[ metal ] titles at Aquarius Records

POCCOLUS

Ragana

(Inferna Profundus) cd 10.00

**SALE **SALE* *SALE**

The return of Lithuanian black metallers Poccolus! Well, not so much a return, as these guys split up a while back, but we're super psyched to hear more from these guys. Their Supernal label full length was a huge hit with the metalheads around here, gloriously thrashy keyboard drenched, post rock flecked Pagan blackness, originally released in 1996, but reissued a couple years ago. The tracks on Ragana date even further back than that, 1993 and 1994, with a couple live tracks tacked on as a bonus, originally released as a super limited cassette in 1997.

Here, Poccolus sound even more raw, and strangely more melodic. The guitars offering up classic metal sounding harmonies, locked in with the drums, pounding way down in the mix. Shades of Iron Maiden, and at least one of the tracks musically is a dead ringer for Slough Feg, that is until it slips into grim blackness, the bellowy reverb drenched croon, switching to harsh hellish shriek, but even then, the music continues to lope along all mournful and minor key, with plenty of keyboards, although here they're buried under the buzz and lo fidelity hiss. The opening track is so melancholy and catchy it's almost not even black metal. More like some gloomy gothy slightly blackened hard rock, but whatever it is, it's pretty excellent.

In fact, as we dig deeper, all the tracks here are barely black metal, although they're buzzy and heavy enough to keep metalheads' attention, the sound is much more raw and old school and classic sounding, the vocals are the blackest element, but even those shrieks and howls just as often revert to clean-ish croons. And it sound like this was mastered from a cassette, so it's all a little warped and warbly, giving it a haunting woozy off kilter vibe, which only adds to the band's unique sound. One track does actually get super grim and blasty, but that's after about 6 minutes of super minimal rumbling drones. The record closes with another strange only sort of black metal jam, lurching, mid tempo, the guitars warbly and minor key, the keyboard drifting like a haze in the background, the melodies getting more and more grand and epic, the band whipping their lo-fi stumble and buzz into something truly majestic sounding.

The live tracks are way more raw and fierce, lo-fi, but still plenty blown out and brutal, but even then, the weird melodicism of the proper tracks still creeps into the bands grim buzz. The Pagan element is also more present on these later tracks, the overall sound sitting somewhere right between the more polished Pagan crush of the full length, and the warped lo-fi classic metal of the demo tracks included here.

MPEG Stream: "I Pagoniu Zeme"

MPEG Stream: "Ragana"

POCCOLUS

s/t

(Supernal) cd 15.98

All hail the lords of Baltic black metal. Ummm... really? Yep, really. Poccolus are, according to Supernal, the best black metal band (and most likely the first!) ever to come out of Lithuania (out of, according to the Encyclopedia Metallium, a total of 96 Lithuanian BM bands). And who are we to argue, especially since we've actually only -ever- heard 2 other black metal bands from Lithuania.

Even so, Poccolus are awesome, and just the sort of gloriously twisted blackness we've come to expect from Supernal. Originally released on a tiny Korean label over a decade ago, this record now gets the wicked deluxe reissue treatment, complete with all new artwork, the booklet and tray card printed on cool leather-like textured paper, lyrics in both English and Lithuanian, remastered sound, and pressed on an extra fancy gold cd.

But what does it sound like? A gloriously buzzy black thrash to begin with, but laced with all sorts of unlikely musical randomness, bizarre epic swaths of grandiose keyboard, lots of long stretches of weird post rocky folk with arpeggiated steel string guitar, loping rhythms and folky arrangements, thick washes of murky drone-y Burzumy buzz, strangely melodic, with bits of epic Viking melody, strange sound effects, big drums, thunder, lightning, and of course some insane vocals, that go from high pitched shriek to banshee like wail to monstrous growl to chant like moan, all over a constantly shifting black metal weirdscape of blackened wah guitar, droning drifting buzz, and thrashing percussive blast.

MPEG Stream: "Vilkolakiai"

MPEG Stream: "Pakol Dega Lauzai"

MPEG Stream: "Ugnis Kyla Virs Azuolu"

POD PEOPLE

Soil

(Pod) cd 11.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Australian band that combine Sabbathy doom metal riffs and death metal vocals, a bit like Cathedral. Distributed in the US by Andee's label tUMULt, and we're the first store to have it.

POISON THE WELL

You Come Before You

(Atlantic) cd 12.98

The last Poison The Well record was easily the best metalcore record, if not one of the best plain ol' METAL records, of last year. And this new one seems poised to repeat the feat! This is PtW's major label debut, taking the plunge, that years ago meant risking losing your core audience to cries of 'Sell out!' but now just means that we may be seeing Poison The Well on MTV and who can argue with that. It's getting tougher and tougher to describe metalcore, my thesaurus is worn away to the size of a matchbook. Yes, this is pummelling, crushing, brutal, punishing, the guitars are downtuned, thunderous riffs, and howled shrieks and furious double kick drumming and relentless rhythms and all that. So yeah, it's HEAVY. But Poison The Well write amazing songs. Every riff, every lyric, every melody, no matter how unlikely, is a part that you will find yourself humming to yourself days later. Incorporating the often problematic, clean vocals and melodic emo breakdowns more deftly than most into their overall sound, PtW drag you kicking and screaming on a rollar coaster of extreme dynamics, lush production and gorgeous catchy pop swathed in metallic brutality. The melodic parts, of which there seem to be a lot more this time around, owing more to their progress as songwriters methinks than their major label leap, are as soaring and captivating, as catchy and heart wrenching as anything the Get Up Kids or Reggie And The Full Effect could come up with on their best days. And so much less cloying, nestled the way they are, all snug and warm between a row of amps on 11 and a swirling, writhing moshpit. This definitely hits the metal spot, but pushes all our emo buttons and satisfies our pop sweet tooth at the same time. At first I didn't like this nearly as much as their last full length, but the more I listen, the more I am completely baffled and knocked out by how much more advanced this record is than its predecessor, so complex and varied, full of hooks, labyrinthine arrangements, beautiful melodies, sheer face-melting metal, gorgeous soulful vocals, lush, layered instrumentation, throat shredding demonic screeches and bizarre but subtle production. This definitely raises the bar impossibly high. It's about time!

MPEG Stream: "Ghostchant"

MPEG Stream: "Loved Ones"

POLES

Marmyteran

(self-released) cd-r 4.98

First we've heard from this French instrumental math / post / noise rock combo, and holy shit, these guys push all our musical buttons, channeling the spirit of Polvo and Pitchblende, all droned out atonal guitars and wild mathy rhythms, mesmerizingly hypnotic metallic grooves and soaring layered sonic sprawls, the perfect post / math rock hybrid, fusing loping super melodic mesmer with gnarled dense near metal crush, but somehow managing the near impossible, making all of this weird mathiness insanely catchy, the sort of rare band that can conjure up swirling intricate landscapes of chugging and churning and soaring and droning, all manner of shimmer and crunch, pummel and pound, into something that you may find yourself humming hours later. Fans of outfits like Psychic Paramount, Dazzling Killmen, Laddio Bolocko, Phleg Camp, Don Caballero, Bastro, Breadwinner, Drive Like Jehu, Rodan and the like will flip. A new favorite band for sure!

MPEG Stream: "Benre"

MPEG Stream: "Vistule"

MPEG Stream: "Krykun"

POOBAH

Let Me In

(Ripple Music) cd 11.98

Heavy psych and metal freaks, perhaps you remember we reviewed a reissue of this power trio Poobah's 1979 album Steamroller a while back? While '79 was a late date for "proto-metal", that's definitely what this Youngstown Ohio outfit sounded like, heavy duty acid rock n' roll action with plenty of psychedelically shredding guitar work. Well, now you can check out where they wuz comin' from, 'cause this "Special Collector's Edition" of their 1972 independently released debut has just been "re-unleashed". Just peep the vintage b&w photos of the band, all long hair, beards, head bands. Total hippies! HEAVY hippies. Hard as nails. But definitely hippies (like the fabulous furry freak bro looking dude depicted in the crude cover cartoon, spitting up into a toilet - or is it the other way around?).

So, yeah, Poobah is "proto-metal" fersure on this one, right from the get-go with the aptly titled "Mr. Destroyer", which despite the peace-loving message of the lyrics seems to demonstrate that violence for violence's sake can work, in rock anyway! And aside from one (quite nice) laidback number, "Enjoy What You Have", the six tracks that make up the original release of Let Me In are all similarly raw rifftastic freakrock heaviness, very underground, their unhinged high wattage psychedelia almost kinda punk, a la the UK's Crushed Butler, Detroit's Death, or Australia's Coloured Balls. BAD ASS in other words. Heck the ominous creepy-crawl of "Bowleen" is practically doom metal, though Poobah do have their lighter side, with a penchant for funny voices and trippy rhythmic passages, hippy potsmoking stuff y'know...

