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One of two terrific new albums of macabre black ambience from the Cyclic Law label (the other being the debut Havan disc from members of Funerary Call and Amber Asylum that's featured elsewhere on this weeks new arrivals list), Sigillum Diaboli is the utterly bewitching second album from Russian artist Alina Antonova's solo project Lamia Vox, crafted out of some of my favorite sounds: the blackest strains of ritualistic ambient music, the darkest kosmische synthscapes, and the long, malevolent shadow of the Cold Meat Industries label can all be heard threaded through Lamia Vox's music as she moves through these nine evocative tracks.
The disc opens up in a wash of gorgeous orchestral synths and vast choral voices on the track "Born Of The Abyss", ascending into a majestic flood of white hot light only to fall back into the depths amid waves of grainy distortion. But it's with the second track "Lapis Occultis" that things really get going, the beginning of the track unfolding into gorgeously grim drones and haunting female keening, a little reminiscent of Dead Can Dance at their most desolate; throughout the whole album, Antonova's understated vocals often appear as a hushed whisper lurking beneath the Walpurgisnacht drums and droning strings. And then the rumble of kettledrums-drums crashes in, thunderous percussion rising the waves of cinematic synthesizers and swells of heavy, distorted drone. As the drums are joined by more layered percussive sounds and skittering rhythms, the music grows more ominous and powerful as those booming ritualistic rhythms reverberate through the depths. Elsewhere, Lamia Vox drifts through deserted graveyards and catacombs lined with human bone on "At The Crossroads Of The Worlds", blending ominous horns and deep resonant strings with distant death-rattles and more of those hypnotic tribal rhythms echoing through underground burial chambers. There's the buzzing, trance-inducing darkness of "Witches Night" and the liturgical choral majesty of "Enemy Of Heaven", whose howling witch-choirs are joined with harsh martial rhythms, and the stentorian synths that take shape on the title track transform into blasting war-horns. Other tracks feature cosmic nightscapes of swirling proggy keyboards and glistening electronics, and you can easily imagine Lamia Vox's music used for some apocalyptic film soundtrack.
Lamia Vox's music might be a direct descendant of the ghostly witch-ambience of early 90s Cold Meat outfits like Aghast and the graveyard ululations of Zero Kama and Hexentanz, but Antonova updates that sound with a modern sound-design sensibility that gives this a huge, cinematic feel. I've been listening to this disc non-stop lately, and highly recommend it to anyone who's equally into the sounds of Elend, Tangerine Dream, Goblin's Suspiria and Aghast's Hexerei Im Zwielicht Der Finsternis.
Comes in digipack packaging.
Track Samples:
Sample : Sigillum Diaboli
Sample : Lapis Occultus
Sample : Enemy Of Heaven
Sample : At The Crossroads Of The Worlds

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Since forming late in the latter half of the past decade, the California-based extreme noise outfit Actuary has been steadily cranking out a stream of split releases that saw them sharing wax (or other petroleum-based substances) with everyone from Merzbow, Bastard Noise and Gnaw Their Tongues side-project Aderlating to cult underground noise spewers like Winters In Osaka, Bacteria Cult, Juhyo and Fetus Eaters. Keeping up with their prolific output has been a daunting task, but also a rewarding one, as Actuary has been pretty consistent in quality, offering epic-length blasts of abstract electronic chaos, extreme psychedelic circuit-fuckery and monstrous synth abuse with each new release that are primed for some serious sonic skull-melt.
