STINKING LIZAVETA The Seventh Direction (Translation Loss) cd 14.98
Aquarius-beloved, all-instrumental metal/jazz/punk/prog power trio Stinking Lizaveta just won't quit. Thank God. Year in and year out, they make genius records, tour tirelessly (playing to perhaps not excessively large but always extremely enthusiastic audiences - naturally, since they're one of thee BEST live bands you're ever gonna see!), and just keep getting better and better. They have a well-deserved cult following (folks you know who you are, of course you don't need to read this review, just know there's a new SL album and come get it!!) that should be getting bigger with every record and tour. This album, their lucky seventh, is especially representative of the band's dedication and will. 'Cause earlier this year, Stinking Lizaveta's badass drummer Cheshire Augusta was struck by a hit and run driver while riding her bicycle in the band's hometown of Philadelphia. Fortunately, she survived the accident but had to endure surgery and painful therapy. But did that stop her from completing this album, and going out on tour a few months later? No sir!
If you're not yet familiar with the magic of Stinking Lizaveta, what this telepathic trio can do with abundant energy, incredible chops, and endless creativity, well please pick this up and listen (also, go see 'em perform if you get the chance 'cuz as all who've seen 'em will acknowledge, no matter how good they are on album, live is even better). Along with drummer Cheshire, the brothers Yanni and Alexi Papadopoulos (on guitar and upright electric bass, respectively) bow to no one in terms of majestic math-metal musicianship, crafting tracks that somehow meld together classic rock bombast, atmospheric post rock vibes, and jazzier, noirish moodiness. Plenty of heaviness, but also so much feeling and emotion and lighter moments of great beauty. And of course, no singing, none needed! While every member of this tight unit are virtuoso players, special mention must be made of Yanni's sheer sinuous psychedelic guitar heroics and his ripping riffs galore. He's a master, of "we're not worthy" caliber. There's something downright spiritual about his tremulous, ecstatic playing - and the music of Stinking Liz in general.
Ok, that's (almost) enough superlatives. Let's just say that Stinking Lizaveta's eighteen years and counting career of kicking ass in their utterly unique fashion are fully embodied here. Heck this has a bunch of our favorite Stinking Liz jams on it yet. As always, we know their fans will want this, but we really want to induct more new folks into the Stinking Liz fanbase. So let's say, did you dig the latest Six Organs Of Admittance? Well try this out too, it takes certain instrumental elements of that to whole 'nother level. Or, how 'bout a cross between Golden Void and The Fucking Champs? Sound good? Here it is, but better! Then mix in both Black Sabbath and Dave Brubeck (RIP). Yup, if you can imagine, it's in here.
And once again, this boasts a powerful production job from Sanford Parker (the switch they made on their previous opus Sacrifice And Bliss, from longtime engineer Steve Albini to Sanford P was, as it turned out, a pretty good one). Though we said the live SL experience can't be really captured in a recording, this comes damn close, especially if you play it LOUD! Includes 2 cd-only bonus tracks.
MPEG Stream: "Z"
MPEG Stream: "Ten Thousand Hours"
MPEG Stream: "The Seventh Direction"

STINY PLAMENU Odpadni Galerie (NAGA) cd 14.98

STINY PLAMENU Rany Cernym Kovem (Barbarian Wrath) cd 14.98

STONE GARDEN s/t (Shadow Kingdom) cd 14.98
Not '80s metal, not '70s metal, this is '60s metal. Or at least, heavy hippie psychedelic garage rock to be more precise. The Shadow Kingdom label, who seem to go for cult current metal bands and even more obscure reissues, reached pretty far back for this one, all the way back to the late sixties (the recordings collected here date from between '65-'70 as far as we can tell). Stone Garden were from the Pacific Northwest, predating the Seattle grunge scene by a couple decades... But if they'd been born later, we could almost imagine 'em on Sub Pop, playing shows with Mudhoney and, uh, Soundgarden, yeah.
Pounding drums and bass, wild jamming organ, and plenty of throbbing distorted guitar, that's what you get from Stone Garden. No, it's not Black Sabbath (it never is) but this ought to appeal to heavy psych, proto-metal heads into Blue Cheer, Bubble Puppy, Sir Lord Baltimore, Iron Butterfly, Fraction, Negative Space and the like. For the era, and considering their age (in the pictures here, Stone Garden are really young looking, though shaggy-haired, teenage kids still in high school), this was on the HEAVY side of the blues rock spectrum most definitely. Not all of it, but enough of it. "Assembly Line", ferinstance, is an appropriately grim lament, laced with acid guitar soloing. They were into Cream and Hendrix, you can tell.
Throughout these 15 tracks, production quality varies, some material was recorded in a real studio, others in a basement home studio, still others in a living room, or live on stage. So this collection has got a patchwork production vibe for sure, but that doesn't stop Stone Garden from rockin'. And when they did make it into a studio, they took advantage of it, you gotta love the freaky tape speed manipulation studio shenanigans that make "Grayworld Forest" an even weirder place to wander than the title suggests.
Stone Garden's music has been reissued before, originally on a limited edition (long out of print) vinyl by Rockadelic in the '90s, and also on compact disc by Gear Fab, but this Shadow Kingdom cd edition is the best, with a bunch of previously unreleased bonus tracks and a nice booklet full of liner notes, vintage photos and, on the back, what we're guessing was the b&w flower power sleeve of their sole 7" release, circa 1969, with the boys looking really REALLY young on it. Which means you can flip the booklet around and have it as a the cd cover instead of the crappier looking "Stonehenge" cover inherited from the Rockadelic lp version, if you like.
MPEG Stream: "Oceans Inside Me (Ripcord Version)"
MPEG Stream: "Assembly Line"

STONEBURNER Sickness Will Pass (Seventh Rule) cd 11.98
"Play At Maximum Volume" it says here, right on the face of the cd. Well, OF COURSE! Duh. Stoneburner, from PDX, are another sludgier-than-thou (and maybe than Thou) metal band, whose debut full-length is brought to us by the same label, Seventh Rule, recently responsible for the newest, aQ Record Of The Week awarded Author & Punisher album, as well as cool discs from the likes of Atriarch, Batillus, Wizard Rifle, Indian and other heavy hitters. Furthermore, one of Stoneburner's guitarists used to wield his axe in the late, great Buried At Sea.
So, it comes as no surprise that Stoneburner, in the nasty doomed-out tradition of such bands as Buried At Sea, Graves At Sea too, Eyehategod, YOB, and yes their hometown pals & labelmates Atriarch, are loaded for bear with fuzz-storted heavy riff-chuggery and throat-ripped vile vokills, along with some suddenly quiet, postrockish detours into acoustic-atmospheric moments that serve to make the prevalent heavy and wretched sounding parts all the more heavy and wretched by contrast (and earn Stoneburner some extra points for musical nuance and sophistication). Six songs here, including an unlisted bonus soundscape-y one (that the CDDB tells us is called "Thank You For Listening").
The misanthropically doom/sludge lovin' amongst us will indeed be playing this at the recommended volume. But we doubt the neighbors will be thankful for listening.
Oh, and we like how the "band pics" in the digipak are all (only) of the individual band members pedals - drum pedals for the drummer, many and various effects pedals for the others.
MPEG Stream: "Christian's Charity"
MPEG Stream: "Marriage"
MPEG Stream: "We Have Failed"

STONEWALL s/t (Kismet) cd 17.98
All right, time to get yr underground proto-metal kicks! Remember the new album from San Francisco longhairs Dzjenghis Khan we highlighted last list?? Well THIS is exactly the sort of thing those retro-stoners were going for. Step up for an authentic '70s hard psych experience. Stonewall's rare, awesomely fuzz riffed record was recorded in '69, but not actually released until 1974, and even then without the band's knowledge, due to exploito-label shennanigans. Read the liner notes for more about that. (Actually, other sources claim this was recorded circa '71-'72, and then released in '76, we don't know what to believe, but either set of dates sounds plausible.)
Stonewall pump out stompin', rockin' boogie, durn heavy for '69 (or '71), fronted by an expressively raspy vocalist, gripped by the spirit of rock n' roll at its countercultural best. He also busts out the occasional harmonica wail. But it's generally guitars to the fore, and fuzzed-out. There's some Hendrix and Cream influences of course, maybe Led Zep too depending on when this really was recorded, and we're treated to some total organ jammin' blues rockin' on "Try & See It Through", while "Atlantis" hints at the slightly proggier riffage of Captain Beyond's debut....
Definitely for fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, Bang, Jerusalem, etc. Also if you remember a much more recent (but very retro) band from the '90s called The Want, who did a disc for Southern Lord, this sounds pretty much just like them. Which is cool 'cause we really digged The Want. Maybe they really digged Stonewall?
Oh, and yes, this IS the same Stonewall album that was previously reissued on cd some years back by the Italian label Akarma, with a different cover and title (Akarma called it Stoner, and the cover had a wall of Marshalls, with blood seeping from several of 'em.) Presumably this is the how the original lp really looked.
MPEG Stream: "Right On"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Outer Spaced"

STONEWALL s/t (Kismet) lp 24.00
Now reissued on vinyl, too!
All right, time to get yr underground proto-metal kicks! Perhaps you're familiar with San Francisco longhairs Dzjenghis Khan, whose live cassette Prehistoric Rock we listed recently? Well THIS is exactly the sort of thing those retro-stoners were going for. Step up for an authentic '70s hard psych experience. Stonewall's rare, awesomely fuzz riffed record was recorded in '69, but not actually released until 1974, and even then without the band's knowledge, due to exploito-label shenanigans. Read the liner notes for more about that. (Actually, other sources claim this was recorded circa '71-'72, and then released in '76, we don't know what to believe, but either set of dates sounds plausible.)
Stonewall pump out stompin', rockin' boogie, durn heavy for '69 (or '71), fronted by an expressively raspy vocalist, gripped by the spirit of rock n' roll at its countercultural best. He also busts out the occasional harmonica wail. But it's generally guitars to the fore, and fuzzed-out. There's some Hendrix and Cream influences of course, maybe Led Zep too depending on when this really was recorded, and we're treated to some total organ jammin' blues rockin' on "Try & See It Through", while "Atlantis" hints at the slightly proggier riffage of Captain Beyond's debut....
Definitely for fans of Sir Lord Baltimore, Dust, Bang, Jerusalem, etc. Also if you remember a much more recent (but very retro) band from the '90s called The Want, who did a disc for Southern Lord, this sounds pretty much just like them. Which is cool 'cause we really digged The Want. Maybe they really digged Stonewall?
Oh, and yes, this IS the same Stonewall album that was previously reissued on cd some years back by the Italian label Akarma, with a different cover and title (Akarma called it Stoner, and the cover had a wall of Marshalls, with blood seeping from several of 'em.) Presumably this is the how the original lp really looked.
MPEG Stream: "Right On"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "Outer Spaced"

