TITLES: N

NACHTMYSTIUM Demise CD $11.98 Autopsy Kitchen

The 2004 full length from midwestern black metal outfit Nachtmystium, who many of you might know from thier recent release of Eulogy IV on Southern Lord, as well as being involved with Twilight. Ultra depressing black metal, noisy and smeared in sheets of distortion and feedback, sprouting majestic spiked riffs that plod along hypnotically, blurring into melancholy stretches of droning mid-tempo trance metal, with a killer melodic sesnsibility that makes Nachtmystium way more melodic and catchy than any of their peers, while drowning their songs in suffocating clouds of filthy distortion. An epic, mesmerizing fusion of classic Norwegian black metal a la Emporer and Immortal, and the contemporary outsider/suicide/psych American black metal of Xasthur and Leviathan. The album closes with a nearly 9 minute blast of utterly depressing, howling feedback dirge, totally in the vein of a Skullflower/Crackhouse/Total amp battle. Awesome.

NACHTMYSTIUM Eulogy IV LP $14.98 Kreation

I was blown away by Nachtmystium's brilliant infusion of psychedelic guitar solos and utterly unique melodic hooks into an otherwise devestating black metal assault, which I first heard on their 2004 album Demise; everything that I've been able to land my hands on since has been awesome. I've gotta say though that out of all of their releases that I own, the Eulogy IV mini-album is my favorite, primarily for having my all-time favorite Nachtmystium song "Eulogy IV". Originally released on Total Holocaust and then re-issued through Southern Lord as a limited edition. Both versions are currently out of print, but we do have this cool LP version that has been issued by Kreation Records, which includes the original five songs from the Total Holocaust CD, plus additional covers of Earth and Burzum. Eulogy IV is loaded with that awesome ethereal, soaring lead guitar playing that's heavily influenced by Pink Floyd, and the melodies here are some of the band's best. Especially during "Eulogy IV", a mostly mid-paced song that has an unbelieveably catchy and melancholy melody gliding over a charred and churning distorted dirge, so catchy that it borders on "pop", but not cheesy or overdone. Other songs like "My Vengeance" and "Bleed For Thee" are faster, more vicious blasts of blackened thrash and buzzsaw distortion with Azentrius' scarred howls and driving, rocking drumming, but those Pink Floyd-ian solos are still all over the place. When the final studio track "You Get Nothing" appears, you'll think that the record has slipped into a locked groove, as the band grinds hypnotically at a simple speedy thrash riff and single drumbeat for over two minutes while effects-mutated vocals zoom through the murk. Awesome. The tail end of the album has the two covers, where Nachtmystium take on Earth's "Charioteer (Temple Song)" off of Pentastar, recorded live at the 2003 Blitzkrieg Festival, and turn it into a short, chaotic blast of mystical thrash. And their seven-minute long rendition of Burzum's "Stemmen Fra Tarnet" is a plodding, grungy dirge slathered in fuzz and tortured screams. I can't recommend Eulogy IV enough, it still makes me think of Roger Waters from Pink Floyd playing over a crushing, raw black metal outfit; hands down some of my favorite black metal ever. This Kreation release is a limited edition of 500 on black vinyl, in a full color jacket and a printed interior slipsleeve.

NACHTMYSTIUM Instinct:Decay CD $14.98 Southern Lord
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We fucking loved the first Nachtmystium album we heard, Demise, and have been blasting that quite often since we first listed it in the Crucial Blast webstore a few months ago. Such a crushing slab of dissonant venom, and one of the best black metal albums we'd landed to date. Here's what we said: "Ultra depressing black metal, noisy and smeared in sheets of distortion and feedback, sprouting majestic spiked riffs that plod along hypnotically, blurring into melancholy stretches of droning mid-tempo trance metal, with a killer melodic sesnsibility that makes Nachtmystium way more melodic and catchy than any of their peers, while drowning their songs in suffocating clouds of filthy distortion. An epic, mesmerizing fusion of classic Norwegian black metal a la Emporer and Immortal, and the contemporary outsider/suicide/psych American black metal of Xasthur and Leviathan. The album closes with a nearly 9 minute blast of utterly depressing, howling feedback dirge, totally in the vein of a Skullflower/Crackhouse/Total amp battle. Awesome."
So here we are with a new studio album from Nachtmystium, released in conjunction with Southern Lord, and let us say, unequivocally, that this is our favorite fucking black metal album ever. EVER.
As far as we are concerned, Instinct:Decay is fucking perfect, a fully realized album bolstered by great clear production that still has just enough filth on it, but with all of the punch and thickness that is needed, and those RIFFS...man, this album has some of the best straight-up metal riffs we've heard in ages, the way the band puts them together is so much more developed than anything they've done in the past. But this is also probably the most psychedelic and spaced-out black metal album we've ever heard, too! The ten tracks on Instinct:Decay flow from ferocious blackened thrash into huge stoner rock grooves into rapturous walls of gorgeous shoegazer guitars and blastbeats, with all sorts of other sounds thrown in that make everything sound huge and frightening and completely abyssal. But it's Nachtmystium's use of processed guitars that blast this music into another dimension, spacey and gigantic sounding, reminding us ALOT of later Pink FLoyd with their bluesy,delayed-to-infinity attack. Those guitars are all over these songs, turning this into an epic, psychedelic, ULTRA CATCHY black metal/space-rock masterpeice. Nachtmystium also foray into nightmarish droneouts and tribal percussion raveups, which further add to the hallucinogenic pull of the album. But ultimately, it's all about super epic and melodic spacey black metal riffage that heads into unbelieveably beautiful/apocalyptic areas. An album that is, in our opinion, totally innovative but also totally recognizeable, tapping into a vein of pure heavy metal energy that we find just as fucking satisying as prime Iron Maiden, or the best of the 80's speed/thrash metal albums, while redefining the edges of the modern BM paradigm. It's that good. Highly HIGHLY recommended!!!

NACKT INSECTEN Sick Animal Eyes CD-R $11.98 At War With False Noise
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Crushing, abyssal swarms of creeping amplifier deathdrone and electrically-charged feedback move languidly over these three mammoth tracks from Glasgow's Ruaraidh Sanachan, a.k.a. Nackt Insecten. Sick Animal Eyes is his second full length, a visually/sonically enveloping piece made up of three epic tracks. The first piece, "Ascension Into Yr Ideal", rumbles with dense clouds of buzzing amp roar and subtlely shifting notes, a 14 minute meditation of sacred speaker corrosion that writhes with the power of early Skullflower and Total. "Monk's Wine" follows, even heavier and more glacial, a rippling low-end drone wave shot through with upper register peals of icy feedback, channeling Earth 2 feedback frequencies via Sunroof. The last track, "Circadian Rhythm", is a lighter, almost melodious wash of sky reaching feedback tones and obfuscated throat hiss, heavy and gorgeous and sparkling drones floating in an endless sea of white noise cascading out of giant amplifiers. This disc is the first we have heard from Nackt Insecten, but we're totally hooked and can't wait to hear more from this project. It's a perfect combination of the devotional drones of groups like Skaters and Double Leopards, classic Skullflower/Total style guitar carnage, and the tectonic doom-drone of Earth, Sunn, Boris, Black Boned Angel, Fear Falls Burning, etc. This disc is in a limited edition of 100 copies which is already sold out from the label, and comes in a visually arresting package design with black-bottomed, white-topped CD-Rs and grey-ink-on-black inserts housed inside of a plastic jewel case whose spine has been filled with the carcasses of dead wasps that were collected at the end of summer.

NADJA Bodycage CD $11.98 Profound Lore
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Bodycage is the second album from the revmaped Nadja lineup of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, originally released as a limited edition CD-R on Nothingness Records several years back in a tiny run of only 66 copies, but now re-issued on CD with new artwork and the inclusion of two new untitled bonus tracks. Something of a moody concept album, the original Bodycage tracks make up a three-part dirgedrone suite about a rare congenital disease that forms bone around muscles, ligaments, tendons, and other connective tissues, and the music creates a haunting soundtrack for this theme, alternating between huge crumbling walls of melodic, super distorted doom metal and wispy fields of shimmering feedback drone in the vein of Aidan Baker's solo guitar releases. It's heady, emotional stuff, with those eerie gleaming melodies that Nadja have become masters at creating over the past few years, and yet it's also claustrophobic and suffocating as their heavy layers of slow moving riffage and dense distortion flow over you. Hypnotic tribal rhythms crawl out of huge drum machines, and massed guitars form epic stretches of buzzing, fuzzy distortion swirling together with celestial keyboard drones that are punctuated by sparse electronic sounds and unidentified rumblings; Aidan's vocals are barely even present, only becoming visible a couple of times throughout the album, and when they do, it's a blasted, distorted croon so buried in white noise and overloaded amplifiers that his voice sounds like an angelic wind coursing through the massive riffs and mechanical trance beats. All three of the Bodycage pieces are epic, the shortest running 10 minutes long and the other two stretching out for over 20 minutes each. The two bonus tracks include a minimal drone piece that weaves quiet system sounds and subliminal tones across a field of silence, and a 12 minute track that is the most brightly melodic song on the album, very Creation Records-esque but of course super slow and heavy and crushing. While Godflesh definitely seems like a reference point with Nadja, they've really carved out their own sound that equally incorporates Aidan's distinctive drone-guitar style and the duo's appreciation of atonal classical music. Fans of the melodic, crushing blissmetal of Jesu and The Angelic Process need to check out Nadja immediately. Comes in a wallet sleeve with full color insert, illustrated by Aidan Baker in a sketchy style that reminds me of Derek Hess.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Clinodactyl" (excerpt)