On their first real full-length Cd 'The Reality Is, The Dream Is Dead', Actuary returns to present us with four new tracks of intense noise that covers all of the different aspects of their sound. The opener 'Spiritual Armageddon' sends spasms of squelchy electronic carnage through a massive rumbling dronescape, evoking visions of high-end robotics in the throes of mass suicide in the bowels of some subterranean forge, interspersing the blasts of crazed glitchery and hyper-speed tape-vomit with passages of dark, reverberating factory ambience. 'Heat Of Eternal Punishment' blends together scraping metallic tones and textures with more of that violently spastic sine wave manipulation and sputtering distortion, later shifting into fields of fearsome industrial soundscaping and layered, processed samples that ratchet up the panic level to nearly unbearable heights. Corrosive buzz saw drones flutter and fluctuate across the 'Pool Of Perpetual Torment', building into crushing waves of percussive industrial pummel, malfunctioning engine roar and mangled electronics. And on the final track 'Baptized In Flames', the band works up a smoldering, apocalyptic noisescape infested with the sounds of clanking metal chains, pulsating distorted synths, and the howling of mutant cetaceans, and by the end of the album has transformed into something resembling an entire megalopolis being consumed in a hell of nuclear fire.
The malevolent, psychedelic electronics that Actuary exudes across 'Reality' takes the sort of brutal cyborg chaos found in the likes of Bastard Noise and Government Alpha, and drenches it in a heavy coating of dextromethorphan delirium, making for some of their heaviest noise so far. Released in a limited, hand-numbered edition of two hundred copies as part of the 'Crucial Blaze' series, 'The Reality Is The Dream Is Dead' also features a thirty-two page art zine assembled by the band, filled with strange, surrealistic artwork from members of the band as well as contributions from FetusK, Mories (Gnaw Their Tongues), Chris Dodge (Spazz), Jay Randall (Agoraphobic Nosebleed) and more...
Track Samples:
Sample : Spiritual Armageddon
Sample : Baptized In Flames
Sample : Pool Of Perpetual Torment

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Recently repressed by the Armageddon folks, and back in stock...
Obey was the first Brainbombs album I had ever heard, my introduction to their bad-news garage thuggery...the longstanding obsession that I've had with this band all started here. Obey was previously released through the label Releasing Eskimo but went out of print several years ago, and has now been reissued by the good folks over at Armageddon with slightly different packaging. Every one of Brainbombs albums is a brutal, murderous slab of misanthropic hatred and depravity, but Obey seems to top 'em all as the clearer production here allows you to hear all of the over the top, seriously disturbing rants that tumble out of the singers mouth. The disc opens with a few moments of snappy cheesbag game show muzak, then mashes you across the grill with "Kill Them All" as the band enters among wailing feedback and a noxious plodding sludge-punk riff as the singer drunkenly states "if you've got the power, then use it an kill them all...", lurching into their trademark brand of brain-damaged noisy garage scumrock. It's simple but lethal, sludgey out-of-tune riffs repeating over and over, that banged up trumpet blaring some warped jazz over it, pummeling neanderthal drumming, every song a staggering hypnotic crawl through hideous, psychotic depictions of rape and murder and dismemberment...the "lyrics" are delivered in a heavy Swedish accent, more spoken than sung, a crazed murderous scumfuck outlining his crimes and fantasies through songs like "Die You Fuck", "Lipstick On My Dick", "Anal Desire", "Fuckmeat", extreme fucked-up litanies of misogynistic and misanthropic violence. The sludgey riffage of the Melvins dragged through the skuzzy stomp of the Stooges Funhouse and set to repeat, the music becoming more and more horrifying and hypnotic as the band hammers the riff into the ground and the singer becomes more unhinged...intense stuff. The whole vibe here is similiar to the transgressive meltdowns of Whitehouse, though to my ears Brainbombs are far more creepy and disturbing. This new reissue has pretty much the same artwork and layout, except now the artwork is all black-on-black instead of the black and white artwork of the original.
