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album cover AMOCOMA Go To Hell (tUMULt) cd 13.98
Originally released as a super limited, hand made cd-r, now finally available as a proper cd, with all new artwork, remastered, and with TWO bonus tracks not on the original cd-r. Skip down to the end of the review for a bit about the bonus tracks, but before we get to that, here's what we had to say about the record when we first reviewed the cd-r:
The first thing that struck us about this debut release from Amocoma, a mysterious black metal horde from right here in San Francisco, was the cd-r cover art, a child-like pen and ink drawing of a pile of heads, but instead of being bloody or gory or horrific, they're sort of more cartoonish, like a whole slew of stick figures were decapitated, their heads tossed in a huge pile, beneath the scrawled band logo, wreathed in clouds of smeared ink. We were definitely intrigued. And if anything, once inside, we were even moreso...
Amocoma traffic in an ultra lo-fi, muddy murky blackness. It's definitely black metal, there is plenty of buzz and blast and howled vocals, but at the same time it's sort of stumbling and noise rocky, it's probably a little of both, but it's all rendered nearly indistinct by the incredibly FX drenched lo-fi production. 
Beginning with dreamy swirls of soft focus harmonics and distant rumbles, it doesn't take long for the band to lurch into action, a simple hypnotic riff, looped over and over, almost sounding more like a bass than a guitar, and not so heavy as it is trancelike. The drums are mechanical and repetitive, the vocals are howled and swathed in reverb, spread out over the proceedings like a black cloud, so much so that at times they just sound like another layer of buzz. And the more you listen, the more pretty it sounds, sure it's raw and harsh, but the melody is so hypnotic, and the swirling clouds of distortion and reverb give everything a sort of soft focus shimmer. 
We're definitely reminded of WOLD, in the sense that these little fragmented pop songs, are rendered black and buzzy by the application of super saturated distortion, tape hiss and amp buzz, reverb and delay, so even at its heaviest, it's washed out and abstract, and downright dreamy. The drone element is through the roof, and it's impossible not to hear Tim Hecker or Machinefabriek or any one of those masters of smeary dreamlike sound. At some points things get super psychedelic, like halfway through "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body" where the guitar drops out, leaving just the drums, to sort of pulse and putter in a wide open expanse of soft swirl, while drifting above are all manner of glistening guitar harmonics, spacey FX sparkles, and warm warbly melodic hum.
The tUMULt reissue tacks on two new tracks, the first, a brief three minute blur called "Crumbs", dense and chaotic, the vocals a processed bellow, buried beneath soaring saturated buzz, while all around swoop and swing furious tangles of fractured guitars and warm riffy blurs, which gives way to the nearly 12 minute closer "You Shall Yet Rise", which begins as a long sprawling creepscape, rife with synthesizer swells, and bits of crumblingly distorted guitars, it almost sounds like a black metallized Expo '70, spacey and tripped out, until the song suddenly lurches into an ultra poppy almost Viking sounding groove, all over driven and super distorted, hinting a bit at the pop that underpins much of Amocoma's blackness, the track swings wildly from corrosive blast to pounding almost doom, but stays wrapped around that weirdly fuzzy poppy galloping Maiden-y main riff, which stays looped, repeating mantra like, reminding us of a blackened Circle in fact, as the rest of the guitars get more and more tweaked and twisted. Even though it's a bonus track, this might just be one of our favorite tracks on the record!!!
Damaged and dreamy, freaked out and fucked, one of our new favorite slabs of black blurred beauty for sure... 
MPEG Stream: "Cowards Live Forever"
MPEG Stream: "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body"
MPEG Stream: "These Are Your Chocies...Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "You Shall Yet Rise"

album cover AMOCOMA Go To Hell (self-released) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The first thing that struck us about this debut release from Amocoma, a mysterious black metal horde from right here in San Francisco, was the cover art, a child-like pen and ink drawing of a pile of heads, but instead of being bloody or gory or horrific, they're sort of more cartoonish, like a whole slew of stick figures were decapitated, their heads tossed in a huge pile, beneath the scrawled band logo, wreathed in clouds of smeared ink. We were definitely intrigued. And if anything, once inside, we were even moreso...
Amocoma traffic in an ultra lo-fi, muddy murky blackness. It's definitely black metal, there is plenty of buzz and blast and howled vocals, but at the same time it's sort of stumbling and noise rocky, it's probably a little of both, but it's all rendered nearly indistinct by the incredibly FX drenched lo-fi production. 
