TITLES: R

RABBITS / UNDER MOUNTAINS split LP $12.98 Eolian Records

A crushin' double shot of tweaked dark indie sludge from Portland, which I am coming to believe has one of the most kickass underground music scenes in the country. Not only is Portland the home of one of my favorite bands ever, Black Elk, but the PDX has also produced these two titans of stripped-down, bone-crushing sludge rock that each put their own gnarled tongue on the post-Melvins thunder. This Lp is a vinyl only split album, with Rabbits and Under Mountains each rocking a side: Rabbits are a power trio featuring Josh from Angel Hair/VSS/PLeasure Forever, and lumber through two massive jams of crazed droning feedback and huge, grooving metallic sludge laced with some rocking melodic hooks, like a punkier, grungier High On Fire mixed with some nasty 90's noise rock, massively downtuned guitars caked in filth, floor shaking bass grooves, dense, angular aarrangements, the vocals shifting between gutteral grunting to a raging bark, with the band drifting off on huge clouds of blackened, blown out amplifier feedback for minutes at a time. And Under Mountains unleash the instrumental math-sludge attack with a bottom-heavy, furious riff fest, six tracks of clever, complex chord arrangements and thunderous drumming, with the bass nicely prominent in the mix, smashing out sludgy, grooving low-end riffs and a couple of weirdly Iron Maiden-esque moments, their epic tarpit battle anthems reminding me of a cross between Lightning Bolt and a less-shreddy The Fucking Champs, super heavy but really catchy. Awesome record, recorded by Mike Lastra at Smegma Studios, where fellow PDX'rs Black Elk recorded their killer debut. The slab is packaged in a hyper-abstract silkscreened color jacket and comes with a B&W insert sheet.

RACEBANNON The Inevitable Singles and Rarities 1997-2005 2xCD $13.98 Alone

An exhaustive compilation of EP, comp, unreleased songs, and other assorted non-album recordings from the Indiana art-damaged metallic hardcore collective Racebannon, including the stuff from the Satan's Kickin' Yr Dick In seven inch series, the MAJHAS and HELEN OF TROY splits, the BLACK SABBATH, SONIC YOUTH and CAPTAIN BEEFHEART tributes, and more. It's a 9 year progression that is documented here, from their roots as a spazzy, screamy hardcore outfit to the metallic avant hardcore juggernaut they would become, intersecting traces of Melvins sludge, psychedelic electronics, Captain Beefheart, Melt Banana's epileptic grind, and Blue Cheer's acid rock. Comes in a boss double-disc digipack.

RACCOO-OO-OON Behold Secret Kingdom CD $12.98 Release The Bats

The Iowa City band's first proper full-length, Behold Secret Kingdom follows up a freakin' sackload of microedition cd-rs, tapes, and vinyl, as well as a couple of recent cd re-issues of short-run releases on Time Lag and Release The Bats. We thought that their last disc on Release The Bats was pretty great, a druggy miasma of effects glazed vocals and noisy instrumentation serving up ramshackle blots of psychedelic folk/punk/noise rock into the depths of a cobweb-covered forest. Definitely noisy and "punk" enough to be right up our alley, even if their sound had as much in common with the whole freeform avant-folk thing. Well, with this new 8-song album, Raccoo-oo-oon (still not entirely sure how we're supposed to be pronouncing that...) has granted all of the wishes that were sprouting out of our skulls in the wake of their previous music...darker, more fucked up, noisier, and yes, HEAVIER, the Raccoo-oo-oon guys have surfaced with a sound that melts together the free-spirited free-folk/hippie punk weirdness of their previous stuff with some honest-to-goodness Sabbathian sludge riffs that, whenever they appear, knock your shit right out of your chair. Totally mangled and blown out, pounding and megaheavy and beautiful as hell. Those glints of darkdirge massiveness appear in amongst the band's cacophonous free-noise rave ups, Sun Ra style space-outs, freeform tribal percussion jams, and a constant stream of ecstatic dayglo vocal drones that border on total incomprehensibility, drifting boundless through the band's long, meandering forest freakouts. Lotsa swirling sax outbursts throughout these tunes too, especially on "Fangs And Arrows", tons of mangled guitar riffage, tambourines, searing acid solos, bells and chimes, and and endless wave of sweetly damaged synthesizer sounds that stick to our eardrums like bits of candy. With this album Raccoo-oo-oon has morphed into something like Sunburned Hand Of The Man erupting into bouts of incredibly heavy, noisy sludge metal, super psychedelic and joyous and crushing, and we love it. Comes in a full color digipack. Highly highly recommended!

RACCOO-OO-OON Is Night People CD $11.98 Release The Bats

The enigmatically named Raccoo-oo-oon bound out of their haunted woods with this Swedish CD release of the debut cassette these cats put out in an edition of nothing a few years ago. Beautifully packaged in black Arigato pack covered in mystical golden scrawl, Is Night People is a dreamy conglom of free-rock splutter, psychedelic woodland punk mantras, masses of echoing vocals trailing upwards into the sky, pummeling No Wave fits, and raw psych/folk moves. Raccoo-oo-oon is one of the more interesting bands floating around in the psych-punk ether right now, 'cuz along with all of the trippy freeform howling, they can also just as easily lay down some killer heavy hypno dirge and drugged noise punk, and the combination is pretty stunning. The sax/effects/tribal drumming swirl together into ecstatic rites over which are poured cascades of beautifully fucked vocals that are delayed into infinity...think Here Comes The Indian-era Animal Collective but with a propensity for eruptions of heavy narco/noise rock that bury everything under a sea of feedback and buzzsaw amp noise and jazzed up Evol style moves. Excellent, and recommended!

RACCOO-OO-OON / WOODS Pre-American Lands LP $14.98 NotNotFun
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

A killer split LP between two like-minded spirits in the psychedelic punk twilight, which was snatched up pretty quick from the label and is now apparently out of print in the time between our receiving them and our finally getting this review finished! The first side of this LP has Iowa's Raccoo-oo-oon drifting out on six songs of their magical, atonal no wave/punk/pagan/folk/noiserock/improv rituals that oozes the weirdly sylvan atmosphere that surrounds this slab. Like a forest-dwelling Sonic Youth circa Evol but way more stoned, billowing out pink clouds of cosmic sax, heavy rumbling electronics and sick freeform guitar shred, all gliding into one hell of an extended psych/drone jam driven by some terminally funky n' stumbling free-improv drumming and skronky noise rock blissout, closing out on a woozy droneout that sounds like MBV's Loveless being performed on a gang of accordians. Freaking excellent. The other side has Brooklyn's Woods creeping through a haunted forest of blown apart noise rock and primitive free jazz clatter populated with distorted feedback dronings and amplifier howl and some ghostly girl singing off in the shadows. Like Raccoo-oo-oon's side, this is gorgeous, creepy improvised punk-ritual that tastes a bit like a more raw, mutated offshoot of Sunburned Hand Of The Man and No Neck Blues Band. The packaging is beautiful, but this is a Not Not Fun jam, so that's no shock. The think yellow-swirl LP is packaged in a screenprinted posterboard jacket that's partially held together by a synthetic rabbits foot attached by a chain! Already out of print !!! Listed price includes Priority/Airmail shipping.

RAEO Body Loops CD $12.98 Amanita

RAEO is the duo of NY No Wave pioneer Mark Cunningham (former member of MARS and DON KING ) and MOVIDA participant Gat (formerly of Genetico and Buildings). On Body Loops, the two create an evocative, dark, and resoundedly urban post-jazz soundscape, where dark ambient and electronic drones drift with Cunningham's lyrical,emotive trumpet and Gat's industrial strength bass frequencies. Minimalist percussion and rhythms, almost dub-like at times, underscore the dark noir sound of Raeo's dark ambient/free-jazz. Very beautiful stuff. Mark Cunningham is a superb trumpeter , his haunting lines evoking eerie near-future cityscapes and surreal,pastel twilights. These recordings were actually created and performed in tandem with Body Tapes, a 1999 multi-media installation by Barcelona video artist Josep Maria Jordana that was performed at Sonar and numerous other avant-art festivals, and featured images of the human body taken from x-ray scans, anatomical illustrations, and surgical footage. These images were projected directly onto the muscians as well as large screen that sat behind them, and the interplay between the projections, light, and musicians created a improvised interaction during each performance. Images from Body Tapes are featured in the digipack packaging.

RAH BRAS Whohm CD $13.98 Lovitt

Despite the fact that Rah Brahs are from the general DC/VA area and have been at it for probably close to a decade now, I had never heard these guys prior to seeing them earlier this summer, when they were doing a run of shows with Genghis Tron. I completely fell in love with 'em as soon as I saw their live performance though. They played material from their latest album Whohm, and it was a bombastic eruption of synth-driven, HEAVY kraut/punk with weird, esoteric visuals, amazing processed vocoder vocals trading off with operatic singing, blasts of pummeling heavy metal drumming and motorik beats, and a guy ripping out these super heavy distorted synth chords out of his keytar. And the songs are incredibly catchy too, all gigantic pop hooks powered by huge Teutonic grooves or set afloat on waves of cosmiche keyboards. They even did a stunning rendition of "Gently Johnny" from The Wicker Man. I grabbed a copy of Whohm that night and played it relentlessy, recommending it to everyone I know. This album is so amazing and catchy and heavy, a perfect combo of modern art rock spazziness, majestic synthesizer prog, and heavy metal bombast. Highly highly recommended!!!

RAINBOW OF DEATH self-titled 10" $11.98 Torture Garden Picture Company

What's this? An all-black record jacket with scrawled artwork printed in silver ink, instantly identifiable as the work of the Candy Kill Industries/Monarch! crew, that same unmistakeable cursive scrawl, the cutesy doodle-drawings and song titles like "Hellbent For Kitty" and "Nicehappy Day" and "Transylvanian Princess"? Looks like Monarch, it's all four members of Monarch, but this isn't the French doomsquad, nope, this is their alter-ego band Rainbow Of Death, which deals out short, vicious blasts of hyperspeed garage-punk powerviolence! The first couple of seconds of the record are ripped apart by shrieking feedback and Emilie's trademark scream, but just before you're fooled into thinking that this is going to be anything like the ultra-slow, glacial doom metal of Monarch!, Rainbow Of Death explodes into raw, noisy three-chord punk jams, super snotty and catchy, like a weird mix of Yeah Yeah Yeahs garaginess and old-school poppy 70's punk, with Emilie singing in a bratty, punky yowl, but the music propelled at LIGHT SPEED a la Infest, grindy and raging and splattered with feedback and buzzing amplifer hum. Lot's of "hey ho, let's go"'s and rocking mid-tempo parts keep this rooted in punk rock, but it's just as weird and goofy and heavy as you would expect the garage-punk-grind alter ego of Monarch! would be, at times sounding a little bit like a WAY noisier and punkier Melt Banana mixed in with their mutant take on black metal riffing and hardcore punk. This 10" is the first release from Rainbow Of Death, packaged in a heavy black sleeve with a printed inner sleeve, and pressed on thick black vinyl .