STORM LEGION The Eye Of The Prophet (Goatowarex) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "Destroyer"
MPEG Stream: "Of Sadness And Grim Cyclones"

STORM THE CASTLE! The History Of Doomed Expeditions Vol. 1 (Lightbulb Detective Agency) cd 13.98
We have pretty good reason to assume that the guys in Fayetteville, Arkansas' Storm The Castle! (exclamation point theirs, but wholly appropriate) won't mind us comparing their band to Hammers Of Misfortune, the beloved "operatic" metal act from here in San Francisco, related to the somewhat similar sounding Slough Feg. They'd better not mind, 'cause that's what happens when you play over the top progtastic power metal that's part '80s, part indie-artsy-postrockishness, with clean, dramatic vox and technical instrumental shred, including of course twin guitar harmonies galore! Sure there's differences - no female vocalist, no Hammond organ - and the singer of Storm The Castle! sounds something like (a very theatrical version of) Metallica's James Hetfield, moreso than he does any of Hammer's male singers past or present. But we DO think that Hammers Of Misfortune fans might dig this big time. In fact, Allan was playing it in the office 'round about when the most recent Hammers opus came out and Cup was momentarily convinced that this WAS the new Hammers.
"The Chief Goal Of Alchemy" opens the proceedings with an atmospheric electronic effects + mysterious spoken word sample into, which gives way to gentle acoustic guitars, bursting almost immediately into bombastic, triumphing true metal ass kickery. Later tracks are also crammed with complexities of hectic riffage, heroic melodies, and unexpected interludes. Slough Feg fans will find familiar the (heavy) folky motifs in "Victory, But At What Price", while "Laugh Track" is simply a ripper. This five song, half-hour-plus debut wraps up with its longest epic, grand finale "Here, Be Dragons" (10:54) which again features some very Slough Feggy guitar parts, we must say. It's all very VERY metal and yet paradoxically otherwise, or at least unexpectedly artier, giving us suspicion that this was seemingly conceptualized as a collection of metallic signifiers juxtaposed with the otherwise, to obtain an alloy that transcends such labeling. All in all, this is one that we suggest, nay insist that fans of Hammers check out, as you've already gathered. Same goes for fans of the 'Feg, Blind Guardian, The Fucking Champs, Zebulon Pike... oh and NYC's Under Satan's Sun (a band who get the award for sounding even more like Hammers, however).
MPEG Stream: "Laugh Track"
MPEG Stream: "Fire Breathing Sympathy Machine"

STORM, THE s/t (Wah Wah) cd 21.00
If you picked up the Spanish Trip compilation we reviewed a few months back, you might recall a song by this band from Seville, that we described as an example of "off-the-rails Deep Purplish bludgeon". And by "off-the-rails" we meant that their track, "I Don't Know", was played with a sloppy, wild abandon that made sound almost punk. Pretty cool! Well that song was from this, their only full-length album, originally released in 1974, and finally now reissued on cd in a fairly deluxe package (slipcover, bonus video clip), which features another seven tracks of hard rockin' proto-metal psych with gobs of heavy organ and acid blues guitar soloing...there's even a drum solo on here too. More aggressive than progressive, The Storm did their best to live up to their name, kicking out the jams more energetically than any other band from Spain up to that point in Spanish rock history except maybe Tapiman (whose excellent album with the pink skull on the cover was also recently reviewed by us, you may recall). Yet despite all their "storminess", though, these guys seem to have a sunny side too. Not downer rock by any means. You can kinda hear their '60s Beatles-lovin' pop roots.
Now, we've gotta say, on our last list we reviewed the comparably hard rockin', equally vintage Pax album from Peru, and it didn't get quite the response we were hoping for... we thought there were more of you proto-metal fans out there reading this stuff! Hmm. But if you're there, this is one you might dig (and that Pax too, go back and read about it).
MPEG Stream: "I Am Busy"
MPEG Stream: "I Don't Know"

STORMCROW Wounded Skies (Dwell) cd ep 9.98
We don't know too much about Stormcrow, besides that they're from Italy... beyond that we don't know if this is their first record, or if there are any folks from other bands in the band. Hardly matters really when you get right down to it. It's the music that matters and holy shit is this a serious blast of ultra black buzz. The sticker on the cover mentions Emperor, Dark Funeral and 1349, and while any super fast, super tight black metal band will most likely sound a little bit like one or all off those, Stormcrow somehow have a little bit more groove. It's still super fast and grim and true and blah blah blah, but the riffs sort of swing, and instead of being nothing but a black blur, it sort of lopes and lurches at lightning speed. Some killer blast beats underpinning a serious dose of killer riffing. Definitely worthy of being mentioned in the same breath as the above mentioned hordes, with a little something special to set them apart. Don't be mislead though by the 'swing' and the 'groove', this is first and foremost, ultra fast, harsh as fuck, brutal and raw black metal, but there are a bunch of little sonic subtleties, weird composition, subtly strange song structure, and that killer drumming, combined with slightly twisted riffs, that makes us dig this way more than we expected to.
MPEG Stream: "Dark Promises (Are Always Kept By Satan)"
MPEG Stream: "Demons"

STORMCROW / COFFINS Split (20 Buck Spin) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Yet another heavy hitting downtuned blackened blast and dirge matchup, this one between Oakland ultra heavies Stormcrow, and Japan's equally brutal Coffins. Stormcrow start things off with a trudging grim pummel, all sludge and trudge and pound, the vocals a hellish belch, eventually exploding into some thrashing blasting punishment, the band spewing a filthy brew that's equal parts Bolt Thrower and Winter, and over the course of nearly 13 minutes they drift from woozy mournful classic doom, to twisted crusty sort-of speed metal, to sprawling D-beat blasts but always back to crushing lumbering slo-mo sludge.
Coffins definitely exist right there next to Stormcrow in the sonic spectrum, their dirgey downtuned doom laced death metal creep, a grim and harrowing thing, lumbering and monstrous, the sound blow out, the guitars impossibly low, lurching along below some grunted vokills, and some WAY up in the mix drums, the cymbals adding a strange haze of sizzle to the proceedings, and like Stormcrow, Coffins mix it up, slipping from Corrupted style sludge to Hellhammerish primitive death metal and back again, some seriously crusty, crushing, amp destroying, head caving filth for sure. Awesome.

STORMCROW / SANCTUM split (20 Buck Spin) cd 13.98
Want some brutal "war crust" to, um, brighten your day? Look no further. Stormcrow (from Oakland, and not to be confused with the Italian black metal band of the same name) team up with likeminded metallers Sanctum (from Seattle) for this split cd on the ever-reliable, heavy as heck 20 Buck Spin label. Dark and wretched, violent and crushing, it's a raw mix of speedy death and moody doom from two bands both of whom love their Bolt Thrower and Amebix, Winter and Doom. The grey-shaded artwork depicting armored foes in medieval combat is quite appropriate, as across this sprawling split, they're either charging forward with berserk fury, or trudging battleweary from the killing fields... (generally Sanctum do the former, Stormcrow the latter). Imagine Asunder with D-beats.
MPEG Stream: STORMCROW "Dead Dreams"
MPEG Stream: SANCTUM "Age Of Ruin"

STORY OF RATS, A Thought Forms (Eiderdown) lp 19.98
Hot on the heels of the recent super limited cassette on Flingco (got a few left, ask if you want one), comes this also limited lp from Gareck Druss, aka A Story Of Rats, who might be more familiar to aQ folks as a member of PDX doomdronedirge outfit Tecumseh. And A Story Of Rats actually seems like a logical extension of the Tecumseh mothership, a more minimal, hushed sound, but definitely the same sort of dirgey drift.
Thought Forms is a single sprawling epic split up into two sidelong movements, the first is as you might expect, a creepy atmospheric dronescape, all distant sounds, reverbed field recordings, warm whirling tones, the sound drifts meditatively, but begins to grow more industrial, as the sounds grow more caustic, bell like chimes, are wreathed in distortion and begin to crumble, vocals buried so they sound like more rumbles and whirs, keening fragmented melodies drift beneath the surface, the sound constantly in motion, but subtly so, shifting from deep somnambulant creep to washed out shimmer and back again. The second side/movement is more looped and hypnotic, woozy and psychedelic, the sounds more hazy and softly swirly, melodies blurred into chordal thrum, it's prettier than the A side, but the darkness seems to grow gradually, a droned out soft noise that builds and builds into a crumbling and ominous black buzz outro. Most definitely for fans of all things slow and low, minimal and droney, dark and drifty.
The packaging is incredible, hand screened jackets, black and metallic gold ink, the vinyl pressed on swirled black and grey vinyl, packaged with a super swank insert, again hand screened in metallic gold ink, on heavy textured paper.
LIMITED TO 300 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "Thought Forms I (excerpt)"
MPEG Stream: "Thought Forms II (excerpt)"

STOUSY, BRANDON / MATTHEW BARNEY / WOLD Tubal Cain magazine + dvd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

STRANGULATED BEATOFFS Greatest Hits (Behemoth) cd 13.98
The Strangulated Beatoffs are a weird weird band. But then what did you expect from a band called the Strangulated Beatoffs? Or from a band that features members of infamous noise punks Drunks With Guns?
This demented duo sometimes use samplers and loops to make fucked up hypnotic grooves and seriously demented electronic weirdness, but as is evidenced by Greatest Hits, they're also puerile purveyors of sick sludgey noise rock and filthy drunkrock dirges. Greatest Hits is mostly a collection of seven inches, the earliest recordings of the Beatoffs circa 1988-1992 or so and thus are maybe the closest sonically to the late great Drunks With Guns. Some tracks like "Porky The Pig And Bess" and "Heeby Jeeby/Practicing To Be A Doctor" are heavy dirgey space rock drug jams that sound like they could have been yanked from a Butthole Surfers set, while others, like "Lick My Butthole" musically sound like Dutch post metallers Gore, but with the addition of some goofy fucked up lyrics, and some damaged shards of buzz and crunch.
"It's A Vile, Vile, Vile, Vile World" is a super lengthy collage of looped eighties Carpenter-ish soundtracks, that sounds like it could be James Ferraro, but it's from at least a decade before Ferraro delved into lysergic pop music, so the Beatoffs are unsung musical pioneers! Fuck yeah! There's a Troggs cover too, but you'd never know it, a murky field recording that sounds like it was captured in the bar around the corner from the show, there's a dorky acoustic ditty, some strange carnivalesque child molesting weirdness, some Mentors like punk rock, but the finest moments are when the band do their best Butthole Surfers, crafting longform drone dirge drug rock, all swirling spacey effects, gnarled looped guitars, and mesmerizingly motorik beats...
If you're not sold by now, maybe this will sway you: Strangulated Beatoffs are one of Andee's all time favorite bands. EVER. So much so that he contacted them about reissuing all of their records, maybe even a box set, but all they wanted to release on tUMULt was their record of Genesis covers! (And then he never heard from them again.) How rad is that???
MPEG Stream: "Lick My Butthole"
MPEG Stream: "Did Those Dumbfucks Even Name This One?"
MPEG Stream: "Fake Eyeball"
MPEG Stream: "Heeby Jeeby / Practicing To Be A Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Vile, Vile, VIle, Vile World"