Track Samples:
Sample : Die You Fuck
Sample : Fuckmeat
Sample : Kill Them All

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Originally released on the French label Polly Maggoo back in 2007 as a double Cd (now long sold out), this formally-untitled collection of early sonic scum-assaults from these Swedish fiends is available once again, this time via the Armageddon Label who also brought us the most current edition of the 'bombs classic Obey, presented as a double Lp set limited to five hundred copies. An essential collection for anyone into the murderous punk-sludge that this outfit has been slinging for the past two decades; here's my old write-up of the original Cd release:
At long last, the collection of out of print Brainbombs singles and EPs that I've been jonesing for ever since I first heard their scumfuck masterpeice Obey! Actually, this is the Singles Collection II CD that was just released by the French label Polly Magoo, the followup to the first Brainbombs singles CD that is currently out of print. This is an equally essential anthology CD for any fans of these notorious Swedish noise punkers, gathering five different singles from 1998 through 2007 along with four never-before-released live jams from 1993. If you haven't already joined the cult, you gotta check them out if you're even remotely into the current skuzz-punk sounds of Clockcleaner, Violent Students, Homostupids, Burmese, and that ilk. Seriously. Aside from maybe Flipper, Brainbombs are the primo figureheads for violent, antisocial dirge. Brainbombs formed in 1987 in Hudiksvall, Sweden and spent the next two decades spreading their terminally reprobate, heavy-as-hell sludge punk, each of their songs usually consisting of just one monstrous riff that the band plays over and over, hammering it into the ground while their singer spews all manner of psychopathic, sexually transgressive ranting over the band's radioactive Stooges trudge in a deadpan sing-speak that sounds pretty funny at first, until you actually make out what he's saying and realize that this is pretty fucking deranged. And the music is so heavy, the riffs slow and sludgy and just evil sounding, with sinister trumpet blowing bleating over top, sending vile brass notes drifting over their droning, hypnotic noise rock, everything recorded raw and low fi and totally in the red, every instrument glazed in distortion, the drumming locking into a propulsive motorik beat. Utterly crushing genius, and one of the most crucial noise rock bands on the planet. This anthology focuses on the Brainbomb's later years, and includes the Macht (Gun couRt singles SEries) 7" from 1998, the Stigma Of The Ripper / Street Cleaner 7" on Tumult from 2003, The Grinder / Mommy Said 7" on Ken Rock from 2004, the I Need Speed 7" on Big Brothel from 2006, the Stinking Memory / Insects 7" on Anthem, and the live recordings of "Stacy", "Tired And Bloody", "Danny Was A Streetwhore", and "Urge To Kill" that were recorded in Oslo, Norway in 1993, all perfectly gnarly and noisy and raging.
Comes on black vinyl, and includes a double sided insert that includes the brief liner notes written by The Lamp's Monty Buckles that also appeared in the Cd version. Highly recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Danny Was a Streetwhore
Sample : Stigma of the Ripper
Sample : Stinking Memory

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I've seen a number of bands pay homage to the ancient 8-track cartridge over the past decade, from the Melvins and HNW outfit Burial Ground to Locrian and Drop Dead. Pioneering grindcore band Brutal Truth is the latest to offer their music in this chunky, antiquated format, with this super-limited 8-Track edition of their latest album End Time, and the geek in me finds this thing extremely cool-looking. Here's my old write-up of the original album release:
These pioneering grindlords are one of extreme metal's most unapologetically experimental bands, and since getting back together after a long hiatus in 2009, they've been producing harsh, noise-laced blast violence that's every bit as confrontational and edgy as their classic 90's output. That by itself is why I've been such a fan of Brutal Truth over the years, but I've also always appreciated their fatalist worldview that doesn't bother itself too much with proposing a bunch of anarchist platitudes, instead laying out the message loud and clear: we're fucked, and we're at this very moment in the throes of that the BY guys have long referred to as our "slow motion apocalypse". Not the cheeriest thought for anyone who turns to grindcore for a lil' bit of cathartic fun, but that's hardly why I listen to this stuff. Brutal Truth's latest shows that there still isn't a dull edge to be found on these grind vets, as End Time backs up it's eschatological visions with a crushing onslaught of experimental noise, brutal grindpunk, industrial heaviness and punishing sludge.
