Aquarius Records: Search Results for Keyword: Caina
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IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion):
Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps "out of print/unavailable" notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock -- or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us -- please email our mailorder department for availability status -- or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.


album cover CAINA I, Mountain (God Is Myth) 3" cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is the first in a super limited series of 3" cd-r's dedicated to H.P. Lovecraft. This inaugural installment comes from UK one man black metal horde Caina, whose debut record indeed bore a passing resemblance to AQ faves, Lurker Of Chalice, the weirder side project of Leviathan's Wrest, but managed to be it's own strange black beast.
And if anything, I, Mountain is even stranger, with barely any black metal, in fact there's very little here that might be considered metal at all. But that in no way means this isn't dark, or mysterious or subtly heavy.
I, Mountain is an instrumental interpretation of Lovecraft's At The Mountains Of Madness, and is an intense sonic journey.
The first five minutes are a blissy dreamy drift, muted acoustic guitars, glistening and shimmering, it's not until five minutes in that the tenor becomes ominous, with haunting crumbling production and mysterious minor key ambience. Then it's about halfway through before we get the first hint of anything resembling metal, and even then, it's thick clouds of noxious distortion, drifting in the background, a sort of black ambience, but this quickly gives way to a churning doomy sludge, downtuned guitars, thick waves, layer after layer, slowly shifting and pulsing.
Finally, with only minutes to go, the metal kicks in, but it's no black blast, instead a propulsive metallic dirge, thick guitars, and pounding simple drums with the occasionally splattery fill, trudging resolutely forward before the drums drift off, leaving dense peals of processed guitar to swirl and shimmer ominously before the dark ambience fades to black.
I, Mountain is tracked as a single 20+ minute track, although in the booklet, the sections are separated into movements. Packaged in a slim jewel case, with a 4 panel booklet and a thick card insert with a photo of Lovecraft on one side and an essay on the other. Nice!
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!!! We got 20, and it's already out of print, so when we run out, we will not be able to get more...
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "excerpt 2"

album cover CAINA Mourner (Profound Lore) cd 12.98

MPEG Stream: "Waves Engulf A Pier"
MPEG Stream: "Hideous Gnosis"
MPEG Stream: "I Reeled In Heaven"

album cover CAINA s/t (Universal Tongue / Bubonic Productions) cd ep 12.98
Latest from this one man UK avant black metal outfit, whose Temporary Antennae record on Profound Lore we raved about a while back, a four song ep that like Temporary Antennae, and most of the other Caina records, veers all over the place, taking seemingly disparate sounds and parts, and weaves them all together into something cohesive and compelling, mysterious and a bit bizarre.
The record opens with some sunshiney post rock, all warm sun dappled synths, simple drums, whooshing major key shimmer, epic and majestic and pretty, which only makes the second track that much more menacing, with it's overdriven crumbling guitars, its growled demonic vokills, its weird spaced out arrangement, more doom than black metal, until the song revs up and blasts blackly before slipping into something much more abstract, the vocals remain, but the music transformed into something more jangly and poppy, the sound once again shifting back toward something blown out and blissy, a soaring emotional coda that does not at all match the song's ominous beginning.
The third track is the most fucked up of the bunch, beginning with some plodding, weirdly melodic depressive black metal, before everything drops out leaving just the guitars, to unwind some folky fluttery melodies, over subtle bass throb, and warm synth swells, eventually dropping out completely, leaving just some sampled voices, which just so happen to be Jim Jones from the People's Temple recorded in Guyana, creepy and fucked up for sure, the music shifts to match, a lurching start stop that sounds a bit like the recent Funeral Mist.
The final track begins with some almost-cheesy Goblin-y soundtracky synth, laid over some simple shuffling drumming, spidery minor key guitar, post rocky and drifty and dreamy. About halfway through, some warped metallic chug gradually builds into a pounding math metal workout, again all very major key and epic sounding, gradually becoming less and less epic, as the sound shifts slowly toward a more raw and blasting blackness.
Cool stuff, definitely twisted and confusional, but we're beginning to think that's precisely why we dig Caina so much...
MPEG Stream: "Drilling The Spire"
MPEG Stream: "To Pluck The Night Up By Its Skin"