STRATUM TERROR Fixation (Old Europa Cafe) cd 15.98

STRAY s/t (Walhalla) cd 23.00
Here's yet another one of those bands that we'd vaguely heard of (or perhaps not) but never really encountered actual records by, and now that we have we can't figure out why they weren't a bigger deal! I think I first became aware of 'em via the thanks/influences list on a Pentagram album. Kinda always assumed they were your basic British blues rock but on the evidence of this, their 1970 debut they were something a little different than the Cream/Zep sort of thing I'd imagined. They're rather more like a '60s psych-pop singles band, of the garagey/Nuggetsy variety, with the fuzz factor and sheer guitar heaviness cranked way up toward proto-metallic levels. More psych than prog, more pop than blues. Kinda punk too. Very kick ass and energetic, catchy and rockin', venturing from the paisley-painted pop melodicism of "Around The World In Eighty Days" to the slamming punkish "Only What You Make It" to a number of extended fuzz guitar workouts... but first and foremost it's good old-fashioned hard rock. Think Thin Lizzy. Or Dust, or Budgie. Or even early, early Rush (one song here always puts Byram in mind of "Working Man"). But as mentioned it's got a poppy '60s garage vibe unlike a lot of those acts... And there's enough proggier, psychier elements loaded in here to pique the interest of a wider audience than just the hard rock lovers among us. The guitar parts especially are full of odd harmonies and melodic richness that bring to mind Amon Duul II, if Amon Duul II could have managed to fit their open ended song structures into a tighter blues rock straight jacket. What makes Stray's music work so well is their attention to structure: keeping their compositions on a tight leash and avoiding the esoteric meanderings that can be a pitfall to many prog rockers. This and their sense of dynamics, knowing just how and when to throw the switch and rip the seat of your pants, is what must have made them a seriously kick ass live band (and apparently they were super popular as such in and around their London, England turf, but unfortunately never managed to cash in on the hard rock success like some of their contempories). They recorded numerous albums, of which this first one is likely their best (though their second LP Suicide is a good one too, and we're just not that familiar with the rest of their '70s output), but their biggest claim to fame might be that Iron Maiden covered one of their songs on a b-side ("All In Your Mind", the very first track on this disc). Stray's version was way better btw.
MPEG Stream: "All In Your Mind"
MPEG Stream: "Time Machine"

STRIBORG Autumnal Melancholy (Displeased) cd 14.98
It's another, like-no-other, claustrophobically constricted creepy-crawl through the mists that seemingly, steamingly enshroud the Tasmanian rainforest lair of that far off island's major (only?) one man black metal export, Striborg. Mists that buzz with fuzz, like a metallic miasma, a sonic cloud of fog-smog composed of atomized Burzumic bits. Damaged, droning distorted fuzz. If Fuck Buttons or Growing listen to black metal, we bet they'd like Striborg! And as far as we're concerned, a new Striborg disc is always cause for grim celebration... this one, following both Ghostwoodlands and Solitude from 2007, is fresh for spring 2008 (remember, that's fall below the equator, hence Striborg's current Autumnal Melancholy).
As is Striborg's wont, this album consists of either epic-length (several close to 15 minutes each) black metal numbers, or somewhat shorter, more "experimental" isolationist electronic interludes. On those pieces, such as the "The Scrying Mirror", the quietly lovely "In Oppressive Silence", and "The Manifestation Of Black Residual Energy", Striborg could be mistaken for some particularly scary 20th century classical composer or ambient soundtrack artist. But even when he unleashes the full black metal attack, with drum machinery and anguished rasps, it's still pretty darn "experimental"!
With plodding tempi and enervated emotion, the likes of "As A Hermit Hiding In The Trance Of Night" and the title track trudge forth like a sleepwalking zombies, with each step forward, sinking slowly into the quicksand-like foundation of the ever-present fuzz, which really comes to an unholy, catastrophic climax with the Merzbovian noise blow-out of album-ender "Transfiguration Of Terror", a two-minute track following the one here with perhaps the album's most metal-est riffing, "Meandering In Sorrow", a well-named 14:35 indeed. As with all Striborg releases, recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "The Void And Cloudless Sky"
MPEG Stream: "In Oppressive Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Meandering In Sorrow"

STRIBORG Black Desolate Winter / Depressive Hibernation (Displeased) cd 14.98
A lot has changed since we first heard Striborg, and his truly idiosyncratic Tasmanian rain forest black metal. Since then he's released about a million records, some on Southern Lord, and frontman Sin Nanna has performed and recorded with SUNNO))), so it would seem he's not nearly as kult as he once was (but much better known). But the weird thing about Striborg, is no matter how popular he gets, or how many records he puts out, NO ONE will be more kult. Hell, he lives in Tasmania, in a shack, and records record after record of some of the bleakest, depressive and totally fucked black metal we've ever heard.
A big part of Striborg's sound is the production, which fluctuates wildly from record to record, and sometimes even song to song, and while we love EVERYTHING he's done, we're particularly partial to the older stuff, as if is so completely wacked and so impossibly lo-fi, someone here once described it like listening to a boombox in the shower, but that's exactly how a black metal record should sound, or at least THIS kind of black metal record.
Seems weird to take two records and lump them together on a single disc, but Striborg has been doing it since the beginning, usually a new-ISH record, with an older demo tacked on, and since his sound remains pretty consistent, typically the two record work well together, but what's different here is that Black Desolate Winter and Depressive Hibernation were both recorded in 2005 and released together, and thus feel like two parts of a single whole. Each record is all about the title track, "Black Desolate Winter", the song, is 30 minutes long! Surrounded by shorted blasts and bits of drone and black ambience, "Depressive Hibernation" is nearly 15 minutes, it too, surrounded by shorter tracks, the whole disc finishing off with the nearly 11 minute "In The Gloom Of The Foreboding Night."
Striborg initiates already know what to expect, stumbling off kilter drumming, brittle buzzing guitars that sounds like swarms of insects, mournful melodies, the production very much like a boom box in the shower, the drums more of a pt pt pt pt than a blast or a pound, the vocals a wail buried in the mix, the guitars, sometimes all spidery and arpeggiated, but more often than not lost in clouds of furious buzz and crumbling distortion. "Black Desolate Winter" is a depressive buzzing black epic, that slips from lurching blast to woozy midtempo plod and back again over the course of its half hour, with ambient outros, appropriately creepy and warped sounding before and after.
Depressive Hibernation is more of a proper record, "Entangled In The Black Roots Of The Forest" is another chunk of frenetic buzz, doused in sheets of white noise distortion, but with some of the most tweaked vocals ever, raspy and demonic, but super effected so they seem to go spinning off into distance. "Depressive Hibernation" the track, begins all pretty and melancholy, but when the guitars kick in, they're barely riffs at all, it's like someone turned on a white noise generator. A shriek and then some simple drumming turn the track into a creepy Burzumic plod, the super processed shrieks continue on, making for another of the weirdest BM tracks ever. The rest of the disc plays out equal parts deep black drones, and fucked up and freaked out buzz drenched blurs, peppered with bizarre vocals, buried drums and maybe even a riff or two.
Needless to say, there is a reason, Striborg was always the barometer by which we measured all other 'fucked up' or 'damaged' black metal, and listening to these records again, it seems to us that Striborg might still reign supreme!
Striborg on vinyl is rare, so we were super psyched to get these, heavy vinyl, deluxe heavy weight gatefold sleeves, and of course limited limited limited!!!
MPEG Stream: "Black Desolate Winter"
MPEG Stream: "Depressive Hibernation"

STRIBORG Black Desolate Winter / Depressive Hibernation (Aphelion) 2lp 26.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A lot has changed since we first hear Striborg, and his truly idiosyncratic Tasmanian rain forest black metal. Since then he's released about a million records, some on Southern Lord, and frontman Sin Nanna has performed and recorded with SUNNO))), so it would seem he's not nearly as kult as he once was (but much better known). But the weird thing about Striborg, is no matter how popular he gets, or how many records he puts out, NO ONE will be more kult. Hell, he lives in Tasmania, in a shack, and records record after record of some of the bleakest, depressive and totally fucked black metal we've ever heard.
A big part of Striborg's sound is the production, which fluctuates wildly from record to record, and sometimes even song to song, and while we love EVERYTHING he's done, we're particularly partial to the older stuff, as if is so completely wacked and so impossibly lo-fi, someone here once described it like listening to a boombox in the shower, but that's exactly how a black metal record should sound, or at least THIS kind of black metal record.
We got a bunch of these double lps, figuring that we had reviewed the cd at some point, when in fact, this was one of the many that slipped through the cracks. We do have this on cd, both the original version and the recently reissued Displeased version, if you want either, or both, but this is about the vinyl version of these two bleak black grim classics.
Seems weird to take two records and lump them together on a single disc, but Striborg has been doing it since the beginning, usually a new-ISH record, with an older demo tacked on, and since his sound remains pretty consistent, typically the two record work well together, but what's different here is that Black Desolate Winter and Depressive Hibernation were both recorded in 2005 and released together, and thus feel like two parts of a single whole. Each record is all about the title track, "Black Desolate Winter", the song, is 30 minutes long! Surrounded by shorted blasts and bits of drone and black ambience, "Depressive Hibernation" is nearly 15 minutes, it too, surrounded by shorter tracks, the whole disc finishing off with the nearly 11 minute "In The Gloom Of The Foreboding Night."
Striborg initiates already know what to expect, stumbling off kilter drumming, brittle buzzing guitars that sounds like swarms of insects, mournful melodies, the production very much like a boom box in the shower, the drums more of a pt pt pt pt than a blast or a pound, the vocals a wail buried in the mix, the guitars, sometimes all spidery and arpeggiated, but more often than not lost in clouds of furious buzz and crumbling distortion. "Black Desolate Winter" is a depressive buzzing black epic, that slips from lurching blast to woozy midtempo plod and back again over the course of its half hour, with ambient outros, appropriately creepy and warped sounding before and after.
Depressive Hibernation is more of a proper record, "Entangled In The Black Roots Of The Forest" is another chunk of frenetic buzz, doused in sheets of white noise distortion, but with some of the most tweaked vocals ever, raspy and demonic, but super effected so they seem to go spinning off into distance. "Depressive Hibernation" the track, begins all pretty and melancholy, but when the guitars kick in, they're barely riffs at all, it's like someone turned on a white noise generator. A shriek and then some simple drumming turn the track into a creepy Burzumic plod, the super processed shrieks continue on, making for another of the weirdest BM tracks ever. The rest of the disc plays out equal parts deep black drones, and fucked up and freaked out buzz drenched blurs, peppered with bizarre vocals, buried drums and maybe even a riff or two.
Needless to say, there is a reason, Striborg was always the barometer by which we measured all other 'fucked up' or 'damaged' black metal, and listening to these records again, it seems to us that Striborg might still reign supreme!
Striborg on vinyl is rare, so we were super psyched to get these, heavy vinyl, deluxe heavy weight gatefold sleeves, and of course limited limited limited!!!
MPEG Stream: "Black Desolate Winter"
MPEG Stream: "Depressive Hibernation"