The opening song "Malice" gets this rolling with a killer atonal dirge, the band slowly lurching over a spasm of noisy chords and twitchy no-wave splattered heaviness, alternating between an angular sludgy anti-groove and faster, more frantic thrashing, then blasts into the spastic grind of "Simple Math", which ends up slipping into an off-kilter bit of southern rock riffing over the blasting grind at the end. Rich Hoak's octopoidal drumming flies all over the place on End Time, and propels this stuff into whirlwinds of chaos; after listening to the disc a couple of times, a lot of the rhythms and riffs on End Time feel more jagged than usual, almost "mathy", making some of this stuff sound incredibly angular thanks to the extremely dissonant riff-style of new guitarist Eric Burke, whose playing gives the new BT stuff a woozy, off-balance quality. And Kevin's awesome frenzied howl is as bestial as always- NOBODY sounds like this guy, his vocals are some of the best in grind, ever. The title track is another short chunk of dissonant grind etched in strange mathematics, but as usual, the band pulls out an awesome hooky riff amid the spastic blast chaos, even slipping into an unexpected melodic rock part at the very end. The album is primarily made up of these kinds of shorter, compact assaults of complex grindcore delivered in minute-and-a-half long bursts, the angular thrash riffs colliding with the skronky, atonal guitar parts, the drumming frenzied and loose, as always informed by the extremes of free-jazz percussion that has long influenced Hoak's playing in BT. There's blazing D-beat and hardcore punk that erupts on songs like "Small Talk" and "Lottery"; whenever these guys break out the hardcore stuff it fucking rips, but they always twist it and deform it into their unique cyclonic chaos. Other tracks like ".58 Caliber" blend harsh guitar noise, wild drumming and samples into an improv-thrash workout. There's a couple of collaborations on the album, first with Italian noise artist Robert Piotrowicz on the grueling, sludgy "Warm Embrace Of Poverty", where nauseating feedback is incorporated into the crushing sludgepunk, and the song "Gut-Check" has the Chicago industrial sludge band Winters In Osaka contributing some additional toxic electronics. The end of the Lp closes with the grinding doom-laden death metal dirge "Drink Up", super slow and heavy, and on the Cd version finishes with a fifteen-minute bonus track called "Control Room", a furious free-improv noise workout with furious double-bass drumming and jazzy blasting beneath huge swathes of amplifier rumble and power electronics-style feedback abuse, layers of murky samples, harsh guitar skree, all kinds of strange electronic pulses and glitches, the sound very dense and layered, an industrialized improv blastscape that becomes very hypnotic the further you get into it's dense rumbling chaos.
Track Samples:
Sample : Control Room
Sample : Crawling Man Blues
Sample : End Time
Sample : Gut-Check
Sample : Malice

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Track Samples:
Sample : BURIAL HEX - Resurrection
Sample : CROWN OF BONE - Strangulation Rites

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First released on Cd here at Crucial Blast in late 2011, the latest album from this Dutch blackened avant doom beast is now in stock on vinyl via a gorgeous-looking double 10" set that comes in a heavy gatefold jacket, presented by the Belgian label Consouling Sounds. Here's the original write-up of our Cd release:
Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus. Roughly translated, with blood and whip, we worship the dark. This is the latest collection of atrocities from Gnaw Their Tongues, an eight song investigation into the rites and rituals that emerge from the copper-scented frenzy of the serial killer, the obsessive acts of death worship enacted by those that live on the edge of abyss, the limits of experience sought by black cults. The sound is, as always, immensely heavy, with fractured drums and tunderous tympani skins reverberating within a maelstrom of seething black doom, screeching classical strings, horns, piano, and some of the most vomitous vocals imagineable. However, Per Flagellum Sanguemque is marked by the most frenetic percussive attack that we have heard from Gnaw Their Tongues, with volleys of chaotic drumming, fractured blasts, and maniacally complex patterns that sometimes seem to border on free-jazz drumming.
The band has rarely sounded as nauseating and depraved as it does on the opener "Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei", where putrid bass riffs and lurching double bass drums spasm and thunder over the harrowing tension of atonal strings and the layered screams of the eviscerated; when the chaos suddenly drops out and we are left alone with the sounds of a woman gagging as somber strings slowly rise from below, it is one of Gnaw Their Tongue's more unsettling moments. The classical elements take over on "Human Skin For The Messengers Robe", where pleas for mercy are drowned out by blasts of evil, dissonant piano, demonic bloodlust-driven shrieks, and halting, lumbering percussion that eventually leads into the terrifying wail of choral groups rising out of the guts of Hell.