album cover CAINA Some People Fall (God Is Myth) cd 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 we heard about this UK outfit Caina, was that they sounded a bit like Lurker Of Chalice, Wrest from Leviathan's more experimental black metal side project. And if you're anything like us, which we're thinking in matters Leviathan you most definitely are, then that was pretty much all we needed to hear. And it does definitely share some sonic similarities, although it is most definitely it's own mournful, melancholy blackened beast.
The opening track doesn't prepare you at all for the rest of the disc, it's a strange and murky, shimmering ambient soundscape, rich swells of epic sound, like an instrumental post rock Constellation band run through some sort of Jeck / Basinski / Tim Hecker filter rendering everything smeary and gloriously indistinct. Distant drums, bits of percussive skitter, all drifting below a sun baked expanse of glistening soft focus drone. Quite lovely. And the rest of the record is lovely too, just in a much more bleak and blackened way. The opening track has a definite shoegazer vibe that manages to stretch out and settle over all the tracks here. Thick reverby guitars, super primitive practice space drums, arpeggiated minor key melodies, strange little guitar leads spun out into the ether, ultra raw vocals way up in the mix, huge guitar chugs, lilting sort of sea sick rhythms, bizarre convoluted song structures, blast beats that seem to just sink into the mire, long stretches of caliginous dark ambience, gorgeous slabs of simple hypnotic guitar, the whole record wreathed in a dense funereal sonic fog. Dark and creepy and pretty but still so bleak and black. Lurker / Leviathan fans need this for sure. As does anyone into weird damaged blissed out black metal. And if you love stuff like My Bloody Valentine, Jesus & Mary Chain, M83, Phillip Jeck, Tim Hecker and the like, but can't really imagine what all those bands would sound like in a black metal context, look no further...
MPEG Stream: "The Validity Of Hate Within An Emotional Vacuum"
MPEG Stream: "Black End Tyme Collapse"
MPEG Stream: "Satanikultur Pessimis"

album cover CAINA Temporary Antennae (Profound Love) cd 13.98
We were super into the first couple records from UK black metal outfit Caina, especially their entry in the HP Lovecraft 3" cd-r series, but then after that we sort of lost interest, not sure what it was exactly, the records started sounding more acoustic, more folky, not that we're opposed to that, it just wasn't doing it for us. So we almost skipped this new disc completely, but boy are we glad we didn't. Another instance that has us wondering what the hell we were thinking, and giving us cause to go back and see if maybe we just weren't way off the mark.
Because Temporary Antennae is really something else. Heavy, and folky, and creepy, and pretty goddamn weird. Beginning with some rumbling black ambience, assembled from what sounds like chants and guttural vocalizations, culminating in an incredibly freaky processed voice, leading us into the first song proper, a killer start stop blackened groove, that almost sounds like Led Zeppelin mixed with Lurker Of Chalice. We had compared Caina to Lurker way back when, and it still sort of applies. If you consider Lurker to be the gothier doomier creepier less distinctly black metal side of Leviathan. The sound her is definitely black, but not buzzy and blasty, instead, the guitars almost jangle, the voice is deep and dramatic, and the arrangement is more epic, almost post rocky, with haunting majestic melodies, warm reverb drenched ambience, all very moody and dour, another black metal band that seems to be leaning heavily toward old school slowcore. But filtering in all sorts of doom and folk and various other unlikely elements.
And so it goes with Temporary Antennae, simple skeletal drum machine rhythms beneath glimmering fx laden shimmer, haunting operatic vocals, all giving way to a super slow, but surprisingly not 'heavy' funereal doom, rife with clean guitar, and fucked up bellowed vox, atonal off kilter blasting blackness stutters into a lurching arrangement that makes it sound more like Ved Buens Ende than anything more traditionally black, and again, shot through with moody mathy clean guitar, crooned vocals, processed shoegazey guitars, and out of the blue drum machine throb and pulse, there's even what sounds like some eighties FM radio new wave, all synthy and poppy and jangly, which gradually transforms into something much heavier, like Jesu or Nadja, the same sort of M83 fuzziness, and then suddenly the record will shift again into a brooding gothic pop, all mournful melodies and spare drumming, guitar harmonics and distant hazy shimmer, only to change gears again moments later, taking the shape of a sort of melancholic sadcore jangle, like Mazzy Star or The For Carnation, and for the next few songs, the sound shifts, continually slipping from jangle to shimmer to drift, but never really returning to anything remotely metal, but by that point, you don't really want it to, you're in some sort of blissed out trance state, which is precisely the point.
Only the most adventurous and pop savvy metalheads are gonna dig this. Even at its heaviest, things are still pretty fuzzy and jangly and pretty, but if you've been digging stuff like Alcest and Amesoeurs, then this might just hit the spot.
MPEG Stream: "Ten Went Up River"
MPEG Stream: "Willows And Whippoorwills"
MPEG Stream: "Tobacco Beetle"