Beginning with dreamy swirls of soft focus harmonics and distant rumbles, it doesn't take long for the band to lurch into action, a simple hypnotic riff, looped over and over, almost sounding more like a bass than a guitar, and not so heavy as it is trancelike. The drums are mechanical and repetitive, the vocals are howled and swathed in reverb, spread out over the proceedings like a black cloud, so much so that at times they just sound like another layer of buzz. And the more you listen, the more pretty it sounds, sure it's raw and harsh, but the melody is so hypnotic, and the swirling clouds of distortion and reverb give everything a sort of soft focus shimmer. 
We're definitely reminded of WOLD, in the sense that these little fragmented pop songs, are rendered black and buzzy by the application of super saturated distortion, tape hiss and amp buzz, reverb and delay, so even at its heaviest, it's washed out and abstract, and downright dreamy. The drone element is through the roof, and it's impossible not to hear Tim Hecker or Machinefabriek or any one of those masters of smeary dreamlike sound. At some points things get super psychedelic, like halfway through "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body" where the guitar drops out, leaving just the drums, to sort of pulse and putter in a wide open expanse of soft swirl, while drifting above are all manner of glistening guitar harmonics, spacey FX sparkles, and warm warbly melodic hum. 
Damaged and dreamy, freaked out and fucked, one of our new favorite slabs of black beauty for sure... 
MPEG Stream: "Cowards Live Forever"
MPEG Stream: "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body"
MPEG Stream: "These Are Your Chocies...Darkness"

album cover 3 LEAFS Space Rock Tulip (self-released) lp 14.98
It's been a few years since we reviewed anything from these local spaced out psychrockers, and there have been at least a couple releases since Inward Sun, the last one we reviewed way back in 2007. Listening to Space Rock Tulip now, we're kicking ourselves big time. This stuff is awesome. Blissed out, effects flecked krauty space rock, heavy on the drift and shimmer and meander. Strings buzz, sounds swoop and stutter backwards, the drums are simple and motorik, synths whir, flutes flutter, the group slips from full on heart of the sun space jam, to Circle-esque hypnorock, to ethereal almost ambient groove, to Eastern style ur-drone to Santana sounding Latin tinged psychedelic rock to heavy tripped out metallic sounding stoner rock freakouts to full on trippy dubbiness, all woven into one extended and nearly seamless druggy outrock sprawl.
Anyone into The Heads, White Hills, Monster Magnet, Expo 70, White Hills, Burnt Hills, Titan, Gunslingers, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, or any of that kraut/space rock bliss, will definitely flip for these guys. Features a whole mess of local luminaries, who do or have done time in other bands like: the Fresh And Onlys, Tussle, Citay, Amocoma, Horn Of Dagoth, Black Fiction, Subarachnoid Space, Six Eye Columbia and more...
MPEG Stream: "No Control"
MPEG Stream: "Acorn"

album cover COHEN, TIM Two Sides of Tim Cohen (Secret Seven / Empty Cellar) lp 14.98
As if fronting super hyped garage rockers the Fresh & Onlys wasn't enough, or being the one man in one man weirdo black metal horde AmocomA, or playing in Black Fiction and Three Leafs or any of a number of other local bands, or even being the back up band for psych rock legend Rodriguez, well, apparently none of that is enough, as here's a brand new full length from Mr. Tim Cohen, he of all the above mentioned rockness.
The Two Sides seems to focus on another side of Cohen we've only gotten little glimpses of, and that's the classic popsmith. And yeah, classic pop sounds infuse pretty much everything he does (heck, even AmocomA has a distinctly pop vibe), but this is definitely his 'pop' record, a sort of lo-fi, ramshackle, home brewed psychedelic Pet Sounds for the current landscape of FM radio revivalists, a la Ariel Pink, Ty Segall, etc. But where Pink is truly drug addled and twisted, and Segall tends towards the slightly more rocking, Cohen here is emotional and sincere, the lyrics plenty twisted and bizarre, the music fractured and freaky, but it's all wound into something definitely classic sounding, Beach Boys, Beatles, of course, but more than the sound it's the vibe and the feel, as folky as it is classic rock, poppy all over, slipping effortlessly from moody and brooding almost Nick Drake sounding intimacy, to surprisingly lush almost radio ready old school FM pop. The vocals drift from softly sung spoken to soaring falsetto, wrapping themselves up in sweet harmonies, the musical backdrop more subtle than one might expect, intricate acoustic guitars, muted percussion, everything stripped down and wreathed in reverb and delay, a low key fuzzy psych pop, that will definitely appeal to the current crop of retro lo-fi drug poppers, but is way less willfully obscure, tapping into something a bit more classic, a bit more timeless.