Conversely, the soaring harmonies and strings that take form on "Urine Soaked Neophytes" allow for brief moments of repreive from the surging black chaos, breaking into shafts of heavenly glory that peirce through the evil cacophony for a moment before being swallowed back up by the lurching amoirphous doom. French horns and Wagnerian strings dominate "Tod, Wo Ist Dein Licht", and on "Fallen Deities Bathing In Gall", the strings rise in series of high drones like some horrific Bernard Hermann nightmare as monstrously distorted overdriven bass crawls and buzzes and the drums are whipped into a frenzy of rolls and fills, fractured blastbeats pounding against the background and a jagged blackened anti-groove takes shape and claws it's way into a field of mangled, mewling black ambience. The remainder of the album offers no relent from the pain; "Bonedust On Dead Genitals" is an agony ritual fueled by industrial clank and the slow pound of a kettledrum as death-chants, blow-out doom bass and wild beasts roar and gibber in fury, and on "The Storming Heavens As A Father To All Broken Bodies" we are thrown a curveball when the song immediately lurches into an assault of fucked-up industrial black metal with blastbeats chooped up and splattered across the orchestral insanity in a manner reminiscent of electro-death mutants Whourkr. The album ends with the stentorian brass fanfare and hellish descent of the title track, a nearly ten minute exercise in grueling horror where chains meet flesh, throats are torn on the torture wheel, and a female voice recites lines from Charlotte Mew's death-poem "The Quiet House".
Track Samples:
Sample : Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei
Sample : Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus
Sample : Urine Soaked Neophytes

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When I was first introduced to the entity known as Stalaggh a few years ago, the Dutch blacknoise maniacs crawled under my skin immediately. Couldn't really come up with a precedent for what they were doing, taking recordings of the screams and wails of mental patients and layering them against a fearsome tableau of dissonant skull-scraping noise, Merzbow levels of grinding harsh feedback and heaps of low-fi improvised black doom all but hidden by their thick curtains of demonic skree. It certainly made for some demented, evil sounding noise, and the three albums that they released made up a suffocating, bizarre body of work that seemed to challenge even the mighty Abruptum for the crown of nihilistic, abstract black horror. In 2008, the band announced that they were going to alter their sound and change their name to Gulaggh, with the new incarnation of the band now focusing on creating their terrifying soundscapes using orchestral instruments instead of the blackened ultra-harsh distortion and feedback of their previous works. And while their new sound isn't as harsh or oppressive as the Stalaggh material, Gulaggh has managed to create something that is equally disturbing and nightmarish with their debut album Vorkuta, resembling some strange fusion of abstract European improv and the howling background sounds from an exorcism ritual.
The first in a planned trilogy of albums, Vorukta was first released in 2009 by New Era Productions. The album went out of print, but has now been resurrected by Crucial Blast in a revised package for newcomers to Gulaggh's otherworldly dissonant dread. Comprised of a single 45 minute track, the band crafts an epic surrealistic sound-collage formed from violins, saxophones, trumpets, electronics and voices. It begins with what sounds like a old recording of a Russian voice, distorted and echoing, played over a surface of noisy hiss and scraped metal while a far-off kettledrums rumbles in the distance. As the album continues, more sounds appear, stretched out metallic scrapes and deep bass rumblings, sheets of grimy drift and gleaming electronic glitches, and soon the voices begin to enter, the moans and wails of anguished voices merging with the ominous murky ambience, followed by brass horns bleating and straining, violins plucked and scraped, that booming baleful tympani quickening it's thunderous throb, lowing strings resonating below, flute-like whistles wheezing while the throng of screaming, groaning voices becomes louder and more prominent, slowly and inexorably ratcheting up the atmosphere of fear and sickness that hangs over Gulaggh's bizarre aural nightmare.
