very otherworldly and dreamlike. Apparently these songs date back to 1983, and originally appeared on now long-out-of-print cassettes, singles, and compilations, but have been re-recorded and re-arranged for this release (so the production on these songs is quite modern). RESIDENTS and DEERHOOF fans should both check this out, as this is strong stuff for fans of really weird pop. The second disc features nine remixes/reconfigurations of LE FORBICI DI MANITU songs by a variety of artists. These tracks range from the awesome J-pop of Valvola & Mac Donald Duck Eclair, to weird electro-funk of Technogod and Erasermen, the bizarre avant-punk of Maisie, and ambient dub from Teho Teardo. However, the high point of the remixes disc is definitely the twenty-three minute long title track "Tagliare", an electronic piece of LE FORBICI DI MANITU that had been reworked by Mana ERG, DJ Balli, Lloyd Dunn, Rod Summers, T.A.C., Massimo Giacon, and Nocturnal Emissions, and then mixed in a phenomenal cut-up dj set performed by Marani and Taver of DuoZero. Intense. The thick booklet contains track-by-track liner notes (in Italian) by Manitù Rossi.

LEGION Zodiac CD $12.98 Auf Abwegen
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British audio-visual technician Andrew Lagowski has been an active participant in the shadows of underground industrial/electronics culture for over three decades; having worked with seminal outfits Lustmord, S.P.K., Isolrubin BK and Terror Against Terror in the past, Lagowski went on to release a series of singles from 1992 through 1994 that established him in the realm of techno, as well as working on the borders of ambient music, dub, and electronica with his SETI project later in the decade. In between all of these different aliases, he also started to create some truly harrowing dark ambient dronescapes under the Legion banner, whose fourth and most recent release is Zodiac, a collection of five austere dronescapes draped in menace. Yeah, the album is named after the infamous Zodiac killer that terrorized San Francisco area in the 60's & 70's, but that's where the connection ends; if there's a concept behind Zodiac, it's the exploration of psychic blackness and the human capacity for evil through Legion's blackened minor key synthesizer dirges and broken rhythms spotted with buzzing noises, seriously frightening vocal-like sounds, and underwater clang, painting a portrait of intense hellish dread, a nightmarish horror film soundtrack narrated by the tracks 'Hell & Damnation', 'The Caravan', 'Four Fourty Four', 'Martyrs', and 'Ion'. It's a solidly unsettling fall into the void on par with Lustmord and Yen Pox, highly recommended to horror-drone heads and black ambient fans, issued in a single limited edition of 500 copies in a full color jewel case with eerie abstract artwork.

LE SCRAWL Eager To Please CD $11.98 Life is Abuse

Following their crucial 66 song discography Too Short To Ignore 1991-1998 (also released on Life Is Abuse), Germany's Le Scrawl return with this latest EP of grindcore/ska/jazz scramble, sixteen minutes and thirteen songs of glorious genre mashing blast. Just imagine Naked City and Napalm Death taking hard right turns into joyous ska raveups complete with horns and keyboards, super political grindpunk one second and fucked lounge groove the next, all deadpan delivery and amazingly complex and terminally wacky!

LE SCRAWL Too Short To Ignore 1991-1998 discography CD $13.98 Life is Abuse

Demented and amazing hyper-eclectic ska grind from Germany? You betcha! This discography CD has 66 tracks (about an hours worth) of crazy grindcore minute-long miniatures spliced with stop-on-a-dime shifts into groovy ska, bossa nova, and sleazy jazz action with horns, accordian, flamenco style guitars, and organs, like John Zorn's Naked City mixed up with grody 90's Euro grind. These guys are great musicians, executing the changeups effortlessly, and the tunes are backed by super gutteral death grunts (even over the ska and jazz parts!) which shoots this into a whole other realm of awesomely ridiculous, even doing covers of everything from De La Soul to Terrorizer, recombinating the original tunes DNA into their own freakish ska-grind structure. This discography spans from 1991 to 1998, containing two MCD titles, compilation jams, demos, and some live stuff recorded in Slovenia. The booklet contains lots of art and liner notes from the original releases. Killer! Fans of grinding genre-mash like Naked City, Exit 13, People, Mexican Power Authority, Spazztic Blurr, etc., take note.

LES GEORGES LENINGRAD Sur les traces de Black Eskimo CD $9.98 Alien8

Wildly catchy post-punk/noise/electro/improv dancefloor freakouts from costumed French-Canadians LES GEORGES LENINGRAD. The trio of Poney, Bobo, and Mingo lay down infectious beats and noisy,wacked out tuneage, vivid squalls of mutant punk-funk, synth hooks, screeching improv noise, electro bump like Le Tigre, Peaches and Sonic Youth liquified and poured into pure death disco mold. Very weird, wonderful avant electro punk. Tunes like "Supa Doopa" will attach themselves to your nervous system. Excellent gatefold packaging, with deranged art from the band, and a foldout insert.