RAKHIM Crimson Umbrella CD $12.98 20 Buck Spin

A new full length album of awesome necrotic drone clatter from the Finnish duo Rakhim. This is the first time I've heard anything from this outfit, and it certainly looks wicked: the 4-panel gatefold case is made of a thick black paper stock that is printed in stark metallic silver inks, the front cover sporting the high-contrast image of Rakhim members Krypt and Rudimentor all decked out in Kerry King shades and spiked armbands and an adequately illegible logo. Fuckin' tight. Throwin' this disc in with headphones on and the volume cranked, I'm thrust into a nightmarish black soundworld of hectic, freeform percussive clatter, layers of spacey electronic effects and pulsating bass throb, with manipulated chanted vocals, deep orc grunting, and demonic screams floating through the blackness. There's two tracks, "Transylvanian Error" and "Ultimate Sword", each around 17 minutes long, both sending you on subterranean flights through sightless murk and slaytanic bone rituals, chunks of metal debris banging against each other like death chimes, deep deep throat chanting resounding off of the granite walls of some underground shrine, the clanking and rattling of bits and pieces of wood attached to skulls being rattled in the lightlessness. A dense, psychedelic, improvised dronescape imbued with an evil weirdness, similiar to legendary freeform black metallers Abruptum. There's also definitely a mutant kraut-rock influence behind Rakhim, which you'd probably anticipate knowing that Jussi Lehtisalo (Krypt) and Janne Tuomi (Rudimentor) from Circle and Pharoah Overlord are the minds behind this, and Dave at 20 Buck Spin additionally references Z'ev's avant-percussion, Darkthrone's raw evil, the plodding noise murk of Wolf Eyes, and Faust's gooey tape experiments as coordinates for Rakhim's abstract abysses. Awesome, spellbinding blackness!

RAMESSES Ramesses II w/ Master (Your Demons) 7" EP $6.98 Psychedoomelic

Limited edition 2- song 7" from the UK psychedelic death sludge trio featuring Tim Bagshaw and Mark Greening, the former rhythm section for Electric Wizard. These are the early demo versions of "Ramesses II" and "Master (Your Demons)", the first songs recorded by the band and still slick with disease, and both jams emit blackened urk that fuses early Celtic Frost and Autopsy with charred psych jams, tarpit magick, and some haunted Hammond organ at the beginning of "Master...". Not as psychedelic as Electric Wizard, this is primo beast sludge for fans of Grief, Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, Noothgrush, etc. The thick Euro vinyl is packaged in an attractive, arty gatefold 7" sleeve. Limited to 1000 copies.

RAMESSES We Will Lead You To Glorious Times CD $14.98 This Dark Reign

Boasting the former Electric Wizard rhythm section, this UK trio get ugly with a diseased mix of kult death sludge (think Autopsy, old Celtic Frost), Sons Of Otis style bluesy space doom, and the blackened hippie doom of the 'Wizard, but heavier and chunkier,dripping some of the filthiest sounding riffs and guitar tones ever and moving at a slug crawl across the 4 tracks on this half-hour disc. Insanely heavy, merciless repetitive but infectious riffs that'll glue to your skull as they churn endlessly, stoned freeform sludge hate and gutteral fucked vocals and sloppy, couph syrup chugging blastbeats beating you into a trance across the nine minute evil of "Witchampton" and the eerie dirge of "Black Domina", with the added bonus of demonic Hammond organs...an awesome syrupy sludgefest, essential for Electric Wizard and Ufomammut fans. This disc boasts Billy Anderson's re-mastered versions of the "(Master) Your Demons"/"Ramesses ii" picture disc released by Shifty Records a while back, along with a couple of unreleased songs and two videos on the enhanced CD-ROM portion of the CD.

RAMESSES / NEGATIVE REACTION split CD $11.98 Psychedoomelic

Two brutal sludge squads brought together in a compact disc cage match, each one crawling through two epic tracks of mud violence. New Yorkers Negative Reaction start it off with "A Song For Constance", which marries an almost old-school hardcore vibe to a saurian, melodic upbeat sludge riff that just fuggin bulldozes over you. This is followed by "Nod", which is our favorite Negative Reaction song to date. This thing STOMPS, opening with a uber-downtuned bass droop that would make Dixie Dave proud, then kicks in and clobbers with THAT RIFF, a Weedeater / Floor hybrid that shakes our Godzilla figures off the shelves. And just wait till the flute comes in... "Nod" is, by itself, reason enough to snag this disc. A high point in sludge history. But lo! RAMESSES follows, ex- ELECTRIC WIZARD tag and all. Mark and Tim from the WIZARD debuted here with "Master (Your Demons)" and "Ramesses II", both of which summon the spirits of VENOM and CELTIC FROST and stuff them into into serious battle-scarred, slaytanic slo-mo riffage. We can hear the spaced out, blackened shambolism of Electric Wizard in these tunes, but there's also sloppy black metal blastbeats, 'oogly gutteral vocals, and an overall crustier vibe going on. A solid split of underground tarpit goodness.

RAMLEH We Created It,Lets Take Over The World Vol.I CD $9.98 RRRecords

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

In our ongoing lifequest to attempt to document and deliver the best in form destroying UK noise rock, it was just a matter of time before we landed this unholy triumvirate of seminal and ESSENTIAL brootal lo-fi feedback violence/blackened cosmic dirgedrone/evil amplifier destruction from the O.G. UK noise outfit Ramleh. Philip Best (formerly of influential UK noise operatives Whitehouse) and Gary Mundy (of Breathless,Skullflower,and owner of the Broken Flag label) were the brains behind this operation, and the history books have always lumped Ramleh and the associated Broken Flag label in with the whole proto-power post-Whitehouse electronics movement, which it certainly has ties to. But perspective (and heavy drugs) also allow us to parse Ramleh's primal power-howl as a precursor to the hot-shit free-rock/destructo noise/drone rock wave that's all the rage currently...I mean, some of this shit came out in fucking 1982, for chrissakes, and it hasn't lost one iota of bone crunching power in the interim, dishing out grueling, sinister feedback and amp drone burn as potent as anything from Wolf Eyes or Gravitar, or Boris' drone blowouts, or Skullflower or Hair Police or any other extreme noise rock dealers. At least, that's our take. So, what's the fuss about?
This 1st entry in RRRecords We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy collects 79 minutes of assorted jams dating back to 1982-1983 and mostly collected from early tape, vinyl and compilation releases, and includes the tracks "Suction", "Throatsuck", "Deathtoll", "Ramleh", "Emaciator", "Onslaught", "Phenol",and "Fistfuck". Taking severely abused synthesizers,tapes, mongoloid space guitar riffs, ANNIHILATING feedback,planet-crushing drumming,n' howling screaming anti-vocals, Ramleh threw it all together into long-form, mostly improvised orgies of lithium violence that go far beyond brothers-in-pain Skullflower. We are talking total bedlam at times, with some of the most incendiary, crushing freeform noise feedback ever commited to tape. The guitar pummel and feedback pyrotechnics on this mother are def in the vein of what Skullflower was doing around the same time, but Ramleh's outrages just seem way more anti-social. It's that intense, a dark, droning, apocalyptic and psychedelic mass. Absolutely crucial to fans of UK noise rock (Skullflower,Total,Splintered). The We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy was released as three separate CDs on Pure in 1995, and we've got all three in stock. The cover for all three CDs is identical except for the volume number on the sticker. All three are collections of earlier Ramleh material, generally from cassette releases. Essential.

RAMLEH We Created It,Lets Take Over The World Vol.II CD $9.98 RRRecords

In our ongoing lifequest to attempt to document and deliver the best in form destroying UK noise rock, it was just a matter of time before we landed this unholy triumvirate of seminal and ESSENTIAL brootal lo-fi feedback violence/blackened cosmic dirgedrone/evil amplifier destruction from the O.G. UK noise outfit Ramleh. Philip Best (formerly of influential UK noise operatives Whitehouse) and Gary Mundy (of Breathless,Skullflower,and owner of the Broken Flag label) were the brains behind this operation, and the history books have always lumped Ramleh and the associated Broken Flag label in with the whole proto-power post-Whitehouse electronics movement, which it certainly has ties to. But perspective (and heavy drugs) also allow us to parse Ramleh's primal power-howl as a precursor to the hot-shit free-rock/destructo noise/drone rock wave that's all the rage currently...I mean, some of this shit came out in fucking 1982, for chrissakes, and it hasn't lost one iota of bone crunching power in the interim, dishing out grueling, sinister feedback and amp drone burn as potent as anything from Wolf Eyes or Gravitar, or Boris' drone blowouts, or Skullflower or Hair Police or any other extreme noise rock dealers. At least, that's our take. So, what's the fuss about?
This 2nd entry in RRRecords We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy collects assorted jams dating back to 1982-1983 and mostly collected from early tape, vinyl and compilation releases, and includes the tracks "McCarthy","Purge", "Drancy", "Korpolagnia", "Return to Slavery","Nordhausen","New Force",and "Phenol". Taking severely abused synthesizers,tapes, mongoloid space guitar riffs, ANNIHILATING feedback,planet-crushing drumming,n' howling screaming anti-vocals, Ramleh threw it all together into long-form, mostly improvised orgies of lithium violence that go far beyond brothers-in-pain Skullflower. We are talking total bedlam at times, with some of the most incendiary, crushing freeform noise feedback ever commited to tape. The guitar pummel and feedback pyrotechnics on this mother are def in the vein of what Skullflower was doing around the same time, but Ramleh's outrages just seem way more anti-social. It's that intense, a dark, droning, apocalyptic and psychedelic mass. Absolutely crucial to fans of UK noise rock (Skullflower,Total,Splintered). The We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy was released as three separate CDs on Pure in 1995, and we've got all three in stock. The cover for all three CDs is identical except for the volume number on the sticker. All three are collections of earlier Ramleh material, generally from cassette releases. Essential.