This bleating, honking, scraping din is like a cross between some demonic chamber ensemble tuning up and a free-jazz group achieving maximum dissonance. Things get really chaotic halfway through when the voices start to swarm in at once and a lone drummer enters the picture, pounding out frenetic free-improv rhythms while the mass of cries and howls and atonal instruments climbs to a fever pitch. The last ten minutes of Vorkuta slowly melts into a din of screaming children (themselves patients from a youth mental hospital) and furious honking horns and scuttling percussion swirling together, like some insane Ayler session drowning in bedlam, and then the sound fades out on a dark drifting fog of droning reeds and depleted horns and low voices, finally coming to a close when that sinister voice from the beginning of the album reappears and brings this in a full circle.
Intensely harrowing and deeply creepy, Vorkuta is one of the more uncomfortable listens I've experienced with its equal parts hellish free-improv, dissonant chamber horror and intensely disturbing sound collage. This new Crucial Blast edition comes in black digipack with metallic silver printing, and is also available for the first time as a high quality digital album.
Track Samples:
Sample : Vorkuta
Sample : Vorkuta
Sample : Vorkuta
Sample : Vorkuta

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Track Samples:
Sample : Satanic Evil II
Sample : Incest Of Wasp
Sample : Devilskin Rising
Sample : Perpetual Desecration
Sample : The Shroud Of Purgatory

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Though the name may be new, those who explore the more terrifying sounds found at the intersection where black metal, industrial noise, power electronics and black ambience meet surely know the minds behind this collaboration. Featuring Mories (of Gnaw Their Tongues / Aderlating / Cloak Of Altering / De Magia Veterum infamy) and Australian black noise/metal technician Nekrasov, Mors Sonat sounds little like their other projects, crafting a cold, hallucinatory strain of aural dread that draws from a strange mixture of twilight chamber music, ghastly death industrial sounds, harsh electronic noise and gleaming dark ambient, while tapping into the sort of psychic unease and violent chaos that will be familiar to fans of their previous efforts.
It's definitely a much more atmospheric and often subdued sonic terrain that Mors Sonat explores on 'Comforts In Atrocity'. Across the six long tracks, they blend together darkly gorgeous chamber music sounds (aided by guest cellist Aaron Martin,) with blasts of excoriating black noise, pools of cloudy dark ambience, clanking industrial horror, and vicious bouts of power electronics-style abuse. From the creaking crypt ambience that starts off opener "Holy Holy Holy Nil" that later give way to the gorgeous cello drones, shimmering orchestral strings and smeared horns that coalesce throughout the track, Mors Sonat lays down a highly evocative mix of layered electronic noise and atmospheric sound that slowly builds into walls of howling chaos, something that repeatedly rears its head throughout the album. The rest of 'Comforts' ventures into strange, hallucinatory shadowscapes like "Sanctuary In Soil", where monstrous death-gasps drift over a rumbling black abyss seething with the distant tremors of grinding infernal machinery, and the intoxicating dark drift of the title track where the duo delves into a vast expanse of crepuscular drift and cinematic electronics bathed in the residual glow from a dying sun. On "The Sweet Long Legs Of Hate", this sort of minimal soundscapery reappears as a vast windswept blackness interweaved with eerie background sounds and strains of desolate piano, forming into something akin to a stark, sun-bleached horror film score.
But then there are the nods to classic power electronics and death industrial that are threaded through several of these tracks. On "The Vengeance Of Embrace", spectral hissing voices are surrounded by diseased, pulsating electronic drones and corrosive signals that give this an evil, almost Atrax Morgue-esque feel. And the final track (which bears the very Gnaw Their Tongues-like title 'So shall I weep in liberation within the ecstasy of decay') closes the disc with a vicious maelstrom of howling electronic violence that convulses with harsh demonic shrieks and coruscating waveforms, a rabid snarling chaos fused to extreme feedback manipulation and crushing metallic noise.