LETHAL FIRETRAP Excursion/Passage CD $11.98 Even Stilte

Excursion/Passage is the debut from the Tokyo-based duo of The Filth and Kelly Churko, who incorporate distant, subtle melodies and found-item percussion and sounds into ghostly field recordings of bird song and parks, vague murmurs of street noise, and train stations. Dark, atmospheric environmental drone shimmer and eerie unidentifiable clatter is drawn from an array of objects, including wine glasses, halogen heater, Thai wooden frogs, guitar, metal cooking bowls, stone bowl, all of which were struck, rubbed, and scraped to create all sorts of haunting drones. The booklet mentions that this is based on some sort of science fiction narrative about the mass evacuation of humanity and terraforming, but all of that is secondary to the creepy ambience. A very beautiful environmental drone album. Limited to 500 copies.

LEVAL BLESSING s/t CD $8.98 Barbarian
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The debut full length from Milwaukee's LEVAL BLESSING combines blistering grindcore and power violence with mathy tech/death acrobatics and violent sludge/metalcore riffs, fronted by a monstrous two-vocal assault.Fierce ogre grind.

LEWD Rivet CD $11.98 Charnel

This unearthed slab of obscure Dutch hypno-metal delivers a seriously aggro brand of rust-plated sludge riffs and atonal anti-hooks with gutteral roars-from-the-id that situate Lewd's thunderous jams squarely between Zeni Geva and Brainbombs, if you can imagine such a monstrosity. Apparently K.K. Null from Zeni Geva/Absolut Null Punkt made the connection too, seeing as how he released Rivet on his Nux Organization label back in the mid-90s. Every song on this album is a criminal act of trance inducing ground-and-pound, with the band setting up a sideways-moving metal riff that borders on death metal heaviosity, and then jamming that mother into near infinity while the singer evacuates every ill vibe in his skull. There are a few sparse moments on here where the riffs flirt with anything close to melody, but mostly this is the total brutal repetition of circular caveman metal clubbing your skull in from start to finish. Heaavy.

LHD Curtains CD $9.98 Troniks

Double flamethrower noise from Los Angeles. This new CD from LHD, an alter ego of Lefthandeddecision, features Phil Blankenship (Lefthandeddecision, The Cherry Point) and John Weise (Bastard Noise, Sissy Spacek) respectively. Curtains showcases five untitled tracks of absolutely savage sonics, unrelenting and explosive. Destructive noise that sweeps from thick destructive low end churning to razor sharp highs frequency assaults. Some of the best and harshest noise to have emerged from the US noise underground recently.

LHD Young And Restless CD $7.98 Blossoming Noise

Housed in a simple monochrome wallet-jacket and emblazoned with a smeared logo and panoramic cover pic of the smoggy Los Angeles cityscape that makes Young And Restless look like some unearthed early L.A. Hardcore 7", this lil' crusher belts out three tracks in 17 minutes that fly at you fast-paced and violent, shooting out a torrent of brutal electronic wall-noise and beastly machine feedback. This is actually the debut release from LHD (a.k.a. Lefthandeddecision), the duo of Cherry Point's Phil Blankenship and John Wiese (Bastard Noise, Sunn O))), Sissy Spacek, etc.), reissued on CD; super intense, super heavy, distorted and chaotic noise rife with layers of blasting stuttering rhythmic pulses and concrete-mixer low-end rumble, sludgy distortion blurts, a thoroughly disorientating use of stereo panning, and howling deathvomit screams slicing through the mix and beating your skull into a pulp. Fierce shit. Limited edition of 1000 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Untitled Track 1" (excerpt)

LIGHT OF SHIPWRECK From The Idle Cylinders CD-R $8.98 Crucial Bliss

Light Of Shipwreck is a one-man band operated by Ben Fleury-Steiner, a Deleware-based drone artist and owner of the excellent Gears of Sand Recordings imprint, which has released discs from some of our favorite ambient/drone/drift artists including Encomiast, Cordell Klier, and Aidan Baker. It was actually through Aidan Baker that we found out about Ben's Light Of Shipwreck project; knowing that we're fanatics for "heavy ambient" sound, Light Of Shipwreck was recommended as something we should check out. At first expecting something more along the lines of the kind of floating ambient rumble that marks so much of my favorite Baker solo stuff, I was pleasantly surprised by how percussive the tracks I heard online from LOS were, the dense, ominous feedback drones and heavy rumbling ur-riffs floating freely over a mechanistic tribal-rhythm freakout. We ended up getting in touch with Ben from Light Of Shipwreck and it turned out that he had a nearly hour-long disc that he wanted to have released through our Crucial Bliss imprint, and here we are: a three-track full length of rich, crushing power-ambient, titled From The Idle Cylinders, a reference to the American Objectivist poet George Oppen whose work is a consistent influence on Light Of Shipwreck's imagery, with huge slabs of resonant sheet metal shimmering in an ocean of heavenly feedback and reverberating guitar drone, and surges of droning tribal Krautrock percussion floating along with distorted ambient doom powerchords and washed out vocal cord bliss, each track running upwards of 20 minutes in length. A totally breathtaking piece of music, like Steve Reich, Brian Eno, Can, and Earth swirled together into an austere, hypnotizing heavy-trance masterpiece. This limited edition CD-R of From The Idle Cylinders comes packaged in the signature Crucial Bliss foldover card sleeve with the disc itself attached to the sleeve on a plastic hub and featuring striking photo design, in a print run of 200 copies.