The bonus tracks (there's 10 on the gatefold double vinyl version and 12 on the compact disc) are all also quite worthy, recorded circa '72-'73, mostly more high energy ass-kickery in the vein of the album tracks, with a few weird noisy studio experiments thrown in for good measure... or maybe not "studio" exactly as most of the bonus cuts were recorded live to 2-track in the guitarist or bassist's living room. It all sounds great though, from the surprise vocal harmonies in the midst of "Make A Man Out Of You" to the Ted Nugent style gonzo goings on of "Going To Rock City"...

Quite a treat, now we're waiting on a proper reissue of Poobah's second album, US Rock, from '76, that's gotta happen someday too...

MPEG Stream: "Mr. Destroyer"

MPEG Stream: "Bowleen"

MPEG Stream: "Make A Man Out Of You"

POOBAH

Let Me In

(Ripple Music) 2lp 21.00

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Quite a treat, now we're waiting on a proper reissue of Poobah's second album, US Rock, from '76, that's gotta happen someday too...

POOBAH

Steamroller

(Vintage / Rockadrome) cd 14.98

The Rockadrome label down in Texas is, as we have said, on a roll, digging up the awesome likes of Jerusalem and Iron Claw for our proto-metal listening pleasure. The both of them were early '70s bands from the UK, but Rockadrome, and related label that preceded it, Monster Records, have actually concentrated more on reissuing records by late '70s/early '80s American hard rock acts, private press obscurities that in a perfect world maybe woulda made it big, but had the misfortune of coming out right when new wave and/or disco was what the record companies wanted.

Here's a great example, something previously reissued by Monster, now at last made available again in the Rockadrome catalog. The mighty POOBAH! A power trio from Ohio, featuring in particular the talents of guitarist/vocalist Jimmy Gustafson, the most kick ass guitar whizz you probably have never heard. This one's their 1979 album Steamroller, and aside from the unexpected, lovely piano intro to the instrumental "Atom Bomb", it pretty much IS a steamroller of rockin' and rollin', wailing guitars, bashing drums, psychedelic effects, and screamin' vocals. Although '79 might be a late date for "proto-metal" that's what we'd say this is, 'cause of the weird psych and prog elements, it's just a little too weird and wild and wacky to fit in with the straight-up metal scene, maybe that's why they stayed underground. The overload of raw, chunky riffage and squiggly, slashing guitar leads (along with campy, tongue-in-cheek lyrics) here wasn't exactly radio-friendly either, though great for a party. Basically the appeal of Poobah can be summed up by image found on this disc's back cover of the band's curly-haired drummer wearing a homemade t-shirt that reads "Poobah Jams" in iron-on letters. Damn right, jam they did!

So if you dig lotsa guitar, from a band influenced both by '70s heavies like Led Zeppelin (they do a cover of "Rock And Roll") and '60s surf music too, then you oughta ignore the budget cover art (both old and new, the one you see here is the new version Rockadrome came up with but the original is also fairly hideous) and check 'em out. You'll know if Poobah's for you after the seven minutes and thirty eight seconds of their track "Jump Through The Golden Ring" that opens the album! Oh, and like the previous edition on Monster, this includes some extra unreleased/live tracks also from '79.

We'd like to hear more by these forgotten Midwestern hard rock heroes. Hopefully Rockadrome will also re-reissue the other Poobah album Monster did, 1976's U.S. Rock. And, eventually, all the other cool out of print Monster titles, like Cain's Pound Of Flesh. We'll keep you posted.

MPEG Stream: "Jump Through The Golden Ring"

MPEG Stream: "She's That Kind Of Lover"

POPOFF, MARTIN

The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 1: The Seventies

(Collector's Guide Publishing) book + cd 23.95

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Strangely enough (or not?) for someone who spends a lot of their time writing music reviews, I just LOVE to read music reviews. And if it's reviews of old heavy metal records, even better! And there's few reviewers whose reviews I get as much of a kick out of as those of Canadian heavy metal opinionmeister Martin Popoff. Back in 1997 he wrote a book -- a tome, in truth, with 3,740 reviews -- entitled The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal, itself an update of Popoff's previously published opus Riff Kills Man: 25 Years Of Hard Rock & Heavy Metal (a mere 1,942 reviews in that one). And that wasn't enough. So now he's back, revising and expanding his ultimate heavy metal review resource into not one but three volumes, one per decade of metal, starting with this one, devoted to pretty much anything that rocked out and exhibited some degree of heaviosity in the '70s! And some relevant late '60s albums sneak in too. Hundreds upon hundreds of albums are covered here, each getting a paragraph-or-two review and ratings on not one but two 10-point scales: first for heaviness (which in Martin's world seems more akin to "metalness") and a second for simply just how much Martin likes the album in question. These two scores often correlate but not always. And of course it's not clear that these faux-scientific numerical rankings are a good idea, since it leads to silly comparisons... Blue Cheer's Vincebus Eruptum gets a "6" for heaviness (I woulda gone higher!) while he gives the same rating to Jo Jo Gunne's Jumpin' The Gunne. And they actually both get the same quality rating too, both 6's. Huh? But that is part of the charming eccentricity of this book and its author. Agree with him or not, he'll still get you stoked on some great music.

That's the best thing about this -- that despite the title, it's not really a "collector's" guide. That is, it's not at all about what's rare and valuable and hard to find and that sort of thing. Sure, the occasional ridiculous eBay price gets mentioned, and Martin will bring up some peculiarity of a reissue or whatever if he thinks it's interesting. But what this book is REALLY about is the music, something that most "collector's guides" barely ever even seem concerned with amidst concerns about rarity and monetary value. Sure, Martin's a collector, i.e., he's got lots of records. And so am I. But the motivation for the collecting -- and review-writing -- is an abiding love for the "Greatest Music In The World" (as Martin puts it, and I won't argue) and a desire to share that excitement. So don't come to this book expecting to read a lot about different vinyl pressings and suchlike, thank god. And indeed, part of Martin's mission here is to dispel some collector's myths. He wants to examine some so-called "collector's holy grails" and see if they really stand up against the more popular, better-known bands in the heaviness stakes. Some do, but the point he's making is that just 'cause something costs $500 for an original pressing doesn't mean it's in the same league musically as, say, the Scorpions LP you can still pick up for relatively cheap at a flea market. Kind of a record-collector reality check. And that's good...although of course I'm still drooling over some of these hard-to-find obscurities regardless! And that's what this is for too... covering as it does everything from the obvious (Deep Purple, Judas Priest, Kiss, Led Zeppelin, Van Halen...) to the obscure (Buffalo, I Teoremi, Leafhound, Bang, Jerusalem...). And Martin devotes a bit of space at the beginning of the book explaining how the definition of heavy metal in the '70s is a bit broader than in later decades, as he includes in lots of stuff that the average headbanger today wouldn't consider metal, from hard rock (Foreigner, Aerosmith, Foghat...) to punk acts (The Stooges, DMZ, The Damned, The Saints, Sex Pistols...) to some harder prog and krautrock. But "heavy metal" meant something a little different back in the '70s anyway (as any reader of Black To Comm 'zine will confirm).

There's very few omissions I could think of (and lots of stuff in here I'd never even heard of before!). He even includes an appendix listing bands that you might think (from the name or album cover) are heavy that aren't! And after hours of reading I've only come across one factual mistake. Opinion-wise, there's more to argue with -- as I said, I don't always agree with his reviews, but they're enthused and amusing and even if he trashes an album I personally love I still read it with a chuckle. For a music (and heavy '70s rock) junkie like me, this is a real can't put down page turner like some people find the latest Stephen King or John Grisham. His style is sportswriterly colourful, sometimes just a little crazed, and real conversational. I shouldn't make this review any longer than it is already by quoting from Popoff's prose, but here's a sample from his (10/10) review of Black Sabbath's Sabotage: "...a tour de force from a quartet improbably tormented by the demons of genius and more probably towel-whipped by the gnomes of stupidity." Nice.

Getting into this guy's music n' metal-mad mind, with all his rankings and charts and appendices and personal reminicences is amazing. And as a fellow-review writer, can I just say how freaking impressed I am with his accomplishment here? Pretty much essential for any historical-minded metalhead or retro-rocker who likes to read! Oh yeah, plus there's a bonus cd comp with tracks from the Monster records reissue roster.

POPOFF, MARTIN

The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 2: The Eighties

(Collector's Guide Publishing) book + cd 28.95

Reading this -- and when we got these in Andee and Allan were doing nothing but -- makes us think that maybe we should replace everything in our metal section with only '80s metal reissues. Get rid of all the '90s and beyond black/death/grind metal, and only stock the big hair, big melodies stuff from the '80s, all the LA Sunset Strip and NWOBHM discs we can get. Whaddya think? Let's rock!!

Ok, maybe we're getting carried away but that's what this book is all about, getting carried away by fannish enthusiasm for the glory days of METAL.