NADJA Touched CD $15.98 Alien8

Another new one from Nadja, following right on the tails of the Thaumogenesis CD that came out a month ago on Archive (and which is now totally out of print!). I'm a freaking fanatic about Nadja, having first experienced the project's gauzy, melodic sludge through a bunch of CD-R releases in the early 00's, totally falling in love with the band's crushing yet beautiful heaviness, and even including a Nadja track on the Shadows Infinitum compilation we released through the Crucial Bliss series back in 2005. Canadian drone guitarist, poet, and artist Aidan Baker is 1/2 of Nadja, joined by Leah Buckareff on bass and vocals, and together they've created a immensely slow-motion form of shoegazer metal, their songs centering on a single, lumbering melodic riff that becomes fully cloaked in white noise and fuzzy distortion, with clean, blurry singing buried in the mix. Yeah, you could make some comparisons to Jesu, but Nadja are even noisier, and waaay slower, more Godflesh than Jesu really,the drum machine crunching out brutal martial rhythms that have been stretched out into a tectonic plod, but also more like Godflesh appropriating riffs from My Bloody Valentine's Loveless and looping them into eternity, then having Fennesz drown the sludgy guitars in fuzzy washes of distortion and lush pink noise, resulting in an epic, gorgeous, metallic ambient sludgepop, beyond crushing and amazingly catchy. Without a doubt one of my favorite bands of the moment.
And so we have Touched, the latest from Nadja. It's not exactly a new album, but a re-working of a CD-R that was released on the Japanese label Deserted Factory in 2002. However, Nadja have taken the original tracks from that CD-R, and re-recorded / re-worked / re-constituted them into heavier, noisier, more devestating versions of the original material. The result is probably the heaviest album from the duo to date. The first two songs are pure avalanche heaviness: "Mutagen" opens Touched with a effectively sinister doom riff that builds in volume and noisiness as the track progresses, churning through a wasteland of tracer feedback and overdriven amplifier speakers enveloped by clouds of sugary distortion for over 14 minutes. And then comes "Stays Demons", and let me tell ya, this has immediately become my favorite song of Nadja's. It starts off with a basic thumping drum beat amidst clouds of sparkling electronics, but then that riff appears, a pure pop riff, but monstrously slow and heavy, gliding through the sea of ambient fuzz and hiss, so beautiful it almost hurts to listen to it. Soft whispers and narcoleptic, androgynous singing appears lost in the fuzz. One of the greatest doomed noisepop songs ever, like Q Lazarus meets Jesu and Tim Hecker. The end of "Demons" drifts straight into "Incubation/Metamorphosis", an 18 minute epic that has the cyclical megariff subsiding into a wash of backwards cymbal noise and hypnotic pulse somewhere between Tangerine Dream and Earth/Sunn O))) ambient sludgemetal. "Flowers of the Flesh" evokes a suffocating sadness through it's utterly melancholic central riff and walls of celestial synthesizers. The final song is "Untitled", a mere 4 minute long coda of distant, quiet drones that fade into silence. Yeah, Touched is an amazing disc, an immense, almost symphonic work that firmly stands out from the "metalgaze" aesthetic. The disc comes in a full color jewel case with abstract artwork from the band members themselves. Highly recommended.

NADJA Corrasion CD $12.98 Foreshadow Productions

Another amazing release from the increasingly visible and prolific duo Nadja, that fuzz enshrouded "metal" outfit of Canadian drone guitarist Aidan Baker. We're longtime fans of Nadja over here, going back to the early days of the project when it was just Aidan behind the controls, and we've been loving Nadja more and more ever since he joined up with bassist/vocalist Leah Buckareff. When Nadja expanded to a duo, the sound become way bigger, their massive slabs of dirgey, metallic and melodic dronesludge becoming even heavier and more cloaked in fuzz and feedback, approaching a total wall-of-sound of blissed-out slow motion crush, with barely recognizeable vocals crooning and wailing through the thick sheets of distortion. Obviously there have been comparisons made to Justin Broadrick's Jesu, but they don't really sound that much alike, aside from both bands using slow, plodding tempos, thick distorted textures, and generous heapings of heart rending melodic hooks throughout their music. Instead, Nadja's trajectory has them chasing down massive drones, taking the kinds of weighty glacial thrum that Aidan crafts with his solo recordings, and turning them into gigantic ponderous avalanches of metallic crunch swirling around a dreampop core. Each Nadja release seems to explore different facets of their approach, and Corrasion ranks as one of the most unrelentingly brutal. Originally released on CD-R in a limited run of 200 copies back in 2003, this album has been resurrected by the original label as a full-fledged CD. But like their other recent release Touched, this is actually a complete re-recording of the original material, giving the original songs new arrangements, a vastly heavier and more crushing sound, and thicker, fuller production. The disc is a whopping 78 minutes in length, with seven massive jams of flowing, fuzzbomb sludge riffage and gorgeous extended dronescapes reminiscent of Tim Hecker. In addition to the four tracks that appeared on the original version of Corrasion, Nadja have also included previously out of print tracks from the split 7" with Moss, and the Foresee The Shadows and Chariots Arrive Again Vol. 2 compilations. As blissed out and ambient as this album can get at times, it also showcases some of the most destructive metal riffage we've ever heard from Nadja, ranging from the hugungous, repetitious hypno-stoner groove of "Ash" to the shoegazer-death-doom of "You Are As Dust", with that omnipresent drum machine rolling like tank tread through these banks of fuzz. Aidan even belts out some monstrous deathdoom roars that are completely soaked in white noise. 100% pulverizing. A totally crucial disc for fans of the blown out dream-dirge sounds of Jesu, Angelic Process, Goslings, Boris' Pink, and Hjarnidaudi. Highly recommended!

MP3 SAMPLE: "Ash" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Base Fluid" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Corrasion" (excerpt)

NAPALM DEATH Smear Campaign CD $13.98 Century Media

Hands down, Napalm Death is one of my favorite bands ever. For the past quarter century, the band has defined and perfected the grindcore aesthetic while continuing to progress and experiment with the form, and is still one of the most powerful and challenging heavy bands on the planet. Last year's The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code was a amazing new chapter from the band, melding their refined grind/thrash aggression with some amazing appropriations of heavy shoegazer/noise guitar textures and post-Industrial dirge moves that touched on the band's outspoken infatuation with My Bloody Valentine and Swans. With what is something of a concept album that directs all of it's venom at religious criticism, Smear Campaign continues on the more straightforward grindcore trajectory that the band re-aligned with on Enemy Of The Music Business and isn't as texturally dense and exploratory as Code, but Napalm Death still delivers a total assault on the senses, with 16 blasts of grindcore perfection injected with killer midtempo Hardcore raveups and loads of brutal D-beat speedpunk action, with Barney's pitbull vocals and incisive lyrics that address the corruption of organized herd religion. And there are of course lots of awesome progressive touches that elevate this above anything else going on in the grind underground' the album's instrumental opener "Wletschmerz" layers acoustic guitars and synthesizers over a crushing, clangorous dirge that's as apocalyptic as anything from Neurosis. Barney utlizes awesome cleaner vocals throughout the album that remind me of Killing Joke a little bit, which add a whole new, epic creepy vibe to Napalm's sound, and Anneke Van Giersbergen from The Gathering offers up her ghostly vocals on "In Deference". There are mild symphonic elements, skull-crushing breakdowns, doomy riffage, hooks galore, lots of dissonant chords and atonal, angular passages that look back to the band's amazing, experimental mid-90's albums (which we are still huge fans of!), all culminating with the awesome title track, which takes on an mechanistic gravity reminiscent of Swans and later Godflesh, with huge chorused clean vocals and monstrous bellowing over a devestating dirge riff. I'm never disappointed with these guys, and they have once again delivered an absolute scorcher of an album, a seamless 45 minutes of intelligent, modern grind excellence. The booklet is thick, with lyrics, etc., and great understated artwork that matches the gloomy, oppressed vibe of the album. Highly recommended.

NAPALM DEATH The Code Is Red...Long Live The Code CD $13.98 Century Media

The newest album of blazing grindcore from the masters! This may actually be their best album to date, a seamless, perfect grindcore album that delivers everything that blast purists and old school NAPALM DEATH fans require, yet at times references the likes of SWANS, DISCHARGE, and MY BLOODY VALENTINE. Absolute power, fucking essential for fans of extreme metal and punk. NAPALM DEATH are one of my favorite bands EVER, I love everything these guys have done, and I gotta say that this may be my favorite album ever from them. The riffs are pure gold from start to finish, the production is powerful and clear, the band's attack is as vital and ferocious as ever, with stinging socio-politcal commentary that's as important and astute now as it ever was. The guest vocals (Jeff Walker of CARCASS, Jamie from HATEBREED, and Jello Biafra) are great.If you're a NAPALM fan and you havent grabbed this yet, dont waste another second. Crucial. This enhanced disc also features a video for the song "Morale". Century Media has also packaged this CD with a free sampler disc that features new tunes from the labels roster.

NAPALMED Never Mind The MSBR, Heres The Napalmed CD $9.98 Na/Palmed

A mammoth blast of intense improvised free noise and post-industrial clatter that explores similiar spheres as HERMIT and the seminal outfit ROTTEN PIECE. Two tracks, 15:10 and 56:44 respectively, create an avalanche of outsider noise from this Czech quartet, fueled by metal junk clatter, terrorizing electronic noise, prepared and homemade acoustic guitars, treated vocals, and an arsenal of effects pedals and microphones. Think NO NECK BLUES BAND filtered through a brutal metallic attack. Friggin' fierce. The disc is laid out as two long sessions, one around 15 minutes,  the other 56+ plus minutes. You can even hear a tiny bit of early (i.e. "Sonic Death" era) Sonic Youth in that some stringed instruments peer out of the feedback onslaught with a feral sneer. On the instrumentation angle it's a mix of junkish percussion, oil drums, shiny bits of stainless steel sparking as they are dropped onto sheets of flint, echoplex tape like delay fed to squeaky door hinges and uncomfortable overdrive pedals. Detuned bass is struck with who the hell the knows, bowed maybe and other than the most metallic material it is pretty hard to get the picture of the domestic refuse yard at the recycling depot out of mind. As said previously, this disc could hardly sound more outsider. At times it is a vocal free Nihilist Spasm Band and NOGGIN with home made pseudo instruments being thrown into a big pile and then promptly stomped on. What normal instruments are present (cymbals for one, guitar and/or bass for two) were probable not pawnable by the end of the sessions. Brutal free-noise splatter for fans of Borbetomagus, Incapacitants, Nautical Almanac and the like. Definitely not for wimps. Packaged in a full color poster foldout sleeve.

NARCOTIC DREAMS Shattered CD $9.98 804Noise

Dark, grinding subterranean drones generated from processed electric guitar,bass, and organ unfold into heavy analogue groans and grim ambient drift, similiar to the ritual thrum of the Aural Hypnox label,or early COIL, or BENEATH THE LAKE's weighty drone epics, occasionally interrupted by bursts of jarring feedback. Tense deep-earth rumble. Packaging sports some dope B&W illustrative abstrractions.