LLORAH self-titled CD $9.98 Atropine

The French just keep it coming. With just about everyone and their mother either jacking into straight into the vein of the post-Neurosis apocalyptic metalcore sound, or else taking a more flowery route through Mono/Godspeed/Mogwai territory, it's the vibrant, but often-overlooked French underground that has been seeding some of the most exciting sounds to emerge from this cultural zeitgeist in the past few years. Overmars, Year Of No Light, pretty much the entire Radar Swarm roster - all have taken that molten, metallic dirge that Neurosis pioneered during the 90's as a jumping off point but have gone much further in making the sound their own, rather than simply copping the form. Llorah, a newer band from Lyon, France, finds themselves in that esteemed company with this debut four-song EP on Atropine, which is the same label that delivered the beautiful double LP edition of Year Of No Light's Nord last year. Fans of Year Of No Light themselves would do well to check Llorah out, as these kids have a similar adept hand at crafting beautifully gloomy melodies that seethe and explode into torrents of unhinged deathcore, complete with deep, gutteral roars and grinding lockstep riffage. Of course, the fact that Llorah also drops in some terrifically mangled riffage that has more in common with classic noise rock grudge than Neur-otic dirge metal does much to endear this first outing to my ears, ya know? There are a couple of quieter, atmospheric instrumental parts on here, particularly the 11+ minute closer "Relique", which slowly builds with clean, jangly guitars and jazzy drumming into total crushing menace, but even here they throw in enough twists to keep this from sounding too familiar. Pretty rad indeed, kinda touches on a variety of vibes ranging from Unsane and French Am Rep-inspired crushers Tantrum to Cult Of Luna and Knut. Of course, Llorah's disc comes in a beautiful package, a silkscreened Arigato Pak style chipboard case that looks amazing. This one is for sure recommended to fans of cool French metallic HC and the more interesting and brutal tendrils of the "post-metal" tree.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Flétrissures précoces" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Nos ombres jalouses" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Echos" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Relique" (excerpt)

LOCKWELD 8 Cuts shaped sawblade LP $12.98 NCC

One of the coolest shaped records I own, Lockweld's phenomenal 8 Cuts album is a vinyl-only release that came out back in 2003 in a limited edition of 500 copies, cut as a circular saw blade shape on black wax. We actually carried this when it originally came out, but sold out of them pretty quickly and had presumed that it had gone out of print through the label. Well, it turns out that there were still a couple of copies of 8 Cuts floating around that I was able to snag, so here's your chance to grab what is one of the most hypnotic pieces of distorto-pulse from Cleveland's king and queen of sheet metal abuse. Consisting of Karen on synth and vocals and Steve Makita (also of grind killers Apt. 213!) on power tools and vocals, Lockweld use power drills and other intimidating machinery to create additional assaults of hardcore factory noise over Karen's dense, churning slabs of distortion, which are masterfully looped into repetitive, trance inducing grooves. Each of the eight "cuts" here run from a minute in length to nearly eight, and range from minimal electronic drones, to rhythmic blasts of wall-noise splattered with fragments of psychedelic melody, to all-out hurricanes of pure white noise immolation. It's all heavy as hell. 'Cut 1" shakes with crushing pools of rumbling static noise and destroyed roaring vocals buried in the mix. 'Cut 4' weaves together harsh tone violence a la Pedestrian Deposit over manipulated vocals and corroded vocal samples. There's a killer overmodulated melody and sinister feedback/vocal drone that congeals for 'Cut 8'. But it's 'Cut 3' that knocked me out, with it's wobbly, melted melody and blasted mass of distortion sounds amazingly like brutal powerviolence vocals cutting a bloody swath through some fucked-up hybrid of black metal, Skullflower, and the Dead C. Fucking awesome. That track is only a coupla minutes long, but it's a blast of gorgeously grim noise perfection. Man, I love this record - out of all of Lockweld's myriad tapes, CD-Rs, vinyl releases, CDs, etc., this is the one that really fused their subtle melodic touches with exuberant grinding nod-outs, like an endless wave of rusted locked grooves coursing over you. The sawblade-shaped vinyl comes in a clear mylar pouch.