It's the second volume in Canadian metal scribe Martin Popoff's rewrite/update of his original book of metal reviews that came out in one volume some years back. The first volume of the new edition, The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 1: The Seventies (which is already, sadly, out of print!) we listed a year ago and we've been waiting anxiously for this volume ever since. Well it's here and even bigger and better than we imagined. 432 pages! Literally thousands of reviews!! You'd be hard pressed to think of an '80s metal band not covered. In the M chapter, for instance, you'll find the biggest of the big four Metallica as well as the more obscure likes of Manilla Road, Malice, and Max Havoc. And Popoff is quite catholic in this endeavor, not neglecting any subgenre of '80s metal from pop to thrash to grunge to crossover...even Husker Du makes the cut!

If you've read any of his previous books you'll know Popoff to have an idiosyncratic, conversational writing style as well as his own sometimes quirky take on things. We certainly don't agree with all his reviews. But we LOVE reading them. Moreso than the '70s volume, which served as resource to find out about a lot of records we'd never heard of before, this one has a bigger nostalgia factor due to our age. Those of us (that'd be Andee) who grew up as metalheads can spend hours and hours looking up old favorites (Icon! Helix! Black n' Blue! Tokyo Blade!) that you otherwise would never ever ever probably hear about ever again. For that in itself -- being a record guide devoted to the unhip, unheralded, but goshdarnit still totally amazing or at least hot rockin' -- we salute Popoff's effort. He deserves a medal. A metal medal. Authoritative, exhaustive, obsessive, encyclopedic, opinionated and most of all (if you're a metal fan) endlessly entertaining! His 1-10 scale ratings are sure to be the cause of some fun arguments too (and we see that Popoff has revised and expanded not only his actual writing but his ratings as well -- we're happy to note that his assessment of local SF legends Brocas Helm has gone up a few notches, their Into Battle LP now rating several points higher than it did in the older edition of this tome.)

Sure, we here at AQ write a lot of reviews too but we've got to bow before his achievement, this massive task to which he has seemingly devoted a good part of his life. Indeed, we can't even imagine how Popoff will top this with the next volume due, devoted to the '90s. He's got to be slaving away on that right now, and as soon as it's out we'll let you know... Apparently that's going to be it for him, he'll retire after that, and any volume four devoted to the current decade will have to be handled by a protege!

Includes a cd sampler of '80s Metal Blade artists including Cirith Ungol, Lizzy Borden, Bitch, Nasty Savage, and Slayer.

POPOFF, MARTIN

The Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal Vol. 3: The Nineties

(Collector's Guide Publishing) book + cd 28.95

Here it is at last. Martin Popoff has laboriously reviewed the heavy metal albums of the '70s, the '80s -- and now the '90s. What a madman. This new book weighs in at 520 pages. THREE THOUSAND SEVENTY THREE reviews. 3,073!!! Good grief. If anybody knows how hard it is to write 3,073 reviews, we do! We bow in honor of Popoff's achievement. And remember, this is volume three in a series (which, as far as Popoff is concerned, stops here, though perhaps an ambitious and/or foolish protege will take up the torch and at some future date produce a book of '00s reviews). The '70s book had 1,162 reviews. The '80s one 2,528. So this is the biggest yet.

So, what's in here, besides just about everything? Well if you're familiar with Martin's other books, you know that he's a very entertaining and idiosyncratic writer. And very opinionated too of course! As he should be, that's what makes this interesting. Just 'cause we don't always (often?) agree with him, that doesn't mean we don't absolutely love reading his reviews. And same goes for reading his reviews of albums that we couldn't care less about (which, this being the '90s book, and so big, there's plenty of in here). You'd think, from our current perspective, that this '90s volume would have tons of the church-burning wave of Scandinavian black metal, and a whole lot of the gory death metal scene of the day. Well, that stuff's in here, for sure, but so's plenty of other styles of metal and bands now less revered. You gotta remember, Martin wrote a lot of these reviews back IN the '90s, for his original Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal (before his 3-volume revision, now completed). And he wasn't that into black metal then, nor was it clear how significant that particular musical movement would become.

What was popular then (and popular with Martin) was the last gasp of the heyday of the hair metal bands. Also the rise of grunge and other forms of alterna-metal. So, although there's only one review of a Burzum album (out of their seven records of the '90s), there's reviews of such (deservedly?) forgotten acts as Mind Funk, Mr. Big, Dangerous Toys, Paw, Big Chief, Saigon Kick, Jackyl, and Mordred. You also get to read about the sad, late-career failed comeback attempts of many '80s hair metal stars, and still-strugglin' '70s acts too (there's three Nazareth reviews!).

This sounds like a criticism, and maybe it is if you're ONLY interested in "extreme metal" (as opposed, to, ferinstance, the band Extreme, which gets a 10 out of 10 for their III Sides To Every Story album from 1992). But remember, there's over three thousand reviews here. And we like being reminded of stuff like Enuff Z'Nuff and Warrior Soul and Circus Of Power and Love/Hate and Masters Of Reality and the SEVEN studio albums Motorhead released in the nineties... And don't worry, the likes of Dimmu Borgir and Borknagar and Marduk etc. all get covered -- basically if a band had an album out on Century Media or Nuclear Blast or Relapse or even Necropolis or Red Stream, it's in here. We also noticed that Martin has upped his scores (awarded on a scale of 1 to 10 for each album) for a lot of the black metal stuff since the original book -- though Mayhem's classic De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas still gets a 0, though Martin allows he would now give it a 7 but feels that the zero is almost more of a compliment to this "near-genius wretch of an album". It's like the anti-ten, that the inverted-cross crowd should appreciate.

And at this point we know and love all of Popoff's reviewing quirks. The Canadian Content, of course. The weird idea he has that bands get BETTER with each release (when everybody knows that most of the time the first album is the best). And then there's his personal "Top 100" list. Which is INSANE. Try this on for size: Popoff's personal favorite best "Heavy Metal" album of the '90s is... wait for it... tad dah, Rhythmeen by ZZ Top! What?? Now, actually that's a pretty cool album (sez Allan) but it sure ain't the best heavy metal disc of the '90s. Heck it's not even heavy metal!!! (And it's not an ironic Chuck Eddy "Tina Marie" move either). So who let this guy write a book about heavy metal? Well if you read it, you'll understand. By the way, the #1 '90s metal album that fans picked in an internet poll conducted by Popoff is a much more sane choice: Megadeth's Rust In Peace.

Granted, this book could at least have been a lot smaller if Martin had restricted his definition of metal just a bit (does Primus really need to be in here?) but again it's written from the perspective of where the "industry" was going back in the '90s... all over the place, basically. So let's leave you with some more names of which this book will perhaps spark fond memories (or not): Sepultura, My Dying Bride, Helmet, Machine Head, Kyuss, Therapy?, Danzig, Porno For Pyros, Pitch Shifter, Skyclad, Tiamat, Monster Magnet, Crowbar, Asphyx, Last Crack, Paradise Lost, Pantera, Four Horsemen, Fudge Tunnel, Therion, Type O Negative, Annihilator... like we said, good grief, there's so much! Jesus Lizard's major label records, and five U.D.O. albums, and all the cool Earache stuff like Godflesh and Carcass and Cathedral and Entombed, and all the Iron Maiden in decline discs, and Metallica's Load albums, and Joey Belladona (ex-Anthrax) solo, Vince Neil solo too, and even Allan's favorite obscure Canadian speed metal band Dogs With Jobs! Maybe the '90s weren't the metal decade that the '80s were, but there was no shortage of the stuff (and its variants) and if you were into it then you'll get a kick out of this book that's for sure.

Oh yeah, of course this also comes with a bonus cd of "nineties rarities", courtesy the Metal Blade label, including tracks by Gwar, Six Feet Under, Skrew, King's X, Cannibal Corpse, and Amon Amarth...

POPOFF, MARTIN

Worlds Away: Voivod And The Art Of Michel Langevin

(Spider Press) book 49.00

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Here it is, at last. The long rumored ART BOOK from Michel Langevin, aka Away, the drummer and visual conceptualist for pioneering Quebecois avant-thrash-metal geniuses Voivod. Away's artwork, the ultimate in sci-fi school binder imagery, helped define his band's unique appeal. Heck, although the music was amazing, one of the other big reasons to buy a Voivod album was to get all that cool artwork, it got to the point that their cds had a piece of Away-art in the booklet for each song, one per page...

We first heard he was putting a book together a few years ago, it was supposed to be published by the Troubleman label, or at least that's what we'd thought, but nothing ever materialized, and then suddenly out of the blue a few weeks ago we got an email from Martin Popoff, the Canadian metal scribe responsible for the three massive Collector's Guide To Heavy Metal volumes we've reviewed in the past, saying that HE was doing a book with Away, and now here it is!