RAMLEH We Created It,Lets Take Over The World Vol.III CD $9.98 RRRecords

In our ongoing lifequest to attempt to document and deliver the best in form destroying UK noise rock, it was just a matter of time before we landed this unholy triumvirate of seminal and ESSENTIAL brootal lo-fi feedback violence/blackened cosmic dirgedrone/evil amplifier destruction from the O.G. UK noise outfit Ramleh. Philip Best (formerly of influential UK noise operatives Whitehouse) and Gary Mundy (of Breathless,Skullflower,and owner of the Broken Flag label) were the brains behind this operation, and the history books have always lumped Ramleh and the associated Broken Flag label in with the whole proto-power post-Whitehouse electronics movement, which it certainly has ties to. But perspective (and heavy drugs) also allow us to parse Ramleh's primal power-howl as a precursor to the hot-shit free-rock/destructo noise/drone rock wave that's all the rage currently...I mean, some of this shit came out in fucking 1982, for chrissakes, and it hasn't lost one iota of bone crunching power in the interim, dishing out grueling, sinister feedback and amp drone burn as potent as anything from Wolf Eyes or Gravitar, or Boris' drone blowouts, or Skullflower or Hair Police or any other extreme noise rock dealers. At least, that's our take. So, what's the fuss about?
This 3rd and final entry in RRRecords We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy collects assorted jams dating back to 1982-1983 and mostly collected from early tape, vinyl and compilation releases, including the Hand Of GLory single in it's entirety, as well as the tracks "Squassation","Prossneck",and "Live at the Roebuck". Taking severely abused synthesizers,tapes, mongoloid space guitar riffs, ANNIHILATING feedback,planet-crushing drumming,n' howling screaming anti-vocals, Ramleh threw it all together into long-form, mostly improvised orgies of lithium violence that go far beyond brothers-in-pain Skullflower. We are talking total bedlam at times, with some of the most incendiary, crushing freeform noise feedback ever commited to tape. The guitar pummel and feedback pyrotechnics on this mother are def in the vein of what Skullflower was doing around the same time, but Ramleh's outrages just seem way more anti-social. It's that intense, a dark, droning, apocalyptic and psychedelic mass. Absolutely crucial to fans of UK noise rock (Skullflower,Total,Splintered). The We Created It, Let's Take It Over trilogy was released as three separate CDs on Pure in 1995, and we've got all three in stock. The cover for all three CDs is identical except for the volume number on the sticker. All three are collections of earlier Ramleh material, generally from cassette releases. Essential.

RAWRADARWAR = = CD $11.98 Shifty

RawRadarWar's debut album == first came out as a limited-edition LP a little while back, but it's just now getting a wider release via CD on the go-to imprint for American sludgecore, Shifty. Pretty much right on the back of the new RawRadarWar/Deer Creek split album that we also have new in stock this week, == is one hell of a ferocious opening shot from the Boston crew, which features the Beantown HC legend and former Only Living Witness/Milligram frontman Jonah Jenkins on vocals. OLW fans that hear that Jenkins is involved and are expecting his powerful, emotive singing are in for a shock though - with RawRadarWar, Jenkins fronts a brutal wave of ultra-heavy thrashcore/sludge/psychedelic noise with some of the sickest, most toxic hardcore shouting this side of Roger Miret or John Tardy. The music on == is intensely bleak and brutal as it is, racing through a combinatio of high speed hardcore thrash, grim Discharge-tinged crust, and an awesome speedcore rendition of the Jerry's Kids anthem "Crucify Me" that al crash headfirst into freaking pulverizing sludgecore dirges laced with an undercurrent of sinister psychedelic drones and electronic noise, which reaches a berserker fever pitch with the impossibly crushing stomp-dirge "Truckloads Of Amunition" that finishes off the album. But Jonah's fierce spiteful vocals and the awesomely smart, evocative lyrics ratchet up the intensity level tenfold, making this not only one of the best debuts I've heard in ages, but also one of the most powerful hardcore releases of the new millenium. Can't recommend this one enough to fans of truly crushing, yet adventurous metal/hardcore/sludge, a total shoe-in for our featured release this week. And as if the music wasn't enough, == comes in one of the coolest looking foldout cases I've ever seen, with awesome high-contrast artwork that looks like a collision between early 80's anarcho-punk imagery, Seldon Hunt's recent mirror-image designwork, and the highly detailed dystopian artwork of Voivod's Away. Highly recommended !!!

RAWRADARWAR / DEER CREEK split CD $11.98 Game Two

Sludge/doom/slo-mo metal junkies, you're going to LOVE this. A split album featuring two newer names in the sludge pantheon, the palindromic Boston sludge outfit RawRadarWar and Denver skuzzdoom berserkers Deer Creek. We've got this on both CD and LP, and both formats are limited edition. The CD edition of the split is in a limited edition of 1000 copies.
OK, so we've got RawRadarWar who have already been turning heads recently with their brutal sludge/hardcore/noise assault that draws equally from Man Is The Bastard, doom metal, classic Hardcore vibes, and Industrial. I had heard that these guys were pretty rad, and the fact that Jonah Jenkins from Only Living Witness/Milligram is fronting them had me doubly curious to hear 'em. Their tracks on this split are WAY HEAVIER than what I was expecting though..."Not Exactly Invincible" opens their side with a mega slow doomcore dirge textured with subtle electronic sounds, ridiculously heavy and ponderous, like fellow Bostonoids Warhorse but more tortured and anguished sounding; the song eventually becomes more and more distorted and blown out until it becomes a slab of crumbling, white-hot fuzz. "The End The Whole Time" is equally slooow and scathing, as Jenkins tears his throat out with the most feral and harsh vocals I've ever heard from the guy, over spacious blackened sludge riffs stretched out into infinity and weird electronic sounds fluttering at the periphery of your hearing. Mixed in with these tracks are lengthy blasts of squelchy, synpase scorching electronic glitchscapes: ""Too Giant Style Of Hentai Demon" is an eerie tapestry of splashy electronic wave manipulations and cyborg whale songs floating through dank alleyways and deserted warehouse districts, while the mammoth 12-minute long "Rejoice: A Swine Of Fire" unleashes a splattery electronics orgy a la Bastard Noise. After hearing this, I can't wait to hear the new RawRadarWar album coming out on Shifty...this is some of the best new sludge/doom stuff I've heard. As heavy and bonecrushing as Fistula, Grief, and Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine. Awesome!
The Deer Creek side of the CD features seven tracks of their gnarly, ultra detuned doom that picks up where they left off on their killer split LP with Church Of Misery from last year. With Game Two boss Conan Hultgren on guitar and vocals, Deer Creek spew their bleak megaheaviness that combines classic Sabbathian doom with seriously crusty sludgecore and damaged, lysergic lead guitar. There's four new tracks on here, “In Vain, I Struggled,” “Profess to Be...,” “She Was Beneath,” and “Born to Sin”, the latter of which is a homage to both Saint Vitus and Pentagram. On this CD edition, they've also included the three tracks off of their Mammon demo. Awesome crusty doom rock with a superbly fucked-up guitar tone. Deer Creek manage to take their classic doom influences and warp them just enough to make them sound like a mutant, blackened version of Pentagram. Both bands deliver on this split disc, and fans of slow, crushing extreme doom are gonna love it. Highly recommended!

RAWRADARWAR / DEER CREEK split LP $11.98 Game Two

Sludge/doom/slo-mo metal junkies, you're going to LOVE this. A split album featuring two newer names in the sludge pantheon, the palindromic Boston sludge outfit RawRadarWar and Denver skuzzdoom berserkers Deer Creek. We've got this on both CD and LP, and both formats are limited edition. This is the vinyl version of the RawRadarWar/Deep Creek split, in a limited edition of 500 copies on red/black swirled vinyl!
OK, so we've got RawRadarWar who have already been turning heads recently with their brutal sludge/hardcore/noise assault that draws equally from Man Is The Bastard, doom metal, classic Hardcore vibes, and Industrial. I had heard that these guys were pretty rad, and the fact that Jonah Jenkins from Only Living Witness/Milligram is fronting them had me doubly curious to hear 'em. Their tracks on this split are WAY HEAVIER than what I was expecting though..."Not Exactly Invincible" opens their side with a mega slow doomcore dirge textured with subtle electronic sounds, ridiculously heavy and ponderous, like fellow Bostonoids Warhorse but more tortured and anguished sounding; the song eventually becomes more and more distorted and blown out until it becomes a slab of crumbling, white-hot fuzz. "The End The Whole Time" is equally slooow and scathing, as Jenkins tears his throat out with the most feral and harsh vocals I've ever heard from the guy, over spacious blackened sludge riffs stretched out into infinity and weird electronic sounds fluttering at the periphery of your hearing. This LP version lacks the additional noise/electronics tracks found on the CD version, though. After hearing this, I can't wait to hear the new RawRadarWar album coming out on Shifty...this is some of the best new sludge/doom stuff I've heard. As heavy and bonecrushing as Fistula, Grief, and Teeth Of Lions Rule The Divine. Awesome!
The Deer Creek side of the LP features seven tracks of their gnarly, ultra detuned doom that picks up where they left off on their killer split LP with Church Of Misery from last year. With Game Two boss Conan Hultgren on guitar and vocals, Deer Creek spew their bleak megaheaviness that combines classic Sabbathian doom with seriously crusty sludgecore and damaged, lysergic lead guitar. There's four new tracks on here, “In Vain, I Struggled,” “Profess to Be...,” “She Was Beneath,” and “Born to Sin”, the latter of which is a homage to both Saint Vitus and Pentagram. Awesome crusty doom rock with a superbly fucked-up guitar tone. Deer Creek manage to take their classic doom influences and warp them just enough to make them sound like a mutant, blackened version of Pentagram. Both bands deliver on this split disc, and fans of slow, crushing extreme doom are gonna love it. Highly recommended!

RAXINASKY Transport De Viandes CD $11.98 Amanita

Another Belgian destructo duo courtesy of Amanita Records, this time in the form of the LOUD, sinister avant-freeform metalcore prog of RAXINASKY. Burly guitar n' drums interlock into snarling acrobatics, slamming RUINS / GUAPO -like hardcore prog into the abstract, evil metalcore of CONVERGE, while yawning maws of droning, disharmonic doom metal open up suddenly, sending swarms of bat-like electronic shrieks and into the stratosphere.Impossibly complex BOTCH-meets-SHELLAC math-metal riffs and SLINT -y dynamics scribble off the fretboard as the drums spasm and begin running backwards against currents of angular feedback drones, minimal vocal roars, and dubbed out satanic glitchtronic pestilence. Um, like everything else that came in from Amanita this week, this is fucking AWESOME, a whirlwind of noisecore-informed demonic post rock, headache inducing and crushingly heavy!