LOCUST SYMPATHIZER Habakkuk CD-R $8.98 Audiobot

New private-press disc from this Rochester duo, carving out chunks of feedback from malfunctioning amplifiers and drowing the whole planet in ultra high frequency squeal. Research tells us that Locust Sympathizer utilized washtub bass, banjo, and trombone along with drums, metal percussion, and field recordings to cultivate these soundfields, but good luck trying to establish that by ear. Habbakuk really starts to ignite when the guys begin busting out some mondo free-rock junk and try to cut through the thick curtains of feedback and amp gnarl with fits of splattery gorilla drumming...that shit sounds like a coked out free jazz combo being hurled off of a parking deck, and frankly rules the school. Elsewhere, Locust Sympathizer mellows out with brain drilling beams of textured skree backed by heavy metallic clatter and monstrously pitched sinewaves that threaten to kill everything within a 10' radius. Killer shit that really starts to fuck with your nervous sytem after about twelve minutes. Seriously recommended to anyone into the sort of sonic horror currently being peddled by heads like DOm Fernow of Prurient, Pedestrian Deposit, and Oscillating Innards. There are also some tangental lines connecting this thoughtwise to K2's nastiest blasts and the whole Wolf Eyes/Hair Police gang. Packaged in a boss handassembled full color wallet sleeve.

LOGH A Sunset Panorama CD $12.98 Hydra Head

Here’s something different from the HH camp...On their third full length, released in the US through Hydra Head, Sweden’s LOGH have perfected a lush indie-pop take on SONIC YOUTH’s Daydream Nation, with cascading sheets of guitar driven by propulsive rhythms, melodic vocals that sound like Thurston Moore’s sleepy little brother, and undeniable hooks. It’s actually really freakin’ great, we fell in love with this on our first listen. There’s none of the heaviness that one might normally expect from this label - it’s definitely the most accessible thing Hydra Head has released besides 27 - but this stuff is tops, especially if you’re like us and absolutely love the era of indie rock that A Sunset Panorama tends to evoke. The CD/packaging sports great vector-chaos artwork from the heathen warrior Stephen O’Malley.

LORDS OF LIGHT Doom 7” EP $5.98 Enterruption

Completely AMAZING out-grind from Portland that we're kicking ourselves for not checking out before. Seriously, this shit is utterly amazing, think plodding heaviness like Melvins meets an almost Lungfish style melodic sense meets BLASTING SPEED VIOLENCE similiar to Infest or Man Is The Bastard, with churning,droning guitars over the slower parts, and a fucking killer rock and roll frontman whose howling tuneful vocals are the perfect foil for the music. Completely fucked up and AWESOME. This EP from Enterruption has 5 songs, every one a ripper, and comes on black wax in a color sleeve in an edition of 500. Highly recommended. Side note: throw this mother on 45rpm, and it sounds like the Lollipop Guild fronting Melt Banana. Choice!

LOTUS Version 2.0 CD $5.98 Little Mafia

Just got this one back in stock, and we figured we'd give it a rethink as our previous review really didn't give this capsule-burst of digital shock any real justice. 'Cuz this is really fucking weird. Version 2.0 is the sole release (as far as we can tell) from the Pennsylvania duo Lotus, who take deranged free noise, various samples, retarded electro/dance beats, digital blastbeats, and absurd vocal bird-squawks and create a sort of avant-electro-cheersquad nightmare using only a modified Commodore 64 and two microphones attached to 200 foot cables, allowing the Lotus guys plenty of space to flip out royally. Imagine a drooling, caffiene-overdosed mashup of brain damaged Digital Hardcore Records seizures, the dayglo freak thrash of An Albatross, and primitive computer jams with two lobotimized little kids freaking out on the mic as they are being electrocuted. This EP is fifteen minutes long, blazing through 22 untitled microbursts of digital splatter. Mucho fun! Comes in a full color wallet sleeve.