NECROPHAGIST Onset Of Putrefaction CD $11.98 Willowtip

We still get cross-eyed whenever we throw Necrophagist's 1999 debut on the stereo, as deathshred god Muhammed Suicmez wraps miles of insane complex fretboard chaos around our brains. This album features 8 tracks of ridiculously complicated, insanely fast death metal written, performed, and recorded by Suicmez...yep, this is primarily a one man band (with a few exceptions), but the most complex one-man bedroom death metal band ever, his guitar playing an unrelenting shredfest with nonstop squiggly leads and convulted riffing, skewed and technical enough to make Orthrelm/Mick Barr, John Zorn, Morbid Angel, and Buckethead fans' heads explode. It's seriously hard to believe that human hands are capable of doing this, more like the work of a multitentacled zomboid guitar god, layering riff after riff after lead after lead on top of each other, a swarm of hyperactive mutant guitar action. Total twisted tech-death genius/weirdness, with some occasionaly bizarre vocal processing that just pushes this further into some weird sphere of slaytanic cyborg deathshred. Onset Of Putrefaction had been out of print for years until Willowtip re-issued it here in the US recently, but this is no mere re-release- this new Willowtip edition features a complete remastering job plus new drum tracks formed from samples recorded by a real drummer (in place of the drum machine programming that appeared on the original version), but then fed into their drum programming equipment and sequenced into an incredible stop-on-a-dime percussion assault. In addition, there are 2 previously unreleased songs from the self-titled 1995 demo included as bonus tracks. Crucial insanoid tech/avant/death metal.

NEFAS Seven Times Seven CD $9.98 Bones Brigade

Following up their killer MCD and split CD w/ Bastard Saints, NEFAS delivers an 11 song full length debut loaded with ultra brutal, ultra cruel technical Italian grindcore. NEFAS have produced an excellent release of hyperblast led by unique growling vocals.Seven Times Seven lurches and contorts in and out of technical intensity and precision. Tracks like Lashes of Shadows are jarring/disturbing exercises in extreme speed and technicality. The delivery erupts in spasms and feels like an old truck with a manual transmission trying to take off from an intersection under the control of an inexperienced driver that can't quite get the clutch all the way to the floor. Fans of death metal that toes the line with avant-metal experimentalism, a la Erosion of Sanity-era GORGUTS and INCANTATION's angular grinding doom will dig this.

NEGATIVA s/t CD $12.98 Prodisk

Holy shit, was I stoked to get this! OK, if you haven't heard, Negativa is the Quebecois tech metal ensemble that was formed by members of the now defunct avant-death metal band Gorguts, along with members of fellow French Canadian heavyweights Ion Dissonance and Augury. Now, I freaking love Gorguts, their Obscura album is one of the most challenging, batshit form-destroying death metal albums of the past decade, so I've been chomping at the bit to hear these guys back in action, especially after seeing some studio footage of the Negativa guys on Youtube a couple of months back that was fucking unreal...seriously, hearing/seeing former Gorguts guitarists Steeve Hurdle and Luc Lemay inverting their fretboards again is a something to behold. So here's the self-titled debut release from Negativa, a three song EP that clocks in at 20 minutes, in a limited edition of 1,000 copies. And it's everything I hoped it would be and more, sounding like the guys are picking up right where they left off with Obscura and going even deeper into left field, with mind blowingly bizarre and complex riffs, long stretches of minimalist, dissonant doom, and multi-layered dissonant harmonies merging with Luc Lemay's sickening gasping vocals. Another thing - the riffs and blasts are surrounded by these really creepy, string-scraping ambient parts that had my skin crawling, the guitarists scraping and tapping and detuning their strings to create sounds more like the ghoulish violin string sounds on certain Japanese horror films than anything you'd expect to hear from a "death metal" band. I gotta say though that Negativa have already transcended the bounderies of death metal with their debut. If you're even marginally a fan of Gorguts' Obscura, order this right now. Totally fucking amazing. Plus, the disc contains a multimedia CD-ROM section loaded with lyrics, photos, and a video of Chaos In Motion that was created from the studio footage of the band recording the song, the same footage that I originally saw on Youtube many months ago! Can't freaking wait for the full length.

NEGATIVE REACTION Everything You Need For Galactic Battle Adventures CD $11.98 Game Two
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The return of New York's Star Wars-obsessed psychedelic Sludgelords. Eight tracks of seriously heavy,droning Doom / Sludge metal. Oppressive mega crush a la SLEEP's "Jerusalem". With Everything You Need for Galactic Battle Adventures, Negative Reaction have kept the doom elements of their sound just as crushing as on The Orion Chronicles CD.

NEGATIVE REACTION Endofyorerror CD $11.98 Psychedoomelic

Endofyorerror, originally released in 1996 on their own record label, was NEGATIVE REACTION’s first full length CD. This re-issue on Hungarian doom/sludge label Psychedoomelic Records is slightly different from the original release: the two original bonus tracks have been replaced by one song from the Orbit EP. An archival masterpiece from NY’s lords of downtuned devastating sludgecore. Easily one of the heaviest, sickest albums ever recorded. A relentless, never ending barrage of noise, feedback, corroded low slung tarpit riffs, and shrieking witch vocals. Awesome. The band’s SABBATH influence is betrayed by the 9 minute blast of Ten Souls Gather, an excellent combination of diseased SABBATH-riffage, weird noises, and demented howls. And then a track like Reserved caves in your skull with a sudden thrash metal attack before sinking back into La Brea rhythms and tortured screams. Severely intense sludgecore for fans of stuff like CORRUPTED, GRIEF, KHANATE, and TOADLIQUOR. Definitely not for the squeamish.

NEGATIVE REACTION The Orbit 7" EP $4.98 Game Two

2 song EP. Painfully heavy cosmic sludgecore,huge monster riffs of saurian proportions,disturbing lyrics and weird science fiction imagery.. A must for fans of SLEEP, CORRUPTED, GRIEF, and EYEHATEGOD. Oppressive mega crush a la SLEEP's Jerusalem.

NEGATIVE REACTION The Orion Chronicles CD $11.98 Game Two
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Negative Reaction have come up with one of the greatest pieces of mega doom ever dropped on the unsuspecting public, with the ultra molasses sludge monstrosity The Orion Chronicles. This album contains 3 tracks of extended/distended riff pain, with the centerpiece being the 38 minute epic The Moon Song. While not as lengthy as, say, SLEEP’s Jerusalem, there is a greater variance in riffs with these tracks, which still manage to drone like a bulldozer in overdrive,while offering more riff meat to chew on. For those afraid that the Negative Reaction of Endofyorerror is dead and gone, no worries. The song lengths may be longer and musically it may be more traditionally doomy, but the tortured vocals and crusty delivery are still intact. This second full-length from NR contains their epic 38-minute track "The Moon Song," "Hypothermia," and an unlisted reworking of HAWKWIND's "Lord of Light." Powerful Sludge Doom fueled by Orange amplification.

NEGATIVE REACTION Under The Ancient Penalty CD $14.98 This Dark Reign

The Long Island sludge titans are back with their fourth album and the follow up to their split CD with ex-Electric Wizards Ramesses that came out in 2004 on Psychedoomelic. Even though the band has been around and releasing music since 1993, Negative Reaction seem to fly under the collective radar of much of the sludge/doom/tarpit metal scene, but fans of painfully negative, seriously crushing sludge riffage owe it to themselves to check out Negative Reaction's Orion Chronicles, and their latest disc Under The Ancient Penalty. Like their cosmic/Star Wars-obsessed Orion album, this album is filled with swampy, swingin' Southern style grooves that shows an Eyehategod influence that are mixed in with a burly NYHC hardcore element, like the kind of NY hardcore that was played by guys that really, REALLY loved Celtic Frost, with straightforward, superheavy slow-motion dirge seeping from detuned guitars, sometimes breaking into rocking mid-tempo parts and tangles of thrashy riffs ...and there's the crazy yowling vocals of singer/guitarist Ken-E Bones, whose raspy, high-pitched wheezing growl definitely sounds distinctive. They also throw in little bits of psychedelic weirdness like flutes, momentary clean singing, and searing feedback leads, but Ancient Penalty never moves into spacey territory - this is a lumbering, minsathropic pounding mapped out by songs titled "Lost", "Loathing", "Pain", "Empty", "Suffer", and "Sorrow". At this point, they sound more than ever like a combination of the hateful negatory sludge of Grief and Eyehategod, and the murderous deathcore of bands like Darkside NYC and Confusion.

NEURAXIS Trilateral Progression CD $11.98 Willowtip

I'd like to know what in the hell the Canadian government is putting into the water systems in Montreal to spawn such a wealth of amazing, amazingly weird death, grind, and thrash metal bands. Seriously, you've got Cryptopsy, Obliveon, Gorguts, Unexpect, and Negativa right off the top of my head, all crucial entries in the field of mindmelting progressive death/grind comin' out of Quebec, and now you can safely add Neuraxis to the list. This is the first album I've heard from these guys (this being their fourth), but you can bet that I'll be working my way back through their discography as quickly as I can. The first thing that caught my attention when I picked up Trilateral Progression was the strange, almost digital architectural art on the album, created by Mark Riddick but pretty different from anything else I've seen from the guy. Gives the whole disc a futuristic prog-rock look. Throwing the album in, the intro track "Introspect" enters with a wash of cosmic synth drone, then tears right into the brutal, catchy tech death of "Clarity". There's an Athiest-like complexity here, but Neuraxis remind us most of a perfect combination of former tour partners Cephalic Carnage and the best parts of At The Gates. What really surprised me with Trilateral Progression is how streamlined and amazingly catchy the songs are, deftly balancing super-technical structure and brutal heaviness with a flair for memorable melodies and lots of variety. Singer Ian Campbell commands a broad range of brutal, emotional death roars and horrific shrieks, lead guitarists guitarists Rob Milley and Steven Henry engage in constant twin harmonies that add an epic quality to Neuraxis' complex futurist grind, and the drumming....holy shit, is Tommy McKinnon's drumming amazing, super precise and intricate and relentless, feast of double bass mindwarps and blastbeat bliss.

MP3 SAMPLE: "A Curative Struggle" (excerpt)

NEUROPATHIA Graveyard Cowboys CD $9.98 Self Made God

Mega splatter grind from Bialystok, Poland. 22 brand new songs of hacksaw melodies. Brutal slasher tunes with perfect sound quality & technical skills. Features members of extreme grind masters SQUASH BOWELS. Lots of speed, ultra brutal growls mixed with higher screams and some unique midrange grunting/shouts, that really textured and thick guitar tone, a thrashy sort of vibe to the otherwise death/grind framework, etc. After two minutes of vinyl popping sounds there are five bonus tracks crammed into the 18th track marker on the CD, all of which are cover songs, and all of which are awesome. Agathocles' "Scorn of Humanity", a two-in-one shot of Dead Infection's "Maggots in Your Flesh" and "After Accident", "Malignant Defecation" by Carcass, "At Start at Least" , and then Napalm Death's "Deceiver".