REALICIDE Ready To Fight LP $13.98 RRRecords

Realicide is fast becoming one of my favorite outfits in the underground noise scene, their ferocious combination of raw DIY spirit and no-bullshit social outlook with a skin-peeling hybrid of speedcore gabber, digital grind, samples, and fast-paced harsh electronic noise. I was kinda surprised to see a new LP from the band coming out on RRRecords, from whom I usually expect to hear more straightforward harsh noise or weird cut-up stuff, but Realicide fits nicely with RRRon's confrontational underground aesthetic. Ready To Fight is a new limited edition vinyl-only release, only 350 copies pressed, and it's the first ever LP from the Cincinnati blast collective; it looks amazing, in a white jacket with bright red artwork silkscreened by the Outfall Channel dudes and accompanied by a huge B&W xeroxed booklet and a vinyl sticker. The tracks are ultra spastic blasts of gabber beats jackhammering at splats of animalistic vocal noises and aggro spoken word pieces, low-fi digi-grindcore, hyperspeed electronic cut-up, and mutated hip hop, about as high energy as it gets, and festering with that aforementioned DIY punk spirit that I've gotta turn to the noise scene nowadays to get a fix of. This is great shit, like hearing Nasenbluten and Agoraphobic Nosebleed mashed together in an all-ages VFW hall show through a wall of blown amplifiers.

REBREATHER Half Speed Ahead CD $11.98 DeepSend

Heavy bulldozing swamp riffs, contrasting quiet singing and vein-popping screams, circular and hypnotic crunchiness...this CD collects the songs off of their Die On Pot and Long Play EP's, with a grand total of 9 hook-laden molasses anthems. The band traffics in feedback-drenched distortion and hugungous sludge riffs that fans of Eyehategod, Bongzilla and Weedeater will certainly appreciate, but there's also a strong undercurrent of melody throughout the songs that set this apart from the majority of bands of this ilk. It's due in no small part to Barley Rantilla's distinctive singing, dynamic and melodic and drugged out. This album is catchy and brutally crunchy enough to put it in the same indie-doom orbit as FLOOR and ISIS, without sounding anything like either of those bands. It's more like old HELMET and SOUNDGARDEN slowed down to a New Orleans crawl, soaked in moonshine and wreathed in pot smoke. Heavy azz shit.

RECORD OF SHADOWS INFINITE compilation CD $9.98 Crucial Blast

A diverse collection of drones, post-rock drift, and modern neo-minimalism, Record Of Shadows Infinite brings together eerie twilight hum, harrowing field recordings, intoxicating soundscapes, and hazy psychedelic ambience from across the globe. From pastoral to apocalyptic, a wealth of evocative aural vistas are contained within. Features new recordings from TROUM, FRANCISCO LOPEZ, HOUSE OF LOW CULTURE, THUJA, UNEARTHLY TRANCE, CHAOS AS SHELTER, AMON, BENEATH THE LAKE, SCOT JENERIK, and RUHR HUNTER.

RED SPAROWES / GREGOR SAMSA split CD $12.98 Robotic Empire

New CD version of the split 12" that sold out in hours. This split matches Richmod, VA's Gregor Samsa with Cali's Red Sparowes for 4 songs of top-notch post-rock. Gregor Samsa's two tracks have haunting, gorgeous male & female vocals intertwined with stmospheric guitars, keyboards, and string arrangements, a lush and crawling cloud of reverb heavy chords and eerie melody. Totally breathtaking, beautiful ambient rock, a la Low or Mogwai, but sadder and mistier. Red Sparowes features Isis and Neurosis members delivering two excellent jams of intense instrumental post-rock/shoegaze, one exclusive new track, the other a demo version of one of the songs off of their acclaimed At The Soundless Dawn debut. Lumbering, warm, and dreamlike rock with minor key constructions building into powerful crescendos, reminding us of Explosions In The Sky, Subarachnoid Space, and Godspeed You! Black Emperor. Packaged in a cool digisleeve. Recommended.

REINO ERMITANO Brujas Del Mar CD $11.98 Psychedoomelic

Reino Ermitano's Brujas Del Mar ("Witches Of The Sea") is the second full length from these Peruvian purveryors of weird Doom. Over the course of these 12 jams, the band moves between sludgy traditional doom metal in the vein of Hellhound Records, Pentagram, Black Sabbath, and The Obsessed, mixed with total Ren Faire madrigals and witchy, psychedelic folk parts complete with mandolin strumming, as well as a progressive pop/rock feel with flutes and interesting rhythmical breakdowns and the occasional stoner rock raveup or blast of epic droning metal...but then the female singer kicks in, and this album gets a bit bizarre. Her vocals alternate between a childish, effects-laden multi-tracked wail that makes her sound like Mike Scheidt's (YOB) little sister...or a freaky processed vocal croon that sounds like three witches chanting all at once, with all of the lyrics sung in Spanish. This gets pretty freaking creepy as the album goes on, believe me, with a sorta narrative flow that moves through the soft psych/folk/medieval parts and the crushing doom metal dirge. Not quite as fucked up as the sorta similiar Aarni CD we reviewed a few months ago, but this is still potently weird South American witch-doom that we are massively digging, and def one of the weirdest albums from Psychedoomelic. Recommended.

REMAINS OF THE DAY An Underlying Frequency CD $11.98 Crimes Against Humanity

A mix of apocalyptic crustcore, grind, and hardcore with lots of awesome melodic guitar work and dramatic violinis. Incredibly epic crustcore , includes a NAKED RAYGUN cover. This CD collects both old and new studio tracks. Dark and ominous modern grindpunk ala AMEBIX or such mordern brutality masters TRAGEDY or FROM ASHES RISE but with their own unique sweeping vision. A crushing and powerful release.

REMAINS OF THE DAY Hanging On Rebellion CD $11.98 Crimes Against Humanity

If you thought Remains of the Day's last record,Underlying Frequency was great, then prepare to be floored with their latest record,Hanging on Rebellion. This album is a masterpiece of epic prog-crustcore. They still use brutal grindpunk as a foundation, but have really nailed an epic and emotional sound..there a lot of longer songs that stretch out past 5 minutes where they showcase dynamics that their peers could only dream of copying. This disc is so incredibly balanced, there are shorter songs like "Comb of Prestige" that somehow manage to sound as epic, and powerful as longer tracks like the jaw dropping "Only to Infinity", that builds quietly until it explodes into an overwhelming monster of a track. The use of piano and violin once again plays a great role in adding extra dimensions to their sound, making the whole product unlike anything you've ever heard. The whole recording sounds layered and huge. Remains Of The Day transcend crust and add so many new elements to the aesthetic , making it impossible to classify them.

REPTILJAN The Hellbender Suite CD $11.98 Some Place Else

Awesome eGrind / noise / blastronix insanity from Finnish electronic artist Niko Skorpio, who also runs Some Place Else Records. Here, Skorpio goes under the REPTILJAN monker to mash together ferocious, breakneck digital blasts with crystal-clear explosions of fractal noise, breakcore beats, and rapid-fire sample/plunderphonic cut-up. The Hellbender Suite summons up full-on mutant brutal Drill n’ Bass weaned on the sickest strains of grindcore and shot through with hip-hop splatter and avant-electronic weirdness, wrapping up each eruption in succinct, short tracks . The intense BPM action gets so hypersonic that the rhythms eventually bleed together into crushed drones. Reading the liner notes, we see that the album is dedicated to the likes of cult 1980’s speed-death icons NUCLEAR DEATH, BEHERIT, and IMPETIGO. Definitely silly and whimsical, but dedicated to insane speed destruction and anti-social noise. Imagine NAPALM DEATH deconstructed by KID606. Or PAINKILLER and AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED in a cannibalistic cage-fighting match with VENETIAN SNARES, DOORMOUSE, and PHANTOMSMASHER. Thirty minutes of superb elongated blast bliss for Earache Records-worshipping circuit heads. Sweet.

REPTILJAN / IBRAHIM TERZIC split 7"EP $5.98 Some Place Else

A split 7” EP from Finnish label Some Place Else gives us “Pangrenade”, a decapitating blast of digital grind / dark hop / noise from REPTILJAN that drops a heavy old school hip hop beat wrapped in loops of middle eastern singing in the middle of the track before the layers of machinegun blastbeats re-enter to cut down everything in it’s path….this might just be our favorite REPTILJAN track so far. The other side of the platter features “Yuck Brij” from KAAOS IN ECCENTRIS collaborator Ibrahim Terzic, a loud and abrasive eruption of digital noise cut-up, locked-in white static grooves, and half-dreamed casio melodies. Thick European black vinyl, in full color glued pocket sleeve. Limited edition of 300 copies.

REQUIEM Storm Heaven CD $12.98 Crimethinc.

A powerful, inspiring slab of defiant crustcore, imbued with a crucial urge to defiance. I can definitely hear where this band picked up the defiant torch that was left in the wreckage of Catharsis, who were in my opinion one of the most important bands to emerge out of the hardcore scene of the 1990's. The life-affirming, anti-consumerist, anarchic message of rising up above the spectacle and unconsciousness of modern life that Catharsis (and the whole CrimethInc. "movement") espoused is even more timely and relevant now, and Requiem screams out their dissent just as loudly as their predecessor. The music here is much more raw and unpolished compared to the last two Catharsis albums, but has an innovative approach to modern hardcore by adding captivating Godspeed You Black Emperor influenced instrumental post-rock passages that explode into fierce blasts of crusty, apocalyptic thrash. The male and female vocals work in tandem, and add a grandiose, operatic atmosphere to Storm Heaven. The final song features the marching drums of street protestors, closing the album out on a raging, antiauthoritarian note that lingers for long after the record stops spinning. Storm Heaven features 9 songs, and comes packaged in an elaborate CD sleeve comprised of die cut stencils and lyric inserts with detailed writings from the band. Highly recommended.

REQUIEM Storm Heaven LP $14.98 Crimethinc.