LOTUS EATERS Wurmwulv CD $11.98 Troubleman

It's been five years since the last Lotus Eaters release, and Wurmwulv is a welcome return for the trio, made up of avant-metal icons Aaron Turner (Isis, House Of Low Culture, Old Man Gloom, Hydra Head Records), Stephen O'Malley (Sunn O))), Khanate, KTL, Burning Witch, Thorrs Hammer), and James Plotkin (OLD, Khanate, Phantomsmasher). Lotus Eaters first album Mind Control For Infants and the subsequent self-titled 7" that came out in 2002 were captivating pieces of eerie abstract ambience, and Wurmwulv continues in the same vein, with three untitled tracks that run upwards of 20 minutes each. The first track enters with the echoing bell-like sounds of metal clanging against metal and percussive sounds of drum-like objects and gongs, the strikes vibrating out and dissolving in the air, while barely perceptible drones hum in the distance. It sounds like a Japanese funeral march heard in extreme slow motion. Gradually, more of the metallic percussion and shimmery drones enter the fray, building the track into a dense tangle of improvised clang which then flatlines into creepy electronic ambient, before building once again into a dense outro of chirping tones, howling feedback-like drone, and rustling ghost percussion. Dreamy and haunting, the vibe here reminds me alot of Aural Hypnox's brand of ritualistic drone, and the occultic post-industrial drift of Troum and Coil. The second track is the shortest on Wurmwulv, only 5 minutes long, and begins with another subdued set of floating drones, deep frequencies swirling with high pitched shimmer, but halfway through we are confronted with rattling pieces of metal that explodes into a cloud of gorgeous melted melody and chimes. The last track is definitely the weirdest, as Lotus Eaters drag you through a cranial cave system filled with rippling electronic pulses, bizarre mewling voices, bursts of synthetic animal sounds, low-frequency drones, field recordings of strinhed instruments being masticated by mutants gorged on peyote, all evolving across the track's 15-minutes into a surreal drug-dream vision that culminates in a beautiful drone coda a la Troum. Drone junkies will love this album, and it maps out a new, strange terrain from the band. And as a perfect accompaniment to the otherworldy driftscapes on this disc, the packaging is amazing, the disc presented in a DVD style gatefold case that folds out into 6 panels, featuring moody, murky paintings from artist Stephen Kasner across the outside and a gorgeous eyeburst of tree spew across the interior, designed by Aaron Turner.

LU B-Interrail CD $11.98 Small Voices

Sampler wizard and composer Gianluca Porcu is the guy behind this one-man avant-pop outfit, which blends multi-instrumental Mediterranean folk music (complete with flute, clarinet,sax, piano, guitar, and more...), modern classical hyperglitch, and sugary 8-bit IDM sweetness together into a sunny, brilliant conglom of futuristic jetset/lounge Euro pop fronted by blitzed female vocals (think "O Superman" Laurie Anderson) and heavily layered female vocal choirs. Beautiful and very catchy. The label touts this as the missing link between Fennesz and The Penguin Cafe Orchestra, but this is much closer to the modern classical/folk/pop/avant garde of the latter. A fantastic album. Recommended for fans of Nobukazu Takemura, Pascal Comelade, Pulseprogramming, The Books, etc.

LUASA RAELON Consumed Within The Years Of Lead CD $7.98 Troniks

This is the first non-CDr release from Columbus, OH noise artist David Reed (chief of the excellent homemade noise CDr label, Snip Snip), packaged in an attractive B&W wallet with ominous abstract images. The five tracks on this CD move at a glacial pace, with deep, cavernous rumbling and sharp digital cuts and grisly electrical hums...it's close in spirit to the more recent material from Marax, and just as good, although Reed engages some bursts of dark melody and harsh noise intermittently throughout Consumed. It's a great step for Luasa Raelon, showing a continued development of ideas and sound sources. I first listened to this CD right before watching Takashi Miike's Gozu, and it made for an excellent sonic segueway into that film's surreal horror. Fans of hard drone, dark ambient, and more subtle harsh noise work should definitely check this out.

LUASA RAELON Into The Void CD-R $8.98 Crucial Bliss

Finally, after a pronounced delay on our part, we're presenting the latest in grim, Cthulhian ambient death from David Reed, the man behind the Snip-Snip CD-R label and the ice-drones of Envenomist. With Luasa Raelon, Reed uses deep-frozen synthesizers and electronics to construct pitch-black sonic sculptures that evoke lost cities carved from obsidian whose masterless machines have been left to grind on into eternity, or descents into stygian pits whose bottoms cannot be gauged. Into The Void is the newest masterwork from Reed, recorded in 2006 and presented here as a five-chapter narrative that chronicles a doomed space exploration, where all that is left are the faint transmissions of apocalyptic dread drifting back at us through time. Beyond ominous, and gorgeously eerie, Reed continues to craft some of the blackest, heaviest drift this side of Gruntsplatter, Troum, Lull, Yen Pox, Melek-Tha, Lustmord, and Megaptera. Into The Void has been released in an edition of 200 copies, packaged in the signature Crucial Bliss foldover sleeve with the disc attached to the interior on a plastic hub, and featuring some of our best Bliss artwork yet, which David described as looking like 70's science-fiction art.

LUASA RAELON Season Of The Witch CD $11.98 Snip Snip

Heaviest slab of cold factory dread so far from Luasa Raelon, a.k.a. David Reed. Reed's ability to open portals to obsidian glacial expanses through his synth manipulations and controlled feedback have been documented across several excellent full lengths in the past few years, including the excellent Night Maintenance collab CD with Hive Mind. All of Luasa Raelon's nocturnal deathdrone designs are infused with a deep sense of post-technological dread, a vibe which culminated with The Poison City album released on Eibon Records last year, a stunning series of visions of incandescent radioactive skies and empty factories and cities devoid of organic life. On Season Of The Witch, Luasa Raelon continues to summon icy, ink-black ambience and washes of metallic shimmer that decay into the darkness, but another presence can be felt, a propulsive grind of still-running factory machinery that has slowed to a crawl, turning tracks like "Strike The Hours" and "Liars" into crushing, ritualistic dirgescapes, like some collaboration between Black Boned Angel and Megaptera taking place in a steel forge buried deep beneath the earth. Really amazing music, packaged in terrific artwork by Robert Troutman that compliments the occult/apocalyptic dreamscape contained here.