STRIBORG Embittered Darkness / Isle De Morts (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Lovers of damaged demented bizarre baffling freaked out and fucked up black metal rejoice!! We couldn't be more excited if there was a brand new Benighted Leams record. FINALLY, we're able to review and list a record from one of our all time favorite outsider one man black metal bands, Striborg. Most folks have probably never actually heard Striborg, even though this will mark release #15 or thereabouts. But it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. We have been completely obsessed with Striborg since we first heard him a few years back and have been trying to get enough copies of ANY of his releases to list. Everytime we found someone who carried Striborg records, we would order 30 or 40 or 50, and would get 1 or 2. Or more likely none. We even resorted to writing letters to the band (he apparently lives in a shack in the woods with no phone and no computer!) And while most folks have never -heard- Striborg, you've probably at least heard OF him. Whether it was in an aQuarius review, we've referenced Striborg as the ultimate outsider black metal band in reviews of records by black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine, Lugubrum, Draugar, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden and more, or on the recent black metallized SUNNO))) record Black One, which even had a track named for the dark mastermind behind Striborg Sin-Nanna.
But what is it exactly about Striborg that has everyone freaking out?
Five words for you: Tasmanian rain forest black metal! And it's just as grim and weird and as amazing as that might lead you to believe. We have Southern Lord to thank for this, the first readily available Striborg release, which continues his tradition of combining multiple releases on single cds, this one includes the brand new 2006 recording. Embittered Darkness, as well as the super rare Isle De Morts release recorded almost a decade ago, way back in 1997.
So what exactly does Tasmanian rain forest black metal sound like? Definitely grim, and lo-fi, ultra personal, demented and damaged, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Dead Reptile Shrine, Necrofrost, Emit, Furze, Urfaust and all the rest of the baffling black metal hierarchy should give you a rough idea, but Striborg, is even further out, way more fucked up, more strangely psychedelic and freaked out, a doomy drone drenched black buzz, a growling fuzzy missive from the depths of some dark netherworld.
Haunting washes of gauzy synthesizer, mournful minor key acoustic guitars, dreary overcast swaths of depressive melancholia, and you think other black metal bands are buzzy?! Striborg take that black buzz and whip it into a furious freaked out frenzy, a guitar buzz like a million bumble bees, but sped WAY up, a prickly, fuzzy swirl, even at it's most doomy and plodding, Striborg drenches everything in that overblown buzz, a thick sandpapery ambience, that is the metal equivalent of walking through the pouring rain, under a full moon, through a graveyard at the edge of the world. Sin-Nanna growls and gurgles his obtuse black ravings in an impossibly creepy animalistic voice, somewhere between a rabid dog, a tiny demon, and a wicked old witch, often everything will drop out and all that will be left is a buzzing tangle of hissing harsh vocal and fuzzed out black riffing. Buried in the murk and mire are weird, rehearsal space drums, really flat and dry sounding, erupting in spastic and chaotic burts, not just blast beats, but instead bizarre blasts of percussive tangle amidst stretches of almost punk rock drumming, although most of Embittered Darkness is spent at a crawl, a buzzing midtempo dirge, as doomy as it is black, if not more so. Imagine an ultra lo-fi doom metal Xasthur, slow motion misery dotted with occasional barrages of black metal buzz and once in a while surges of slithering black ambience.
So totally creepy and beautiful, fucked up and gorgeous, a massive soul crushing slab of doom drenched black metal brilliance.
Isle De Morts, from 1997, is a lot more traditional, and a lot faster, almost every track a frenetic and frenzied burst of blackened and buzzing brutality, lo-fi but completely blown out and in the red, channeling Transylvanian Hunger era Darkthrone, but filtered through Striborg's cracked sonic kaleidoscope, rendering what might have been just some classic Norwegian BM worship, as a creepy and cracked world of ultrabuzz and overblown acidfried blackness, blast beats so fast they sound like radio static, guitars so buzzy and blurry they turn into thick washes of crumbling prickly sound, and croaking toadlike vocals so high in the mix it sounds like the band is in a different room. So gloriously fucked up and freaked out. One listen is all it takes to see why Striborg towers above all his bizarre black metal contemporaries, ruling the doomed and damaged kingdom of ultrapersonal black metal dementia with an iron fist, a busted 4-track and a growing legion of buzz hungry minions!
MPEG Stream: "Wrapped In A Cacoon Out Of Harm's Way"
MPEG Stream: "Race Of Apathy"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Veils Of Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Descending From A Black Sky"

STRIBORG Embittered Darkness / Isle De Morts (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Also available for a limited time (of course) on vinyl, as a deluxe double lp, packaged in a swank gatefold. Clear vinyl while they last!!
Lovers of damaged demented bizarre baffling freaked out and fucked up black metal rejoice!! We couldn't be more excited if there was a brand new Benighted Leams record. FINALLY, we're able to review and list a record from one of our all time favorite outsider one man black metal bands, Striborg. Most folks have probably never actually heard Striborg, even though this will mark release #15 or thereabouts. But it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. We have been completely obsessed with Striborg since we first heard him a few years back and have been trying to get enough copies of ANY of his releases to list. Everytime we found someone who carried Striborg records, we would order 30 or 40 or 50, and would get 1 or 2. Or more likely none. We even resorted to writing letters to the band (he apparently lives in a shack in the woods with no phone and no computer!) And while most folks have never -heard- Striborg, you've probably at least heard OF him. Whether it was in an aQuarius review, we've referenced Striborg as the ultimate outsider black metal band in reviews of records by black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine, Lugubrum, Draugar, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden and more, or on the recent black metallized SUNNO))) record Black One, which even had a track named for the dark mastermind behind Striborg Sin-Nanna.
But what is it exactly about Striborg that has everyone freaking out?
Five words for you: Tasmanian rain forest black metal! And it's just as grim and weird and as amazing as that might lead you to believe. We have Southern Lord to thank for this, the first readily available Striborg release, which continues his tradition of combining multiple releases on single cds, this one includes the brand new 2006 recording. Embittered Darkness, as well as the super rare Isle De Morts release recorded almost a decade ago, way back in 1997.
So what exactly does Tasmanian rain forest black metal sound like? Definitely grim, and lo-fi, ultra personal, demented and damaged, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Dead Reptile Shrine, Necrofrost, Emit, Furze, Urfaust and all the rest of the baffling black metal hierarchy should give you a rough idea, but Striborg, is even further out, way more fucked up, more strangely psychedelic and freaked out, a doomy drone drenched black buzz, a growling fuzzy missive from the depths of some dark netherworld.
Haunting washes of gauzy synthesizer, mournful minor key acoustic guitars, dreary overcast swaths of depressive melancholia, and you think other black metal bands are buzzy?! Striborg take that black buzz and whip it into a furious freaked out frenzy, a guitar buzz like a million bumble bees, but sped WAY up, a prickly, fuzzy swirl, even at it's most doomy and plodding, Striborg drenches everything in that overblown buzz, a thick sandpapery ambience, that is the metal equivalent of walking through the pouring rain, under a full moon, through a graveyard at the edge of the world. Sin-Nanna growls and gurgles his obtuse black ravings in an impossibly creepy animalistic voice, somewhere between a rabid dog, a tiny demon, and a wicked old witch, often everything will drop out and all that will be left is a buzzing tangle of hissing harsh vocal and fuzzed out black riffing. Buried in the murk and mire are weird, rehearsal space drums, really flat and dry sounding, erupting in spastic and chaotic burts, not just blast beats, but instead bizarre blasts of percussive tangle amidst stretches of almost punk rock drumming, although most of Embittered Darkness is spent at a crawl, a buzzing midtempo dirge, as doomy as it is black, if not more so. Imagine an ultra lo-fi doom metal Xasthur, slow motion misery dotted with occasional barrages of black metal buzz and once in a while surges of slithering black ambience.
So totally creepy and beautiful, fucked up and gorgeous, a massive soul crushing slab of doom drenched black metal brilliance.
Isle De Morts, from 1997, is a lot more traditional, and a lot faster, almost every track a frenetic and frenzied burst of blackened and buzzing brutality, lo-fi but completely blown out and in the red, channeling Transylvanian Hunger era Darkthrone, but filtered through Striborg's cracked sonic kaleidoscope, rendering what might have been just some classic Norwegian BM worship, as a creepy and cracked world of ultrabuzz and overblown acidfried blackness, blast beats so fast they sound like radio static, guitars so buzzy and blurry they turn into thick washes of crumbling prickly sound, and croaking toadlike vocals so high in the mix it sounds like the band is in a different room. So gloriously fucked up and freaked out. One c
MPEG Stream: "Wrapped In A Cacoon Out Of Harm's Way"
MPEG Stream: "Race Of Apathy"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Veils Of Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Descending From A Black Sky"