A powerful, inspiring slab of defiant crustcore, imbued with a crucial urge to defiance. I can definitely hear where this band picked up the defiant torch that was left in the wreckage of Catharsis, who were in my opinion one of the most important bands to emerge out of the hardcore scene of the 1990's. The life-affirming, anti-consumerist, anarchic message of rising up above the spectacle and unconsciousness of modern life that Catharsis (and the whole CrimethInc. "movement") espoused is even more timely and relevant now, and Requiem screams out their dissent just as loudly as their predecessor. The music here is much more raw and unpolished compared to the last two Catharsis albums, but has an innovative approach to modern hardcore by adding captivating Godspeed You Black Emperor influenced instrumental post-rock passages that explode into fierce blasts of crusty, apocalyptic thrash. The male and female vocals work in tandem, and add a grandiose, operatic atmosphere to Storm Heaven. The final song features the marching drums of street protestors, closing the album out on a raging, antiauthoritarian note that lingers for long after the record stops spinning. Storm Heaven features 9 songs, and comes packaged in an elaborate sleeve comprised of die cut stencils and lyric inserts with detailed writings from the band. Highly recommended.

REUTOFF ReuTRauM II 7" EP $6.98 Kaos Kontrol

I was just turned onto this long running Russian post-industrial band recently while digging around for some European obscurities online, and was pretty stunned by the grinding machine dread that I was hearing. It took a little bit of tracking down, but I ended up getting a small quantity of this 7" from 2003 that was released by the Finnish label Kaos Kontrol. ReuTRauM II's A-side ("Moor") is an amazingly heavy dirge, with heavy grinding machinery hammering away, creating a crushing rhythmic groove while the sound of wailing, tortured angel choirs howl through the emptiness of some enormous, hellish factory. An awesome, frightening slab of black industrial. The flipside ("Morn") is much calmer but no less evil sounding - here, Reutoff craft a macabre dark ambient dronescape, with looped electronic noise rippling across a vast expanse of black drift. This EP comes on transparent green vinyl, and was issued in a full color sleeve in an edition of 500 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Morn" (excerpt)

REVENGE Victory Intolerance Mastery CD $11.98 Red Stream

An ultra-chaotic, blownout black metal noise assault from Canada's Revenge, which came out back in 2004 but just now getting added to our shelves. Revenge was the duo of James Read (ex-Conqueror, Axis Of Advance, Arkhon Infaustus) and Pete Helmkamp (of Angelcorpse, Order From Chaos, and bizarro voidworld industrialists Terror Organ), who are depicted in the disc's stark, black and white 10-panel booklet outfitted in full camo, bullet belts, and knives in hand. Victory Intolerance Mastery was the last release from the band, and it's on a whole 'nother level of seriously evil, distorted, raw, blownout grinding blackness, a horrific 8-song vision of total armageddon, riding on blastwaves of murky, black riffage caked in overdriven distortion and noise, rumbling formless low-end, Read's insane octopoidal blastbeat drumming that goes all over the fucking place, vomiting shrieks, layers of inhuman FX-splattered growls tripping through dimensions, total chaos. Ultra harsh, bleak, bestial scumblast in the tradition of Beherit and Blasphemy and early grindcore, with awesome, ridiculously chaotic hyperdistorted solos and pick sweeps slicing through a wall of corrosive psychedelic violence. Reminds me of what might happen if Anaal Nathrakh was fused with Fear Of God's 1st EP (which also appears in this week's list - get both of these discs for maximum skull crush. Awesome.

REVENGE Superion Command Destroy CD $6.98 Invocation Records

There's a lot of talk about "extremism" in metal, noise, and other left of center, aggressive underground music forms, but some bands are so out-of-control and bona fide ferocious that the word "extreme" just doesn't really do the music justice. Revenge is a perfect example, a Canadian outfit that includes members James Read (Conqueror, Axis Of Advance, Arkhon Infaustus) and Pete Helmkamp (of Angelcorpse, Order From Chaos, and weirdo industrial noise duo Terror Organ), and whose noisy (and I mean FUCKING NOISY) blackened "war metal" achieves a level of crazed violence that puts them on par with something akin to a combination of free-noise grinders Burmese, Watchmaker, and cult Canuck blacknoise blasters Blasphemy. We listed another Revenge CD, Victory Intolerance Mastery in the C-Blast webstore not too long ago, a savage blackened noiseblast attack that made the list for one of the most distorted, noisy black metal albums we've ever heard, EVER. Super fast and blown out and unbelieveably pissed off sounding, we thought that album kicked total ass and we've been trying to track down more Revenge since then. Didn't take too long, as we found a somewhat hard-to-find EP of theirs via Battle Kommand, the black/death metal label run by Blake from Nachtmystium. Battle Kommand had recently taken over the distribution for the label Invocation Records, which had re-issued the blazing Superion Command Destroy EP from Revenge, a merely eight minute-long disc that nevertheless contains two annihilating blasts of chaotic, hyperspeed black/grind/noise, sounding at times like an almost improvised noisecore freakout. Truly extreme. This CDEP is a re-issue of a long out-of-print 7" EP that was released on War Hammer Records a few years ago, and now presented in a cardboard wallet a la Troniks releases, and limited to 1000 copies. And from what Blake at Battle Kommand has told us, there's not a whole lot of these left.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Blood Division" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Superion Revenge" (excerpt)

REVEREND BIZARRE / MANNHAI Under The Sign Of The Wolf 7" EP $6.98 The Church Within
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Aww YEAH, two smokin' Finnish doom metal outfits each pay homage to a different Pentagram jam and the results are KILLER. Tribute records can be an iffy proposition but the two bands picked for this particular slab couldn't be better outfitted for the job. The a-side has Mannhai, who I hadn't heard of previously but some quick investigating turns up that the band is made up of a couple of ex-Amorphis dudes playing brutally bluesy stoner rock, and their rendition of Pentagram's mighty "Forever My Queen" is a titanic chugger, the central monster riff, bangover-inducing guitar harmonies and sleezy singing backed up by what sounds like a malfunctioning tape player jamming its motors. AWESOME. And it gets even better when you flip this mother onto the b-side, where legendary Finnish doomsters Reverend Bizarre unleash a cover of "Broken Vows", one of my fave Pentagram jams, and dontcha know that Reverend Bizarre just lay out there version supremely, beefed up with Albert Witchfinders distinctive vocals and wicked guitar harmonies. One of the final breaths from the Rev and it's almost bittersweet, seein' as how this split came out right around the same time as RB played their last show. Killer werewolf cover art, too.

RICHARD RAMIREZ / SKIN CRIME Pleasure, Commerce, And Disease CD $7.98 Troniks

Whoa, Richard Ramirez and Skin Crime? Collaborating together? Can we even withstand this? Surprisingly, the four tracks on Pleasure,Commerce,And Disease,while indeed unrelenting and crushing bouts of ultradistortion, become rather meditative once you allow the waves of fried speaker carnage to wash over you. Each track (all loosely connected in theme around medical care and hospitalization) differs in volume and attack, but all are equally dense, brutal waterfalls of thick cascading midrange augmented with subtle manipulations and creative use of stereo panning. And headphones reveal a universe of microscopic detail amidst the hellstorm. Dare we call this a "brutal drone" album? It's certainly much closer to a hypnotic whiteout than it is pure punishment. Either way, it's fucking great. Assembled and recorded through the mail between the two artists, this disc comes packaged in a patented PACrec wallet sleeve.

RICHE EN FRUITS compilation CD $11.98 Amanita

This hard-to-find compilation was released in the late 90's on Amanita Records to showcase the French noise-rock underground. What can we say? WE LOVE FRENCH NOISE ROCK. And this fifteen blast compilation gives it up. What you get with pretty much all of the bands is a weirder, stripped down, distinctly French approach to the Am Rep / NYC pigfuck sound, resulting in an even mixture of bruising, brutal riffage and utterly weird indie noise. Standouts include Fleur, with their majestic angelic choir over brutal hypno riffs and GODFLESH -heavy drum machines, building a massively heavy technoid metal dirge before ending in a fog of chant drones and clattering noises. Andy's Car Crash open the comp with "E 240", an awesome melodic noiserock chugger, equal parts CURE, shoegaze, and UNSANE-style howl. Zadig's minimal Helmet -esque crunch is blown apart by some Catherine Wheel flange storm. Also included is the skittery dark improv rock of Shut Up, the blown out aggression of Microsquane, Miam, Owun, Rogojine and Bianca, as well as Skrewed Ass' Tom Waits-on-quaaludes mess, the seething ambient/drone/no wave of Alma Fury, and the circular trance pop of Mo-e. Very cool.

RIGOR SARDONICOUS Apocalypsis Damnare CD $12.98 Paragon

Super cult, black-hole extreme doom that’s got Steve Moran from EVOKEN now amongst their reptilian ranks. Ultra slow and crushing and raw, this is actually a re-recorded, beefed up "new" version of the band’s 1999 self-released second album, Apocalypsis Damnare, with droning, lumbering, impossibly downtuned funeral doom riffs buried beneath pure blackened murk, with what sounds like the scratching of vinyl grooves hissing in the background, sputtering double-kick drums,and loud, abrasive trashcan-lid cymbal crashes punctuating the dirge. Add to that a fucking ridiculously bestial, super-low and warped zombie-lion-roar that oozes all over the tracks , and you get utterly fucked up, damaged, anti-social doom that will clear a party immediately. Mega slow death dirge, like WARHORSE meets Cause Of Death-era OBITUARY, and slowed down tp 20bpm. For dead-end grim doom fans only. If you dig EVOKEN, ESOTERIC, and WINTER, check it out. Enhanced CD features a bonus video.

RIGOR SARDONICOUS Principia Sardonica CD $12.98 Paragon

Principia Sardonica is the third full length of disturbed, weird apocalyptic dirge-doom from RIGOR SARDONICOUS, who explores similar subterranean murk as the likes of THERGOTHON, early SKEPTICISM, DISEMBOWELMENT, WINTER, etc., but even more raw and primitive and glacial, a monolithic droning sludgefeast like an unholy pairing of WARHORSE’s tar-covered psychsludge and the slow crushing torpor of early OBITUARY, with impossibly low , sub-human vocals, and bizarrely mixed cymbals and gongs that sound like someone banging on a trashcan. Weird, awesome, demonic doom!