LUASA RAELON The Poison City CD $11.98 Eibon

I've been a big fan of David Reed's LUASA RAELON project ever since we first became acquainted with his Snip Snip label, a cool CD-R/CD label with a catalog of hard drone / heavy drift noise and a nice handmade visual aesthetic. David has released a handful of LUASA RAELON discs through Snip Snip, as well as the debut "real" CD release of Consumed Within The Years Of Lead (co-released with PACrec), and the killer Night Maintenance split with HIVE MIND which found both artists collaborating together on some wicked 2am death buzz. All of these discs delivered Reed's particular brand of rolling, ominous industrial death drone, which has fallen more in league with the dark ambient of LUSTMORD and YEN POX with each subsequant release. Now we have The Poison City, Reed's latest LUASA RAELON full length album released on cult Italian imprint Eibon, and I think it's the most cohesive and ambient LR release yet, full of dense midnight minor-key ambient doom laced with frozen bursts of crunchy, inhuman electronic noise and feedback. Listening to LUASA RAELON sinister shifting synthscapes and ominous industrial grinding, I was easily envisioning distant trails of nuclear war heads cruising over the horizon, or great monolithic smoke stacks and towering factories belching green ash into the sky. Or Elder Gods descending to earth from the radioactive heavens. You catch my drift. Immense synth doom. The booklet contains eerie high-contrast green-glow photography of urban decay that fits perfectly with the title theme. Definitely check this out if you're into heavy death ambient, the Cold Meat sound, GRUNTSPLATTER, BRIGHTER DEATH NOW, CAUl,etc.Recommended.

LUDICRA s/t CD $12.98 Life Is Abuse

Killer new 3 song mini album from San Fran's urban black metallers Ludicra! There's 22 minutes of music here, all recorded from the same session that made up their Another Great Love Song album from last year. That album crushed us, and these songs are just as good. Actually, the second song here, "Walk The Path Of Ash", might just be my favorite Ludicra song ever, a mighty loping metal anthem with a central melancholic melody that vaguely reminds me of late era Swans, building into a bleak, majestic thrash breakdown with killer dual harmony guitar lines and sky reaching harmonized clean vocals. Awesome. Ludicra's Christie Cather and Laurie Sue Shanaman still team up on the singing, and I still think that their combined tortured shrieks are some of the most harsh, harrowing female vocals in the black/death metal spectrum. Of course, Ludicra also incorporate some very un-black metal elements into their songs too, injecting post rock and prog vibes into the thrash attack and bringing in Amber Asylum's Kris Force on violin and Jackie Perez-Gratz on cello. In addition, the disc contains some cool CD-ROM footage with 5 live songs filmed in October 2005 in San Francisco, plus a slideshow of in-studio photos backed by a new acoustic piece from Ludicra. For fans of Ludicra's arty battle thrash, this mother is loaded.

LUDICRA s/t 12" $12.98 Life Is Abuse

Rad looking new 12" vinyl version of the recent self-titled CD from San Francisco black metallers Ludicra, on sweet white wax and with one side of the vinyl screenprinted in black ink with the bands logo !
Killer new 3 song mini album from San Fran's urban black metallers Ludicra! There's 22 minutes of music here, all recorded from the same session that made up their Another Great Love Song album from last year. That album crushed us, and these songs are just as good. Actually, the second song here, "Walk The Path Of Ash", might just be my favorite Ludicra song ever, a mighty loping metal anthem with a central melancholic melody that vaguely reminds me of late era Swans, building into a bleak, majestic thrash breakdown with killer dual harmony guitar lines and sky reaching harmonized clean vocals. Awesome, arty battle thrash. Ludicra's Christie Cather and Laurie Sue Shanaman still team up on the singing, and I still think that their combined tortured shrieks are some of the most harsh, harrowing female vocals in the black/death metal spectrum. Of course, Ludicra also incorporate some very un-black metal elements into their songs too, injecting post rock and prog vibes into the thrash attack and bringing in Amber Asylum's Kris Force on violin and Jackie Perez-Gratz on cello. Recommended.