STRIBORG Ghostwoodlands (Displeased) cd 14.98
Deep in the damp backwoods of Tasmania (yes, Tasmania!), one of our very favorite one-man black metal bands lurks. Sin-nanna is that man, Striborg is that band. The eagerly awaited Ghostwoodlands is the latest manifestation of Striborg's musical misanthropy, another extreme and extremely "outsider" statement of black metal idiosyncrasy and fucked up brilliance.
Starting with track one, "Bete Noirs", every other track on Ghostwoodlands is an ambient episode of beautifully droning, isolationist electronics, psychedelic blackness that's not overtly metal at all (and could give some additional weight to the ridiculous rumor we once heard that Sin-nanna is actually Australian dronologist Oren Ambarchi). The longer, even-numbered songs, though, are indeed recognizable as a species of black metal, wherein Sin-nanna's guitar (and voice, and keyboards, and much else) still sounds like some noxious gas escaping under pressure. This aerosol mist of grim musik is, as always, accompanied by his own primitive "timekeeping", percussive thump and clatter full of many confusional fills, blasts and beats. This drumming is seemingly (and sometimes startlingly) one of Sin-nanna's primary expressive outlets, having more active physicality than the spectral presences of his other instrumentation -- and its artistic effectiveness proves that desire trumps ability in his realm. With woozy alien synths wandering over from the "ambient" tracks, Striborg's steam clouds of croak-encrusted, broken-down black metal require hails all around. Indeed, the next time someone asks, "what's so great? -- and what's so fucked up?" about Striborg, track two here is one we'll immediately want to play 'em. The slowly paced, 19 and a half minute "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery" is a monument to Sin-nanna's unique genius, as we're sure you'll agree after just a few minutes into it, when you're fully enveloped in his hissing, buzzing, chuddering world, and the ambient Aphex synth droplets start falling amidst his percussive extemporaneity. So good! Like a brain-damaged Burzum, and we mean that in the best possible way. And these abnormal atmospheres continue throughout the rest of the disc, furthering our love of Striborg. A great followup to the taster offered by the Striborg / Xasthur split single we listed just last week!
PS. God what we wouldn't give for a Striborg / Keiji Haino collaboration!!!
MPEG Stream: "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery"
MPEG Stream: "Light Anomalies In The Phantom Woods"
MPEG Stream: "Ghostwoodlands"

STRIBORG In The Heart Of The Rainforest / Misanthropic Isolation (Displeased) cd 14.98

STRIBORG Journey Of A Misanthrope (Displeased) dvd 16.98
For a while it was practically impossible to get records by our favorite one man Tasmanian rain forest black metal misanthrope Striborg. We listed one or two years ago, and constantly had a couple copies of titles in stock, but rarely were we able to get enough copies to list, or to get them at all consistently. Finally after years of trying unsuccessfully to track down all the Striborg discs for you, the faithful AQ outsider black metal elite, Displeased Records over in Holland finally began a pretty comprehensive Striborg reissue campaign recently, remastering the sound, fancying up the artwork, but most importantly, letting all you freaked out damaged black metal obsessives get your ears on some of the most amazing, most fucked up black metal music ever. And it still is as far as we're concerned. We love Furze and Necrofrost and all that, but there's something special about Striborg. All you have to do is check out some of our other reviews where we go on at length about the magical mysterious soundworld Sin-Nanna aka Striborg has crafted over the years. Thick washes of static and hiss, washed out buzz, stumbling chaotic drumming, gorgeous dreamlike atmospheres, mournful and melancholy, depressive and miserable, but at the same time, blessed out and dreamy, a haunting blackened ambience peppered with bursts of blurred buzz and abstract metallic crush.
But one thing we can guarantee you we never thought we'd see, was a Striborg DVD!!! But here it is, and while secretly we were hoping for some glimpses of the man himself, lurking in caves, and creeping across moors, instead, what you get, quite appropriately we might add, are landscapes, rocks and snow, epic vistas, dark forests, cloudy skies, gorgeous skylines, lush rain forests, vines and leaves and branches, and of course lots and lots of trees. Much of it shot night vision style, like the Blair Witch Project, but a lot of it long tracking shots, like some mysterious nature documentary. Some are overlaid with video experiments flickering shapes and formless video static, pulsing and throbbing, spinning and shifting, others are washed out or filtered, others are negative, but some are just left the way they are, lovely shots of unspoilt nature. All perfectly complimenting the sounds of Striborg, whether it be creepy ambient shimmer, or blurry buzzy stumbling blasts. It's like being some sort of wraith or spirit, floating bodiless through some lost land, devoid of humanity, drifting through dark forests and moonlit landscapes and winter wastelands.
But those hoping to catch a glimpse of the man himself will not be disappointed after all. There's a "Forest Gallery" which is a slide show see to music, a series of striking forest images, but also, TONS of photos of Sin-Nanna, be-robed and corpsepainted and wandering through the Tasmanian rain forests, as well as drawings of trees (many of which were included in past cd releases) and most shocking of all, several photos of Sin-Nanna sans corpsepaint, just a metal dude with long hair and a Darkthrone t-shirt.
As if that weren't enough, there's also a "Treeography", which we were originally hoping would be some sort of list of Striborg's favorite trees, or at least a tour of the forest complete with the information about all the trees, but instead is a discography, and then another slide show of jittery super eight images of Sin-Nanna and the forest, underlit, creepy and flickery, so beautiful.
In fact all the films here are gorgeous, were they not "black metal videos" it wouldn't be hard to imagine these as experimental short films in some obscure film festival. Definitely recommended. Essential for Striborg freeks, and weirdo black metal fanatics, but equally recommended for adventurous viewers and listeners, who might just be looking for something truly strange and creepy, blackened and beautiful.

STRIBORG Misanthropic Isolation / Roaming The Forests (Asgard) cd 14.98

STRIBORG Mysterious Semblance (Displeased) cd 14.98
Sometimes it's good to remind ourselves just why Striborg continues to be quite possibly our favorite freaked out, damaged and demented outsider black metal one man band EVER. Not that we need reminding, but with so many releases, it's easy to take his intense and intensely fucked up body of work for granted.
Thankfully, after literally years of trying to track down all of the Striborg releases, Displeased Records is reissuing them all (the ones Southern Lord didn't release), most with new artwork, and many with extra tracks. So over the next few months we'll be getting everyone back up to speed on the confusional and chaotic soundworld of the mighty Striborg. Starting with Mysterious Semblance from 2004.
For those of you who already love Striborg, then this is a no brainer, if you don't already own this, you absolutely should. It's amazing. Dark and heavy, fucked up and drone-y. But for those new to Striborg, this is as good a place to start as any.
As with all Striborg releases, it's as much about the mood and presentation, as it is about the music. A bizarre forest world of buzz and blur, of haunting synths and cryptic messages. The record is adorned with various images of the forest, the jungle, trees and leaves and vines, some photos, others primitive drawings, no band photos, at least here, just the bizarre lyrics and all sorts of images of the dark wood.
Then there are the song titles, "Sour Pale Ghostly Dawn", "Mysterious Semblance Of Spectral Trees", "Lurking The Murky Damp Forest", "Looming Black Apparition", and appropriately depressive and ghoulish lyrics to match. And while we can't get enough of all that stuff, that sort of evocative imagery, the haunting and mysterious world those images and words evoke, it wouldn't mean anything if the music was equally as dark and creepy and fucked up. And as you probably realized by now, it absolutely is.
Mysterious Semblance is one of the doomier sounding Striborg records, lots of slow plodding tempos, swirling ghostly keyboards, long drawn out droning riffs, the tracks long and hypnotic, repetitive and trancelike. Lots of extended expanses of creepy crawly black ambience, like the opening tracks, long streaks of warbly organ, and wavery synths, drifting like a black fog, little twinkle of far off percussion, but for the most part, pure swirling dark ambient creep. Up next is the sort of title track, clocking in at nearly 20 minutes, and begins with more chiming shimmer, then the guitar comes in, and its that unmistakable Striborg tone, like someone just turned on the radio between stations, or began vacuuming the house, sheets of white noise buzz, the riff so indistinct it almost just sounds like a static buzz, here the buzz washes over a gentle lilting keyboard line, very Burzumic, but even more minimal and trancelike, the song eventually breaks into some serious blasting buzz, but the sound is so washed out and drone-y it's almost impossible to tell. The rest of the disc drifts back and forth between long stretches of scary ambient whir and blown out buzz, "The Ghostly Pallid Hand Of Fear" being maybe our favorite, the drums super loud this time, a stumbling double kick, under a lurching buzzy riff, the vocals all dubbed out, with weird metallic reverb, the voice echoing into the void like some sort of demon robot. Fucking awesome.
This reissue tacks on three bonus tracks, including the 15+ minute "Lurking The Murky Damp Forest", which sounds as murky and damp as the title would lead you to believe, the guitars and drums muted and muddy, but the vocals, super effected and creepy, lots of metallic reverb again, but this time a strangled croak like a black metal Gollum (although Gollum's pretty black metal already). The other two tracks are on the ambient side, but both suffused with thick distorted buzz, all gloriously washed out and drone-y.
We're always tempted to proclaim every Striborg record as our favorite, but that must just mean they are all sort of our favorite. Which makes perfect sense really. It's like each is some grim buzzy chapter in some epic black metal tome, every one drawing from the other, able to stand alone, but way more effective in the ongoing epic tale of Sin Nanna, Striborg, and whatever murky black forest he calls home.
And while they last we'll have the Mysterious Semblance discs with the super limited silver metallic cover (the rest of the layout is revamped as well, but once we sell out of this batch, it'll be back to the non-silver cover, and everything else will remain the same).
MPEG Stream: "A Sour Pale Ghostly Dawn"
MPEG Stream: "Mysterious Semblance of Spectral Trees"
MPEG Stream: "Looming Black Apparition"