Super nice packaging, thick eye popping sleeve, inside a printed lyric sheet, as well as an insert, with the code so you can download the whole record, as well as a bunch of digital only bonus tracks!

album cover DEATH CHEETAH s/t (Celibate Celebrity) 3" cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Death Cheetah is probably a name new to you, it was to us, the man behind Death Cheetah though you might know as the guy who painted that bad ass pile of skulls album cover for the recent AmocomA record on tUMULt, he also contributed to the short lived Matter tape of the month series we reviewed a while back, but this super limited 3" is the first recording from the curiously named one man band, a teaser for an upcoming full length, but it's doubtful that could possibly be as cool as these. LIMITED TO 20 COPIES, of which we got ALL 20, each one hand painted, every single one super striking and unique, just like the music inside.
Three tracks, the first one is some sort of brooding Bohren like crawl, all skittery brushed drums and deep rumbling low end, ominous hushed vocals, little muted flurries of soft focus keyboard, a blissed out nightmarish creep, slithery and shimmery and dark dark dark, almost jazzy, but more in a Necks sort of way, some seriously deeeeep slowcore minimalism, that builds to more of a downtempo plod near the end.
The second track is totally different, stuttery dubbed out drums, dubstep style fuzzed out synth bass rumbles, shouted distorted vocals, a woozy post punk dubby groove, flecked with shards of reverb drenched guitar, streaks of synthesizer, it sounds like some lost eighties DIY deathfunk jam, but a bit more freaked out and abstract. The closing track veers more toward the minimalism of the opener, spare bits of guitar flutter, jazzy skittery drums, flickers of flute, acoustic guitar, tons of space, a slow slow late night drift, abstract and dreamy, smoke-y and gauzy and so so nice.
Hard to get a handle on just what Death Cheetah is all about, three tracks, three different directions, but we like them all, and in some strange way they do all link together, and flow, and when taken with the meticulously hand painted covers, this is a gorgeous piece of outsider soundart, and one that won't be around for long, grab one of these quick or steel yourself for a long wait for the full length...
MPEG Stream: "Cloning Device"
MPEG Stream: "The Book That Bit Me"

album cover HABSYLL MMVIII (tUMULt / At War With False Noise / PsycheDOOMelic / Obscure Sombre / Odio Sonoro / Skyr) cd 13.98
NEW ON tUMULt!!!!
It's starting to get seriously tUMULtuous around here. One killer disc just out and still fresh, The Memories Attack, (one of ,if not THE pop record of last year, this year and any year, in Andee's humble opinion), THREE new releases about to drop (Diamatregon, Amocoma and the Ovens) and this, the first full length record from French ultra-mega-abstract-doom trio Habsyll, which just so happens to feature one member of the mighty Fantastikol Hole, as well as the former drummer of faerical punk blasters Nuit Noire!
But nothing, and we mean nothing will prepare you for Habsyll's particularly virulent strain of ultradoom. Heavy and slow, yeah obviously, but it's HOW heavy (very) and HOW slow (ummm, so slow the songs seem to have almost zero forward momentum) that makes Habsyll something much more than a metal band or a doom band, it's almost like twentieth century classical played with downtuned guitars and massive drums. So much space, the notes and drum beats miles apart, the drums not so much beats and rhythms (although those do pop up occasionally) as brief explosions or percussive squalls, more for dynamics and texture, or if they are actually engaged in some sort of actual beat, it's mind bendingly abstract and extended and slow to the point of hovering around 2 or 3 bpm. Think Khanate, Monarch, Moss, Bunkur, Fleshpress? You're already thinking too fast, too structured, too riffy. This is some excessive extremist radical dooooooooom, the sort of chug and plod and buzz and bombinate that makes the rest of those bands sound like speed metal.
But in this slow sprawl, and these long stretches of decay, these sudden flurries of drum splatter and downtuned chug, there is a buried beauty, occasionally, these disparate parts mesh into a brief flicker of melody, or a single epic majestic hook filled swell, before slipping back into blackness. And once or twice the band ramps it up, and locks into some serious pounding crushing black hole sludge, but even then, it's a crawl, a glacial black ooze tempo, and before too long, the band abandon any sense of rhythm or tempo, opting instead to drift through some wide open stretch of outerspace ultra doom emptiness.