LUDICRA Fex Urbis Lex Orbis CD $14.98 Alternative Tentacles

It seems like Ludicra have always caught alot of attention just for some of the more secondary idiosyncrasies surrounding the band: their presence on the esteemed Alternative Tentacles roster (a label that a lot of people seem to think is a "hardcore punk" label, but come on, AT put out three albums from Zeni Geva, fer chrissakes), and the novelty of the presence of two female singers in the group, for starters. Bottom line, Ludicra are one of the coolest, most majestic sounding bands around having anything to do with the black metal tag, while dispensing with any of the corpsepaint affectations that define so much of Black Metal. And man, listening to their latest album Fex Urbis Lex Orbis totally reminds me of why Black Metal is the wellspring for some of the greatest music happening right now at the dawn of this fucked-up century. The title being a reference to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Fex Urbis Lex Orbis translates to "the dregs of the city, the law of the earth", and sets the mood for the five hymns to urban decay, isolation, and personal corrosion, shot through with only the faintest glimmers of hope. Their music takes on a prog-rock hue with songs reaching almost 12 minutes in length, and travels through slow-building, fairly elaborate song structures, awesome buzzy riffage and darkly beautiful melodies glowing in the sodium light of streetlamps at dusk. And yeah, Laurie and Christy's vocals are awesome, trading off between murderous raspy screams and austere, ethereal croons. Emotional and sleekly sophisticated, Fex Urbis continues to deliver the band's potent melding of Ulver/Weakling/Darkthrone-inspired Black Metal with trace elements of death metal, Louisville math-rock, Bay Area thrash metal power, the nuclear cloud prophesies of classic crustcore, and a meaty streak of classic heavy metal axework reminiscent of sister band Hammers Of Misfortune (who shares Ludicra guitarist John Cobbett). Also kicking my ass: the awesome drumming from Ludicra's drummer Aesop; the guys unleashes with insane fills all over the place, incredibly tight and dead-on, but still creating a total blast blizzard atmosphere throughout. The album adjourns with the twelve minute "Collapse", streaming ghostly cello from an Amber Asylum member over a brooding blackprog epic. Very cool design work in place as well, juxtaposing images of various city "vermin" (rats, cockroaches, pigeons, etc) against clean, defined architectural lines.

LUDICRA Fex Urbis Lex Orbis LP $12.98 Alternative Tentacles

An attractive vinyl edition of Ludicra's incredible third album from late 2006!
It seems like Ludicra have always caught alot of attention just for some of the more secondary idiosyncrasies surrounding the band: their presence on the esteemed Alternative Tentacles roster (a label that a lot of people seem to think is a "hardcore punk" label, but come on, AT put out three albums from Zeni Geva, fer chrissakes), and the novelty of the presence of two female singers in the group, for starters. Bottom line, Ludicra are one of the coolest, most majestic sounding bands around having anything to do with the black metal tag, while dispensing with any of the corpsepaint affectations that define so much of Black Metal. And man, listening to their latest album Fex Urbis Lex Orbis totally reminds me of why Black Metal is the wellspring for some of the greatest music happening right now at the dawn of this fucked-up century. The title being a reference to Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, Fex Urbis Lex Orbis translates to "the dregs of the city, the law of the earth", and sets the mood for the five hymns to urban decay, isolation, and personal corrosion, shot through with only the faintest glimmers of hope. Their music takes on a prog-rock hue with songs reaching almost 12 minutes in length, and travels through slow-building, fairly elaborate song structures, awesome buzzy riffage and darkly beautiful melodies glowing in the sodium light of streetlamps at dusk. And yeah, Laurie and Christy's vocals are awesome, trading off between murderous raspy screams and austere, ethereal croons. Emotional and sleekly sophisticated, Fex Urbis continues to deliver the band's potent melding of Ulver/Weakling/Darkthrone-inspired Black Metal with trace elements of death metal, Louisville math-rock, Bay Area thrash metal power, the nuclear cloud prophesies of classic crustcore, and a meaty streak of classic heavy metal axework reminiscent of sister band Hammers Of Misfortune (who shares Ludicra guitarist John Cobbett). Also kicking my ass: the awesome drumming from Ludicra's drummer Aesop; the guys unleashes with insane fills all over the place, incredibly tight and dead-on, but still creating a total blast blizzard atmosphere throughout. The album adjourns with the twelve minute "Collapse", streaming ghostly cello from an Amber Asylum member over a brooding blackprog epic. Very cool design work in place as well, juxtaposing images of various city "vermin" (rats, cockroaches, pigeons, etc) against clean, defined architectural lines.

LUDICRA Hollow Psalms CD $13.98 Life is Abuse
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Man, we loved last year's Another Great Love Song, the second album from San Fran post-black metal blasters LUDICRA, and their first for Alternative Tentacles. That album was a ferocious roar of female-fronted blackened ultrathrash and massive dirge with pretty hidden melodies and weird, post-rock-ish moves that made them a sort of urban, American counterpart to ENSLAVED's epic black metal alchemy.
So here we are with LUDICRA's debut album, Hollow Psalms, and this mother rips. These cats drop some vicious hyperspeed black metal riffs into punky speedcore drumming and front the assault with a nasty two-woman dual-vocal setup that shreds throats and emits some insane bloodcurdling screams. This album is fucking awesome, ferocious and crushing, grimly psychedelic, both locking into nebular post-rock moves like ENSLAVED, and grinding out serious drone thrash a la WEAKLING, plus acoustic interludes, burly grindcore blasts, forays into doomy gloom, all delivered with a killer songwriting style and loads of dynamics. The folks involved are major heads in the Bay Area metal movement- LUDICRA includes members of EXHUMED, IMPALED, HAMMERS OF MISFORTUNE, and LORD WEIRD SLOUGH FEG, and the pedigree here shines through their bonecrushing delivery. It's tough not to gush about this one...like we mentioned, we love LUDICRA, and this debut rules. The packaging is killer too, presented in a standard digipack but laid out in reverse so that it opens like a book, with the disc tray on the inside front cover, and the opposite panel attached to a multipage booklet, set up sort of like a storybook. Awesome!