STRIBORG Nefaria / A Tragic Journey Towards The Light (Southern Lord) cd 13.98
Another of our favorite Striborg records (although we pretty much love them all) back in stock!
The return of our favorite one man Tasmanian rain forest black metal horde, the mighty Striborg, whose damaged outsider lo-fi black buzz has held us in its thrall since the very first time we heard it years ago. Even though this is only the second Striborg release we've managed to get enough of to review and list, there have actually probably been more like a dozen full lengths from Striborg so far...
And lord knows we've tried to track down enough copies of those old releases to list, but as they are all self released on Striborg mainman Sin Nanna's own label, they've been mighty tough to get a hold of. Thankfully, he's taken to tacking on old out of print records at the tail end of new records. So here we've got the brand new full length Nefaria, coupled with his '95 demo A Tragic Journey Towards The Light. And the amazing thing is that even after all that time, and all those releases, the sound is just as lo-fi, fucked up and damaged as ever. The atmosphere is creepy and gloomy, the vocals a strangled croak swathed in reverb, the drums a stumbling thrashing mess, a dank black buzz that writhes and squirms, filthy and mysterious and so fucking awesome. There are some haunting ambient tracks too, whirring warbly synths drifting wraith like, sometimes with a lurching subtle beat buried way down in the mix, but for the most part, it's all damaged buzzing blackness, wrapped around bizarre arrangements and loads of lo-fi hiss and whir. Amidst the weirdness there are some breathtaking moments, moody and emotional and strangely haunting, like the first half of closer "Black Apparitional Void" a slowcore midtemo Burzumy buzz replete with distant keyboard melody and gorgeous minor key melodies, as lovely and sorrowful as it is buzzy and black, with bizarre muddy swells that briefly swallow up the entire song before quickly receding back into the murk, before the song lurches into a dizzying squall of buzzing guitars, processed vocals, and bizarrely recorded drums, the rest of the track going from lo-fi to even more lo-fi and back again.
But then we're only scratching the surface as far as lo-fi is concerned, cuz up next is Striborg's very first recording, A Tragic Journey Towards The Light, which is so lo-fi and so liberally sprinkled with effects, that at times it stops being black metal and becomes some weird swirling morass of black sound. The drum machine is doused in reverb, doubling and blurring, almost like some hyperspeed dub, during the super dynamic start and stop parts, the vocals and the drums are so caked in FX, that they sound like some sort of children's TV show special effects sounds, and the vocals, a garbled tongue twisting whatthefuck stream of growls and guttural yelps, the guitar a squiggly distorted streak over the churning blur beneath, so completely over the top and confusing to listen to, but so completely and impossibly catchy. This is the Striborg that ensorcelled us back in the day, and it sounds just as amazingly fucked as ever!
MPEG Stream: "Nefaria"
MPEG Stream: "Somnambulistic Nightmares"
MPEG Stream: "Garmonbozia"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Shadow Of Silence ('95)"

STRIBORG Nefaria / A Tragic Journey Towards The Light (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available as a deluxe double lp! Housed in a deluxe gatefold sleeve and pressed on 180 gram clear vinyl!
The return of our favorite one man Tasmanian rain forest black metal horde, the mighty Striborg, whose damaged outsider lo-fi black buzz has held us in its thrall since the very first time we heard it years ago. Even though this is only the second Striborg release we've managed to get enough of to review and list, there have actually probably been more like a dozen full lengths from Striborg so far...
And lord knows we've tried to track down enough copies of those old releases to list, but as they are all self released on Striborg mainman Sin Nanna's own label, they've been mighty tough to get a hold of. Thankfully, he's taken to tacking on old out of print records at the tail end of new records. So here we've got the brand new full length Nefaria, coupled with his '95 demo A Tragic Journey Towards The Light. And the amazing thing is that even after all that time, and all those releases, the sound is just as lo-fi, fucked up and damaged as ever. The atmosphere is creepy and gloomy, the vocals a strangled croak swathed in reverb, the drums a stumbling thrashing mess, a dank black buzz that writhes and squirms, filthy and mysterious and so fucking awesome. There are some haunting ambient tracks too, whirring warbly synths drifting wraith like, sometimes with a lurching subtle beat buried way down in the mix, but for the most part, it's all damaged buzzing blackness, wrapped around bizarre arrangements and loads of lo-fi hiss and whir. Amidst the weirdness there are some breathtaking moments, moody and emotional and strangely haunting, like the first half of closer "Black Apparitional Void" a slowcore midtemo Burzumy buzz replete with distant keyboard melody and gorgeous minor key melodies, as lovely and sorrowful as it is buzzy and black, with bizarre muddy swells that briefly swallow up the entire song before quickly receding back into the murk, before the song lurches into a dizzying squall of buzzing guitars, processed vocals, and bizarrely recorded drums, the rest of the track going from lo-fi to even more lo-fi and back again.
But then we're only scratching the surface as far as lo-fi is concerned, cuz up next is Striborg's very first recording, A Tragic Journey Towards The Light, which is so lo-fi and so liberally sprinkled with effects, that at times it stops being black metal and becomes some weird swirling morass of black sound. The drum machine is doused in reverb, doubling and blurring, almost like some hyperspeed dub, during the super dynamic start and stop parts, the vocals and the drums are so caked in FX, that they sound like some sort of children's TV show special effects sounds, and the vocals, a garbled tongue twisting whatthefuck stream of growls and guttural yelps, the guitar a squiggly distorted streak over the churning blur beneath, so completely over the top and confusing to listen to, but so completely and impossibly catchy. This is the Striborg that ensorcelled us back in the day, and it sounds just as amazingly fucked as ever!
MPEG Stream: "Nefaria"
MPEG Stream: "Somnambulistic Nightmares"
MPEG Stream: "Garmonbozia"
MPEG Stream: "Beyond The Shadow Of Silence ('95)"

STRIBORG Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia (Displeased) cd 8.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
If black metal has a "Jandek" then Striborg might be it. Certainly, an argument can be made that black metal itself is already "outsider art" and then if that's the case, where to put Striborg? Outside the outside. So much of Striborg's eccentrically intimate, idiosyncratic output (this disc holding many fine examples, for instance at one point when it sounds like he's playing the violin in the shower) is so exquisitely wrong it's right, so inadvertently avant-garde and very much trance-inducing that of course Striborg is a big AQ fave. Until recently, though, it was easier for us to get Jandek cds than those of Striborg. But at long last the gates to Striborg's lair have swung open, and the many previously hard-to-find recordings by this Tasmanian black metal savant (as you may know, Striborg is a "band" staffed solely by the mysterious Sin-Nanna) are now readily available to us... and to you, the discriminating consumer of fucked-up black metal. Among the many Striborg discs that we for so long wanted but were unable to stock, is this one. Another essential in Striborg's damaged discography for sure. This cd combines two demos from 2002 and 2003, so it's material from pretty early on in Sin-Nanna's career of evil, though his demo-days go back as far as 1997, and these are in fact the final two (4th and 5th) demos released before he started making "proper albums" instead, although production-wise we can detect no great differences! This cd compilation of those two demos was originally released in 2003 by Striborg's own Finsternis Productions in a limited edition of 500 copies, and has now been resurrected by Displeased (along with, as we said, several other desirable Striborg artifacts).
Nocturnal Emissions consists of the title track, followed by "Despondent Cries", "Son Of The Moon", and "The Freezing Northland". The latter is interesting 'cause you'd think in Striborg's case it would be "The Freezing Southland", being so nearby to Antarctica, but it turns out that this track is a tribute to another one-man black metal cult, Norway's Ildjarn. We should also note that "The Son Of The Moon" is dedicated to Sin Nanna's baby boy, Zachariah aka Sin-Nanna junior (the name Sin-Nanna that of the god of the crescent moon in ancient Sumer, btw). This might be the first and only black metal song written by a proud father to his newborn son! In welcoming his child to "this world of tragedy, magic and sorrow", he tells him, "the stars of Aquarius is [sic] on your side".
Otherwise, Striborg's lyrical themes are entirely depressive and misanthropic, all mope-tropes matched of course by his music, the ever-present droning black buzz, a fuzzed-out spray of monochrome guitar distortion, through thick fields of which wander Striborg's special, utterly non-metroymic drum-stumble and o'er which he rasps his despondent cries.
The four tracks of Nyctophobia are next, "Under Black Rain", "Through The Dark Fog", "Across Thornfields", and "Into Night Moor". We'll single out "Under Black Rain" for mention, as it's composed entirely of what sounds like woozy violin improv, his jittering string-scrape punctuated by a resonating gong-blows, mixed with field recordings of drizzling rain and ominous thunderclaps... we'd be happy with just a whole disc of just that! But each track here has its unique charms, "Through Dark Fog" in particular notable for Sin-Nanna's excessively distorted vocal turn. And "Into Night Moor" is a beautiful outro of isolationist electronic ambience. It seems everything he touches turns, not to gold, but to blackened weirdness. Weird enough we assure you that you'll be giving your stereo strange looks and often rewinding to hear some choice bit of bizarreness again and again, if you share our taste in outsider black metal oddity! None more sublime than Striborg.
We'll have reviews of a couple more Striborg reissues soon (Trepidation and Spiritual Catharsis) and also look forward to a new release, the Journey Of A Misanthrope DVD...
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal Emissions"
MPEG Stream: "Despondent Cries"
MPEG Stream: "Under Black Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Dark Fog"

STRIBORG Perceiving The World With Hate (Displeased) cd 14.98
What more can we say about Tasmanian black metal one man band Striborg that we haven't already? This is the 15th or 16th record we've reviewed by the mysterious and prolific Sin-Nanna, whose tortured doomic black buzz has remained relatively unchanged for the last 12 years. But hell why fix what ain't broke right? And nothing's broke here, or maybe EVERYTHING is broke, but that's precisely why we're still so smitten with Striborg's creepy underproduced outsider black metal. Guitars that seem to buzz, without ever actually coalescing into riffs, more often a sheet of white noise, a wall of hiss, the sound of a rainstorm or a thousand showers, the near constant buzz is one of the hallmarks of Striborg's sound, and it's what turns stumbling depressive black metal into tranced out almost blissy black dronemusic. Then there's the entropic, seemingly abstract drumming, the rhythms simply skeletal frameworks around which to erect huge undulating clouds of buzz, Sin-Nanna's beastly croak, adding a certain bit of pathos to the slow motion monochromatic crawl that is most Striborg.
This stuff is most definitely an acquired taste, but once it's acquired, it takes over, you find yourself needing more, wanting more, and wanting it to be more raw, more feral, more lo-fi, and Striborg is more than happy to oblige. Every record another fragmented yet strangely beautiful black missive, that in its own way does seem to evoke the rainforest he calls home, the sound is expansive and thick, humid even, the all encompassing buzz the sonic equivalent of unceasing rainfall, the sad organs and mournful synths like thick black clouds blotting out the sky, the tangled branches of the forest an abstract skeleton huddling beneath the whirling winds, but with every record, Sin-Nanna is still capable of surprising us, of taking his sound someplace new, but equally perplexing and fascinating. Here, it's "When The Moon And The Earth Collide Into The Sun", a caustic burst of corrosive blacknoise, blown out and abrasive, which is quickly followed by one of the prettiest and most mysterious Striborg tracks ever, the 10+ minute title track, whose background is a warm hissy bed of lo-fi buss and sizzling cymbals, the guitars mere hints of melodies, the drums, loping clumsily but dramatically though the hazy soundfield, the vocals metallic, as if sung from the bottom of a well, the music weirdly warm and melodic, sans vocals, it's almost like some insanely lo-fi slab of pop ambient short wave interference, or perhaps like listening to some moody doom pop, but with the radio station between stations. Strange, but truly wonderful, as only Striborg can be.
As we mentioned before, you either already love Striborg, in which case odds are you're probably a bit obsessed and will most definitely want this, or you can't stand it, and this will in no way change your mind, or this is your very first exposure to Striborg's mad musical genius, in which case, you might just have found lo-fi outsider black buzz nirvana. We're sort of jealous too, we can remember how exciting it is to discover something this fucked up, this gloriously idiosyncratic, this gorgeously damaged for the first time. You just might have to overhaul completely your understanding of black metal. Of metal. Of music. It's magical. And mysterious. And utterly confounding. Enjoy!
Housed in a DVD case, printed covers inside and out, with a nice oversized, full color insert filled with photos and drawings of the Tasmanian rainforest.
MPEG Stream: "The Dark Forest's Embrace"
MPEG Stream: "Trails Of Desolation"
MPEG Stream: "Call Of The Redwood Forest"