NEUROPATHIA Satan Is A Cunt CD $11.98 No Escape

This is exactly the kind of grindcore that we live for, and for which Aussie label No Escape is quickly becoming known for carving out as their particular niche…fun, quirky, and catchy Grind rooted in the old school Earache style that’s also not afraid of occasionally being quite weird. Enter NEUROPATHIA, a Polish trio that combines catchy, major-key pop punk and rock hooks with punishing old school grind reminiscent of REPULSION, AGATHOCLES, and CARCASS, but with an ultra-stylized, neo-MISFITS-esque B-movie/garage/splatter aesthetic (right down to the EC Comics-meets-Pushead style artwork) and occasional far-out sounds, like poppy casio melodies that’ll appear over a rocking chorus, or 2-minute long stretches of feedback howl that would be at home on a TOTAL album. Count us in. Fourteen blasts of brutal, buzzsaw grind with hooks out the wazoo and the occasional psychedelic touches. We’ve got to file this next to CSSO and BUTCHER ABC for the pure hard rockin’ fun factor. The disc is also sort of a conglom, at the end tacking on an 8-song studio session from 1998 that features the lo-fi toilet-monster CARCASS worship that NEUROPATHIA formerly trafficked in, as well as some gross 1998/1999 recordings of IMPETIGO, REPULSION, BRUTAL TRUTH, and GUT covers, littered with splatter movie soundbites and general limb-ripping hysteria.

NEUROSIS Given To The Rising CD $15.98 Neurot

It's always an event when Neurosis re-emerges with a new album, and even moreso when it's preceded by as much expectation as has surrounded Given To The Rising. The band released some advance music a couple of months back before this came out, which led to everyone forseeing Given... to be a return to their heavier side, which we haven't seen truly unleashed since 1999's Times Of Grace. We gotta agree that Given To The Rising is indeed the heaviest stuff these guys have done in years...Eye Of Every Storm and A Sun That Never Sets were both great albums, both of which explored more psychedelic, subdued environs and expansive textural vistas, but when those first massive metallic chords of Given To The Rising's title track kicked in, we were totally swept over by Neurosis' leaden magic in a way that takes us back to their seminal 90's albums while simultaneously bringing in some new elements that we've never heard from them before. That heady pre-apocalyptic vibe that has always been a recurrent theme with Neurosis is fully present, as are the psychedelic and post-rock elements; the vocals are awesomely ferocious, the lyrics triumphant and mystical and grim all at the same time, the tracks buffeted by often-chilling industrial style grindscapes and swarming nightmare electronics. Dark rolling tribal percussion flowing like black thunder, haunting and gorgeous melodic blissouts as dreamy as anything you've heard from Jesu, and operatic psych metal eruptions. So awesome. Neurosis continue to create some of the most powerful heavy music, utterly defying catagorization. Absolutely essential, an apocalyptic soundtrack of massive beauty and aggressive power, and which sees Neurosis completely reclaiming the sound that countless bands have been struggling to ape over the past decade. The CD version of Given To The Rising is beautifully packaged with a multi-part booklet that seperates into a 4-panel lyric sheet and a large 6-panel foldout that features Josh Graham's forbidding, grimly psychedelic album artwork, and the case enclosed in an O-card sleeve.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Given To The Rising" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "To The Wind" (excerpt)

NEUROSIS Given To The Rising 2xLP $19.98 Neurot

The awesome looking gatefold vinyl edition of Neurosis' newest psych metal masterpeice!
It's always an event when Neurosis re-emerges with a new album, and even moreso when it's preceded by as much expectation as has surrounded Given To The Rising. The band released some advance music a couple of months back before this came out, which led to everyone forseeing Given... to be a return to their heavier side, which we haven't seen truly unleashed since 1999's Times Of Grace. We gotta agree that Given To The Rising is indeed the heaviest stuff these guys have done in years...Eye Of Every Storm and A Sun That Never Sets were both great albums, both of which explored more psychedelic, subdued environs and expansive textural vistas, but when those first massive metallic chords of Given To The Rising's title track kicked in, we were totally swept over by Neurosis' leaden magic in a way that takes us back to their seminal 90's albums while simultaneously bringing in some new elements that we've never heard from them before. That heady pre-apocalyptic vibe that has always been a recurrent theme with Neurosis is fully present, as are the psychedelic and post-rock elements; the vocals are awesomely ferocious, the lyrics triumphant and mystical and grim all at the same time, the tracks buffeted by often-chilling industrial style grindscapes and swarming nightmare electronics. Dark rolling tribal percussion flowing like black thunder, haunting and gorgeous melodic blissouts as dreamy as anything you've heard from Jesu, and operatic psych metal eruptions. So awesome. Neurosis continue to create some of the most powerful heavy music, utterly defying catagorization. Absolutely essential, an apocalyptic soundtrack of massive beauty and aggressive power, and which sees Neurosis completely reclaiming the sound that countless bands have been struggling to ape over the past decade. The double LP version of Given To The Rising is also beautifully packaged, with a 6-panel gatefold jacket and lyric insert, all featuring Josh Graham's forbidding, grimly psychedelic album artwork, which is hand's down our favorite Neurosis album artwork ever!. The vinyl is limited, so we're not sure how long this is going to be available.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Given To The Rising" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "To The Wind" (excerpt)

NEUROSIS Live In Stockholm 10.15.99 CD $15.98 Neurot

Recently repressed and available once again!
The second release in what the band called their "official bootleg" series, Live In Stockholm Sweden 10.15.99 captures a complete 71 minute set from the tribal metal masters while they were touring the planet around the release of their 1999 album Times Of Grace. Live In Stockholm boasts a much beefier, heavier recording than the previous entry in the series (Live In Lyon), as this was recorded by Swedish National Radio, and showcases the band in full on psychedelic mode, with a large portion of the set dedicated obviously to Times Of Grace. The set starts off with the polyrhythmic tribal drumming and black ambient drift of "Flood" before exploding into the atonal fury of "The Doorway", and continues to move through the album tracks "Belief", "Under The Surface", and "Times of Grace". Some older jams appear as well, "Lost", "An Offering" (which would later appear on the Sovereign EP), and the immense "Locust Star" (from their classic Through Silver In Blood album). As far as live albums go, this has one of the thickest recordings I have ever heard, and is by far the best audio document of this band in the live setting, where they get really intense and let the songs stretch out and expand into colossal rituals of megaheavy dirge metal and void-trawling psychedelia. Obviously crucial for Neurosis fanatics. The disc comes in a full color case that rocks killer abstract insectile artwork from Josh Graham.

NEUROSIS Live In Lyon France 11.02.99 CD $15.98 Neurot

Live In Lyon France 11.02.99 was the first in the short series of official live albums issued by Neurosis through their own Neurot imprint - while not having the massive production of their other entry in the series (the Live In Stockholm disc, which had been recorded by a major radio network for broadcast), this is nonetheless a powerful live document of the psych-metal juggernaut in action. I keep coming back to these two live albums as they both capture the band's live engagements in improvisation and sprawling tribal jams, which for obvious reasons are limited on Neurosis' albums proper, and the band occasionally diverts into brief but exciting noise and improvisation between the tracks. This particular concert from Neurosis' 1999 European tour in support of the Times Of Grace album and their Sovereign EP consists of an hour long set, six tracks, opening with "The Doorway", moving through "Lost", "An Offering", "Away", "Locust Star", and ending with "Times Of Grace". Again, the recording is clean but a little murkier and more low-fi than the Stockholm disc, but it still sounds great. If you're a diehard Neurosis fan, this should satisfy any jones you may have for the gravitational weight of the live Neurosis expeience.
MP3 SAMPLE: "An Offering" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Locust Star" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Doorway" (excerpt)

NEURO VISCERAL EXHUMATION Mass Murder Festival CD $11.98 No Escape

More gore soaked hyperbrutality from No Escape Records. This time, their jackhammering our craniums with this 18-song blast of rotted out supersonic splattergrind. These Brazilians whip up a buzzing,noisy-as-fuck tornado of Carcass-inspired riffing and bulldozer-bass, blindingly fast blastbeats, and ridiculously low/monstrous vocals. This disc has solid production, and the playing is ferocious. Most of Mass Murder alternates between those raw,manic blastbeats and fast paced thrash rhythms, but occasionally slips into a spine-buckling slow groove. And no triggers! Nothing weakens a grindcore band like the sound of triggered drums. Thankfully, there's none of that bullshit here...Neuro Visceral Exhumation deliver the goods. And stay tuned at the very end for a hidden track that's a total freeform blastnoise blowout. Yes. This definitely scratches our itch for brutal, fucked up grindcore.

NEVERMIND The Future of Mankind 12" $9.98 Blastbeat

This crushing 12" release from NYC speedcore beast Nevermind, along with the PCP Torpedo remix 12" that's in this weeks store update, marks the auspicious debut of BlastBeat, the new vinyl imprint that was recently formed by Agoraphobic Nosebleed frontman Jay Randall. Focusing on the most brutal strains of extreme techno, the BlastBeat 12"s are vicious slabs of machinegun rhythms and chopped up, ultra distorted beats slammed into your gourd at 600 bpm, presented in limited editions of 200-300 copies and packaged in DJ style sleeves. Nevermind's The Future of Mankind has all of that and more, crushing blast/distorted bass kick destruction that has all of the filth and raw force of old school Earache Record-style grindcore vibes wrapped in barbed wire, ultrafast speedcore rhythms, and crushing four-on-the-floor raveups. Splattered jackhammer beats and splintered electronic noise coagulate into brutally funky grooves. The final track "Cuntz And Bluntz" takes a handful of chopped up, unidentifiable death metal riffs and smears them all over one of the most rabid beat freakouts on the whole side, cut up with apocalyptic robot vocals decalring your doom. Terrific! On black wax, in a standard DJ style 12" black sleeve with center hole cut and DJ sticker in the upper corner. Seriously heavy shit!

NEVER PRESENCE FOREVER Disturbed Visceral Nociception CD $9.98 Crionic Mind

NEVER PRESENCE FOREVER unravel slowly with a profoundly well conceived album of Bleak Minimalism and Dark Ambience. To this foundation they add somniferous hints of melody, abrasion and rhythmic punctuation. Rich textural drifts and detailed craftsmanship give this release a enveloping penetration and depth. NPF has a few limited releases but Disturbed Visceral Nociception is the marks the first widely available release. NEVER PRESENCE FOREVER's Andrew Westerhouse also runs AVERSIONLINE eZine. Limited to 500.