The guitars go from grinding and sharp, to muddy and massive, the chugs flung into the ether and carried along on streaks of whirring hiss and blackened buzz, spitting out huge jagged shards of feedback, and long smears of blurred anti-riffage, the bass is a massive cloud of low end, throbbing and pulsing, exploding like a brick wall to the side of the head before slipping back into a shadowy rumble, the vocals a caustic demonic shriek, raspy and hellish, slipping into an almost hysterical falsetto, and just as often offering up some alien ululations, and the drums, oh the drums, any drummer can tell you how hard it is to play slow, but they're talking slowcore slow, or even regular doom slow, this is something else entirely, this is doom drumming gone free jazz, pound and skitter in equal measure, meting out beats one at a time, like some sleek black submarine releasing depth charges.
Two lengthy epics, 17 minutes and nearly 29 minutes, neither very traditionally doomlike, but both most definitely doom, maybe more 'doom', than most actual doom we've heard. Like staring into the abyss, or looking up at a black moonless night sky, these sounds are the sounds of emptiness, of bottomless depths, of never ending expanses of space and time, the end of the world, the birth of new universes, the sound of black holes, of exploding stars, the soundtrack to the end of the world, to the end of everything. Slow and heavy and low and spaced out and damaged and fucked up and strangely beautiful and mysterious and abstract and far out and completely kick ass while remaining very very very difficult listening indeed!
This is a split label release, tUMULt of course, along with 5 other kick ass labels: At War With False Noise, Obscure Sombre, PsycheDOOMelic, Skyr and Odio Sonoro.
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "I"

album cover PANDISCORDIAN NECROGENESIS Live Across The Abyssic Planes (self-released) cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One man black metal bands are a dime a dozen these days. Heck we review one or two every list, and that's only a fraction of the one man bedroom grimnity going on in the world at any one time. Anyone with a 4 track, a black heart, and a rudimentary grasp of riffs and programming a busted up old drum machine, through the magic of the internet, can become a mysterious kvlt BM figure overnight. That said, there are plenty of one man black metal bands who transcend, some of our favorites in fact, Leviathan, Draugar, Xasthur, I Shalt Become, Striborg, Nekrasov, AmocomA, Moloch, Paysage D'Hiver we could go on and on. But the thing is, none of those 'groups' are truly one man bands. They are one man, and they are technically bands, but none are proper one man bands, you know, like the old timey sort of one man band, bass drum on the back, harmonica on a rack around the neck, tiny cymbals on the knees, squeezebox in front, ONE MAN BAND.
So as far as we know, there has never been an ACTUAL one man black metal band. UNTIL NOW. Pandiscordian Necrogeneis is the project of Lord Ephemeral Domignostika, also known as Mastery, the man behind the SF black metal monster of the same name (who have a double cd coming out soon on tUMULt) and who is also the vocalist and bass player for Horn Of Dagoth.
But in Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, Lord plays all the instruments himself, AT THE SAME TIME. Right foot plays the kick drum, left foot plays the snare, while he sings and plays guitar simultaneously. As if that weren't enough, all the songs and sounds here are totally improvised on the spot. WTF?? This shit is insane, and ridiculous, and incredible. Imagine a spike laden corpsepainted dude, sitting in the forest on an old rotted log, his feet pounding away on a kick drum and a weirdly rigged snare, his hands a blur on the guitar as he howls and shrieks into a microphone dangling from the branches above. Well, that's at least how we imagine it. But seriously, this shit is amazing. Frenzied and furious, the drums, a relentless D-beat pound, a sort of almost blast beat, the vocals sometimes a hellish croak, other times a demonic shriek, the guitar though, the riffs are incredible, tangled and gnarled, slipping from garbled chug, to insectoid buzz, sometimes soaring and majestic, other times murky and atonal, the songs shifting from stumbling blast to Burzumic plod, pretty hard to believe that one guy is playing all the instruments at once, AND that he's making up this shit off the top of his head. Most actual black metal bands recording one track at a time, couldn't come up with something this heavy and buzzy and grim and black.
Essential listening for the true black metal hordes, a brief, but gloriously blasting slab of outsider blackness, indeed performed by the only ACTUAL one man black metal horde in the world...