Fans of the shambling chthonic evil of Mories' other projects and Nekrasov's black-hole visions will find some of these elements in Mors Sonat's sound, but it's tempered by the use of haunting chamber strings, ritualistic ambience and experimental electronics, diffused into a kind of grim otherworldly soundscape all its own. Recommended to fans of everything from Funerary Call and Nordvargr's blackened electronics, Shinjuku Thief's 'Witch Trilogy', and Cold Meat-style death industrial, the Cd edition presented in a six panel digipack.
Track Samples:
Sample : So shall I weep in liberation within the ecstasy of decay
Sample : Comforts in atrocity
Sample : The vengence of embrace
Sample : Holy holy holy nil

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I Vivi E I Morti is the debut album from Italian void-gazers Rotorvator, a seven-song blast of blackened electronics, pounding industrial rhythms, deformed black metal and punishing abstract noise issued through Crucial Blast's Crucial Blaze series. The band's unique strain of blackened industrial metal was first forged through a series of super-limited tapes and Cd-rs that were released on obscure, noise-friendly Italian labels like Dokuro; although Rotorvator's early works emerged out of the noise/drone underground, their music is unmistakably rooted in black metal, with blistering vocals, blasting tempos and eerily dissonant riffing all woven into their strange mechanical music, a unique sound that shifts between moments of mutant majesty and vicious chaos throughout this album.
Beginning with the pneumatic industrial rhythms, icy black metal guitars and gothic synthesizers diffused into wavering clouds of nebulous electronics on opener "Ad Sanctos", Rotorvator begins its descent into angular, blasting violence; the mechanical percussive sound that takes shape gives this a rigid, relentless attack that suggests the influence of early mecha-BM pioneers Mysticum and Dødheimsgard, even as the song slips into murky, tectonic breakbeats in its final moments. Then there's tracks like "Domenica", where the black metal elements are consumed into a strange, mutated industrial sound, shuffling breakbeats and eerie electronic ambience wrapping themselves around those ragged, utterly psychotic vocals and creeping minor key guitars, the shambling, sinister music suddenly erupting into masses of seething noise; and the bleak, droning crush of "In Limine", which fuses some brooding, slo-mo bass-thud layered with sheets of corrosive noise with fractured drum loops, swells of dramatic synthesizer drift, and a swirling fog of scathing screams and haunting distant vocals. Elsewhere on I Vivi E I Morti, Rotorvator wanders through stretches of dreamlike gothic trip-hop ("L'Eternita") and militant mechanical black metal ("I Morti"), the songs arranged chaotically as swarming black metal riffs suddenly collide with jagged, lurching rhythms, waves of stirring synthesizer drift combine with blasts of fractured, electronic doom, and corrosive noise rains down on shuffling hypnotic drum machines, eventually closing with the hallucinatory black majesty of "Humming Bones" where streaks of warped synth-pop flare out from the pounding tribal rhythms and malevolent riffing.
The disturbed apocalyptic electronics and blackened violence of Rotorvator's music is altogether too demented to simply be described as another industrial black metal outfit, drawing heavily from a mixture of industrial/electronic sounds to produce something more aligned with the likes of cult Swedish black industrialists Mz.412 and the malformed likes of Ivs Primae Noctis, Murmuüre, Gnaw Their Tongues and Utarm. Released as part of the Crucial Blaze series, I Vivi E I Morti comes in a Dvd-style case with a set of ten warped collage pieces created by the band, bound together in a black obi, the set produced in a limited hand-numbered edition of four hundred copies.
Track Samples:
Sample : Humming Bones
Sample : In Limine
Sample : L'Eternita
Sample : Ad Sanctos

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Back in stock.
Now available on vinyl courtesy of The Flenser...