NEWAGEHILLBILLY Familiar Puzzle CD-R $4.98 MT6

The strongest recorded effort yet from Baltimore improv-noise-folk-rock shaman Newagehillbilly, aka Alex Strama. Despite the goofy name, this stuff is cool drugged out basement psych, with Strama creating cyclical drones, beat/loop driven, minimal electronica/psychedelia created by guitars, trumpets, and electronics, over which drift dark,catchy melodies. Not too far removed from some of Warp Records more adventurous stuff, actually, but with a vaguely folksy, Appalachian shadow popping up subtly here and there. Comes packaged in a DVD case with insert.

NEWAGEHILLBILLY IV: White Walls CD $5.98 MT6

This is the first professionally released CD from Baltimore musician Alex Strama, one of the key people behind the Baltimore freak scene currently revolving around the ongoing Experimental Open performance series and Strama's own MT6 Records, and whose previous CDR releases were mostly psychedelic, low-fi synth ambience and fractured electronica with bedroom-psych/folk elements. IV:White Walls,however, gets full-on rock, with acid-drenched guitar shred and Sabbath-y riffs bubbling up through angelic synthesizer bliss, sci-fi/video game electronic beeps and bloops, bizarre retro-electro beats, manic thrash tantrums, buzzing drones, synth-pop brilliance, vocoder insanity, and heavily effected vocals drifting off into the ether, all wrapped around some genuinely great songs and Alex's uniquely twisted psych/pop/robo-noise/thrashcore/acid-rock vision.

NEWAGEHILLBILLY Lofi Dreams CD-R $4.98 MT6

17 tracks recorded at the Trailer Studios, 1997-2001, by Baltimore's Alex Strama. This is a pretty eclectic mashup of acid folk instrumentals, indietronic dance hits, and space center anthems. Low fi junk jams, insidious beats, and damaged funk blasts are tempered by bass driven ambience and homemade trance loops. Really quite catchy at times, and Strama manages a good balance of fractured bedroom pop and noisy weirdness.

NEW FLESH Filth & Degradation Vol. I CD-R $5.98 Imvated

These Baltimore noise punks seem to be all over the place lately, touring, hitting up SXSW, their name dripping off the tongues of hipster noiseniks. And with good reason. NEW FLESH bash out meaty hardcore garage jams with all the rough edges sticking out, a No Wave blast drowning in distortion and feedback and attitude. Think MELVINS, WOLF EYES,early Siltbreeze Records sounds, and MAGIK MARKERS rolled up into one speaker-melting, sludgy noise jam, with in-the-red guitar feedback, choking vocals, and wildman drum pummel. Their first full length from last year was a ripper, and this private press CD-R on MT6/Imvated follows as a documentation of THE NEW FLESH's plodding basement offensives. There are 15 tracks here, all noisy as fuck live jams from various basment/loft/radio station locales, featuring the band at their most drooling and rocking, a shambling noise rock beast cloaked in tape-hiss and human skins,lumbering off sideways and recorded on boombox mics. Packaged in a scraggly xeroxed sleeve with inserted "psychedelic owl" art for added WTF factor.

NEW FLESH & ROBERT INHUMAN Punch Drunk In This Shit World 7" EP $5.98 Realicide

One of Baltimore's most savage noise crews, The New Flesh have become a powerful exponent of modern day, post-Am Rep heavy skuzz through their assorted cd-r and cd releases, all of which kick serious ass, and the electric filth of their live set. We caught these guys recently at a house show in DC, and it was a glorious frenzy of convulsive sludge rock riffs and unrestrained feedback, band members crawling around each other on the floor, the drummer locking in with a fierce percussive assault that anchored the shitfit of sludgy riffs and endlessly droning chords and barely intelligible, narcoleptic singing. There aren't that many bands around nowadays that channel the type of blown out, brutal amplifier-destroying rock that was pioneered by bands like Cherubs, Unsane, Flipper, and early Nirvana, but New Flesh do and god bless 'em for it, burying killer, catchy hooks in a blast of contempo pigfuck that's shot up with the adrenaline of 80's hardcore.
This newish EP features The New Flesh teaming up with Midwestern vocal/noise fiend Robert Inhuman, who fronts these jams with his unique throat destroying vocals while they tackle a crushing cover of "Punched In The Head" by Drunks With Guns and a new free-noise-rock meltdown that's part Melvins crush, part Dead C hazed chaos on the A-side. The B-side contains "Abyss", which throws a total curveball with a lengthy ambient dose of ultra minimal distortion that could almost pass for a Francisco Lopez piece. Limited edition of 300. Crucial.

NEW YORK AGAINST BRUKUTUS E O Fim! 2xCD $16.98 Rottheness
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We have such a small number of these in stock, and it's already completely out of print so we aren't going to be restocking this, so I'm going to make this one short - this double CD from Brazilian noise maniacs NEW YORK AGAINST BRUKUTUS barely clocks in at an hour combined, but for some reason the band split this into two discs; maybe it had something to do with the fact that the first disc (which is labeled "grindcore" over it's garish, gory artwork) is roughly 30 minutes of sloppy, skull-shredding grind in the tradition of Napalm Death's Scum, 55 tracks in all, almost all of them under a minute long, just pure noisy grind served in lightspeed shots of blastbeat violence. But then there's the second disc, labeled "noise", where things get ALOT more fucked up - the tracks are still short, and there's 99 of them on here, but this stuff is all over the place...there's lots of noisy, super low-fi hyperspeed noisegrind of course, but also weird funk guitars, accordian music, free-improv noisecore with acid-rock guitar solos, sounds of birds chirping and weird laser gun effects, retarded skuzz-punk dirges a la Bunnybrains, toy trumpet fanfares, kazoos, totally ridiculous vocal noises, and a lot of other similiar noisy weirdness. The first disc would appeal to fans of old school noisecore and proto-grind, but that second disc, man, what the fuck...definitely the strangest shit I have ever heard from these guys, which is saying alot considering that they've been releasing albums of Napalm Death covers and 4-second noiseblasts for over a decade now. It's like a grindcore Bunnybrains almost, a free-for-all garage blastcore freakout dosed to the gills. And what's up with the album artwork? Check out that bizarre cover art of a hunchbacked ogre carrying an American flag confronting some kind of demon/jester hybrid that appears to be riding a giant shoe filled with skulls? Pass the blunt, please.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Catifunda, You're Living On My Mind" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Key Solo" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Micareta Do Hell" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Os Passaros" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Para-Choques Amassados" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Pitta Bailarino" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Voices Solo" (excerpt)

NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU / EMPTY GRAVE / PURE NOISE 3-way split CD $11.98 Latincore
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Take a look at the back of the jewel case for this CD, and where there would normally be a track listing or some other similar indicator of the content within, there are only the words “172 Songs” beneath the nearly incomprehensible logos of the three bands that make up this 3-way split CD. This absurd statement should hopefully prepare you for the ridiculously wicked blitz of freeform Brazilian grindnoise on order here from NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU, EMPTY GRAVE, and PURE NOISE. While virtually extinct in other regions of the globe, it would seem that the ANAL CUNT/FEAR OF GOD/SORE THROAT noisecore legacy lives strong in Brazil. NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU, who are virtually legends in this “scene”, open this up with 28 blasts of nonsensical blastbeat mayhem, brainmelting Casio melodies, entire riffs lifted from VAN HALEN and RUSH, and mongoloid thrash breakdowns mashed together into a blur of lo-fi speed chaos. Imagine early BOREDOMS action as filtered through the noxious grind of ANAL CUNT.
EMPTY GRAVE are a tough-looking drums’n’guitar duo whose 69 songs flirt a little more with old school death and speed metal, busting out some pretty viscious lo-fi speedcore riffs and monstrous breakdowns, but the frequent forays into nursery rhymes, 5-second songs, and roaring walls of distortion that barely obscure the frenetic, sloppy blastbeating relentlessly going on in the background keep this firmly entrenched in the noisecore/blurr orbit. The production here is slightly improved over NEW YORK AGAINST THE BELZEBU’s vaccum-cleaner eruptions, but it’s still no picnic. Mostly it’s multi-second riffblast on par with early CRIPPLE BASTARDS and FEAR OF GOD accented with moments of brootal mid-tempo crustcore, evil monk chants, old time spirituals, and fucked structures like a retarded NAKED CITY, complete with dual cave troll/rabid warthog/electrocuted housewife vocals.
PURE NOISE wrap it up with what would appear to be 75 individual compositions, but since a CD can only have 99 labeled track ID’s, all of the PURE NOISE material has been squashed together as one continuous stream of improv blast violence on track 99. None of this really matters…what does matter is that PURE NOISE sounds like Scum-era NAPALM DEATH channeling old school Japanoise through their shitty practice amps and attempting to lock into some flesh destroying free-jazz thoughtwaves. Obviously, this feast of blast is only recommended to serious noise heads, old school grind freaks, and fans of truly adventurous/fried brutal improv. This disc is packaged in blown color Xerox graphics which make this appear more like black market Brazilian snuff .

NIDEN DIV. 187 Impergium / Towards Judgement CD $11.98 Barbarian

Blazing lightspeed Swedish black metal nihilism rescued from cult OOP obscurity by the good guys at Barbarian/Earwax in Madison WI. Comprised of members of Dawn, Thy Primordial, and A Canarous Quintet, and had been originally released on Necropolis Records in 1995/1996. Niden Div. 187 unleash a holocaust of relentlessly blasting superfast black metal with zero fills and tortured,buried,incoherent screaming from Dawn/former In Flames vocalist Henke Forss. The furiously distorted guitars swarm into a hyperstrummed blurr, with apocalyptic droning medlodies clustered together into high-velocity near-ambient filth, sometimes breaking off into a necksnapping thrash riff as the drummers insanely fast blastbeats are delivered with militaristic precision. This is fierce shit for fans of Marduk, Zyklon-B, Setherial, and that blistering new Watchmaker album we reviewed on the last list. Features the Impergium album plus the entire 1996 Towards Judgement EP.