A hefty, hardback, 12"x9" coffee table tome, 184 pages, in full color when appropriate, Worlds Away is what we've been waiting for. TONS of his artwork, of course. Stuff you'll remember from the albums of course, but also sketchbook pages, flyers, demo tape covers, logos, picture discs, as well as art he's done on commission for other bands... Eye candy for Voivod fans oh yeah. And then there's the text, Away interviewed by Popoff, chapter after chapter delving into the world of Voivod, the music, the art and their connection. The early years stuff is surprising but not surprising as we learn about his artistic inspirations as a kid in the '70s (Magma album covers, Gene Simmons' boots...). The history of the band is traced, their evolution from raw thrashers to spaced-out art rockers, along with the evolution in Away's creative / technical process. Turns out the cool monochrome, sorta low res images from the Nothingface album look like that 'cause of the memory limitations of the computer he was using, for instance. Also we get the story behind the 3-D art for The Outer Limits album (which almost didn't happen). We probably don't need to go on, those of you who want this book probably already know it.

FYI, since these aren't cheap, and we're not a bookstore, and it's pretty much for fans only, we only got a few. So if and when we run out it will remain to be seen if we can get more.

VOIVOD!!!!

PORN + MERZBOW

And the Devil Makes Three

(Truth Cult) cd 17.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Woah. Somebody somewhere just had a fantasy come true, and it's got nothing to do with the bondage photos that often adorn Merbow releases. It's Japanese noise master Masami "Merzbow" Akita jamming with American stoner rock outfit Porn, who feature none other than the mighty Dale Crover of the Melvins on drums. Also Tim Moss on guitar, and heaviness engineering guru Billy Anderson on bass! Add in the Seldon Hunt art/design and this promises to be quite heavy, or noisy, or both. Definitely both, though it sounds much more like a Merzbow record than anything else. Shrieking electronic skree all over the place, with some plodding boombastic drums and heavy guitar riffs struggling through the dense muzzzzzz. Kinda what you might expect!

There are a dozen Roman numeral numbered tracks, each one individualized with Merzbow's noise dynamically varied and vibrating, from crinkum-crankum glitch to high pitched whine to howling, whooshing zapping. Porn's contributions (occasionally) add more structure and momentum. Distorted (natch) vocals surface at one point, the drumming speeds up.... or at other times, despite Porn's presence, the Merzbovian brutal harsh noise simply takes over entirely.

There's certainly precedent for Merbow to mix it up with "rock" music. His Hard Lovin' Man album some years back featured samples of Deep Purple, ferinstance - and of course let's not forget about his couple collaborations with Boris!! Maybe, like those, Porn + Merzbow will be a "gateway drug" for some stoner/doom fans to get into the total noise thing (note however that Merzbow here is far more extreme than his relatively subtle performance on Rock Dream with Boris).

Also, as (in principle) Merzbow fans, but ones often overwhelmed by his prolific output, we're quite partial to his collaborative efforts, giving high marks to recent discs he did with Keiji Haino and Richard Pinhas, juxtapositions like this one which somehow enhance the effect of Merbow's noise aesthetic.

MPEG Stream: "II"

MPEG Stream: "VI"

PORN + MERZBOW

And the Devil Makes Three

(Truth Cult) lp 19.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "II"

MPEG Stream: "VI"

PORRAS, JON

Orilla Oscura

(Immune) lp 22.00

Orilla Oscura is the latest solo record from Jon Porras, former aQ-er, and one half of dronedoom duo Barn Owl. It's Porras' second release this year (along with Black Mesa), but this one takes Porras's signature sound, all smoldering twang flecked drift, and haunting droned out mesmer, and applies it to something much more high concept, and the results are pretty fantastic.

Using old tapes as the basis of Orilla Obscura, Porras slowed down and manipulated the source tapes, adding effects and various textures, and then approached the compositions as if the guitar was a tool with which to explore these ghostly sounds, the haunting mysteries revealed by these old tapes, do in fact make the perfect background for Porras' haunting sonic ruminations, so much so that in many places it's difficult to tell what's guitar and what's tape, the various sounds bleeding into one another, long passages of somnambulant drift, give way to some soaring, almost shredding (at least the barn Owl / Porras version of shredding) distorted guitar blissout, lush distorted layers of guitar aimed heavenward, quickly drifting back to earth and settling into another sprawl of slo-mo soft psych drift. The tapes seem to provide texture as much as anything, adding plenty of hiss and hum, giving the sound a rough around the edges feel, and a mysterious warmth. Divine and dreamy, and beautifully ghostly.

To be fair, the sounds here are not hugely removed from Porras' other solo work, or as Elm, or even his work with Barn Owl, but it is a stunningly subtle progression, as he continues to push the boundaries of his own explorative guitar ambience, continuing to delve deeper into the dark and dusty corners of abstract psychedelia, and with each record further refining the sonic essence of shadow and light, rendered here in lush, sweeping epics of spectral guitardrone and heaving swells of warm chordal shimmer. So nice.

Housed in a super heavy full color gatefold jacket. Includes a download coupon as well!

MPEG Stream: "Light Of Dawn"

MPEG Stream: "Your Sleeping Ghost"

MPEG Stream: "Light Of Dusk"

PORTAL

Lurker At The Threshold

(Chrome Leaf) 7" picture disc 9.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

These masked mysterious weirdo death metallers just drifted through town, their show, like their sound, a grim, almost dada-esque twist on classic death metal, a swirling chaos of gnarled buzzing riffage, blasting loose limbed drumming, and the creepy grunts and growls of hooded front man 'The Curator', the whole band masked and draped in black, spewing huge swells of twisted sonic malevolence.

All three Portal full lengths were huge favorites around here, every one a dizzying assemblage of warped blackness and fractured death metal fury, murky and muddy and washed out, frenzied and freaky and gloriously fucked up. Visually and sonically like a metal Faxed Head, Portal's death metal bears only a slight resemblance to regular death metal, which is precisely why it's so appealing.

This super limited picture disc 7" compiles 2 of the 3 songs from Portal's 2006 demo tape Lurker At The Threshold, and while re-recorded versions of both these songs found their way on to the Outre full length, these older, more raw (believe it or not) versions are well worth checking out. "Omnipresent Crawling Chaos" explodes in a blast of murky metallic grind, frenzied and frantic, but so blurred and smeared as to render it a strange shadowing deathmetalscape, all lurching and lumbering and blasting, a swirling black sonic cloud. "13 Globes" is another chunk of blown out grinding metal crush, but with some cool woozy warbly minor key melodies, stuttering start stop rhythms, and insane tangled riffage, all wrapped in a melted murky lo-fi blacknoize gauze.

LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Pressed on super thick 70 gram vinyl, super striking picture disc adorned with creepy Lovecraftian artwork, either already out of print or darn close, so get one while you can...

PORTAL

Outre

(Profound Lore) cd 14.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Record number two from these mysterious Australian technical death metal weirdoes, whose sound, as we mentioned in our review of their debut, Seepia, is anything but traditional death metal, instead, the grunted vocals and crushing downtuned riffs and all the traditional death metal tropes are completely subverted, tangled and mangled into damaged and demented squalls of chaotic blackened noize, having plenty in common with a band like labelmates Wold, as well as old school DM legends like Gorguts, Suffocation or Immolation�

The sound on Outre is a murky buzz drenched sonic swamp, riffs buzz and blast, but are so doused in effects, so dripping with muddy distortion, they appear to be nothing but droning streaks of downtuned sound, until once in a while when they surface to chug briefly, offering up some brief dynamics before being swallowed up again by the band's relentless blur. The vocals are a subsonic demonic gurgle, barking, howling, growling and mewling, but again, so buried in fuzz and hiss, it just sounds like another layer of black buzz. The melodies are dark and twisted, like some vile black weed, the production is dense and thick, the sound druggy and seasick, warped and warbly, the whole thing sounding a little like some cross breeding experiment gone wrong. Gorguts, Wold, Black Flag, Faxed Head, all melted down and heated up and then poured into your cd player, a similarly noxious downtuned buzz oozes from your speakers, a distillation of Portal's convoluted and cracked take on death metal, a sound black enough to be black metal, noisy enough to be noise, and fucked up enough to be, well to be anything this fucked up sounding.

Strange swaths of synth, atonal detuned guitars, simple industrial plods, monstrous slow motion doom, blasts of speaker shredding ultranoise, billowing black ambience all pepper the proceedings, but at its heart, the sound of Outre is most definitely blasting brutal death metal, but the sort of death metal we always wanna hear, warped and twisted and damaged and filthy and crusty and noisy and buzzing and blackened and doomy and completely fucked.

Packaged in a super deluxe mini gatefold jacket with printed inner sleeve, and including super intense band photos, each band member (Aphotic Mote, The Curator and Horror Illogium) wearing a black hood (or what appears to be a mangled witches hat pulled all the way over the face), all standing in front of an old piano, each photo faded and sepia tone, one wielding a violin, the other clutching what appears to be the horn from a Victrola, the third empty handed, but with a noose hanging from his neck. Weird.