LIMITED TO 88 COPIES. Each one hand numbered with a printed insert, with liner notes / lyrics / packaged in dvd cases, the cover a cool tangled snake on a smeared blood red backdrop that actually IS BLOOD. The whole cover is in fact soaked / painted in actual blood! The effect is pretty cool an creepy, every one different, all with a strangely coppery scent, that will most likely drive your pets insane if you leave it out.
We got about half the pressing, but these will be gone before you know it...
MPEG Stream: "Track 1"
MPEG Stream: "Track 4"
MPEG Stream: "Track 5"

album cover PAYSAGE D'HIVER Kerker (Kunsthall / Cold Dimensions) cd 26.00
At long last! One of the most anticipated black metal reissue campaigns EVER, moves forward with the 4th and 5th installment in the comprehensive cd rerelease of the entire recorded output by Swiss one man horde Paysage D'Hiver. Judging from past installments, and how often we get asked when the next disc is coming out, most of you have already freaked out a bit, added this to your cart, and begun 'the preparations', lighting the torches, blacking out the windows, turning your freezer on high and leaving the door open to produce thick drifts of snow throughout your house (well, it worked in Tom And Jerry cartoons), in anticipation of finally getting to immerse yourself in the frostbitten winter world of Paysage D'Hiver.
Paysage are almost universally revered, as THEE ultimate grim and frosty black metal band, the soundscapes and sprawling epics the make up the 11 Paysage releases so far are truly transcendent, each one dramatically different than the last, but somehow a continuation, another chapter in a hopefully never ending saga. Much like how Darkspace creates a black metal that seems at once futuristic and alien, evoking distant planets, dead suns, black holes, strange ships and mysterious beings, Paysage invokes, crumbling stone walls, set amidst icy peaks, cloaked in year round snow, thick forests painted white, the branches heavy with frost and snow, flickering firelight bravely battling against the ever encroaching coldness, of darkness, and night, of moonlight and death, of earth and sky, seasons and most importantly Winter. Makes perfect sense then, as most of you already know that Wintherr, the man behind Paysage, is also a member of Darkspace.
Both bands transcend the genre, using sound, by deftly arranging sounds similar to many other bands, in a whole new way, to create something wholly original, something that is more than just music, powerful sounds that transport and transform. Like Darkspace, the music of Paysage is made up of course by buzz and blast. And there are riffs and vokills. There are drums, and keyboards and bass. But right there is where any similarity to other black metal bands ends. The world of Paysage is a world of alchemy, it's far more difficult to imagine Wintherr hunched over a four track, than it is to picture him in a cave over a fire mixing potions. When we listen to Paysage, we don't picture someone in jeans and a t-shirt playing a guitar, we imagine a lonely figure wrapped in furs, hunched over, walking up an icy path toward a black structure in the foothills of some mighty mountain range, the windows glowing amber, a distant flicker barely visible through a wall of falling snow. And somehow that's exactly what makes this music so magical, and so utterly mind blowing.
Kerker was originally released on cassette in 2000, and is essentially a single piece, split into movements, and of all the reissues so far is the murkiest, all of the requisite parts are present but the fidelity is so low, the recording so strange, that all of the constituent parts are rendered one swirling muted organic whole. Bands like Wold, Amocoma, Yoga, Paysage take it to a whole 'nother level. Beginning with a rumbling ambience, the main riff soon surfaces, barely audible over the din of the intro, and very little changes when the vocals and the drums join in, the sound becomes a bit more frenentic, headphones reveal more details, but even then, the sound is a swirling churning roiling black sea of buzz and blur and hum and rumble and whir occasionally coalescing into discernible black metal before seemingly blurring before your very eyes and slipping back into the abyss. So incredibly haunting and mysterious and beautifully fucked up. The second movement is all ambient, thick swaths of keyboard, and pounding industrial drums, a gurgling blackened drift, like trudging through some underground cavern populated with demons and monsters, huddled by firepits, trying desperately to escape the blizzard that lurks above. Here too the sound is incredible, lush, yet lo-fi, muddy and indistinct, but within that muddy swirl all manner of subtle details and slow shifting colors reveal themselves. Voices too, demonic, ominous, bubbling up from below. The third movement continues the descent, the ice melting, soon the rocks themselves liquefying into viscous black pools, the sound of this approach to hell is one of deep low end buzz, a blown out distorted rumble that seems to swirl malevolently beneath a haze of blurred whir, until finally a keyboard enters, adding a glimmer of light to the pitch black sprawl.