NIGHT MUST FALL Funeral Of Mankind CD-R $11.98 Endless Desperation
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Nihilistic Funeral Doom! Finland's Night Must Fall are definitely funereal, and our first impression was that these guys are following in the footsteps of their legendary fellow Finns Skepticism, right down to the gloomy mist shrouded keyboards and depressing fuzzed out guitars and minimalist drumming. After a couple of spins though, we realized that Night Must Fall are a bit weirder than Skepticism while sharing that downer vibe. This Russian disc is sort of a discography for the band as it collects both their two song Night Must Fall tape from 2003, and the Funeral Of Mankind EP from 2004, which is a single epic track. Actually, all three of these jams are freakin' epic, the shortest clocking in at over 12 minutes long. The first track "Empty Light" begins with six minutes of miserable ambient synths that set an appropriately grim mood, and then the band kicks in like a more minimalist Skepticism, with ultra gutteral warrior-monk death vocals and fuzzy blurred guitars way off in the background, a faint droning buzz of hypnotic, beautiful funeral dirge that repeats over and over again grounded by a spare, skeletal drumbeat. Total downer trance that gets weirder and spacier as the song progresses, evolving into a sort of cosmic post-rock by the end of the song. The second song "Carried Amidst The Funeral Winds" begins in the same Skepticism vein as a plodding drumbeat accompanies far-off droning guitars and funeral keyboards, but then a couple of minutes into the song, there is a weird shift into a sort of dreamy, dissonant dreampop with a gorgeous woozy melodic hook that comes from outta nowhere. It's the most beautiful funeral doom song we've ever heard, like Skepticism doing some sort of jazzy dreamy Brit-pop or something, dripping in syrup and reverb. Awesome. But the really weird shit happens with the final song, "Funeral Of Mankind", where Night Must Fall descend into a 23 minute improv-dirge, a freeform sludge crawl through murky synthesizer drones, drugged meandering suicide riffs, deathly whispers, and muddy freeform drumming that eventually devolves into fucked up, diseased ambience. Overall, this is close to an hour of progressively weird suicide doom that fans of Esoteric, Evoken, Rapture, Shape Of Despair, Asunder, Nortt, and Thergothon will dig!

NIKO SKORPIO Delta Amoeba CD $9.98 Some Place Else

Delta Amoeba features three older tracks (circa 2000) from Finnish beat/sampler alchemist Niko Skorpio. We're pretty stoked on the REPTILJAN stuff we've gotten our hands on, which is Skorpio's eGrind/breakbeat/blastnoise alter ego. His live and collaborative work with Ovro was cool stuff, too. Delta Amoeba finds Niko exploring a different sort of territory, however. These three songs are indeed heavy and fractured, especially the middle track, "Pain Inducers". But this material is more beat-driven and anchored in sorta-pop structures compared to his other stuff that we have heard. But still totally damaged and weird. The opener, "Delta Amoeba", is a weird cartoonish noise-hop number with a loping blues-squelch loop and drowsy vocals. "Pain Inducers" reminds us of TECHNO ANIMAL's muddy beats and heavy noise-hop crunch backed with distorted, almost-industrial guitar loops. "Lambs Lie Down" meshes stumbling polyrhythms with slithering, heavily processed Poltergiest-style children's vocal chants and creepy synth drones and organ melodies. Neat stuff from a slightly more "accessible" side of Mr. Skorpio's deranged, cut-up vision. Packaged in a slimline case.

NIKO SKORPIO Escape From Heaven CD $11.98 Some Place Else

Seriously weird plunderphonic metal/industrial/goth/droneology from Niko Skorpio, the guy behind the eclectic Some Place Else label and shop based out of Turku, Finland, whom you might also know from the seminal eary 90's death-doom band Thergothon and his extreme digital grind/cut-up/glitch project Reptiljan. We've carried some other Skorpio releases in the past, but this is by far the most fucked up and surreal material from him to date. Escape From Heaven is all over the place, a dreamlike pastiche of looped speed metal samples, shimmery synthesized ambient sound designs, nightmarish skrewed cabaret tunes, media soundbites, watery dub-industrial beats, deep drones, and occult themes, frequently reminding me of Rabies era Skinny Puppy if they had delved into more abstract ambient soundscapes and had generally been even more fucked up and zonked. The title track is a particularly weird blast of plunderphonic speed metal, with an immediately recognizeable sample that is looped briefly with bizarre processed vocals before it just comes to a halt. Weird. The album has a meandering vibe that feels more akin to a film soundtrack, broken up into sequential pieces that seem to form some kind of ghostly hallucinogenic narrative. I definitely dug this album, but I think that only fans of truly outsider industrial/sound collage/occult sound design will really "get it", anyone else might be put off by the overall weirdness...Escape From Heaven is adventurous to say the least.

NIKO SKORPIO To Give Light To That Which Is Without CD-R $9.98 Some Place Else
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This new, self-released full length CD-R from Finnish electro-subverter NIKO SKORPIO features a variety of live, studio, and location recordings from Helsinki and Turku, Finland, developed over Spring and Summer of 2005. This material eschews the eGrind destruction of his smokin’ REPTILJAN project as well as the more beat/glitch/darkhop orientated solo work he is known for, and instead goes for a chilly, meditative brand of dark ambient and electro-acoustic soundscape sculpture. Eerie space drift and synth drones float amongst detailed microbursts of electronic feedback and noise. Deep, dark, noisy droneworks that will appeal as much to fans of Cold Spring-style dark ambient industrial like SCHLOSS TEGAL, ARCHON SATANI, and SLEEP RESEARCH FACILITY, as they will to enthusiasts of Skorpio’s other work. The disc comes in a white cardboard sleeve that has been hand-printed with “consecrated” ingredients (don’t ask us), and is limited to only 93 copies.

NIKUDOREI Genital Torture CD $16.98 HG Fact

Back in stock after over a year! Nikudorei's 1997 album Genital Torture is a fucking classic in the realm of freeform, improvised "grindcore", or noisecore, or whatever you want to call it. What you get is 99 tracks in one hour of the harshest, most freaked out grindnoise you can imagine, with just a drums/vocals/electronics lineup creating this holocaust. Featuring Kenny from Facialmess, a killer 90's harsh noise project that did a great collaborative EP with Suppression, these guys intersect painful electronic noise, like Incapacitants, or maybe Prurient at his most brutal, with ultranoisy microburst grindcore, via multi-second explosions of blastbeat drumming and monstrous vocal slop. Picture Japanese harsh noise a la Massona/Pain Jerk fused with Anal Cunt and buried under loads of wah-effects. Complete ear terror. Some longer jams drop the drums completely and dwell on some audio warfare sinewaves that razor right through your eardrums. Heavy and fucking FREAKED OUT. Artwork is covered in their highly stylized bondage-cartoon imagery amongst more familiar grind ephemera.

NIKUDOREI / DIE split 7" EP $5.98 BloodBath
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Out of print. We've got the last few copies. A dual blast of extreme Japanese ultragrind. Free improvised noisegrinders NIKUDOREI freak out on some of their most brutal and insane stuff yet. Donmai grinders DxIxEx unleash 6 tracks of extreme face-shredding power. The success life or kill? Damn right. Brain destroying japanese grindcore from both.

N.I.L. s/t CD $11.98 Battle Kommand

N.I.L. is a new project from Lord Imperial, whom black metal fans will know from the long running USBM outfit Krieg and BM superunit Twilight. But if you're looking for a continuation of Krieg's raw, necro black metal, you're going to be surprised. With N.I.L. (which stands for 'Nihilism is Liberation", according to the CD booklet), it seems that Lord Imperial is exploring a mixture of slow, doomed droning black metal riffs and post-punk influences, and there's a couple parts of this self-titled debut that are darkly melodic. Before I even listened to the disc, I noticed that Imperial was credited inside the booklet with "vocals, drums, bass, acoustic guitar, and singing bowl", and the other half of N.I.L., J. Marcheski, is credited with "guitars, mandolin, acoustic guitar". Singing bowls and mandolin on a black metal album definitely give me the impression that the duo are going for a more atmospheric sound, which is verified when the first track 'Plague Doors Rusted Shut' opens with acoustic guitars and mandolin playing a haunting, folksy minor key melody over a layer of softly crackling distortion, like the rasp of a phonograph needle stuck in a groove. That only lasts for a minute or so though befure N.I.L. kick in with 'Here I Found No Shelter', and the duo shift into a slow, crushing blackened dirge, a single droning minor key riff that churns hypnotically over cymbal-heavy midtempo drums. 'I Quenched My Thirst With Dust' is a vortex of sloppy thrash drumming, walls of cymbal noise, and a gorgeously woozy two-chord guitar riff that all gloms together into a blast of black metal-meets-My Bloody Valentine pink/black noise. The rest of the disc follows suit, each song a black blast of loose, fast-to-midtemp drumming and simple, repetitive churning riffs with a melodic core, with forays into acoustic gloom ('Serpent Circle') and a constant droning atmosphere throughout every track. What really fucked me up is when N.I.L. suddenly drops a cover of Big Black's 'Bad Houses' into the middle of the album, and it's not like they do a "black metal" version of the tune, no, they play it pretty straight, although Krieg does of course sing the lyrics in his blackened rasp. Otherwise, it's a catchy, albeit heavier and distorted version of the song. Pretty awesome. I'm sure that this album will piss off a lot of black metal purists, but I think this is pretty damn killer, sort of a heavier, doomier take on the post-punk/shoegazer affected USBM of bands like Lurker Of Chalice and Velvet Cacoon, and even Leviathan's melodic, shoegazey material.

1985, THE Nerve Eighty CD $11.98 Progeria

Before Microwaves, before Zombi, there was The 1985, a heavy, skronky noise rock band from Pittsburgh that was around from 1996 to 2000. The band released two LPs while they were around, one of which was 1999's Nerve Eighty, a burly bit of nervous aggro that weilds a loud, angular attack that's a bit heavier than much of what was coming out of the noise punk scene around that time. Along with their tourmates in Arab On Radar, The 1985 were originators of that blend of twitchy, distorted guitars and the dancey rhythms of experimental punk outfits Crass, Gang Of Four and Public Image, Ltd., but these guys were the heavier of the bunch, their guitars bashing out some great rusted-out riffage and grating electroshock feedback while the rhythm section would dig in with heavy grooves that anchored their chaotic, sexually charged freakouts. Kinda has a Jesus Lizard/Big Black feel to it at times. We just picked up some copies of this disc from John Roman from Microwaves, who had previously played drums in The 1985, and you can hear where Microwaves took the herky-jerky noise of his former band and added a serious dose of metallic skullburn to create the thrashy no wave of the 'Waves. Pretty crucial noise rock for fans of Microwaves, Arab On Radar, and Skin Graft noise punk.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Cosmo With Children" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "She Works Weekends" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Warning Shot" (excerpt)

NOCTURNAL Unholycraft CD $11.98 God Is Myth

Fucking ripping primitive black metal from Poland with an absolute zero-bullshit assault. NOCTURNAL deliver 8 tracks of blasphemous satanic speed and pounding dissonant breaks with a couple of lethal mid-tempo breakdowns, obviously in the tradition of HORNA, DARKTHRONE, CARPATHIAN FOREST, early IMMORTAL, but with some weirdness in the form of jarring background sounds that could be sheet metal being pounded and gunshots being fired off behind the wall of bleary, buzzing black metal. Blasting, tinny double kick drums, trebly, razor-sharp guitars, and cavernous vocal hate. And AWESOME riffs. Songs and lyrics like "Ripping Christian Carrion" do little to candy coat their vibe. Fuck yeah.