RIGOR SARDONICUS Risus Ex Mortuus CD $12.98 Endless Desperation

More apocalyptic doom from Rigor Sardonicus, who have again re-recorded/re-released older 90's material, this time reduxing their out-of-print Risus Ex Mortuus album and including vinyl tracks, unreleased stuff, and a skullcrushing cover of Kiss' "God Of Thunder" !! Rigor Sardonicus' syrupy skrewed deathsludge is massively heavy, a weird and rumbling wall of downtuned guitar buzz and murky bass ozzing along to a spastic Boss DR-660 Dr. Rhythm drum machine, which occasionally unleashes bizarre trashcan-lid cymbal crashes, and with absurdly pitchshifted, gutteral gore vocals. Imagine the saurian death metal of Obituary or early Celtic Frost drowning in cough syrup, skrewed into a 10bpm dirge assault with speaker rattling amp drones and machinegun drum machine blastbeats that seem to make the music go even slower. This is seriously pitch black shit, and fans of suicidal doom like Symphony of Grief, Disembowelment, Winter, Theregothon, Skepticism, etc that need something even more downtuned and dirgey and skuzzy and bizarre, well, you're going to love RS. It's almost like a cross between the fungoid mutant sludge of Black Mayonnaise and Disembowelment's extreme ambient deathdoom. And their take on Kiss' "God Of Thunder" is seriously fucking destructive, that killer riff enlarged to Godzilla size proportions and sent lumbering across the wasteland, with those gurgling deathvomit vocals bubbling out the lyrics like a wicked case of GI distress. COmpletely fucking CRUSHING. In addition, this disc was released by a Russian label on a peculiar style of cd-r that has the band name imprinted on the playing side of the disc in Old English script. Pretty cool!

RIISTETERROR Taabajara Hardcore 7" EP $4.98 HCH Records

Members of RIISTETYT (Finland) and SICK TERROR (Brazil) pair up for hysteric hardcore in the Finnish tradition but with Finnish, English & Portuguese vocals! Also includes participation of ARMAGEDOM members. Old school Finnish d-beat with modern thrash flavor.

RITA, THE Bodies Bear Traces Of Carnal Violence CD $7.98 Troniks

THE RITA specialize in brutal, rough harsh noise that's heavily influenced by the black gloves and razorblades of Italian "Giallo" violence and cinema, and which plumbs extreme lower frequencies of bass crust. After a weekend of dosing on Argento's Opera and Soavi's Stagefright, this shit really hits the spot. The two half-hour long tracks that make up Bodies Bear Traces... (one of which is a collaboration with Texas sleaze-noise merchant Mania of TAINT ) are totally relentless blasts of low-frequency harsh noise and blown out ultra-distortion feedback. Headphones will reveal a cosmos of speaker-flaying grit and tubular feedback snarl among the blasting white noise. Obviously rooted in the extreme noise cassette culture, this has got to be one of the most horrific blow-out albums we've heard since Deathpile's G.R.. Actually, Bodies... becomes mesmerizing after a while, the low-end roar of distortion overload melting into a cascading wave of tectonic drone-noise. This full length follows shortrun CD releases on Self Abuse and Chondritic Sound and a handful of self released cassettes. Massive. Like most other PACrec releases, this comes in a printed wallet.

RITA, THE Thousands Of Dead Gods CD $7.98 Troniks

The Rita returns with another skeleton-collapsing mass of heavy, oceanic distortion, this time manifested from live recordings of sound captured from Great White Shark cage diving, and sculpted into an epic 59 minute piece. Bodies Bear Traces..., the last full length from this Canadian noise/tapesludge outfit, was a brutal blast of giallo-inspired, quasi-conceptual low-frequency harsh noise and blown feedback drone that revealed endless details of hallucinatory sound after we allowed the deafening distortion to wipe our consciousness clean after about five minutes. This material definitely has the same effect, the source material of the field recordings manipulated into an unrecognizeable and amorphous slab of charred n' melted electronic rumble and trance-inducing furnace roar. Totally cathartic heavy crunch waves packaged in a signature Troniks wallet sleeve.

ROADSAW / BLACKROCK The Boston Sherwood Tapes CD $6.98 Slow Ride Records

Back in stock! A killer EP featuring Boston’s ROADSAW and Nottingham’s BLACKROCK, with each band serving up two cuts (one original and one cover each) of heavy duty, 70’s hard-rockin stoner fuzz. ROADSAW (who have previously released stuff on Meteor City and Man’s Ruin) busts out a sludgy cover of the PIXIES classic "Where Is My Mind", and BLACKROCK gets knee deep in pure 70’s funk with a rendition of Brian Auger’s "Indian Ropeman". Righteous heavy rock that taps into the Black Sabbath/Bad Company vein, turns the distortion and gnarly swagger up to 11, and delivers massive riffage. ROADSAW’s heavy stoner rock version of the PIXIES is worth the purchase alone!

ROBE Trepanation CD-R $8.98 Outfall Channel

Recorded from 2002-2004, Robe's Trepanation is the sort of organic, crumbling drone we like to pipe into our craniums at maxmimum volume. The six tracks on this private-press CD-R crawl beneath the topsoil, feeling their way along assorted sub-frequencies using brittle tendrils of feedback and compressed distorted bass. It's a grim, earthen rattling that only at the very end begins to show signs of any sort of living pulse. We're not sure who or what is behind Robe, but this is killer stuff, like a dark, insectile mutant that has escaped from the guts of a buried Not Not Fun cassette. It sort of lurks near the vicinity of Luasa Raelon and Hive Mind style sludge electricty. Unbeleivably tactile packaging this time too, with the front of the jewel case holding a handmade Thai birdsnest paper insert that gives the package the look and feel of a gardener's Necronomicon.

ROBOT VS RABBIT Dos CD $11.98 Squirrelgirl

Trading The Witch For The Devil was the deliciously murky debut from Carolina noise-sludge coven Robot Vs Rabbit that delivered awesome mangled basement-doom riffage, crackling instrument-cable ambience, and a psychedelic circuit-bent sludginess that reminded me of a fucked up fusion of early Industrialists SPK and Factrix with grimy Skullflower/Earth dronecrush. The sweet goatheaded cover art and ambiguous occult imagery certainly didn't hurt either. I had picked that disc up from Mandragora, the label run by sitar-wizard and all-around psychedelic sludge hound Erik Amlee, and although Trading... was waaaay heavier than even the heaviest sludgefloat found on Amlee's Paradise Camp 23 CD-R's, the general vibe of busted amplifier drones and low-end primitive tape-loop creep felt right at home amongst the more bonged-out fare on Mandragora. Since then, however, Robot Vs Rabbit has come up with a new album, Dos, which according to the band seems to be loosely inspired by the cold war-era space race, the Kennedy assassination, and the death of the "American Dream" in the 1960's. I haven't been able to sort out exactly how the music here ties in with all of that, since the album is all instrumental, but it certainly summons some dark clouds and weird coded threats. And they've gotten even heavier, REALLY heavy as a matter of fact.
Dos opens with sound of seriously heavy ambient powerchord drone and what might be drumbeats processed and played backwards, and then seques into the low-fi feedback/drone dirge of "Then The March Began", followed by more feedback clouds gathering around the shuffling improvised rock of "Now I Know Which Road". The following tracks continue to evoke tension-filled vibes through loose drone-rock jamming, some sinister uses of manipulated samples and loops, and tons of feedback. The middle of the album is where Robot Vs Rabbit drop in the heavy sludge, starting with the rumbling guitar tectonics and erratic drumming of "Crownless And Cloven" and "Hands Of Conjuration"; the crushing looped feedback drone and gorgeous disintegrating melodic roar of "Erecting A Fifth Column", which sounds like Growing passing through a black hole; and the Melvins/Earth dronemetal fusion of "The Endless Ocean". More heaviness ensues, as well as ghoulish dronescapes creeping out of the cellar, more paranoid tape-collages, and a heavy air of unrest and gloom hanging over the band's live basement jams. It's like they've turned into this creepy, metallic mixture of the Dead C, Throbbing Gristle, Earth, and Melvins, with some UK noise rock like Skullflower, Splintered, and later Ramleh mixed in, heavy and psychedelic, metallic and formless. The disc comes in a glossy black digisleeve illustrated with weird cover art of a squirrel and a rabbit. Recommended!

ROBOT VS. RABBIT Trading The Witch For The Devil CD $11.98 Mandragora

The sole full length from long-gone North Carolina amplifier thugs Robot Vs. Rabbit, a massive 56 minute blowout of satanic feedback deathdrone and mangled occult dirge riffage that takes the heaviest powerdrones of Sunn O))), Skullflower, and Boris, dunks them in black oil, and runs it through the industrial creep of Throbbing Gristle, Factrix, or SPK. These are some of the murkiest speaker tones to hit our ears, total black basement amp chant and low-end feedback stroke that washes over you like a dead tide, but propelled sideways by chattering, smoking tape loops and obscured Japanese traditional melodies. Yep, Trading The Witch For The Devil is a high point in evil primitive psychedelic sludge, and the more we bomb our skulls with this album, the more we realize that this is like a kosmiche black-mass take on the missing link between the Midwestern noise skulk heralded by the likes of Wolf Eyes, Universal Indians, Hair Police, Gravitar... etc., Skullflower at their most brutal, the eeevil tarpit hate of Southern Lord's most extreme artists (Sunn O))), Khanate, etc), and the dense walls of sound of Soundtracks era SWANS. This concept will no doubt get many of you hot n' bothered, as it well should. This is definitely our favorite of the recent stack of Mandragora releases we just landed our mitts on, psychedelic and metallic, heavy as fuck but totally amorphous and otherwordly and evil.

ROMANTIC GORILLA s/t CD $12.98 Sound Pollution

An oft-overlooked but totally brain scrambling slice of quirky lunatic thrashcore from Tokyo, Romantic Gorilla followed up their amazing split with fastcore nutzoids Spazz with this 1998 mini-album on Sound Pollution. Featuring a seriously insane sounding female singer named Gori, Romantic Gorilla belt out 19 songs that mostly run under a minute, combining hysterically fucked-up lyrics ("I gorillaman! My dream is growing long long hair!", for example), Gori's acrobatic growl/scream, a ripping fast-paced hybrid of thrash metal and meth-fueled hardcore punk, blasts of pop punk worked in alongside covers of the "Super Mario" game theme, cutesy childlike imagery a la Melt Banana, visceral production tricks that push the midrange of the recording way up in certain spots to rattle yer skull around. Thrashcore, Japanese or otherwise, does NOT get much more ripping than this - definitely one of the best extreme hardcore discs to come outta the last 90's HC/powerviolence explosion. Features a dope album cover from the legendary Wes Benscoter (Slayer, Venom, etc.).