album cover ASGARD ROOT Issue 2 magazine 14.98
The return of Asgard Root! An upstart metal magazine, whose first issue we raved about a while back, and who with the publication of their second issue are definitely ready to give the big boys at Decibel and Terrorizer a run for their money.
Way bigger than the first issue, this volume is jam packed with tons of amazing metal bands, black, cult and obscure, lots of aQ faves, some non metal groups, as well as reviews and photos and art.
It's a massive and heavy (both literally and figuratively) tome, that should definitely be required reading for the heavy-sounds inclined aQuarians out there.
Depressive black metallers Austere, recent aQ black metal faves Coldworld, raw Canadian cult Akitsa, an interview with Swedish black one man horde Arckanum, Mortiis (!), post black metallers Janvs, melodic black metal outfit Agolloch, mysterious black horde Paragon Belial, post industrialists Allerseelen, UK depressive black metallers Lyrinx, Canadian neo folk black metal outift Musk Ox, rune reader Freya Aswynn, Wallachia's favorite albums, Norwegian legends Enslaved, English steampunk black metallers A Forest Of Stars, gloomy gothic metal group Yussuf Jerusalem, ex-Lycia singer David Galas, UK one man black metal band Caina, Dead Raven Choir (!!), Swedish gloom pop metal masters Lifelover and lots of reviews, magazines, demos, albums, and more more. Definitely recommended.

album cover CELESTIAL SEA Deep Inside The Cold (God Is Myth) cd-r 8.98
Celestial Sea is the unlikely collaboration between God Is Myth head honcho Todd Paulson, who is also responsible for Dormant, reviewed elsewhere on the aQ site, and Andrew Curtis-Brignell, of UK black metal one man band Caina. Not unlikely because of the folks involved, it's not hard to draw lines connecting Caina Dormant and God Is Myth, but more for the sound they produce. An epic cinematic post rock more influenced by folks like Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, Isis and Mono than any black metal or even metal in particular.
Granted the crossover between metal and post rock is pretty common these days with folks on both sides of the sonic divide borrowing freely from the folks opposite. And we're never ones to complain, we love both sounds, pummeling metallic crunch, and loping mathy instrumental jams, and the two together, well, you know where we stand.
So here we Have Celestial Sea, a (perhaps) one off, that finds the duo getting super spacey for the opening 5 minutes, simple minor key guitar figures unfurling over long drawn out drones, ratcheting up the tension, creating a brooding post rock ambience, that to be honest, we'd be happy to hear continue for the length of the whole record.
Instead, the band launch into the first proper song, soaring crystalline chords, breathless vocals, simple drumming, all swept up in a shimmering swell, building to a crescendo that instead of introducing crushing downtuned riffage, offers up some super proggy organs, but only for a moment, a few seconds later, the guitars drop, and the band is soaring majestically, and heavily through some epic major key chords, the drumming wilder and more chaotic, before blissing back out soon after.
Track three, "William Bentley's Grave" is another slow burner, with a definite prog vibe, lots of glistening shimmer, finally exploding in another epic climax, not crushing or heavy, just expansive and cathartic.
The closer, "Deep Inside The Cold" is the darkest of the bunch, and the most overtly heavy, sounding a bit like Opeth or Katatonia but more mathy and introspective. The guitars thick, ringing out, long passages of droning looped riffage, and finally the record's big payoff, high end guitars spiraling heavenward, the drums double time, a serious final blowout.
Definitely for fans of rock both post and math, and of course metalheads not averse to some sonic subtlety and lots of pretty pretty melody
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES, housed in a plain white sleeve with a paste on cover and a printed insert.
MPEG Stream: "Clouds"
MPEG Stream: "As The Birds Fly South We Prepare Ourselves For The Impending Storm"