VARIOUS ARTISTS The Noise Is All In Your Head compilation CD $11.98 Gold Soundz
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A gorgeous, obscure out-of-print compilation of avant/free sounds released a couple of years ago on the Norwegian label Gold Soundz, of which we only obtained 2 copies! The Noise Is All In Your Head compiles a wide variety of avant/improv sounds, much of which is prettier, quieter experimentation, but there's enough loudness and heaviness here to appeal to Crucial Blast customers. The disc features a beautiful track of ambient guitar from Oren Ambarchi, killer drone designs from Continental Fruit, scorching guitar noise from Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, ambient electro trance from Ojn (ex-Landshipping/Metrotone), eerie chain rites from Sindre Bjerga/Anders Gjerde, an awesome sludgy blast of lo-fi avant-hardcore from Noxagt, some more excellent digital noise cut-up from Lasse Marhaug, a brief but arresting psychedelic free folk jam from Volcano The Bear, a gorgeous track of shimmering feedback and melodic drones accompanied by skittering drum machines from Neil Campbell of Vibracathedral Orchestra (this song is intensely beautiful!), crushing rhythmic industrial noise from Rats With Wings, cool avant-blues-rock from The Wife Contract, a cool track of hypnotic glitch/improv/psychedelia from If You Meet Your Anti-Self Don't Shake Hands, (which is Neil Mackay of LOOP and Hair & Skin Trading Co. !), austere feedback collage from Dylan Nyoukis (Prick Decay/Decaer Pinga, Chocolate Monk), a killer distorted endtime raga from Julian Bradley/A Companion as Glamourous as Sleeping, avant pop from Duo Kanel, elastic improvised sawed drones from Songs of Norway (featuring Aaron & Nick from Volcano the Bear), and the whole trip wraps it up with DJ Bra Nesegir seizure inducing oscillator attack. This is a great comp, recommended (but move fast!). COmes in a Dual Plover style CD folder/wallet.

NO LESS Le$$on$ 1993-1998 CD $10.98 Push Down And Turn

An essential discography collecting everything from West Bay psychedelic gangsta grinders No Less, Le$$on$ captures some of the weirdest grind ever to crawl out of the whole San Francisco/"power violence"/Doomryderz/Slap A Ham thing back in the late 1990's. No Less were definitely ahead of their time, a crew of stoner grindheads that rose from the ashes of the Bay area grind band Plutocracy, blasting out massively sludgy grind and frenzied PCP-dipped hardcore glopped together with gangsta rap, psychedelic noise, funk, tons of samples, sloppy jazz, and moments of indescribable weirdness, with a multiple-vocalist assault that ranges from deep, gutteral roars to extremely high pitched shrieking. Imagine a band playing Napalm Death, Zappa, Funkadelic, Man Is The Bastard, and 80's gangsta rappers Above The Law all at the same time. It's a totally brain melting shitstorm of blastbeats, samples, sudden bizarre genre meltdowns, and crushingly heavy riffs. This release contains 35 tracks of thunderous, fucked-up freakout from the band's numerous tape releases and vinyl EP's, including 1993's Tape 1, their tracks from the splits with Evolved To Obliteration, Agents Of Satan, Potato Justice, and Laughing Dog, '94's Lesson 2 cassette, the Boxed In 7", and 1998's Last Lesson tape, plus some interview clips that sound like they were taken from a radio show appearance. Crazed shit, one of our favorite insano blast bands from this era alongside Man Is The Bastard and Gasp. The presentation here is rad, with a cool booklet load3ed with lyrics, liner notes, band info, and more!

NOMA Lacrimosa/Nidus 2xCD-R $10.98 At War With False Noise

Something different from At War With False Noise, who we'd normally expect to be bombing us with diseased noisecore or white-hot furnace blasts of harsh noise. Not so with this interesting double disc set, which comes in an eerie looking packet of translucent vellum paper that holds an insert card with the two discs attached to plastic hubs. Al at AWWFN obly issued 100 hand-numbered copies of this Noma set, and it's a nice collection of slow-breathing drones and heavy noise constructions. The first disc is titled Lacrimosa and features a single track that's almost an hour long; it's one long, slowly developing piece that focuses on layers of harmonium and floating drones that build and build , sometimes light and pretty, other times dissonant and unnerving, and as the piece continues to develop, it gradually becomes a darker, heavier dronescape, filled with threatening low rumbles and becoming an ominous, tho still mesmerizing presence. Very cool. The other disc, entitled Nidus, shifts direction and delivers five tracks that veer from the searing high-frequency sinewaves and brutal stuttering white noise loops of "Hyndland Stair Choir" to the subtle droning ambience and acid-trip samples of "Clay Montage", and right into the ultra violent, Merzbow style harsh feedback of "At War With A Train". An interesting release that incorporates harsh electronic noise, sound collage, and dreamy Troum-esque drone into it's surreal landscape. Fave track on here is the last, "Crocuta", a heavy, meditative amplifier hum vibrating omming through a starlit field of sparkling tones that could have come from a lost recording of Earth's Phase 3 sessions.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Before A Dying Chemist" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Clay Montage" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Crocuta" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "At War With A Train" (excerpt)

NOOSEBOMB Brain Food For The Braindead CD $11.98 Shifty

Jeff Hayward and Randy Odierno, of doom/crust legends Grief and crustcore legends Disrupt, return with this power trio that combines gooey tar sludge anthems with blasts of ragged crossover thrash and hardcore punk, some Am Rep noise rock vibes, and a melodic flair that borders on "poppy" at times. Between Jeff Hayward's gnarly trademark yowling and Noosebomb's propensity for lumbering sludge rhythms, the Grief pedigree is pretty obvious from the start, but these guys inject a LOT of fast paced crust/thrash/grindcore parts that elevate this above your standard sludgecore plod. It's all about dynamics, and few things in this life are as immediately satisfying as a raging thrash riff breaking down into some sweet Celtic Frost style riffage, which Noosebomb deliver en masse. At least that's the way I feel. The later Grief recordings (from right before they disbanded) started to show a flair for speedier, thrashier sounds, the sort that Disrupt unleashed on their classic Unrest album, and Brain Food definitely feels like a continuation of that. The melodic riffs on this album are way catchier than anything I ever remember hearing from Grief or Disrupt, though. Not that I'm complaining, I love it when sludge bands get melodic, it's just weird hearing these guys bust out a major key sludge-pop riff like the one that lumbers through the end of "Hell Bent For Retirement". Killer punk as fuck lyrics too, dealing with everyday issues like bills, work, and the Spectacle of American life.

NOOTHGRUSH Failing Early Failing Often CD $11.98 Slap A Ham
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Out of print. Some of the most tortured sludgecore ever! This collection of studio sessions from 1995-1997 features 18 slow, painful dirges that creep at geologic pace, but keep the track lengths pretty short (for this sort of music, anyways). Released on the now-defunct Slap A Ham, this is a posthumous collection of early recordings from eight sessions at Trainwreck Studios, all of which is seminal hellish doom/sludge, less "swinging" than the likes of Eyehategod or Weedeater, but not as abstract as Khanate and Corrupted. Comp songs, their Slap A Ham Embraced By The Anti-Self 7", split tracks, and the legendary Kashyyyk demo. This stuff will damage the structural integrity of any building it's played in. Fans of Grief, Toadliquor, Eyehategod, Khanate, Crossed Out, etc, will want to snag this.

NOOTHGRUSH Erode The Person CD $16.98 Throne

The companion to the now out-of-print Failing Early, Failing Often collection on Slap-A-Ham, Noothgrush's Erode The Person is the second volume of odds and ends from the legendary Bay Area sludge outfit. Noothgrush never seemed to get the same love that other extreme slo-mo bands from the same era did (Corrupted, Burning Witch, and Grief, for instance), even though Noothgrush was just as ridiculously heavy and devestating as any of 'em, their ultra-down-tuned riffs and absurdly slow and plodding tempos swimming in droning feedback and misanthropic lyrics that were unrivaled at the time. And then there was the Star Wars and Strawberry Shortcake imagery that Noothgrush would put in their songs and on their record covers, totally throwing powerviolence fans and grindcore 7" collectors for a loop, and predating the juxtaposition of cutesy images and bone-crushing heaviness that Monarch! has perfected. Their songs were jazzier and more complex than most of their peers, too, even as they crawled along glacially, sometimes incorporating a cello into their performance, or the swinging' time-stopping drumming of drummer Chiyo, a young woman who without question served up some of the heaviest beats of the decade. Few are heavier - Noothgrush's recordings are essential listening for fans of Corrupted, Eyehategod, Sunn O))), Bunkur, Monarch, Moss, Khanate, and all things slooooow and crushing.
The disc was originally self-released by the band in a small run for sale on their 1999 US tour (I actually have a copy of that floating around here somewhere, wrapped up in a xerox paper sleeve) and went out of print immediately, but it's been resurrected by the French label Chimeres and Spain's Throne Records, and this is an essential addition to any sludge/doom metal freak's library. Compiled from various out-of-print 7"s and tour-only joints, Erode The Person contains the jams from their split 7"s with Wellington, Gasp, Carol Ann, the split 12" with Corrupted, the then-new material recorded for the tour CD, and several previously unreleased tracks that had been floating around from splits that never materialized. Utterly essential, comes with a big 12 page booklet filled with EP cover art, lyrics, liner notes and more.