STRIBORG Solitude (Displeased) cd 14.98
Black metal bands come in many varieties, and we have our favorites among everything from blackened thrash drunkards to grandiose symphonic keyboard-laden festival headliners to grim trance-y one-man-band eccentrics... particularly the latter, though, especially when we're trying to find black metal to recommend to AQ customers who aren't necessarily metalheads but who like weird weird music whatever the genre. Droning fucked up stuff that's almost more experimental than it is metal. And this (one-man) band Striborg is precisely what we like to have on hand when the subject of, "if I were to buy just one weird black metal record, what should it be?" comes up.
For the longest time, it was next to impossible to find cds by this still-obscure artist from far-off Tasmania (that's right, Tasmania!). Fortunately others besides us have recognized his peculiar genius and now the releases are (somewhat) more readily available. Which brings us to this brand new album, Solitude, and it to us, hot on the heels of Striborg's other recent full-length release, Ghostwoodlands. As with that album, here Striborg has uncapped his usual aerosol spray of buzzing guitars and wretched effected vokills. The fuzzed out, bleak black metal clatter is interspersed with long stretches of what approaches D.I.Y. 20th Century Classical electronic music spookiness! The ambient, isolationist tracks that cropped up on Ghostwoodlands are again to the fore, as is an even more droney, doomy, droomy mood. There are several exclusively "black metal" tracks (two of 'em quarter hour epics!), some of them powered by blazing drum machine beats, but even so the overall vibe of Solitude is so slooooow and doooooomy.
Drum machine? Don't worry, it sounds good, and at times, we think he really IS playing the drums. Striborg's less-than-tight timekeeping and fucked up fills have always been paradoxical highlights of his albums in our perverse estimation, but Solitude finds many ways to provide those idiosyncratic so-wrong-its-right pleasures. Tracks like "Ektoplasmic Dreams", "Doppelganger" and "The Untouched Land" are purely electronic-sounding, ominous abstract dronescapes, piercing with high-end synth-shards and soothing with somnolent textures. Elsewhere, his blurred guitars do the same, reminding us of dreamy gloom dronesters Angelic Process, a hushed guitar tone... not even a tone, more like a pure wave, a solid mass.
We mentioned that Striborg hails from pretty far south -- Tasmania. The rainforests of his island are not that distant from the icy wastes of Antarctica. But this album, Solitude, is the sound of Striborg's one-man, one-way journey even further south, falling right off the edge of this world...
MPEG Stream: "Ektoplasmic Dreams"
MPEG Stream: "Solitude"
MPEG Stream: "The Grandeur of Melancholy"

STRIBORG Southwest Passage (Displeased) cd 13.98
What more can we say about Striborg that we haven't already? The most consistently brilliant and baffling purveyor of bizarre and ultra personal depressive black metal we know of, every record is drenched in otherworldly buzz, super evocative and atmospheric, harrowing and haunting, as gorgeous and strangely beautiful as it is black and grim. This will be about the 20th Striborg record we've reviewed and that's not nearly all of them.
But everything we've heard from Sin Nanna, the man behind Striborg, has totally hit the spot, a sound that is so unique in a genre that seems to breed sameness, Striborg is as much a soundscaper, a noise maker, a sonic alchemist, as his is a corpse painted grimlord, in fact maybe even moreso. The songs are hypnotic and repetitive and mantra like, the guitars locked into cyclical loops, wreathed in layers of texture, tape hiss, guitar buzz, wheezing synths, the drums almost an afterthought, a rhythmic skeletal system to keep the tracks from drifting off like black clouds of warm buzz. The vocals raspy and demonic, probably the most black metal element of Striborg's sound, but set amidst dreary doomy loveliness, buried beneath soaring streaks of buzz, of swirling soundscapes of lo-fi keyboards and angular twisted guitar melodies, the mood and the vibe not afterthoughts, but elements that infuse every sound, ever song, with some strange Tasmanian forest magic, which is definitely part of what sets Striborg apart from the black metal pack.
If you're like us, you can never have enough Striborg. Don't believe us? Read through the tons of other gushing reviews, and you'll maybe begin to understand why we, and lots of you, are so obsessed with this mysterious one man band. And if you've yet to take the plunge, this is as good a place as any. Needless to say, even though we did and great length, some of the most special, and uniquely twisted doom drenched atmospheric and depressive black metal you'll ever hear.
MPEG Stream: "Southwest Passage"
MPEG Stream: "Human Extinction"

STRIBORG Spiritual Catharsis (Displeased) 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**
Once again, we head back into the grim black rainforests of Tasmania, to unearth more of one-man-black-metal-misanthrope Striborg's amazing back catalog, a constantly evolving and devolving soundworld of washed out buzz, chaotic black blur, and haunting dreamlike ambience. If you're already a fan, and have made it this far in Displeased's reissue campaign, odds are you're probably gonna want this one too, and if you've yet to experience the gloriously grim what-the-fuck brilliance of Striborg, then this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it might be one of the best ones to begin with as it's the most varied, and thus the most freaked out and bizarre.
Beginning with a surprisingly melodic almost poppy guitar part, 2004's Spiritual Catharsis quickly unravels into the buzzing stumbling confusional blackness that's so near and dear to our withered hearts. The core of Striborg's sound, is the ever present sheet of white noise guitars, that still sounds like a microphone placed on the floor of a shower, a constant and nearly overwhelming shhhhhooooosshhh. While behind this wash of hissy sibilance, lurk creaking shrieked vocals, and simple stumbling drums, and of course thick epic washes of grandiose keyboard. The drums flipping between punk rock pound and doomic plod, while that wall of blown out buzz remains fairly static. Totally hypnotic. At it's most straight ahead, it sounds like a way more blissy Burzum, loping and midtempo, with those haunting keyboards offering up creepy minor key melodies, but where Burzum buries those keys in the mix, Striborg shoves them right to the front, where they warble and whir and threaten to swallow up the rest of the sounds around it.
But as we mentioned before, Spiritual Catharsis is all over the map. "Glorification Of Mother Nature" is a gorgeously minimal expanse of ambient creep, sci fi synths swirling and shimmering, soft focus layers of sound shifting subtly like fog in an old crumbling graveyard, but then there's the title track, thirteen minutes long, probably the harshest and most chaotic of the bunch, the guitars whipped into a nearly Merzbowian frenzy, the effects so dense it's almost like black metal dub, the vocals careening and rippling out in all directions, the drums like a landslide of snares, the whole thing enveloped in a rippling cloak of black ambience, until part way through when the track shifts into some cinematic doom, the hiss and buzz pushed back a bit, allowing low end rumbles and whirs to play out a super intense melody, while the drums lurch and stutter, other keyboards joining the fray, drifting like soft glowing orbs against the jagged buzzy backdrop, before finally building back up into the fierce fury of the track's opening. The rest of the record constantly shifts between buzz and bliss, blast and crawl, from the minimal rumbling drone of "The Haunted Gum Trees", to the relentlessly blasting black chaos of "Misanthropic Necroforest", to the echo drenched plodding doom of "Dicksonia Antarctica" (replete with more of those dubbed out FX), to the tripped out funereal dreaminess of "Eternal Blackness Surrounds The Bushland", to the full on pounding in-the-red crush of "Black Metal Is The Forest Calling...", Spiritual Catharsis, is indeed just that, a spiritually cathartic, beautifully bizarre, darkly droning musical journey through a black forest of sound, and into the even blacker musical mind of Striborg
Re-mastered, with all new artwork, including a swank metallic silver front cover, and drawings and lyrics inside.
MPEG Stream: "Within The Depths Of Darkness And Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Fields Of Rapacious Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritual Catharsis"

STRIBORG The Foreboding Silence (Displeased) cd 14.98
For once being a grim cult mystery, whose records were practically impossible to find, Striborg has turned into an actual 'band', releasing a record every year, sometimes more than one, guesting on other folks' records, touring with SUNNO))).... you think the glare of the spotlight would have gone to his head, but thankfully, the music of Striborg, aka Sin-Nanna, is as bleak and twisted and fucked up as ever. So fucked up in fact that we are well aware that Striborg is not every metalhead's cup of tea, a quick look at the reviews on the Encyclopedia Metallum website reveals that a whole lot of people don't dig it, or more accurately probably, don't get it.
But as far as we're concerned, what's not to get?! Striborg create truly evocative, lo-fi black metal, that is as idiosyncratic as it is true and grim. The production has remained the same for over a decade, if anything it's gotten progressively more low fidelity and damaged sounding, the music instead of getting tighter and more polished has wandered further and further from traditional black metal tropes, which is precisely why we love it so much. For those new to Striborg, there are 15 or so other reviews on the aQ site that go into great depth, but in brief, Striborg is Sin-Nanna, who lives in the middle of a rainforest in Tasmania, and who crafts some of the most damaged and demented and freaky black metal we've ever heard. Bands like Furze, or Necrofrost, sound like Metallica next to the madness that is Striborg. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, but not by much, and this latest, newest Striborg might even, as impossible as it might seem, manage to outweird the preceding 15 or so releases.
Some things have remained the same, the artwork is appropriately abstract, nothing but pictures and drawings of forests, pictures and drawings of Sin-Nanna himself (including a random glamour shot on the back cover where he sort of looks like a high school goth or New Romantic!), pictures of caves, rivers, the sky and the moon, and not a whole lot else, minimal liner notes, but it's the musicÉ
Sin-Nanna implements a new arrangement this time, still leaning toward the loooong songs, but this time they are preceded by or separated by intros and intervals, most a minute or less, haunting keyboard ambience, bird calls and the sounds of the night forest, a strange sample from some film, laughing voices, male and female, melancholy marimba melodies, Bernard Hermann style strings, a child and a woman intoning some sort of incantation, reverb soaked piano, whirring shimmering cinematic drones, mournful horns, tinkling chimes, but as creepy and abstract as those are, they don't even hold a candle to the songs.
And the first proper song on The Foreboding Silence, "A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest", really might be the best (and most fucked) Striborg song EVER. Eleven minutes long, the track begins with an impossibly buzzy riff, that literally sounds like a swarm of insects, or a million kazoos, unfurling a chromatic wall of nearly static buzz, that shifts from note to note, creating a lurching jagged melody, over which totally dizzying atonal marimbas pulse and loop, sending the whole thing into a woozy sea sick spiral, the various melodies, far from complimentary, the whole thing sounding like it's gradually growing more dissonant, more out of tune, the drums stumbling in the background, the vocal a harsh shriek, it's so off kilter that with headphones on it will make your head spin. Eventually, the marimbas drop out, leaving the track to plod along doomily, the buzzing riff like the sound of a rainstorm on a tin roof, the song shifts tempos, slipping from plod to pound and back again, eventually locking into a repetitive outro, the drums simple, the guitars locked into a two note loop, punctuated by what sounds like thunder off in the distance, which gives the effect even more of the buzzing guitars becoming the sound of rainfall.
The title track is another tweaked masterpiece, the drums locked into an almost-groove, the guitar still in full insectoid buzz mode, underpinning the spewed demonic vox, and a strange gnarled almost Greg Ginn-ish guitar overdub. The drums are LOUD, way up in the mix, shifting from stumbling blast to relentless double kick, while the guitar buzz swirls and sways and slips back and forth right along with it. The biggest surprise here, besides the opener, is the closer, "Somnambulistic Nightmares Return", a lurching chunk of slow motion doom, with some serious guitar chug, and some simple drum pound, while beneath some sort of super intense reverberating low end drone surfaces and envelops the song, while over the top, some woozy clean guitar drifts in, offering up a mournful, mildly atonal counterpoint, resulting in one of the weirdest and strangely pretty Striborg songs yet.
What else needs to be said? If you have all of the other Striborg records, odds are you're a bit obsessed like us and probably need this one too, if you've yet to take the plunge, The Foreboding Silence is definitely a great place to start, and if you get hooked, or are feeling particularly daring, we have a bunch of other Striborg releases in stock, all twisted genius, all fucked and grim and fantastic, just ask...
MPEG Stream: "A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest"
MPEG Stream: "The Foreboding Silence"
MPEG Stream: "Somnambulistic Nightmares Return"