ROSETTA The Galilean Satellites 2xCD $16.98 Translation Loss

Rosetta present a more droneological take on post-NEUROSIS sludge metal with this double-disc set that will definitely appeal to fans of all things art-metal and heavy post-rock, a la Isis, Pelican, Mouth Of The Architect, Cult Of Luna, etc etc. The first disc bears five tracks of epic length metallic crush, with huge majestic riffage and lumbering rhythms, very much in the vein of mid-90's Neurosis with strained, tortured vocals, but also very space-rocky and droning, with lots of swirling electronic miasma. The second disc is actually meant to be played simultaneously with the first, riffing off of the original Times Of Grace Neurosis/Tribes Of Neurot concept....together, the resulting mass is a dense and majestic space-metal fog, a huge wall of beautiful crushing hooks and tension building riffage, at times reminiscent of a cosmic Mastodon-meets-Hawkwind-meets Isis battle, with cleverly mixed voices and drones floating amongst the glorious metallic weight and stretched out fields of starlit feedback. Excellent. By itself, the second disc is a killer installment of Troum/Sunn O))) style post-industrial axe drone, quietly haunting, a minimalist shimmering wave surging over the five long pieces. The post-metal connection is made complete with some as-always terrific vector chaos from package designer Aaron Turner from Hydra Head/Isis territory.

ROSETTA / BALBOA Project Mercury CD $13.98 Level Plane

Besides the fact that both Rosetta and Balboa are based in the Philly area and are closely aligned with each other, the bands also share a deeper sonic aesthetic that makes this split CD work surprisingly well, using rich textures and tension-building dynamics to create some intensely moody heaviness transmitted from the realms of post-hardcore thought. Presented in an attractive case with a clean, streamlined design and lots of stark imagery and imaginative typography laid out against a metallic silver finish, Project Mercury presents three new songs from Balboa and two from Rosetta, as well as the title track which is an instrumental collaboration between members of both bands. Balboa's frantic, progressive hardcore starts things out with the ringing delayed chords and sung-spoke anti-war dissent of "Primitive Accumulation", surrounded with a spacey, almost Western aura a la Earth's Hex or Old Man Gloom, but then suddenly exploding into brutal, hyperfast hardcore. "Kaddish" stretches out even further, mixing crushing Snapcase-esque core with flowing passages of jangly, emotive post-rock and hypnotic drumming, and "Planet Of Slums" features an awesome haunting melodic hook within a storm of explosive chunky hardcore, melancholy space guitars soaring on wings of digital delay. Previous Balboa stuff that I've heard has been pretty cool, but these three songs are killer, almost like a rougher, Americanized version of Envy with more meandering instrumental rock parts.
Rosetta are next, and these two tracks are the first new recordings from the band that I've heard since their awesome double-disc set The Galilean Satellites. Both of their tracks here ("TMA-1" and "Clavius") pursue the droneologic space metal of their debut even further, each song a gradually expanding sculpture of gorgeous, delay-soaked ambience and heartrending guitar melodies sending tracer arcs through the mist of shimmering feedback harmonies and obfuscated samples and electronics, with massive distorted metal riffs surging up. Huge and sprawling and devestatingly heavy, a crushing ambient stargaze that's equal parts Disintegration and Explosions In The Sky and Neurosis. Rosetta are one of the best bands working with these kinds of cosmic metal blooms, with an expert hand at crafting dense, memorable melodies on par with Year Of No Light, Cult Of Luna and Mouth Of The Architect. The album then climaxes with "Project Mercury", a triumphant 9 minute instrumental that builds a series of beautiful, wistful melodies out of breaking waves of feedback crashing over manipulated samples, dark melodic guitar interplay, walls of monolithic disotortion and some heavy dual-drummer action; it's an amazingly beautiful and crushing piece of music.

ROTGUTS Live AT Wyatts 1/5/01 CD-R $4.98 MT6 Records

This DIY live disc from Baltimore improve-junk-punk-psychedelia label MT6 features 18 songs of fried out, improvised funk punk / space jam / free-weirdo-pop live action from these Baltimore folks. Recorded live at the now-defunct Wyatts in Fells Point, Baltimore. 2 bassists, drums, keyboards, and essentially nonsensical singing. Packaged in slim line jewel case with green Xerox inserts. Only 70 copies made.

RTX Western Xterminator CD $14.98 Drag City

Let me preface this with an admission: I fucking love RATT. Which might explain, at least in part, why RTX's Western Xterminator has become one of my contenders for album of the year since this came in a few weeks ago, and is our featured release for this week (even though the album came out back in March). More on the RATT connection in a moment. Firstly, if you haven't picked up on it yet, RTX is the current band of Jennifer Herrema, who, along with Neil Hagerty, made up 90's noise rockers Royal Trux. A couple of years after the breakup of RT, Herrema returned with a new lineup and formed RTX, which took the noisy, overmodulated rock of Trux's Accelerator and played it harder and rougher. The band released their debut Transmaniacon back in 2004, but it's their 2007 followup that has me pretty much losing my shit. Although the album opener and title track tricks you with a witchy psychedelic folk tune replete with trippy guitar shred and flutes, the tone is set with Balls To Pass, which kicks off with an awesome glam metal riff that nearly had me scissor kicking right out of my second-story window. After that, it's on: Western Xterminator tears through 40 minutes of what I can only describe as hallucinogenic cock-rock, with some of the sickest hard rock riffs of the eon, and yep, much of this reminds me a hell of a lot of RATT. Part of it is Herrema's mildly distorted vocal sneer, which amazingly sounds like a drugged-up Stephen Pearcy more than just a little. But it's the KILLER pop-metal riffs that really remind of the LA hair metallers, just about every song is loaded with unstoppable hooks and sleazy fist-pumping riffage, but it's all way more distorted and noisier and just generally fucked up, Herrema's trippy vox, convoluted time changes, and the weirdo noises that pop up all over the place. They even dip into some warped, psychedelic death metal chug with "Wo-Wo Din", and the closer "Rat Will Kill" takes a Sunset Strip-approved stomper and turns into an eight minute psych-prog workout. 100% BADASS.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Western Xterminator" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Black Bananas" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Balls To Pass" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Wo-Wo Din" (excerpt)

RUBES, THE Hokum CD $11.98 Underdogma

Amazingly eclectic stoner rock that you wouldn't expect from a band called The Rubes. At least we didn't. And we certainly weren't expecting this to be as good as it is. Musically, this power trio breaks out huge,fuzzed out stoner and 70's arena rock riffs, super bluesy, sometimes REALLY heavy, and always catchy, frequently slowing down into jazzy interludes, acoustic strumming with flutes, and even launching into some unexpected brutal thrash metal chugging, all delivered with high-caliber precision musicianship that you just dont normally hear from bands in this scene. But the thing that really makes The Rubes stand out are the vocals from lead singer Mace, who has one of the most soulful voices we have ever heard from the stoner rock scene, more soulful than Pete Stahl (Goatsnake) for chrissake's. Mace's pipes belt it out like a cross between Ty Tabor of Kings X and Steve Marriot from Humble Pie. Incredibly expressive, we were blown away. There are also some terrific multi-part harmonies, and even some death metal growling on some of the heavier parts!The Rubes have created a killer album, rooted in 70's hard rockin',Sabbath strength sludginess,ferocious guitar playing,and that utterly soulful delivery, but absolutely perfect for anyone tired of all of the stoner/heavy rock cliches that plagues the post-Kyuss scene. Highly recommended for fans of progressive stoner/doom rock like The Hidden Hand,Goatsnake,Mammoth Volume and U.S. doomsters Witch Mountain.And dig that crushing closing track, "The Ballad Of Sisyphus MacDuff",the perfect combination of The Hidden Hand/Obsessed -style doom riffing and mondo soul vocals!

RUE self-titled CD $11.98 Shifty

Rue's killer debut from a few years back is showing up on our shelves for the 1st time - I don't really have a good reason as to why we didn't stock it before, but if yer a junkie for the whole Shifty Records spectrum of gnarly, hardcore-influenced sludge metal and gooey slomo violence, then this'll be right up yer alley if you haven't been turned onto Rue as of yet. Rue is also another band made up of multiple members of C-Blast faves Fistula, specifically Corey and Bahb, who play drums and bass respectively on Rue's debut. This is a whole 'nother beast though - while Rue does delve into some supremely sludgy and slow crawls through the muck that will plaster huge grins across the mugs of any discerning sludgecore freak, these guys are generally a more fast-paced and swingin' affair, each song busting out brutal mid-paced riffage schooled on Celtic Frost and Black Flag's My War, blisteringly pissed off sludgepunk assaults laced with bonecrushing breakdowns, unexpected time changes and multiple singers spewing bloodcurdling roars and ripped-throat shrieks. Bludgeoning heavy, with an abundance of killer riffage (some of which almost has a 70's classic rock vibe, albeit massively distorted and downtuned), but they also keep things interesting when singer Jeff Fahl occasionally breaks off into slurred melodic singing that remind me a little of Dax Riggs from Acid Bath, which gives Rue a melodic edge that I wasn't expecting the first time I heard this. Rue inhabit a sightly rockier, more high-energy corner of the sludgecore sound, but this is gonna appeal to anyone into sludgy, doomy, crusty heaviness like Acid Bath, Eyehategod, Cavity, Bongzilla, Sofa King Killer, Rwake, Mistress, and Iron Monkey. Features more of Scott Stearn's killer satano-metal scrawl art too, which I can never get enough of.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Shut Your Mouth" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Stonersaurus" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Escapist" (excerpt)

RUHR HUNTER Ritual Before The Hunt CD $12.98 Glass Throat

RUHR HUNTER'S first full length album explores the depths of dark minimalist / drone structure, fused with rich ambient soundscapes. An apocalyptic journey through somber moods that swell without warning into abrasive, violent sound.

RUHR HUNTER Torn Of This CD $12.98 Glass Throat

Named after the case studies of the German serial killer Joachim Kroll, dubbed the "Ruhr Hunter" by authorities after the Ruhr River where his crimes were concentrated, blackened ambient/drone outfit RUHR HUNTER continues to explore transgressive themes and the dark fate of humanity through rich instrumentation and epic drones (as powerful as Lustmord and Yen Pox’s best music) laced with extended song fragments utilizing acoustic guitars, bells, fragile piano melodies, and handcrafted string instruments. Excellent neo-pagan droneworks from one of the more evocative artists in the field. Drone composer Chet W. Scott has blossomed with his most passionate and personal collection of melancholia to date. "Torn of This" RUHR HUNTER'S sophomore solo release, brings a whole new set of dynamics to the soundscape table.Featuring nine beautifully flowing and timeless drone compositions, with a minimalist sound design, traditional folk elements and contemporary acoustical instrumentation. RUHR HUNTER'S Torn of This provides not only another audible journey for the listener to experience, but an absolute look into the composer's personal history, inspired through childhood emotions and experiences, geographical relations and the simple spirit of being. An evocative, sonic portrait of an essence, it's past and it's future.