MPEG Stream: "Abysmill"

MPEG Stream: "Heirships"

MPEG Stream: "Sourlows"

PORTAL

Outre

(Profound Lore) lp 16.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

For a limited time, available on vinyl, packaged in a deluxe gatefold sleeve...

The sound on Outre is a murky buzz drenched sonic swamp, riffs buzz and blast, but are so doused in effects, so dripping with muddy distortion, they appear to be nothing but droning streaks of downtuned sound, until once in a while when they surface to chug briefly, offering up some brief dynamics before being swallowed up again by the band's relentless blur. The vocals are a subsonic demonic gurgle, barking, howling, growling and mewling, but again, so buried in fuzz and hiss, it just sounds like another layer of black buzz. The melodies are dark and twisted, like some vile black weed, the production is dense and thick, the sound druggy and seasick, warped and warbly, the whole thing sounding a little like some cross breeding experiment gone wrong. Gorguts, WOLD, Black Flag, Faxed Head, all melted down and heated up and then poured into your cd player, a similarly noxious downtuned buzz oozes from your speakers, a distillation of Portal's convoluted and cracked take on death metal, a sound black enough to be black metal, noisy enough to be noise, and fucked up enough to be, well to be anything this fucked up sounding.

MPEG Stream: "Abysmill"

MPEG Stream: "Heirships"

MPEG Stream: "Sourlows"

PORTAL

Seepia

(Profound Lore) cd 14.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Gorgeous and long overdue reissue of this out of print death metal classic from Australia. But don't let the words death metal throw you. We're not huge fans of straight up death metal either. But this is anything but straight up. In fact this is most definitely one of the weirdest, most damaged death metal records we have ever heard. From the same label that brought us the truly bizarre WOLD record from a few lists back, this is sort of along the same lines as the no-wave death metal of Gorguts' classic Obscura record, Portal takes traditional death metal and douses it in chaotic noise, twisting the arrangements into serpentine blurs, so fast and furious that it almost becomes a buzzy blurry drone, any faster and it would be a full on noise record, like Total or Skullflower playing death metal maybe. But then on top of that, replace all the standard downtuned DM riffs with impossibly manic squiggly Black Flag like riffing, sounding quite a bit like little metal spiders running up and down the neck of the guitars. Riffs and squeals of feedback shooting out like bolts of lightning, the drumming impossibly complex and blasting away beneath the churning ocean of writhing riffs, the vocals just another squirming barely discernible presence amidst the super distorted tangle of metallic riffing and blasting drums. Sometimes all the disparate sounds lock into weird metallic stuttering loops, buzzing and repeating hypnotically. And every once in a while the metal dissipates into gorgeous, gauzy, ambient drones, whirring and shimmering, like old machinery and black and white films, backwards loops, strange pitch shifts and gritty industrial percussion, a dizzying swirl of abstract sound, very reminiscent of Jeck or Basinski, but those respites are brief and are soon swallowed up by further waves of Portal's confounding crush.

Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold mini lp sleeve, with striking glossy filigree on the front cover, a printed inner sleeve and booklet with lyrics / liner notes.

MPEG Stream: "Glumurphonel"

MPEG Stream: "Tempis Fugit"

PORTAL

Seepia

(Crush Until Madness) picture disc lp 16.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

BACK IN STOCK, and now that the cd version of this grim twisted Canadian death metal oddity is out of print, this here picture disc is the only available version. It's a super striking picture disc housed in a nice thick full color sleeve. And of course, like most things of this ilk, somewhat limited. Here're what we had to say about Seepia when we reviewed the cd:

MPEG Stream: "Glumurphonel"

MPEG Stream: "Tempis Fugit"

PORTAL

Swarth

(Profound Lore) cd 13.98

Death metal weirdos Portal return with another blast of incomprehensible sonic destruction, an avant garde, sepia tinged nightmare that perfectly indicates how appropriate a name like "Portal" is for a group like this. It's like stepping into another world - in this case, Australia, home to all kinds of unprecedented and bizarre metal groups like dISEMBOWELMENT, Halo, and Nekrasov. Simply put, Portal are fucking weird. Not only that, they are intense, and while no one will mistake this for anything other than scary as hell metal, the insane song structures and bizarre instrumentation - harsh and totally unique riffing, cyclonic drumming, and super guttural death growls (the only sort of "normal" thing about the group, but in this context they still sound pretty much unlike anything else) - are something different altogether. It's like whoever is playing guitar decided, after completely mastering his craft, to throw out all knowledge of standard guitar chords and build the band's sound off of hithero unknown chords that are sour, sludgey, and just completely fucking out there. One wonders just how the hell the band remembers where they are going, but somehow they get there like only they can. The overall sound on Swarth, and pretty much all of Portal's releases, is like a buzzing insect caught in a torrential downpour on the moon, or in some parallel dimension... or something. If you haven't figured it out yet, it's pretty hard to pin this stuff down, which is certainly a quality we appreciate in a genre plagued with formulaic ripoffs. So take comfort in the fact that there is hardly anything you could have ever anticipated in a metal group and go from there. It might just change the way you look at things - ESPECIALLY death metal!

MPEG Stream: "Swarth"

MPEG Stream: "Larvae"

MPEG Stream: "Illoomorpheme"

PORTAL

Swarth

( Hells Headbangers) 2lp 38.00

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

NOW, AT LAST, ON VINYL!!!

MPEG Stream: "Swarth"

MPEG Stream: "Larvae"

MPEG Stream: "Illoomorpheme"

PORTAL

Vexovoid

(Profound Lore) cd 13.98

Latest from these Aussie blackened death metal weirdos, and like all the records before, Vexovoid is another exercise in twisted sonic psychosis, the sound here weirdly polished and well produced, but that's really relative, as older records sounded like they were recorded in a subterranean icestorm. And at times sounded less like a metal band and more like some mysterious noise group. But here, the sound is seriously heavy, the riffing less blurred and indistinct, which would seem to be disappointing, but instead, makes this a way more satisfying listen. The opening track "Kilter", named we can only assume for the fact that it's about as far from off kilter as any Portal song we've ever heard, starts off all chugging and churning, frenzied and frenetic, looped and woozy, a dizzying swirl of downtuned riffage, and and avalanche of chaotic drumming, all wound into a tight, taut, gnarled sprawl of tranced out hypnometal crush. When the song finally kicks in proper, the vocals come in all murky bellow, and the riffs blur and smear and ooze, into a washed out, psychedelic buzzscape, that is somehow crazy catchy, as well as being baffling and brutal, and when the sound slips back into that opening churn, totally mesmerizing.

And so goes the whole record, the band either consciously going for a different sound, or just stumbling into what for them probably seems weird in comparison to their normal sound, not the other way around. In some ways, Vexovoid seems the most faithful to their country's metal heritage, oozing the sort of slo-mo death metal vibe of their forebears (Albeit not really slow at all, but somehow it FEELS slow, sludgey and filthy and dirgey, even when it's blasting away at lightspeed), most notably diSEMBOWELMENT but of course, for all of the polish here, this shit is still way demented, when the music drops out, the vocals are harrowingly hellish, and then the riffs, are fantastically droned out, the arrangements dizzying in their complexity, this is warped tech-death insanity that seems to get weirder and more out there as the record progresses, lurching from death metal pound, to woozy, atonal dirge, to tripped out, psychedelic guitarscapery, to doomic pound, to spare spacey drift. Might be our favorite Portal yet, but then it seems we say that about every one...

MPEG Stream: "Kilter"

MPEG Stream: "The Black Wards"

MPEG Stream: "Curtain"

PORTAL

Vexovoid

(Profound Lore) lp 23.00

This insanity, NOW ON THICK BLACK VINYL!!!

MPEG Stream: "Kilter"

MPEG Stream: "The Black Wards"

MPEG Stream: "Curtain"

PORTRAIT

Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae

(Metal Blade) cd 17.98

This Swedish band's self-titled 2008 debut was hailed by us as one of the best - and blackest, in the Satanic sense - efforts of the New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal (bands like Enforcer, Cauldron, In Solitude, and RAM). Now back for their second strike, on new, bigger label Metal Blade, Portrait have produced another excellent, occult album of Mercyful Fate/King Diamond influenced metal mania. The 8 evil, and mostly epic tracks on Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae (we'll expect to see a posting about this title on that "Heavy Latin" blog sometime soon, eh) are once again raging, ripping, riffy speedsters replete with paint-peeling vocals, Satanic subject matter, shredding solos, and sinister melodies... Glorious!

Intricate, energetic, and proudly retro, down to the silver cd face and old school Metal Blade bloody axe logo, Portrait aren't just for killing happy power metal poseurs, but are just the thing to put on (instead of most modern black metal) when you're burning the black candles for a night of devil worship, and would like to get some air guitar practice in at the same time.

By the way, if you liked the rightfully hyped Ghost's Opus Eponymous, but want something a bit more METAL, the much less poppy Portrait is the answer, cranking up the KD falsetto screams whilst dialing down the BOC to zero.