Sickness In is the third album from Portland's most wretched, Trees. Following their similarly abject slabs of feedback-doused horror and quasi-formless dirge 'Lights Bane' and 'Freed Of This Flesh' on Crucial Blast, the band again presents a two-song assault, each one roughly fifteen minutes in length, each a slowly rotting heap of droning slow-motion deathdoom riffs decomposing into clouds of black amplifier hum, high shrieking voices and tortured screams drifting against the glacial roar of smoking amp stacks and short-circuiting hardware. Where the previous album had Trees employing some interesting rhythmic chaos and longer stretches of ambient filth, this time around the band drops some of their most leaden, majestic riffs yet into their slow-mo filthstorm, massive saurian doom riffs slipping WAY out of the confines of 'groove' and deep into rumbling fields of charred ritualistic chanting and almost Abruptum-like states of psychotic noise.
The first track 'Cover Your Mouth' crashes in on an avalanche of thrumming electricity and metallic noise, the crushing abstract heaviness collapsing in on itself, the rhythm section accentuating the rumbling black mass/mess with thunderous blasts of anti-propulsion. Trees have always seemed to have a somewhat improvisational feel to their extreme doom-laden horror, but just when you think that 'Cover' is on the verge of dissolving into a field of pure drone, the band unleashes titanic earth-scorching riffage. On 'Perish', the resonant sound of throat singing introduces a new wave of howling ambient feedback and speaker-hiss, but soon transforms into another twisted, agonized pain-dirge, those tortured vocals scraped raw, pain-wracked screams rising and falling behind the amorphous black sludge and diseased drones.
Track Samples:
Sample : Cover Your Mouth
Sample : Perish

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Back in stock.
The latest offering from the mysterious black psychedelic group Yoga is actually a re-issue of their very first collection of music, which initially appeared both as a stand-along cassette release, and as half of a split Cd with mutoid experimental black/doom creeps Ghast; both releases are long out of print (although we do still have some copies of the limited-edition version of the Cd lingering in our shop), and of course the washed-out, bleary black dream-din that Yoga summons across these eight tracks sounds fantastic on wax, so this comes highly recommended if you fell under Yoga's spell after hearing their amazing Megafauna album from a couple of years ago. Here's my original write-up on the Yoga tracks from the Ghast split:
I'm sure that most of you guys know Yoga; the band has been turning heads with their mysterious blackened psychedelia found on the two Lps they've put out on Holy Mountain over the past two years, and it's all fucking fantastic, an utterly unique mix of low-fi black metal aesthetics, ancient Goblin-esque horror prog sounds, and purposefully murky sound collage techniques. Eight songs on their end of the split, each a terrifying yet intoxicating miasma of burned out, washed out blackness, a shambling mass of hysteric vocals and bizarre noises, muffled rhythms and murky droning riffs, everything melting together into a supremely low-fi aural hallucination. Bits of clarity appear every now and then, a glimpse of a blackened riff, a snatch of epic kosmische sound, but mostly Yoga wander in the abyss, issuing strange and delirious songcraft that feels like you're listening to some low-fi bedroom black metal band performing music from Goblin's soundtrack to Suspiria. Eerie 70's keyboard sounds emerge from the gloom and seem to melt over the slow steady percussive pulse of the drummer, wreathed in black fog and swirling amplifier noise. Ghostly drones drift over strange murmurings and distant clanking. Strains of warped black metal-esque sound appear, backed by hypnotic chiming melodies and gusts of spectral breath. Delicate wind chimes dance against the sound of nocturnal wildlife and mysterious machinelike rumblings in the distance. Bizarre noisy loops materialize alongside jazzy bass guitar, like ectoplasm out of nothingness. The band even lurches into a strange sort of blackened, Goblin-tinged doom metal on "Mothman", though it sounds like doom as if heard from a great distance, the evil lumbering riffage and synths obscured by weird warbling noise and murky ambience. Their side closes with "Emin and Anakim", darkly beautiful, returning to that heavy, murky majesty, swirling blown out synths and heavy drumming buried under miles of noise and feedback, a super moving melody at the heart of it. Gorgeous, intensely creepy stuff that's essential for anyone into their later recordings.
Includes a digital download for the album.
Track Samples:
Sample : YOGA - Star-Spawn of Cthulhu
Sample : YOGA - Lemurian Dreams

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