album cover DORMANT Beneath The Mighty Oak (God Is Myth) cd 10.98
From the man who runs the amazing God Is Myth label, responsible for recent AQ faves like Godheadscope, Caina and Procer Veneficus, and who used to record as Uvall, comes the new 'group' Dormant, which takes the more traditional black metal sound of Uvall and abandons it almost entirely, focusing more on mood and melancholia, texture and timbre, songs as much as sonics, a sort of orchestral dark doom pop sound, run through with streaks of buzzing blackness, and plenty of dark dark ambience.
With some help from folks like Caina and Celestiial, Dormant weaves an unlikely blackened sonic brew, gloomy and dark, but strangely pretty and poppy, epic and almost orchestral at points, there are brief moments of grim buzz and blasting black fury, but they are relatively few and far between, instead most of the record drifts delicately, mournful strummed steel string guitars, moaning drones off in the distance, deep baritone, near spoken vocals. Sounding very much like Swans or Angels of Light. Even the heavier songs spend much of their time moping mournfully, shimmery clean guitar twang, reverbed soft focus riffage, sometimes eventually transforming into midtempo black metal, but still suffused with that distinctly pop element, occasionally even turning pitchblack and offering up some buzzing riffs and harsh vocals, but only briefly, usually slipping back into a lilting dreamy dark folk, or a strange loping industrial dirge, or a haunting expanse of barely there drone.
Definitely for the super adventurous blackmetalheads out there, or for darkfolk freaks who don't mind bits of buzz and blast peppering their spacey jangle, moody gothic miserablism and abstract late night drift.
The first 200 copies of this cd come housed in a hand screened digipak with an insert and a sticker. We have about a dozen of those. Once we run out, we'll have copies from the rest of the pressing, a version that comes in a DVD case instead.
MPEG Stream: "Black Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "I Am The Wind On The Horizon"
MPEG Stream: "Sighs"

album cover FROSTMOON ECLIPSE I Am Providence (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 8.98
Yet another entry in God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3"cd-r homages to horror author H.P. Lovecraft, who is obviously one of the main sources for metal band names, song titles and lyrical themes. Get rid of Lovecraft and Tolkien and suddenly metal bands would have names like Sunshine and Tigerlilly and would sing songs about picnics and rowboats. But fear not, until some mischievous soul with a time machine gets some crazy ideas, all is well in metal.
Past installments have come from a pretty disparate selection of black metal and black ambient outfits: Caina, Harvist, LVTHN, Sapthuran, Smohalla, and now Frostmoon Eclipse.
Although we've only ever listed one Frostmoon record, we've long been big fans, their blend of classic Norwegian style black metal, a la Mayhem, Emperor with dark moody rock, a brooding gothic groove, the result is a strangely catchy, but still fiercely heavy blackened metallic rock. With long stretches of acoustic guitar, simple drumming and almost flamenco style melodies, they definitely remind us of Opeth as well. But FE manage to take their influences and distill something distinctly their own. The strange thing is, we almost prefer the band when they are all acoustic, which much of this ep ends up being, evoking all sorts of melancholic emotions, with just steel strings and a hushed whispered vocal. That said, these guys can crush, and the blasts of heaviness are indeed intense and blackened, blending perfectly with the folky flutter and dark ambient drift surrounding it.
LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. Already sold out and out of print. We got nearly a quarter of those, but like past installments these will no doubt disappear quick. Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with black and white covers and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
MPEG Stream: "In The Vault"
MPEG Stream: "The Thing On The Doorstep"

album cover HARVIST He Who Rises (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is volume two in God Is Myth's 3" cd-r series paying homage to the late great H.P Lovecraft. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, this, the second comes via Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist. Based, according to the label website, on awakening/conjuring of the "Outer Gods": Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath and Cthulhu (who is actually one of the Great Old Ones, according to our resident Lovecraft Mythos expert Allan). So what does that sound like? Well for Harvist, that sounds like relentlessly pounding black buzz, thick washes of overblown guitars, chugging downtuned riffs, killer blast beats and some seriously anguished howls. Also plenty of grunts and "uuuh"s. Wrest from Leviathan might call this "goat metal", but it's fast and black and furious, heavy and epic.
The first two tracks a straight ahead grim frosty old skool black metal. Raw and brutal. The third track adds keyboards and tolling bells, and is more melodic and moody, but it's track 4 that pushes this over the edge, an 'actual' Chaos Magic Ritual dedicated to the awakening of the essence of Cthulhu!! Lots of ambient sound, what could be surf (but also sounds like cars driving by), whispering wind, massive rumbling drones and of course, creepy processed vocals, reciting the unholy incantation to summon the mighty Cthulhu! Pretty weird. But the perfect tribute to the genius and legacy of Lovecraft.
Awesome cover painting of Cthulhu, and each disc includes an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 15 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "He Who Rises From The Deep"
MPEG Stream: "Rites Of The Outer Gods"