Allan's addendum: Did I mention that the songs on this album are all really long? Well that means, though I liked it right away, it took a few listens to *really* sink in - and I've discovered that with repeated spins, more and more cool parts keep revealing themselves. Right now I'm particularly stoked on the uber-rockin' part that the band break into about halfway through track five, "Darkness Forever"... so good!! Hopefully they'll come and play here soon like their brethren in In Solitude recently did.

MPEG Stream: "Infinite Descension"

MPEG Stream: "Darkness Forever"

MPEG Stream: "Der Todesking"

PORTRAIT

s/t

(Holycaust) cd 13.98

Recently we've been chuffed to review some great new releases by what we might call New Wave Of Old School Heavy Metal bands, such as Cauldron and Enforcer. And there was that Heavy Metal Killers comp on Earache recently too, which included those two bands, and these guys, Portrait from Sweden. All young bands doing metal like it was meant to be, back in the day. Portrait certainly deliver tons of speedy energy, galloping riffage, evil atmospheres. Melody too. And of course, no cookie monster vocals! Although singer Philip Svennefelt sometimes switches to gruff rasps, he really loves to break into a wailing witchy falsetto a la King Diamond... so Mercyful Fate seems to be a BIG influence here. Mercyful Fate were, along with Venom, one of the '80s originators of black metal, before the church burning Norwegian types took over, and Portrait's fixation on occultic, Satanic themes (song titles include "Hell", "Bow Unto The Devil", and "Beware The Demons") fits the bill. Totally black metal, that is if the '90s never happened. Not to mention that the picture of guitarist Christian Lindell makes him look positively demon-possessed himself, despite his first name. Eyes wide, and mouth a rictus grin, his expression really sums up why Portrait is so appealing, nay, compelling. It's not just the songs and the sound, it's the spirit. The sinister spirit of their influences - Mercyful Fate, and Satan! So while this is fannishly '80s, it's more than that. Not simplistic - their compositions are often quite long (over nine minutes in the case of "The Adversary") with lots of interesting, dynamically intertwined parts, well paced and put together - and not shallow. They channel the ancient spirit with ripping reverence.

Now reissued domestically, this album originally came out last year in a limited die hard edition on Germany's Iron Kodex label, who also just brought us the new vinyl from AQ faves Slough Feg, who could be considered charter members of the NWOOSHM (nuh-whoosh-um), since they've been at it for a while!

One final note: don't you think Portrait is an odd name for a metal band? But actually, according to the Encyclopedia Metallum, they're not the only Portrait around. Hmm. They've just got to find a metal band named Landscape to tour with! (Another search of the Encyclopedia Metallum DID turn up one Landscape, and they're from Sweden, but defunct... oh well.)

MPEG Stream: "Consecration "

MPEG Stream: "Hell"

POTENTIAM

Balsyn

(Avantgarde Music) cd 13.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Iceland's third most popular band after Bjork and Sigur Ros! But they don't sound a whole lot like either of those artists, as Potentiam aren't pop or electronic, but a black metal band! Now, this isn't a new release, but it's a favorite of ours and we've never listed it before, so we recently got a bunch in to try to turn some of you Icelandic-music lovin' folks on to. Actually, come to think of it, they *do* sound just a little bit like Sigur Ros, as both bands share a similar penchant for bombastic cinematic soundscapes. There's even trumpet on Potentiam's fantastic gloom-pop instrumental "Alfablod", which really does remind us of some of the stuff from Sigur Ros' "Ny Batteri" ep. In the AQ-universe, it's Potentiam that should be the big hit! They also delve into eerie experimental soundscapey stuff (the album-closing "Flames of Potentiam" sounds like they burned a church just for the recording), but the balance of "Balsyn" is grim, dark, epic Viking metal in the mode of Satyricon or Enslaved (and no, we certainly can't find any Sigur Ros parallels there, although as many scribes would have us believe, the land/sea scapes of Iceland are probably an influence on both bands' music). A great, overlooked black metal record with (as the record label name suggests) avantgarde leanings. Recommended!!

RealAudio clip: "Latum Oss Bidja"

RealAudio clip: "Alfablod"

RealAudio clip: "Sorcery"

RealAudio clip: "Flames of Potentiam"

POTENTIAM

Orka I Myrkri

(Wounded Love) cd 14.98

Maybe they were sick of being told that they sounded a bit like Sigur Ros or something, 'cause this new disc from Iceland's Potentiam dispenses with the cinematic soundscapey stuff in favor of fist-in-yer face metallic mayhem. Their previous album from a few years back, the now-out of print Balsyn, was a weird mixture of Viking black metal and ambient atmospheres, full of things like recordings of crackling fires and a melodic almost-pop trumpet dirge. But Balsyn's long-awaited follow-up Orka I Myrkri strikes us a somewhat different beast, way more riffy and technical than what we remember. They've been woodshedding perhaps. Ripping, powerful, even kinda hooky black metal a la Satyricon, Opeth, latter Emperor... It's not Balsyn Pt. 2, but with Orka I Myrkri we definitely remain Potentiam fans!

MPEG Stream: "Born Again"

MPEG Stream: "Guidance Of Sin"

POTOP

Channels

(Iron Pig Records) cd 13.98

Been dying to review this slab of bleak brutal blackened doom drenched power violence for a while now. We were first exposed to these guys when they shared a split lp with the equally downtuned and devastating Burmese. Very few bands are up to the task of sharing a record with the mighty Burmese, but these Macedonian (not Russian as we mistakenly thought) slow motion grindcrushers definitely held their own, enough that we were super psyched to discover there was indeed a full length.

Channels takes up right where those split tracks left off. Heaving, massive, lurching, doomy, crusty crush, but this isn't ultra doom, or even classic power violence, Potop fall right in between, the tempos are slow to midtempo, the guitars crunch and buzz, but just as often ring out, there's tons of space, long stretches dotted with spaced out chords, left hanging, slowly decaying, wrapped in Eyehategod-like sheets of feedback. The vocals are tortured and anguished, a feral yowl, way down in the mix and doused in reverb, those two elements, all tangled up and sprawling, create these epic drifting slabs of angular buzz and monstrous pound, weirdly melodic, and dramatic, sometimes mathy, other times seemingly structureless, but the best moments are when the band lock into a woozy groove, crushing and punishing and massive and so weirdly catchy.

The record finishes off with a 40 second blast of twisted pummeling ultraviolence, a blurred blowout of howling grinding pounding fury. And then it's over. And if you're like us, you go right back to the beginning and listen to the whole thing again...

MPEG Stream: "S.S. Eksplozija"

MPEG Stream: "II"

POWER & THE GLORY, THE

Call Me Armageddon

(Deathwish) cd 14.98

You'd better be good if you're gonna call your band The Power & The Glory! And thankfully this band does manage to live up to their heavy monicker. Not the power and the glory as in castles and dragons and swords and balls-in-a-vice vocals and widdly widdly guitar leads, no this is more like the power and the glory of a bunch of guitar wielding tattooed rockers kicking your scrawny ass with a massive slab of crushing chaotic metalcore with mega aggro screaming vox, punishing riffs and thrashing blast beats. A super dense blast of metallic fury sonically quite similar to AQ faves Converge, which makes a whole lot of sense since this just happens to be on the Converge guy's label and was recorded by Kurt Ballou.

MPEG Stream: "God & Gold"

MPEG Stream: "V Is For Vulture"

POWER OF ZEUS

The Gospel According To Zeus

(Get On Down ) cd 16.98

Hell yeah, '70s proto-metal from Detroit (and not only that, released on a Motown subsidiary)! These dudes have appeared on some cool comps of heavy psych obscurities we've listed (Up All Night, White Lace & Strange) but this is the first time we've seen a legit reissue of their only album, from 1970, entitled The Gospel According To Zeus. This digipacked reish is from the master tapes. The album starts off with stone classic "It Couldn't Be Me", a track that hiphop headz might recognize as having been sampled on an Obie Trice record a few years back. What we also now realize, is that recent AQ fave band Malachai (the sampledelic UK duo on Domino) essentially sounds, at their best, a whole heck of a lot like that one song by Power Of Zeus - it's as if Malachai based their entire sound on the big beat fuzz pop hard rock of "It Couldn't Be Me"! So that's pretty cool.

But Power Of Zeus have a bunch more bellbottomed acid rock goodness to offer here... ten tracks total ranging from upbeat garagey psych nuggets like "In The Night" and "I Lost My Love", to the mellower, harpsichord-laced "Green Grass & Clover" and the epic, aptly titled doomic dirge "The Death Trip", eventually culminating in the freaked out finale of prog opus "The Sorcerer Of Isis (Ritual Of The Mole)", another track that's been sampled by hiphop producers.

Along the way, lotsa bangin' fuzz riffs, wailing organ, lofty vocals, and cowbell knockin' grooviness, real good stuff for all you proto-metal (and popsike!) fans into the likes of Sir Lord Baltimore, Granicus, Atomic Rooster, Dust, Frijid Pink, Bubble Puppy, and last list's proto-metal selections by Bang and Elonkorjuu.