Finally, the cycle is completed with another super distorted, murky blast, this time with synthesizers adding demented shards of melody, the drums an avalanche of pound and crash, the guitars a maniacal frenzied buzz, the vocals a subterranean gurgle, and again all blurred and smeared into a gorgeously hazy washed out smear of abstract buzzing blackness, dark and dramatic, haunting and enigmatic.
Like all of the reissues, the cd is housed in a book sized A5 digipak, adorned with haunting images, this time a grim looking dungeon (Kerker means Dungeon) and a swirling black hole, with lyrics and NO liner notes. The digipak is housed in a black envelope, with the name of the band and the record printed in barely legible black ink.
MPEG Stream: "Tiefe"
MPEG Stream: "Schritte"

album cover SONNY & THE SUNSETS Tomorrow Is Alright (Secret Seven / Soft Abuse) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Some awesomely sunshine-y jangle pop from right here in SF, Sonny & The Sunsets, fronted by local luminary Sonny Smith, who for his debut was joined by a who's who of local rockers, including Kelly Stoltz, John Dwyer of Thee Oh Sees, Shayde Sartin of the Fresh & Onlys, Flying Canyon and Kelly Stoltz's band and Tim Cohen (Fresh & Onlys, 3 Leafs, Amocoma!). The label compares S&TS to Jonathan Richman, Michael Hurley, Velvet Underground, the Holy Modal Rounders, which definitely all apply, but there's plenty of Beach Boys going on too.
From brooding moody lope, to shimmery doo wop flecked surf rock to stripped down classic power pop, to fifties style balladry, to twangy back porch folk the songs are simple and heartfelt, sometimes intimate and hushed, other times subtly silly, even a bit more rocking now and again, but always catchy, melodic and cool.
MPEG Stream: "Too Young To Burn"
MPEG Stream: "Death Cream"
MPEG Stream: "Strange Love"

album cover V/A Matter 10.2007 (Tape Of The Month) (self-released) cassette 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in September we got the first installment in what was meant to be a sort of tape of the month thing organized and recorded by two local guys, one who you all might know from his weirdo black metal band Amacoma (he also plays in Black Fiction and 3). It was a huge hit (we do have a few copies left if you missed it) and so they immediately got to work on the October installment. So we know what you're thinking, but it wasn't all our fault, just mostly. We got the October tape, right at the end of the month, but then stuff got crazy and we're only now getting around to reviewing it and it's December! But fuck it, just imagine that ten is a twelve and we'll be fine, it's just as cool and weird and varied as the first volume, with each dude taking a side of the tape, and this one like the first is essential for lovers of weirdo black metal as there's a brand new Amocoma track!
And it's a doozy, worth the price of admission alone. So buzzy and washed out, it's barely even black metal, it's more like some cavernous black ambient epic, the riffs more like throbbing pulses, the vocals hissy clouds of static, grim and fuzzed out, but because of the extreme blur and smear it's almost like black metal pop ambient. Here and there, the riffage does coalesce into extreme blackness, or splinters off into some spare clean guitar slither, but it always returns to the blossoming avalanche of black buzz.
There's a track by a band called Hash Hashish, that's a serious slab of gorgeous distorted dreampop, with some weird almost death metal vocals mixed in as well as some circusy keyboards and a dense wall of My Bloody Valentine blur. The 3 Leafs song is an awesome stretch of super spaced out druggy ambience, all whirling FX and disembodied voices, percussive thud and dark rumbling whir.
The flip side is packed with sonic weirdness, it's hard to differentiate which is which (ah, good old tapes!), but there are two tracks by Debre Damo, and two by Atom Eve, they all sort of blend into each other, but it's all awesome. Abstract electronic experimentation, bleeps and bloops, whirs and shimmers, very musiq concrete, woven into dense tripped out garagey space rock with thick guitars and pounding drums and of course lots and lots of FX. Weird alien guitar experiments are stretched out into crumbling glitchy ambience, it seems like maybe the names are just to keep it interesting as the whole side plays like a single piece.
As always, dying to hear more from all of these outfits, and keep listening to that Amocoma track over and over...

album cover V/A Matter 9.2007 (Tape Of The Month) (self-released) cassette 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
First in a new series of monthly tape releases from two local guys, one who AQ customers might know from his weirdo black metal band Amocoma (as well as playing in Black Fiction and 3 Leafs among others) and the other, his partners in musical crime. For this inaugural tape, the two decided to each compile one side of the tape, offering their own take on the sounds they've been making, discovering, and digging. 