album cover LVTHN Sentinel Hill (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is volume three in God Is Myth's 3" cd-r series paying homage to the late great H.P Lovecraft. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, the second from Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist. This volume features the strangely monickered LVTHN, pronounced Leviathan, and not to be confused with our own Leviathan.
LVTHN just so happens to be the black ambient ritualistic alter ego of one Gaendaal from the band Wraiths, whose Paradigms disc we reviewed recently, and if you dug the Wraiths disc, you'll for sure want to check this out.
This is gorgeously bleak and mysteriously abstract, an ambient world of strange sonic events and ominous drones. Inspired by the Dunwich Horror, Sentinel Hill is one long, slow crawl through the blackest of terrors, distant tolling bells, crumbling wastelands of blood drenched hills and drone drenched swells, rhythms are muted pulses, layer after layer of black sonic gauze is wrapped in billowing clouds around every sound no matter how slight, disembodied vocals and clanging metal are smeared into still more layers of blackness. Truly dark and dense and harrowing. Another perfect sonic tribute to the master.
Each disc includes a full color booklet as well as an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 15 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "track 1 (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "track 1 (excerpt 2)"

album cover OAKEN THRONE Number Five - Summer 2007 magazine + cd 7.00
The same people who have been going on and on about the death of the record store, have also been heralding the end of print media. But you know what, screw them. Who wants to spend their whole life sitting in front of a computer? Listen to music at your desk, shop for mp3's, read that article on the laptop... whatever. Sure that stuff is convenient, and we all partake a bit, but nothing will ever replace your local record store, thumbing through bins of lps or digging through stacks of cds, just like a gorgeously designed and laid out magazine will never be replaced by a website. Especially a magazine as gorgeous and jam packed with black metal weirdness as Oaken Throne. 
Beginning life as a super strange, WAY oversized zine, impossible to ship, and difficult to display, but brilliant in its obstinacy, Oaken Throne has just gotten better and better, easily the best magazine devoted to underground black metal and strange heavy musicks. With amazing writing, great art, and some of the most stylish, but subtle layout and design of any magazine we can think of. The cover is always metallic silver on black, inside, the ads are often as striking as the illustrations accompanying the articles (which makes sense considering one of the two OT head honchos designs many of the ads as well). But Oaken Throne is not just another pretty corpse painted face. Nope, it's packed with articles and interviews on and with some of the most infamous artists in the black metal (and generally heavy) underground. 
This time around, a bunch of AQ faves: Asunder (featuring John from Weakling), Harvey Milk, Wold, Portal, Moss, Coffins, Caina, as well as some other amazing groups who have yet to get reviewed on the AQ site: Acrimonious, Adorior, Archgoat, Blacklodge, Cult Of Daath, Dapnom and Necromorbus...
Tons of killer photos and yet another amazing illustration from AQ pal Justin Bartlett (whose art has also adorned a bunch of SUNNO))) and SUNNO))) related records). In addition to all that, there are a bunch of record reviews too... easily one of the best mags, metal or otherwise going today...
This is the first issue that includes comes with a cd, containing tracks from each of the bands featured in the magazine, none of them exclusive or rare really (except maybe the Asunder track, recorded live on KFJC) but a pretty killer metal mixtape (er... cd) for sure... As always, totally recommended and essential. 

album cover SAPTHURAN The Beast In The Cave (God Is Myth) 3" cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Probably most well known around these parts for sharing a split with SF black metal overlord Leviathan a while back, Sapthuran pretty much held their own, which in that sort of company is saying something for sure. Their most recent full length was pretty great as well, a gloriously buzzed out slab of Burzumic brutality, as blissed out and hypnotic as grim and fuzzy. And a logical choice to be a part of God Is Myth's ongoing series of 3" cd-r's paying tribute to the writer H.P. Lovecraft, who has probably had more of an affect on metal music than almost any other writer (minus J.R.R. Tolkien obviously).
This is volume four in the series. The first came courtesy of UK experimental black metal outfit Caina, the second from Appalachian heathen metal horde Harvist, the third from the strangely monickered LVTHN, pronounced Leviathan, but not to be confused with our own Leviathan and number four comes from this Kentuckian black horde. 
Three songs, a little under twenty minutes, thematically Lovecraftian, but sonically, much like the last Sapthuran full length. The guitars are a drone-y buzz, loping and looping, fuzzed out and hypnotic, very Burzumy for sure, the vocals a strangled demony growl, the drums a chaotic black blast, the whole thing swirled into a relentlessly mesmerizing, pounding black buzz that wraps it's spiky tendrils around you and pulls you into the bleak and black emptiness below.  
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. We only got 20 and it's already out of print from the label so once these are gone we will not be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: "Into The Mouth Of The Earth"
MPEG Stream: "The Watcher"