RUHR HUNTER / GRUNTSPLATTER split CD $11.98 Glass Throat

Featuring 35min. of material each from these two projects... RUHR HUNTER offers a trance induced flow of desolate, improvised drone soundscapes and belligerent experimentation... While GRUNTSPLATTER unites ultra dense atmospheres of sullen noise ambient, with sonic sounds so heavy, gravity could not compare.

RUINS OF BEVERAST Unlock The Shrine CD $12.98 Battle Kommand

Another amazing descent into black metal psychedelia, the 2004 album Unlock The Shrine (Reliquary Of The White Abyss) was only just recently reissued as a domestic release through Battle Kommand, the progressively-minded black/death metal label operated by Blake Judd of Nachtmystium. Ruins Of Beverast is the solo project of former drummer for Nagelfar (the German one), Alexander von Meilenwald. I'm not familiar with his former band yet, but I love this album, a mysterious, melancholy black metal assault, doomy and atmospheric, contrasting the occasional blast of total blazing black metal with dirgey, hypnotic midtempo buzz and monstrously slow doom, all cloaked in blackness and layers of gauzy ambience and navigated by von Meilenwald’s effects-glazed death rasp. Much of Unlock The Shrines surreal atmosphere is created by the careful collaging of processed film samples, most of which are impossible to identify, which float wraithlike over the Burzumic riffage and churning drumming, accompanied by thick woozy smears of keyboards and tolling bells, cheering crowds and cartoony synthesizers, blasting synthetic horns, angelic female choirs that appear beneath the churning guitars, and weird industrial loops. Soundtrack recordings of water dripping in dank cellars, deep breathing, and ominous ambient ooze appear and suddenly turn the album into a satanic radio play that eventually evolves into an abstract doom metal dirge. It's all kind of symphonic and cinematic with the way that von Meilenwald has carefully assembled all of these layers of fuzzy riffs and offkilter rhythms and samples, with all kinds of additional weird little sonic events and impossibly catchy guitar melodies appearing throughout the songs. Kinda reminds me of a cross between Leviathan, some fucked up version of Cold Meat Industries death industrial, and Blut Aus Nord's The Work Which Transforms God, fierce and pounding and yet intensely dreamlike.
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Clockhand's Groaning Circles" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Summer Decapitation Ritual" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Mine" (excerpt)

RUNE End Of Nothing (Special Edition) CD $11.98 Willowtip

Far and away one of 2003's best albums. Unfortunately, Rune broke up in 2004 about a year after the end of nothing's initial release. This special edition version of the end of nothing contains a bonus full live set which includes the last 2 songs Rune had written (two brand new unreleased songs). The live set was mastered by scott hull and comes from a show on 4.29.04 in cleveland, oh where rune played the following tracks 1. worship with silence (unreleased, new) 2. opium for my soul 3. by the errors we exceed (unreleased, new) 4. this sorrow. End Of Nothing is the band's apex, delivering a dark, cerebral brand of metal that mixes elements of doom/sludge, post-rock, prog, grindcore, and death metal to create a truly captivating listening experience. A perfect mix of the diabolical presence of Morbid Angel with the spacey sludge of recent Neurosis. Sounds like weird mix, maybe, but Rune were really mining a unique style of complex, intricate, death/grind-influenced post-rock (or post-rock/Neurosis informed death metal...) before their unfortunate disbanding. Definitely recommended.

RUNE untitled CD $4.98 Crucial Blast
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

The debut release from Dayton, Ohio's RUNE features 3 songs of brutal, shred-tastic tech-grind-sludge-death, equal parts CRYPTOPSY, CORRUPTED, and DISCORDANCE AXIS ! Formed (sorta) out of the remains of 23RD CHAPTER, with a guy from TWELVE TRIBES , RUNE lays down some crushing complex whirlwind blast that would win them fans and subsequent releases on Relapse and Willowtip Records. RUNE disbanded about a year or so ago, but members reconfigured themselves as the post-rock / epic metal heavyweight outfit MOUTH OF THE ARCHITECT.
This CDEP had been deleted from the catalog and has been out of print since last year, but we just received a VERY small quantity of these from an old distributor, so here's your chance if you missed out on this explosive debut.

RUSTED SHUT Rehab CD $14.98 Emperor Jones

ULTRA DEVESTATING, ultra nihilistic repetitive noise-metal from Texas that ranks as one of the heaviest goddamn albums we own ! Rusted Shut's Rehab was originally released as a limited CD-R on 2003 and is now re-issued by Emperor Jones, with a bonus batch of destroyed live jams. On the surface, these guys are situated amongst the sludgy free-improv-noise-rock of bands like Gravitar, High Rise, and other in-the-red chaos squads, with guitars spewing feedback and catchy rock forms obliterated by thick gobs of noise...but where those sorts of bands bring form from chaos and get exploratory, Rusted Shut's songs take a simple dirge riff, and make it so unbelieveably heavy and distorted that the powerchords seem to crumble as they crawl out of their amps, and simply crush your fucking skull in with insanely heavy napalm sludge destruction...imagine an Eyehategod/Lightning Bolt pod fusion in mid-tempo mode, locking in one one totally killer destructo riff, and just crushing it through a wall of amplifiers cranked to 12 and set on fire, with a really pissed off, misanthropic singer. Jesus, these songs are heavy enough to border on metalcore, but this is pure, noisy sludge rock, just quite possibly the heaviest, noisiest sludge rock band on the planet ! It's hard to beleive these guys have been at it since 1986. Apparently, their live show is infamously entertaining, with lots of arguing, backhands, kicking...bandleader Don Walsh, a former oil rig worker, belts out lines like "I never asked to be born / I wish I would fuckin' dieM" and "Do you like this life / Do you like to slice?" A bone crushing avalanche of rocking scorn, and an absolute must-have for fans of Brainbombs, Geisha, Humanasaur, Lightning Bolt, Skullflower, and the heaviest noise rock / scuzz metal ever !!!

RUST IONICS Moving/Pictures LP $10.98 Colour Sounds Recordings

Following a stream of craftily packaged CD-R releases from his various other free/psych/improv projects (La Otracina, Owl Sounds Exploding Galaxy, Blizzards, etc), Colour Sounds operator and freak-out drummer extraordinaire Adam Kriney opts to get LOUD with this killer LP from the free-improv/grind/jazz brut ensemble that has Kriney pillaging his drumkit alongside Dual members Ed Chang (alto sax) and Doug Theriault (guitars). Totally blinding power-improv workouts with Chang's extended sax eruptions spitting out a volley of white-hot squeaks and squeals like machine sparks over a din of crashing, blastbeating drumming and textured guitar noise. The trio frequent puts on the brakes and wraps themselves around some mesmerizing free-jazz, but most of Moving/Pictures is intense, insane primal skronk conjured from the same fires that birthed the likes of Last Exit, Painkiller, Ruins, Borbetomagus, and Peter Brotzmann's heavier material, and meant to be played LOUD. Presented on transparent blue vinyl in a clear plastic sleeve with a plastic sticker inscribed with the band logo and minimal album credits, in a limited edition of 311 copies.

RWAKE If You Walk Before You Crawl You Crawl Before You Die CD $13.98 At A Loss

The Arkansas psych-sludge metal tribe resurfaces with this full length that again uses two lead singers for maximum torn-throat shriekage and psychotic bellowing over a skyblackening twin guitar assault that sends amazing harmonies a la Crowbar into the stratosphere before falling into sinister detuned sludgecore crush. The crusty, swampy vibes are further enhanced with creepy Moog and sampler electronics, taking this into an evolved dissonance somewhere between the Louisiana dirge of Eyehategod and Crowbar, and the epic might of Neurosis. We loved their Hell Is A Door To The Sun album from a couple of years ago, and this is even heavier, more complex, with crushing production from Sanford Parker of Minsk (who has produced recent albums from Unearthly Trance and Pelican), and a more pronounced, tighter dual-axe prowess that reminds us of a swampier, druggier Mastodon, more proggy than doomy, with occasional acoustic guitar flourishes and majestic riffage.

RYKE Resuscitation CD $13.98 Blossoming Noise

A collection of recorded work from the collaborative duo of Kazumoto Endo, the legendary Japanese noise artist whose Killer Bug material still stands as some of the more ferocious harsh noise of the 90's, and Randy Yau, the Calfornia-based artist whose sound designs are focused on his "action-concrete" approach which is usually centered on amplified recordings of areas of his body put under serious duress. Together, these guys have created what they call "harsh spastic action concrete", with Endo providing quick, violent bursts of harsh electronic noise that collide with Yau's vicious vocal noises and sounds. The noise elements are crushing, Endo totally at the top of his game here as he spews savage high-frequency feedback, brutal blocks of oscillating distortion, grinding rhythm loops, and near-gabba levels of percussive blast at top speed, fragments of electronic shrapnel cut up and cast back together against spaces of total silence. But Randy Yau's improvised throat noises really push this out into a realm of pure physicality that we're not used to hearing in harsh noise; his throat emits a flood of mewling, gasping noises, or gagging, choking sounds that litterally had us feeling pretty queasy. At times it actually sounds like we're hearing him vomit in the middle of a ricocheting assault of electronic collage blast; elsewhere, Yau retches in a raspy, maniacal croak a stream of unintelligible gibberish that makes yer skin crawl, and which grindcore vocalists the world over would kill to possess. Brutal. Obviously, fans of Kazumoto Endo and Killer Bug are going to groove on his presence here, but this would additionally be right up yer alley if you are a fan of anything from the far, far out fringes of noisecore, Gerogerigegege, and Dave Phillip's grueling concrete recordings. This disc consists of material created between 1998 and 2006, comes in a digipack case, and is limited to 360 copies.

MP3 SAMPLE: "III" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "IX" (excerpt)

RZEZNIA Mathematical Grind CD $9.98 SelfMadeGod

11 fast blistering songs of unrelenting grind blastcore brutality from Poland. Includes Brujeria "La Migra" cover song and "Zrec" demo tape as a bonus. Comparisons? Think Assuck mixed with Fear Of God! Straight up machinegun blast with barbedwire production values. Most of the inlay and songs are screamed in Polish, there is a few in English though. A solid mix of vicious rhythms and blasting speed, low growls and sick midrange screams, short songs that cut to the chase without fucking around (most in less than a minute), etc.