Side A begins with a blast and never lets up, the first band Bereavement delivers a super dense blast of thrashing black noise, drenched in reverb, a furious chaos, a whirling dervish of sound, with strange little interludes that are just as quickly swallowed up again. Black Fiction deliver some damaged tribalism, all simple drumming, reverbed chanting, jagged shards  of upper register guitar, streaks of feedback, some creepy ritualistic ambience for sure. Then there's an unreleased track from Amocoma, a glorious muddy murky soundscape of black buzz and blown out drone (anyone who missed out on the full length should buy it NOW)... the side continues on, leaning toward the chaotic and heavy, another track from Bereavement, as well as more Black Fiction and tons of other cool stuff. 
The B side begins with two tracks from the awesomely monickered Death Cheetah, who traffic in a weird sort of lo-fi, Hella meets Justice, synth and drums ramjam, funky and chaotic, heavy and weird as all get out. The cool thing about this tape (or frustrating thing depending on your angle), is that it's sort of difficult to tell where one song ends and another begins, they're all sort of tangled up, blending into one another, some groups sound similar, so their tracks almost sound like two parts of the same track. The B side continues with a bunch of songs from Atom Eve (we think), who sound like some crossbreeding experiment between Finnish folk and NY free noise a la NNCK or SHOTM, fluttering flutes, tribal drumming, simple guitar riffing, looped and circular... and this side continues on, more from Death Cheetah, some spaced out ambient glitchiness (Man In San Diego?) and a bunch more Atom Eve.
A killer glimpse into the mad musical minds of these mystery men, a nice sampling of some SF underground sounds, and a brand new Amocoma track to top it all off! Can't wait to hear what October's installment has in store...

album cover VOLTAIC OMEN Hammer Of Witches (self-released) cassette 5.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We told the story of Volataic Omen when we reviewed the Supreme Satanic Substorm cd-r a while back, but it definitely bears repeating:
It all began with two unidentified mp3's sent via email, no message, no anything, just two HUGE files. We were wondering if there was something wrong with our email, and then POW. Two songs, identified only by title, but nothing about what they were, the name of the band, where they came from. Our first impulse was to just trash 'em, but we thought what the heck? And holy shit were we immediately floored. Exactly the sort of buzzing warped blackness we love around these parts, lo-fi, tripped out, druggy, heavy, space-y, we had to figure out who the heck this band was and how to get MORE!! After a few emails back and forth, we discovered this filthy black chaos was the work of a one man band from the Northwest called Voltaic Omen, a little more digging revealed than not only did that one man have the most bad ass corpse paint, but his corpsepainted visage was an integral part of one of the VO logos, one of the best black metal logos ever by the way.
So we were smitten, if one can be smitten by something as grim and fucked up and blown out as Voltaic Omen, there is a tUMULt release in the works, and at the rate this guys kicks out tracks, there's bound to be an avalanche of grim blackness down the line, but for now, you gotta grab one of these filthy little gems while you can, this one is LIMITED TO 25 COPIES, and we got them ALL, but these are gonna fly outta here, so grimlords be quick.
Oh right, what's the fuss about this Voltaic Omen stuff anyway? More of that fractured fucked up lo-fi stumbling buzzy black weirdness we can't ever seem to get enough of. Damaged drum machines blast over woozy washed out black buzz, the vocals are insane, moaning and screeching, even though the drums are blasting, the music is slow and sludgey and lurching and lumbering, a weird, dizzyingly off kilter sonic squall. One of the tracks here begins all punk rock, but then gets all oompah, still shrieky and buzzy and bizarre, but wrapped around a weird 1-2-1-2-1-2 sort of rhythm, but flip it over, and things get all doomy and filthy and abject and blown the fuck out. So goddamn good. You like Furze, Striborg, Lonesummer, Amocoma, Anwech, Wrnlrd, Jabladav, Xasthur, Draugar, Vorak, Necrofrost? You probably like Volatic Omen. Way recommended and WAY LIMITED.
And for those folks who want to get WAY into VO, we have a couple other releases, 2 tapes and a 3"cd-r, which we only got a very few copies of, but they're cheap if you want 'em, just ask, cuz as far as we're concerned you should get as much Voltaic Omen as you can handle...

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