album cover SMOHALLA Nova Persei (God Is Myth) 3" cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest in God Is Myth's ongoing series of super limited 3" cd-r's. each a tribute, homage, musical offering to the legacy of H.P. Lovecraft, who, as we've posited before, has had more of an affect on heavy metal, than even J.R.R. Tolkien! And these are crazy limited, only 100 copies, we got 20, and it's already out of print, this is your first and only stab and nabbing one of these.
The series so far has been pretty stellar, and surprisingly varied. Past installments have included UK experimental folk black metal one man band Caina, Appalachian heathen black metallers Harvist, mysterious blacknoise dronelords LVTHN, and Kentuckian black buzzers Sapthuran, who shared a split with the mighty Leviathan a while back.
The newest comes from a truly bizarre and epic post rock avant black metal trio called Smohalla, who hail from France, and while not shoegazey like the other French BM outfits we've been so obsessed with as of late, Alcest, Amesoeurs, etc., they do display a similar unconventional approach to their black metal, and while not as blissy, it is quite fuzzy and tripped out and in many ways not very black at all.
The intro is a brief swirl of atmospheric cinematic sort of krautrock, reminding us a bit of Silver Mt. Zion, epic and intense with some very Achim Reichel like vocals, delayed and tripped out.
The second track we expected to burst into furious buzz, but instead begins like some apocalyptic folk track, all martial snares, and mournful melodies, swoonsome melodic swells, chanted crooned vocals, clean finger picked guitars, all dense and reverby, wrapped in a mist of fuzzy swirl, definitely more post rock than metal, very reminiscent of Ved Buens Ende, but more washed out and druggy. There are some black metal riffs, but they're delivered cleanly, and stretched over a loping rhythmic backdrop. Before the pic doomy breakdown near the end, a thick wall of roiling guitars, heavy, but more melodic and mysterious.
The whole record tends to hover in a strange post rock landscape, where chunks of metal and buzzing riffage, drift by on steady currents of midtempo dramatic math rock minimalism, with occasional howly metal vox, but even then they're strewn over a chaotic avant rock framework, and the occasional blast beats too are nestled in thick reverby swaths of soft buzz instead of grim blacknessŠ
The only truly metal moment, is the opening of track 4 with it's dense furious buzzing riff, and harsh vocals, but even that is long passages of haunting piano, strange swirling FX, and disembodied voices, some very choral, the vocals like some ancient angelic choir.
These guys may be a metal band, and this may very well be a black metal record, but the typical tropes of black metal are not the focus, instead, they're just elements of a bigger whole, a weird, creepy, off kilter, fucked up, epic, cinematic whole, the sound more dark and haunting than heavy, more loping and midtempo than blasting and buzzing, but in many ways that makes this an even more appropriate tribute to the Lovecraft and the magical worlds he created.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, and again we have 20 of those. You know what that means. Full color cover, each disc includes an insert with information on Lovecraft as well as a killer creepy portrait.
MPEG Stream: "Les Yeux Du Temps"
MPEG Stream: "Nova Persei"