Way cool.

If Power Of Zeus played shows with Funkadelic back in the day, we wouldn't be at all surprised...

MPEG Stream: "It Couldn't Be Me"

MPEG Stream: "In The Night"

MPEG Stream: "No Time"

MPEG Stream: "Realization"

POWERS COURT

Nine Kinds Of Hell

(Dragonheart) cd 21.00

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Powers Court is a metal marvel from the USA, Illinois to be exact. They're a three piece, but while bassist Steve Murray and drummer Mike Evams handle their parts well, the beating metal heart of the band resides in the person of Danie Powers, guitarist and vocalist. She's beyond any argument one of the most talented women in metal, ever. Her singing is the first and most striking thing you'll notice about her band, as she's got a dramatic, versatile multi-octave voice that she puts to good use, sounding like a weird robot hybrid of Grace Slick and the most kick-ass of male metal vocalists, able to roam from underground deathmetal grunts up to King Diamondish cathedral spires. And if her vocal abilities weren't enough, she also plays a mean lead guitar (and a custom, bloodsplattered electric mandolin too!) and writes all her band's music. Oh, and programs their website. Wow. Already fans of PC's previous, self-released album, we were understandably excited about the prospect of this, their debut on Italy's Dragonheart label (home also to AQ-faves The Lord Weird Slough Feg). Now it's here, and it actually blows away their debut. Heavier, much better produced -- utterly devastating true metal that's suitably '80s derived (Maiden, Bay Area Thrash) but is modern enough to destroy releases by more popular power metal peers like Iced Earth and Nevermore. Impressive *and* eccentric, to say the least!

RealAudio clip: "The Tragedy of Faust"

RealAudio clip: "Echoes of Silence"

RealAudio clip: "Agnostica"

POWERS COURT

Red Mist Of Endenmore

(Dragonheart) cd 10.00

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

**SALE **SALE* *SALE**

You know how we're always talkin' cult this, cult that, with regard to black metal? Well heck if your black metal band *isn't* considered cult you may as well hang it up. But in other genres, the term can still have some actual meaning. Power metal ferinstance. Lots of not-cult bands of that ilk crowding the scene. And then the occasional one that truly is "cult", has a cult, or deserves a cult (following)... we'll leave it to black metal bands to potentially BE cults in the religious sense.

In any event, all this is preliminarily in aid of saying, bow down, a new Powers Court album (only their third in 18 years of existence!) has finally materialized on our shared plane of existence!! We've reviewed and raved about their others, longtime AQ customers may remember. Basic info: Powers Court is a power metal trio from Illinois (yep, American metal!) whose cult quality is pretty much owed to the persona of the talented Danie Powers, guitarist/vocalist. Females are rare enough in metal bands, especially as leaders, making Ms. Powers immediately notable. She's notable too for her amazing, nearly 5-octave range. She'd be a unique and formidable vocalist alone, but she's also the main songwriter, shredder, and riffmaster (mistress?) of the band. Go, girl!

And while it's been quite a few years since the last Powers Court album back in 2001, Danie & Co. seem to have put that time to good use, crafting a meticulous and magnificent display of 21st century true metal mastery... We'll recommend this immediately to Hammers Of Misfortune fans for a couple reasons, first you probably like operatic female metal vocals, and secondly, this is a concept album, a narrative based on some dark Italian folktale about doomed lovers and occult happenings. This sinister story is set against a relentless, surging backdrop of proggy, pyrotechnic power metal. And we do mean power. Full of explosive, galloping double bass drumming, chunky buzzsaw guitar riffage, harmonic squeals, herky-jerk rhythmic complexities, and, soaring melodically o'er it all, that haunting, weird voice. Theatrical, commanding, sorta like a power metal version of Grace Slick or Pat Benatar, also comparable to Kind Diamond. She sings like a woman possessed, sometimes a crystal clear delicate songbird (as on finale "Vain Regrets") in the upper range, sometimes descending to a much throatier, lower register that's definitely medievally monkish, or even akin to a black metal rasp. Often doubled, multitracked for extra eerie effect, Powers warbles and holds notes in weird ways, her phrasing always adding as much preternatural personality to the proceedings as does her wide range.

Recommended! Definitely for Hammers fans, also for anyone into the dark, thrashy eccentricity of another American metal cult, Manilla Road.

MPEG Stream: "A Somber Day"

MPEG Stream: "Outrage"

MPEG Stream: "Darkness Calls"

POWERS COURT

s/t

cd 11.98

THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

Triumphing true metal power trio from the USA, lead by Danie Powers, who is probably the most kick-ass woman in metal today. Not only does she play guitar, write the music, and design the band's website, she's the vocalist, and no ordinary vocalist at that: her range, from low growls to simply amazing high screams makes her the female answer to King Diamond. Not your typical female metal vocalist at all (we thought she was a German guy when we first heard the band, no offense meant.) Her band Powers Court plays speed metal in a style not that far off from something like, say, the The Champs. Occult topics (witches and high priestesses, etc.) provide the lyrical focus. Unique and impressive. (Not a new release, but we just got a few in stock, in anticipation of next year's release on Dragonheart.)

PREMONITION 13

(Volcom) cd 11.98

Another day, another new Wino band! Not that we're complaining. The stoner / doom metal scene's version of Lemmy (total lifer!) Scott "Wino" Weinrich sure keeps busy. He's most legendary for being the front man for The Obsessed and Saint Vitus back in the day (and for subsequent reunions), and has released records in recent years with such outfits as Spirit Caravan, The Hidden Hand, Place Of Skulls, the supergroup Shrinebuilder, and as just plain Wino.

His latest combo, Premonition 13, is just about what you'd expect. The man's distinctive vocals and guitar tone are in full effect, as are his, umm, paranoid conspiratorial lyrical themes. Of course musically it's riffy heavy rock, in the timeless Wino tradition. Doomy stoner metal with trace elements of both prog and punk. What's a bit different with P13 compared to, say, The Hidden Hand or The Obsessed is that Wino isn't the only guitarist/singer in the band, there's also a fellow here by the name of Jim Karow who also does both, holding his own with Wino, which allows for dual guitar interplay and some trading off on the vocals as well (so it's a bit like the Wino/Victor Griffin team up in Place Of Skulls).

The nine minute opener "B.E.A.U.T.Y.", encompassing both lumbering riffs and mellow moody interludes, sets the stage for the album as a whole. Karow brings a bit of Southern twang to the track "Modern Man", and album closer "Peyote Road" is suitably druggy and psychedelic sounding, kinda Pink Floydish. "Deranged Rock N' Roller" is Wino's proud, Ozzy-like, never-gonna-stop-rockin' autobiographical statement here ("I wanna die / sweating on the stage"). Let's hope that doesn't actually happen any time soon, although we appreciate his dedication.

So, with Wino + the extra axeman, P13 provides plenty of downer riffage and spacey psych guitar richness for all fans to enjoy.

MPEG Stream: "Clay Pigeons"

MPEG Stream: "La Hechicera De La Jeringa"

MPEG Stream: "Peyote Road"

PREMONITION 13

(Volcom) lp 15.98

So, with Wino + the extra axeman, P13 provides plenty of downer riffage and spacey psych guitar richness for all fans to enjoy.

MPEG Stream: "Clay Pigeons"

MPEG Stream: "La Hechicera De La Jeringa"

MPEG Stream: "Peyote Road"

PRESTON, JOE & DANIEL MENCHE

Cerberic Doxology

(Discourage) lp 12.98

NOW ON VINYL!!

What might you expect from a match up between Mr. Joe Preston, he of Harvey Milk, Thrones, High On Fire and a million more, and Mr. Daniel Menche serious noise maker in his own right? Well definitely not this, although safe to say we're surprised but most assuredly not disappointed.

Cerberic Doxology is a single 25 minute piece, for just vocals, a glorious primal, ritual of chants and longform vocal tones, which at first, and only for the briefest of seconds, sounds a bit odd, maybe because we were expecting to be blasted out of our seats, but within moments, the voices grow much less distinct, the sound around them gets hazier and blurrier, the floor drops out and the listener is suddenly suspended in some whirling otherworld, the low voices become fuzzier and buzzier and soon become thick undulating drones, the higher vocals, soar and shimmer, and offer up soft smears of melody. It's like Ligeti or Part filtered through SUNNO))) or Earth, a totally immersive and nearly suffocating soundscape of layered thrum and throb. With headphones, at about the halfway mark we forgot what we were listening to, but it had totally transported us, and we found ourselves gloriously lost in a seemingly endless vocal drone.

Flip the dualdisc over, and play it in your dvd player, and not only will you be treated to enhanced sound, a super hi fidelity rendering of the music from the flipside, but you'll also get to see the accompanying images, slow shots of deserts and mountains, of wide open skies, smoldering volcanoes, strange stone monoliths, dark clouds, crashing surf, all shot in blacks and greys, and with some subtle yet strange effects, where the image will blur briefly, or the same few seconds will lock into a barely discernible loop, but always returning to its slow haunting drift.