LUGUBRUM De Totem CD $11.98 Blood Fire Death

This is the infamous 1999 masterpeice of psychedelic hillbilly black metal weirdness, re-released and remastered domestically by Blood,Fire,Death/Red Stream with an additional two bonus tracks! These Darkthrone-worshipping, carrot devouring, Belgian alcoholics specialize in slow, low-fi Sabbathian sludgery and mind scrambling blasts of super fuzzy, feedbacking black metal, hypnotic and droney, weird and atonal, with particularly tortured vocals howling in the distance. Diseased, filthy, completely fucked, with a weird sense of humour in their song titles ("Midget Of Evil"?) and in their aesthetic: the photographs of the band in De Totem's booklet look like they are a band of 18th century mountaineers. Huh? Later tracks on the album also incorporate a banjo alongside the shredded, distorted guitar blurr, and that instrument serves to make the music about 300 times more evil sounding. And on one of the bonus tracks, there is what sounds like a Jamaican dub influence...amazing. Completely evil, warped, and adventurous black metal psych-filth.

LULL Collected CD $13.98 Manifold
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The ultimate in drift and darkness! A collection of rare and unreleased compilation tracks formed within Mick Harris' deepest nightmares. Tracking the work from the very first track Lull created; 'Hung' to the haunting nineteen-minute 'Closed In', previously found only on vinyl. Seven works of sublime uneasiness that surround the listener, filling the room with a restful sort of darkness. Includes unreleased material.
Manifold Records has pulled together a collection of rare compilation and unreleased tracks from Mick Harris' beat-less drone project, Lull. The collecion features mostly material that can be found elsewhere, with only one new previously unreleased track, but the mere fact that these songs have been released somewhere doesn't mean they are easy to find. Collected in this respect helps purists to fill out the Lull catalog without forcing them to buy a bunch of compilations that were released in limited quantities by odd-ball labels. It also serves as a nice primer and introduction to Harris' work as Lull for the uninitiated. Lull has always been Harris' deepest and most sensual project. If Scorn and Quoit are Harris' answer to 'dance' music, and Napalm Death and Painkiller are his forays into rock and avant jazz, then Lull is certainly Harris' own take on the notion of ambient. Collected does a nice job of chronicling the evolution of Lull from a noisy, loopy entity with a fairly primitive and gutteral approach to noise/drone music to the more refined, evolved and drifting works that would come later. From the beginning of the disc to the end, the compositions grow increasingly more focused, and they are stripped down until the last track, collected from the Lull 12" also on Manifold sounds almost like its hinting at silence. Main took a similar trajectory towards the infinitesimal and wound up with albums of minute clicks and hiss that barely resemble a feeling, but Harris is able to maintain the depth throughout, even while taking away some of the bombast and contrast. If you have even a passing interest in noise/drone/dark ambient, you had better grab this yesterday.

LUNATIC GODS The Wilderness LP $11.98 ARE Records

10 song LP featuring an interesting mix of Slovakian Occult death metal with tweaked melodic flourishes, and fried-out Euro folk elements executed through the use of sitar and didgeridoo (!). Extremely original, twisted avant-death metal.

LUSTMORD Juggernaut CD $14.98 Hydra Head

Once again, we've got a new, uber-limited title finally listed in the Crucial Blast store long after it has already sold out from the label. Oh well, with the limited pressings that so many releases are getting lately, it's tough to keep up and stay on top. So be warned, we've got a limited amount of these CDs and they will no doubt fly out of here pretty quick. Especially considering how anticipated this release was. So what is Lustmord's Juggernaut all about? Well, to begin with, this album could actually be called Lustmord & King Buzzo's Juggernaut, as the Melvins riff master joined up with Brian Lustmord to sculpt these four lengthy tracks (clocking in at over 40 minutes) of menacing dark ambient drone, nocturnal guitar forms, tortured robo vocals, and HEAVY ambient dirgemetal riffing grinding away in the background. This material was originally recorded for an art opening for legendary hot-rod/poster artist Chris "Coop" Cooper that took place in 2004, but has been resurrected and updated for this limited edition version. Presented in a full color digipack edition of 2000 copies.