album cover STROSZEK The Wild Hunt (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 9.98
Volume eight in the ongoing HP Lovecraft 3"cd-r series, each a unique tribute to the writer and his works, past installments included discs from Caina, Brown Jenkins, Sapthuran, Smohalla, Frostmoon Eclipse, LVTHN and Harvist, all of them WAY out of print, since each one is limited to a mere 100 copies. Out of each batch of 100 we get 20 copies, so by now you should know exactly what that means...
Stroszek is the solo project of Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse, and is, wait for it, ALL ACOUSTIC. Yeah, we know, we're very cautious when it comes to acoustic solo folky projects from grim black metallers, but as we discussed at length in the review of the most recent Stroszek full length, Songs For Remorse, which itself wasn't strictly acoustic, somehow even in Frostmoon, this guy has such a way with melody and arrangement, that even without distortion or blast beats or drums at all, he's able to conjure up dark spirits, evoke dreamlike memories and call forth all manner of ancient mystery. But this, this is definitely not even remotely black metal, instead, this is some gorgeous dark acoustic folk, solo acoustic guitar, and nothing else,moody and brooding, minor key and melancholic, a little bit Appalachia, but more simple and stripped down, no furious flurries of notes or slippery slide, this is all about melody and ambience, these skeletal minimal acoustic guitarscapes are delicate and dark and so lovely. There are vocals, but they are nearly whispered and only surface occasionally. leaving the guitar to unfurl crystalline notes and gently line them up into shimmery melodies, the whole thing darkly intimate, and really quite beautiful.
Metal fans may want this to round out the series, but only the most open minded metalhead will dig this, instead, we'd recommend this to fans of free folk and dark folk other delicate six stringery, Six Organs Of Admittance, Steven R. Smith, Ilyas Ahmed, James Blackshaw, Jack Rose, that sort of thing.
Again, LIMITED TO ONLY 100 COPIES. We got only TWENTY! Packaged in a normal slimline cd case, with sepia toned covers, and a sepia printed cardstock insert with a photo and a brief biography of Lovecraft.
MPEG Stream: "Secret Of The Earth"
MPEG Stream: "From Mound To Mound"

album cover CAIN A Pound Of Flesh (Rockadrome / Vintage) cd 12.98
Rockadrome's Vintage division comes through with the proto metal goods yet again, this time reissuing the 1975 debut album from Minnesota hard rockers Cain (put out on compact disc once before by Rockadrome's previous incarnation Monster Records, but long out of print). First off, you know this is gonna be heavy when you see that cover, graphically and grossly depicting an actual pound (or more) of actual flesh overflowing from a tin can marked Cain. "8 Prime Cuts" it says on the can. And there are, 8 prime cuts of good ol' '70s American riff rock. (Plus four more bonus tracks from '78 on this cd reish.) It's along the lines of Grand Funk, Starz, Bad Company, Ted Nugent, Moxy, with some hints of Angel and Blue Oyster Cult...
Frontman Jiggs Lee's barechested vocals lead the charge with barroom bravado, as Cain kick out their jams, consisting of hard hitting party time grooves definitely made to be blasted LOUD out of muscle cars in the Midwest. Full of funky rhythms and dramatic crescendos, Cain's music is basically swaggering cock rock, with nods to both glam and the proggier fare from the likes of Led Zep and Queen (there's even flute in the intro to the second track, "Katy"). Speaking of Queen, you gotta love a band that has a song called "Queen Of The Night" and then another one, two tracks later, entitled "South Side Queen".
If you liked the recent Rockadrome reissue of Poobah, you'll want to check this out too. And for even more proto metal awesomeness that's shown up here this week, see also our review of the Up All Night various artists collection!
MPEG Stream: "Queen Of The Night"
MPEG Stream: "Heed The Call"

album cover CIRCLE OF OUROBORUS Old Ghosts (Cocainacopia) lp 16.98
Once again, Finnish 'black metal' weirdos distance themselves even further from what most of us would consider to be black metal. This compiles two 'sides' originally recorded for 2 planned split lps with another bunch of outsider black metallers, Urfaust. For whatever reason, said splits failed to materialize, thus we have this, two part bit of oddness called Old Ghosts, not a new album technically (part 3 of the Shores - Stream - Islands trilogy is coming out soon) but heck, new album or not, this is in fact a new full length from our of our favorite purveyors of damaged, off kilter blackness.
And as we mentioned above, CoO were never really the black and buzzy type, instead they took those elements and fused them with their more sort of abstract folk flecked, Jandekian stumble, the result something we found genius, but a fair amount of TROO black metal warriors found to be hard to handle. Moody, noodily slow motion almost new wave sounding guitars, reminding us quite a bit of some lost Cure demo, dark and spidery and creepy, the vocals sort of sung/spoken, often slipping into weird out of tune crooning, it's easy to see how these jams were intended to be on a split with Urfaust, the same sort of dramatic poppiness, a lurching, bizarrely rendered bit of not very metal blackness.
After the first track, the drums kick in, there's then a bit more buzz, but other than that, the sound remains essentially the same, dour and depressive, stripped down, almost jangly, more a sort of lo-fi doom-pop than black metal, very much along the same lines as the last few Hypothermia records, or maybe Dead Reptile Shrine at their most folky and poppy.
For being two different records, the two sides flow together fairly seamlessly, a sprawling collection of lumbering, loping, downtuned depressive, jangle flecked, blackened, gothic new wave pop weirdness. Further cementing these guys' position as one of our favorite groups around. Both sides finish off with short bursts of urgently strummed atonal acoustic folk, that sounds a bit like a more fucked up blackened Mountain Goats?! So cool.
Comes with a printed insert, with liner notes and lyrics, and features one of the best covers we've EVER seen on a 'metal' record for sure.