PRESTON, JOE AND DANIEL MENCHE

Cerberic Doxology

(Anthem Records) dualdisc 14.98

PREVALENT RESISTANCE

Eternal Return

(Nykta) cd 13.98

As we mentioned in the Horna review a while back, we're pretty obsessed with Finnish black metal. There's something super distinctive about the sound, about the feel, you can almost tell within seconds that a record is Finnish. Horna, Baptism, Vordr, Satanic Warmaster, Uncreation's Dawn, Incriminated, Gestapo 666, Pest, Warloghe, Sargeist, Behexen, and then there's the other side of Finnish BM, the sort of fractured fucked up damaged side: Circle Of Ouroborus, Dead Reptile Shrine. Needless to say, that list of bands alone should be enough to convince you of the power and majesty of Finnish black metal.

Another name that belongs on that list is Prevalent Resistance, another revered Finnish horde with a Finnish pedigree that reads almost like the list above: Baptism, Circle Of Ouroborus, Vordr, Alghazanth, Unveiled, Trollheim's Grott, Black Death Ritual. And don't let the presence of Atvar from Circle Of Ouroborus mislead you, this is not some avant acoustic stumbling black dirge fucked up weirdness, this is much more in line with Horna, Baptism and Behexen, blasting melodic blackness, slipping between frenzied thrashing, and more midtempo almost-grooves, with the occasional flurry of freaked out black chaos, but for the most part his is dark solid, super heavy well produced blackness, taking elements of Burzum, Darkthrone, the usual suspects but running it through that distinctive Finnish sonic filter. Even the noisiest and most frenzied parts are infused with plenty of melody, making them soar majestically, before slipping back into something more martial and maniacal, or something more buzzing and midtempo.

This is again an instance where it's not the sound alone, but also the songs, which are surprisingly catchy, like lots of Finnish black metal, and anyone who has been digging recent Horna, should probably check this out as well. We were definitely digging this even after only a few quick listens, but weirdly enough we've found ourselves returning to this over and over again. Another seriously kick ass slab of Finnish blackness.

MPEG Stream: "From Beyond The Chains"

MPEG Stream: "Altars Of Our Black Cult"

PRIESTESS

Hello Master

(RCA) cd 13.98

I can tell you this about Priestess: they're one kick ass live rock n' roll band. I saw 'em on a bill not long ago with heavy metal revivalists The Sword -and- Early Man (both of those bands hotly tipped, and by us too!), and y'know what? Priestess simply DESTROYED both The Sword and Early Man, good as they were. Priestess were just the better live performers, working the crowd and wowing with musicianship and showmanship both. They had rock star swagger, and the skills to back it up -- guitar pyrotechnics, harmony vocals, and some darn catchy real riffy rock n' roll songs. Oh yeah, and a really frickin' good drummer, whose non-sucky *drum solo* definitely put Priestess over the top (in more ways than one) in competition with their tourmates that night.

I'd never heard of 'em before and was pretty darn impressed. Turns out they were from Montreal, and had an album out in Canada, not yet out in the States... well it's here now, this is it. I bought the Canadian version at the show, and didn't even listen to it for a long time 'cause I figured that they couldn't really live up to that live experience. And it's true to some extent, the album doesn't blow away Early Man's album, for instance, the way they did to the band in person. But it's definitely a good, honest-to-God hard rock album that you'd want to blare loudly from your (hypothetical, in all likelihood) Camaro as you put the pedal to the metal.

And having said that, get this: it's non-ironic too, near as we can tell, which also might explain why they had the advantage over those other two bands at that show (and by the way, it wasn't just that show, I saw 'em again opening for Dinosaur Jr. and Comets On Fire, and they were pretty good too, though suffering from the usual opener's lack of energetic crowd response, specifically due to the lack of a crowd at that early hour). Now how can a band like this be non-ironic, you ask? A band so partial to the cowbell, and clearly with visions of stadium-sized showmanship already hard-wired into their songwriting? Maybe 'cause they're Canadian? For whatever reason, their punchy and emotional three-minute pop hard rockin' songs are presented with more authentic feeling (to these ears) than, say, obvious comparison Wolfmother does it.

More about their sound: despite their name (which, unfortunately, conjures the image of an all-female Judas Priest cover band, doesn't it?) they're far from being an '80s retro metal band. More bluesy '70s, and less metal than that. The stoner/grunge thing is closer to the mark. Yeah, a bit White Stripesy at times like Wolfmother, also all AC/DC and QOTSA at others. Can't wait to see 'em again! In the meantime, we'll be spinning this...

MPEG Stream: "Lay Down"

MPEG Stream: "Time Will Cut You Down"

MPEG Stream: "Everything That You Are"

PRIESTESS

Hello Master

(Ace Fu) lp 11.98

NOW ON VINYL!

MPEG Stream: "Lay Down"

MPEG Stream: "Time Will Cut You Down"

MPEG Stream: "Everything That You Are"

PRIESTESS

Prior To The Fire

(Tee Pee) cd 15.98

2nd album from these Canadian rockers, a great live band, pretty good on their debut, trying maybe to be a bit too poppy and not quite as metal on this follow-up. Who can blame 'em, they'd like to be as big as Wolfmother too. But as far as we're concerned, while there's some nice twin guitar harmony moments and stuff, we prefer the album prior to Prior To The Fire (which we imagine they like to pronounce, Fie-or).

PRIMATE

Draw Back A Stump

(Relapse) cd 13.98

We'd been hearing about this band for a while now, the new project featuring Kevin Sharp of Brutal Truth and Bill Kelliher of Mastodon and a few other dudes, playing what? Grind of course, what else? But not really grind like you might be imagining it, Primate offer up a pretty fresh take on classic grind, merging the churn and pound and punkish ferocity with something WAY more melodic, a sound one could posit as the perfect mix of Brutal Truth and Mastodon, which is not such bad math when you think about it, and listening to Primate it definitely works. Pretty much all the tracks here thrash and grind to varying degrees, the drums heavy and complex, the guitars downtuned and chugging, the songs slipping from midtempo punk rock thrash to dense blackhole blast, Sharp's vocals as fierce as ever, but without fail, even the heaviest and most brutal of the bunch, are laced with some sort of serious melodic component, subtle in places, but totally overt in others, with tracks like "Global Division" getting CRAZY poppy, with some rad shredding guitar leads, and classic old school metalisms, or the punk metal pound of "Hellbound", which channels the same classic metal into a much more frenzied near-grind gallop. Or the harmonized metal guitars on "March Of The Curmudgeon, they even cover Black Flag's "Drinking And Driving" too, staying pretty true to the original. And of course, throughout, the group never hesitate to erupt into straight up full on grind, which of course kills, but it's all tangled up into songs that are surprisingly hooky while remaining super heavy.

It helps too that the production is massive too, super polished, everything sounds loud, the mix is perfect, which is another thing that keeps this from sounding like standard grind. Instead, Draw Back A Stump is like some weird, sorta poppy modern grind metal record, one that could most definitely be a gateway for all those Mastodon fans out there to sounds much more fast and frantic, furious and fucked up.

MPEG Stream: "Global Division"

MPEG Stream: "Hellbound"

MPEG Stream: "March Of The Curmudgeon"

PRIMEVAL MASS

As Solemn Maelstrom...

(Stuza Productions) cd 13.98

We had never heard of Greek black metallers Primeval Mass before, they were recommended to us by Roman Saenko, the man behind numerous bad ass Ukrainian black metal hordes: Hate Forest, Drudkh, Dark Ages, Lucifugum, Blood Of Kingu, needless to say, his recommendation was definitely enough for us, and we're glad we checked these guys out. Total classic old school black buzz, frenzied and frantic, insectoid riffs and blasting beats, raw and reverb soaked, heavy as hell but still lo-fi and a little fucked up, when the band is blasting full bore, it totally reminds us of early Immortal or Satyricon, that sort of chaotic black buzz infused with buried melody, a swirling maelstrom of raw Norwegian style blackness, that impossibly manages to be catchy even though it's essentially a furious black cloud of sound. But Primeval Mass add their own vibe to the proceedings, incorporating lurching stretches of Burzumic dirgery, bits of creepy spoken word, woozy droned out guitarscapes, little bursts of lo-fi practice space crunch, super primitive effected guitars, all phaser and flanger, but it all contributes to the glorious black mood and ambience, and the songs, for all their little bits of weirdness, spend most of their time buzzing and blasting and thrashing exploding in grim black gouts of true, kvlt sonic fury. Fucking AWESOME.

MPEG Stream: "Blackened Sky Upon The Mournfull Throne Of Suicide"

MPEG Stream: "Burial Anthem For The Undead"

MPEG Stream: "Oracle Of Truths Unveiled"

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