NORDVARGR / DRAKH The Betrayal Of Light CD $13.98 Tumult

An awesome new collaboration between former MZ.412 members Nordvargr and Drakh, The Betrayal Of Light is also the first new Tumult release in ages. I always know that I'm going to love anything that comes out on Tumult, but even I was surprised at how awesome this album is... The Betrayal Of Light is a single epic piece divided into six chapters, each movement conjuring a blackened, beautiful dronescape where fragile guitar melodies float over whirring circuitboard sounds and deep rumbling resonance. At first, the duo weave a foggy driftscape of murky drones and softly plucked guitar strings, but then the swarms of buzzing guitars appear, playing a monstrous funereal melody but strafed with crackling, corrosive distortion, like the beatless ambient riffing of a black metal guitarist alone. As the album progresses, Nordvargr and Drakh move through a shifting soundworld of shimmering subterranean drift and roaring doomdrone guitars, elegiac minor key death marches drifting over frozen wasted plains, subsonic booms detonating in the distance while epic black metal riffs churn by themselves through the void. A breathtaking blackened doomgaze, shot through with toxic industrial fumes and heavenly melodies melting over the grinding ambience. Highly recommended, and presented in a beautiful 6-panel digipack.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Reaction Infernale" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Betrayal Of Light" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Vessal" (excerpt)

NORTHERN LIBERTIES Secret Revolution CD $6.98 Worldeater

Rad 14 song album of spazzy basement art-punk from this Philly drums/bass/vox trio that's tied up in the intriguing urban-underground Worldeater collective, who also cranked out the fucking stellar Humanasaur CD-R reviewed elsewhere on this list. Northern Liberties are sort of a heavier, modern day version of The Butthole Surfers, a psychedelic punk assault slinging metaphysical vibes all over their album, but with a spare drums/bass/vocals n' effects lineup and apparent love for black mascara post-punk that puts these jams somewhere between the dissonant riff-heavy freakouts of Lightning Bolt, sullen Cure/Joy Division gloom, melodic hardcore marches, and spacey, psychedelic angular avant-punk that touches on USAISAMONSTER, folk, and cosmic effects tripouts, bound together with bizarre feverdream lyrics and really cool zoned out vocals. Yep, a cool, weird mix of Load Records damage, the Butthole Surfers acid visions, and pop punk.

NORTT / XASTHUR A Curse For The Lifeless CD $14.98 Southern lord
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Ridiculously awesome CD re-issue of the out-of-print Total Holocaust LP. NORTT, a one-man band from Denmark, opens this up with four tracks of depressing, fuzzy funeral doom, super slow and awash in a buzzing swirl of practice-amp distortion and distant drums. NORTT's miserable piano and ghoulish vocals melt together into a mournful graveyard hiss. Like SKEPTICISM, or CORRUPTED circa-Llenandose, but heavier on the epic, gothic lo-fi drone n' groan. A total downer. Cult fave XASTHUR arrives with three blasts of gorgeous necro shoegaze and beautiful minor-key melodies bathed in fuzzy distortion, with clean melodic chants and tinny,far-off drumbeats lost in the woozy blackness. Excellent !!

NOS Not Otherwise Specified CD $11.98 Economy
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Crushing darkhop/noise-hop that fans of Techno Animal and Scorn will go ballistic over. Creeping structures of slow darkhop; the haunted psychedelic mechanism of crushing beats and noise-drone / urban psych-drift-type textures wedded into one seamless, unforgettable flight. The debut release from this highly regarded Swiss duo tips it's hat to Mick Harris' Scorn and Quoit projects, runs the same streets as Ocosi, Mothboy and Submerged, but cuts through even vaster, more downtempo nether-regions of chewy, soul-kissing grooves. Slower and more melancholy than any of it's contemporaries, NOS rules a certain kingdom in that universe, an empire of darker rivers, less light and active shadows.

NOSFERATUS SUBWORLD self-titled CD $11.98 Oscura Sonrisa

Rabid, frothing-at-the-mouth apocalyptic modern D-beat driven hardcore from Spain, powered by a combo of Iron Maiden-esque hooks and way-anthemic melodic hardcore, complete with a sandpaper-throated, infuriated singer who sounds like he's about to climb out of the speakers and burn your house down. Add pretty instrumental breaks, skull-powdering metallic breakdowns, tight as fuck playing, blazing tempos, enraged socio-political lyrics. This CD has these AWESOME parts where these super-catchy melodies appear, heavy and dramatic, before taking off again into high-speed, burn-down-the-block thrash. Sort of like His Hero Is Gone or Tragedy with NoFX's guitarists. Or Disrupt with Samiam's hooks. Supremely heavy and catchy melodic crustcore. Only have 3 copies of this available!

NOT Music For Womb CD-R $6.98 At War With False Noise

This is by far the calmest release we've picked up from the usually-confrontational At War With False Noise label, after getting our heads ripped off by the lo-fi trashcan noise/core improv of Tetsuo, Kylie Minoise's turbulent Masonna style wipeouts, and Nackt Insecten's crushing amplifier drone. We dug around online but couldn't find any information on Not anywhere, so the who's and what's of this mysterious project are unknown to us. Doesn't matter though, as I'm satisfied enough with the consciousness wiping blast of muffled white noise drone contained on this disc, one that reveals barely noticeable shifts in form and becomes an oceanic wave of hypnotic sound over the course of it's hour long duration. Harnessed from wavelength tweaking and low frequency oscillations of white noise, the experience of listening to Music For Womb feels like resting your head against a guitar amplifier that has been cranked to 10 and allowing your skull to be filled with an endless ocean of speaker hiss. Imagine a lowercase version of the space between riffs on Earth's 2, a Zen drone soundscape of swirling, muted, ashen distortion and tidal fuzz; fans of disembodied guitar drone who are into the ultra-minimalist end of the spectrum might want to check this one out. Limited edition of 50 copies, minimally packaged in two sheets of printed translucent heavy-stock paper.

NOVEMBER COMING FIRE Dungeness CD $13.98 Reflections

Here's a rad full length from UK based November Coming Fire, which is part dirgey, grim, nautical inspired post-metalcore with a similar palette as the likes of Mouth Of The Architects, The Ocean, Giant Squid, Tides, Isis, Neurosis, etc...and part weird, esoteric 'core that reminds us of the UK hardcore outsiders Art Of Burning Water that we have been flipping out over lately. Dungeness is cloaked in dark seaside shadows, from the droning riffage and downer poetry of their lyrics to the stark black-and-white photography of coastal landscapes and copper spot-color inked woodcuts and squid tentacles. Musically, the album cruises through a combination of chaotic, fast paced hardcore and droning dirgey metallic heaviness with hoarse shouted vocals and plodding, noise rock style bass guitar, a ferocious melting together of Converge and Neurosis with blasts of fast jagged hardcore, moody Mogwai style post-rock, and the densely layered tension build of Buried Inside, interspersed with songs like the Big Black/Shellac style bass hatred of "Instrumental No.2" and the somber, Western-tinged "Mascot", which sounds eerily like Isis playing dusty indie rock with soft, hushed singing.

NOXAGT Noxagt CD $12.98 Load

Deadly hypno-dirge blasts and bludgeoning detuned riffage are what roll over ya with the third album from Norway's Noxagt, oddly self-titled and sporting some weird imagery and an album cover that could pass for an American Apparel ad. Once I stuck it in the drive though, what really hit me with Noxagt is the abscence of Nils Erga's viola, which was a huge x-factor with past Noxagt albums; instead, Anders Hana from Ultralyd and Jaga Jazzist has taken the reins and unloads some brutally queasy baritone guitar riffage all over the albums seven all-instrumental jams. Heavy as hell, yes, Kjetll Brandsdal's gigantic pounding detuned bass throb grounding the songs while sludgy, textured guitar riffage and sculpted feedback, sharp and jagged, weaves and wraps around repetitive herky-jerky rhythms and pounding horizontally-moving drumming that jump from tempo to tempo, their rhythmic changes strategically planned, hard and angular, stomping through the rusted out terrain between primo Melvins crush and Shellac, crushing but not quite Metal, a kind of serpentine hypnotic math-sludge. Despite the change in sonics that the band has underwent with this new album, they're still as crushing as ever, closing out the album with the 11 minute hypno-metal dirge epic "The Impious One". This CD edition of Noxagt comes in a full color 4-panel digipack case.

NOXAGT Noxagt LP $11.98 Load

Deadly hypno-dirge blasts and bludgeoning detuned riffage are what roll over ya with the third album from Norway's Noxagt, oddly self-titled and sporting some weird imagery and an album cover that could pass for an American Apparel ad. Once I stuck it in the drive though, what really hit me with Noxagt is the abscence of Nils Erga's viola, which was a huge x-factor with past Noxagt albums; instead, Anders Hana from Ultralyd and Jaga Jazzist has taken the reins and unloads some brutally queasy baritone guitar riffage all over the albums seven all-instrumental jams. Heavy as hell, yes, Kjetll Brandsdal's gigantic pounding detuned bass throb grounding the songs while sludgy, textured guitar riffage and sculpted feedback, sharp and jagged, weaves and wraps around repetitive herky-jerky rhythms and pounding horizontally-moving drumming that jump from tempo to tempo, their rhythmic changes strategically planned, hard and angular, stomping through the rusted out terrain between primo Melvins crush and Shellac, crushing but not quite Metal, a kind of serpentine hypnotic math-sludge. Despite the change in sonics that the band has underwent with this new album, they're still as crushing as ever, closing out the album with the 11 minute hypno-metal dirge epic "The Impious One". This LP edition of Noxagt comes in a full color jacket, on black vinyl.

NYARLATHOTEP Skillful Means CD-R $8.98 Housepig
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

I'm a huge Lovecraft nerd. I've read just about everything he's written, I've watched all of the 80's splatter movie adaptations of his work a million times over, and I even used to play the Call of Cthulhu role-playing game religiously back in the 80's. Like I said, I'm a huge Lovecraft nerd. And I'm a sucker for bands that use Lovecraftian themes and imagery in their music. Like Nyarlathotep, a creeped out electronic noise entity from Arizona named after one of the cosmic Outer Gods of the Cthulhu Mythos, whose Skillful Means CD-R on Housepig is a collection of charred, chaotic drones, sculptures of monstrous electronic roar, and insectile circuit-chaos, like field recordings of winged intergalactic horrors swarming through space, and gargantuan beasts rising from the deep. Doomy fluctuating chord shifts and malevolent ultradistorted riffing spew oozes over the hour-long running time. Awesome, crushing and hallucinogenic doom-noise-drone, a black vomit fusion of Cherry Point distortion blowout, menacing ritual drone horror, and skull imploding noisesludge a la Burmese, imprisoned on a hand-screened black-on-black CD-R held in a black digipack with labeled artwork and an insert card, in a limited edition of 80 copies that is already sold out through Housepig; we've got the last copies available, so move quick!