CRIPTA OCULTA Sangue Do Novo Amanhecer (Cocainacopia / Bubonic Productions) cd 7.98

album cover DEAD REPTILE SHRINE Burning Black Infinity (Cocainacopia) 2lp 29.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The newest release from these Finnish black metal weirdos, which we listed on cassette a couple lists back (we have a very few left!) is now available on vinyl. Super deluxe, 180 gram colored vinyl, black and white and grey swirled, limited to 333 copies, hand numbered, super thick deluxe full colored gatefold with cool reflective spot varnish printing on top, so over the top and thus pricey and again CRAZY LIMITED!
We're always going on and on about the weirdest, most fucked up black metal bands ever, even elsewhere on this list, we review the new one from Tasmanian one man band Striborg, and declare it maybe the weirdest yet. But there's weird, and then there's Dead Reptile Shrine, who beyond being weird, are barely even black metal, the metallic elements far outweighed by the fractured folk and total whatthefuck elements, and the blackness, well that infuses pretty much every sound they produce, just not in the way most folks are used to or most metalheads want. Instead, DRS do their own thing, and their own thing is some fucked up mix of dark dronemusic, detuned free folk, stumbling chaotic black metal, some orchestral bits, tortured vocals, all wound into a confusional world of black rituals and mysterious sonic otherworlds.
While we anxiously await the forth coming double cd on tUMULt, we have this brand new damaged black sonic ritual to tide us over. Burning Black Intensity offers up a taste of what will be found on the soon to come sprawling tUMULt 2cd full length, and if BBI is any indication, then two whole cds of this stuff is going to DESTROY. This record begins with some creepy, orchestral Peter And The Wolf type sounds, strings and percussion, sampled we assume, while DRS croon over the top, offering up wavery clean vocals, strange incantations, and various other vocalizations, the result is truly twisted. This goes on for several tracks before the band launch into some black metal, but DRS black metal is a whole other thing, the drums buried in the mix, barely audible, the guitars strangled, and gnarled, buzzing, blurred and murky, dueling vocals, one a high howled screech, the other a rumbling demonic gurgle, both drenched in reverb, both howling maniacally, and relentlessly, while the guitars churn and the drums stumble, the whole thing lurching drunkenly, super raw and primitive and lo-fi and fractured and FUCKED for sure. The next track demonstrates that no matter how weird it gets, everything they do is deliberate, the guitars are thick and fuzzy, the drums simple but propulsive, the riff a near static black groove, the bass, pulsing and undulating, more typical black metal vocals screeching over the top, while way in the distance a voice shrieks hysterically, the two vocals all tangled up, the guitar spewing forth a super mesmerizing singular riff, totally hypnotic and trancelike, the vocals growing more and more unhinged. The next track is a murky muddy Wold style soundscape, melodies and guitars smeared and blurred into bleary eyed streaks of sound, the vocals an ominous rumble, the drums a chaotic blast beat, while the guitars swoon woozily, the whole track dizzy and druggy and weirdly dreamlike, the vocal eventually growing more and more warped, almost cartoonish, sing songy and almost operatic, wrapped in fluttery flutes and more distorted soft buzz.
Needless to say, this is brilliantly twisted stuff, totally wacked, outsider blackness, as true as any of the more classically TROO black metal, but unlike those, DRS are true only to themselves, any resemblance between their music and other black metal is not only coincidental it's a fluke, as most of this sounds like nothing you've ever heard.

SATANIZE Demonic Conquest In Jerusalem (Cocainacopia) cassette 4.50

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