STRIBORG Trepidation (Displeased) cd 14.98
We figured that before the brand new record Autumnal Melancholy drops from Tasmanian black metal misanthrope Striborg (just showed up today, reviewed on the next list!), we oughta finally list the last of the reissues. So here it is, Trepidation, another damaged and deliriously freaked out, fucked up and grim grim grim slab of rain forest black metal as only Striborg can do it.
Like all of the other Striborg records, this is absolutely essential for fans of outsider black metal, and actually anyone into super challenging, confusing, weird-as-fuck sounds needs to dig into some Striborg. It rarely gets more outsider than this.
Striborg is Sin Nanna, who lives in Tasmania, supposedly sans phone or internet, communing with nature, offering up his blackened soul to the spirit of the forest. In the form of impossible buzz drenched blasts of black metal. And we talk about BUZZ all the time, but Striborg takes it to a whole other level. The guitars and riffs rendered almost dronelike, suspended in a wall of shifting crumbling fuzz, in fact wall might be off the mark, the sound isn't so much a wall, nothing so massive and foreboding, instead it's like some sort of flowing black river, churning and choppy, but blurred into something almost static. The drums sound inhuman, and probably are, a monotonous relentless beat pounding away but again, pounding connotes heaviness, and the sound here isn't really heavy, it's atmospheric more than anything. Super lo-fi, a wash of keyboards draped over the blurry buzz, the vocals are the biggest disruption, howling and shrieking, a wicked maniacal cackle, but just as often they vocals fade away leaving just that droning buzz to almost lull you into a trance.
Primitive, and raw, stumbling and chaotic, a dizzyingly confusional strain of metal cloaked in blackness and doused in drone, the guitar tone like a vacuum cleaner, the drums like cardboard boxes and trashcan lids, the arrangements convoluted and complex when they're not locked into a seemingly never ending loop. Fucked up for sure, brilliant? Without a doubt.
There are plenty of other Striborg reviews on the aQuarius site, if you want to read more about the man, the band, the sound. Needless to say, the metalheads around here consider Striborg one of our all time favorites, possibly the most freaked out and fucked up, damaged, and completely and utterly baffling of the bunch. And Trepidation definitely ranks up there with Striborg's best. Fans obviously need it if they don't already have it, and if you're new to this black metal weirdness, and were looking for a good place to start, to bravely enter the dark damaged world of Striborg, Trepidation, even heeding the title, might just be the one...
Deluxe reissue (originally released in 2005), with all new artwork, tons of photos of snow and forests and trees, all printed in black and metallic silver.
MPEG Stream: "Journey Of A Misanthrope"
MPEG Stream: "Dismal Snow Set In The Sombre Forests"
MPEG Stream: "Catawampus"

STRIBORG / CLAUSTROPHOBIA Black Hatred In A Ghostly Corner (Finisternis Productions) cd 14.98
As we were waiting patiently for the new Striborg full length, Southwest Passage, we discovered ANOTHER new Striborg release, a split with a band called Claustrophobia, released on Sin Nanna of Striborg's own label Finsternis Productions, so we contacted Sin Nanna directly (the reports of his reclusiveness, living in a shack with no telephone or computer, turned out to be greatly exaggerated!) and ordered a bunch, and we're happy to report that the new Striborg material is as twisted and blackly brilliant as always.
Just when you thought Striborg couldn't get any more buzzy and fuzz drenched, along comes "Psychic Visions", a 12 minute dirge, buried completely under a sheet of hiss and whir, but where this track is different is the gorgeously creepy keyboard textures laid over the top, giving the whole track a ghostly, weirdly melodic, strangely lovely quality. Sure the drums are minimal and the vocals are an indecipherable growl, and the guitars, well, if they were riffs, they've been blurred and smeared into thick streaks of warm muted buzz, but once the whole track is wreathed in that looping shimmering ghostlike keyboard ambience, it becomes this blackened beautiful thing. The drums shift gear and the keyboards follow, the entire song seems to waver in communion, before slipping back into the initial opening dirge.
After a brief instrumental drone interlude, Sin Nanna offers up another bizarre blast, the drums WAY up in the mix this time, the same sheet of hiss, and again the whirling ghostly keyboards, but this time, the sound is much more atonal, tense and jagged, an almost suspenseful horror movie feel, a strange but sonically sound balance for the strange beauty of the first track.
Sin Nanna seems to have found a kindred spirit in a person called Raped Corpse, who is behind the band Claustrophobia. From China we think, regardless, the two groups definitely share sonic sensibilities, the same hiss/fuzz drenched ambience, stumbling drumming, anguished vocals, strange keyboards, the tracks play out the same almost, long song, short interlude, slightly less long song. But Claustrophobia's opener is much more rocking, with some wild chaotic drumming, and over the top keyboards, LOUD drums, the second track, the nearly nine minute closer is a doozy, almost like a grim blackened Goblin, so creepy and emotional and moody and haunting, the melodies minor key, the keyboards evoking such dread, definitely want to hear more from this guy.
If you're in the market for some mysterious and creepy, buzz drenched melancholic blackness, both Striborg and Claustrophobia should do it for you.
Now, can't wait for Southwest Passage...
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered...
MPEG Stream: STRIBORG "Psychic Visions"
MPEG Stream: CLAUSTROPHOBIA "Ghostly Melancholy"

STRIBORG / SCURSHAHOR split (Southern Lord) 7" 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Outsider black metal aficionados already know they need this, a brand new single from Tasmanian BM weirdo Striborg, but the fact that it's a split with another mysterious black outfit we've never heard of, Scurshahor, and that the sound in many ways is weird enough (and not even really metal), should cause this to appeal to all regular old lovers of weird music.
Starting with the song titles, we're not sure there's ever been a collection of songs that sounds more like they were named using the age old adjective / noun notebook, with which many of your favorite bands were probably named. Check it out: "Psychedelic Nightmare", "Syncopated Pandemonium" and "Malicious Resplendence". Could be killer band names all of them. But here, they also suit the tripped out dubby blackness found within. Dubby? Yep, you read that right. Striborg offers up two tracks, the first beginning with haunting, mournful melancholic guitars, before being swallowed whole by a blown out primitive blast of effects drenched blackness, the most noticeable thing being the vocals, doused in delay and distortion and reverb, the howls and anguished cries sent careening King Tubby style into the void. The second track ranks up there with the weirdest and most experimental stuff Striborg has ever done, a buzzing backdrop of near static drone-riffing, the guitars way off in the distance, swelling and swooping, and the vocals over the top, again, definitely dubbed out, and adding a whole 'nother chaotic tripped out layer to the already damaged black sounds.
The flipside, from a band called Scurshahor (who we're tempted to suspect is in fact Oren Ambarchi) is like a bassier, more low end more static and drone-y Striborg, with similarly dubbed out vocals, leading us to believe that maybe both were recorded at the same time and in the same studio? Either way, Scurshahor sound like a more black metal SUNNO))) (even more than Black One), the riffing a glacial blur crafted from amp buzz and low end drone, chaotic metallic percussion here and there, and of course the vocals, a swirling distorted reverbed dubbed out wraith like rasp. Awesome.
Incredibly thick vinyl, housed in a super striking, ultra heavy deluxe sleeve. And probably limited as all get out...

STRIBORG / VEIL OF DARKNESS Cold Winter Moon / In The Valley Of The Shadow Of Death (Finsternis) cd 12.98
It's been a while since we've heard from Tasmanian one man black metal band Striborg. There was a time, that nary a list would go by without a new release, featuring that distinctive Striborg sound, plodding, miserable blackness doused in sheets of distortion and buzz that were so thick and hissy, they almost sounded like field recordings of rain on steel rooftops.
Ostensibly this is a split, between Striborg, and a band called Veil Of Darkness, who we had never heard before, but who in fact, just so happens to be Sin-Nanna as well, Mr. Striborg himself. Strange. Both Halves of this split were recorded a while ago, 1997-2000, and in fact the Striborg stuff predates the VoD stuff, so not sure what was going on. What we do know, is that everything we love about Striborg is in full effect here, maybe even moreso, the opening track is super distorted, the sound crumbling and blackened, the buzz so thick and blown out, that the riffs are barely discernible, after a brief bit of doomic plod, the sound lurches into a dense frenzied blast, all blurred and murky, the drums a machinelike pound, the vokills a sinister croak, and minus the vocals, the music is locked and looped into a trancelike blur that doesn't let up for the rest of the song. And so it goes, from brittle blasting blackness, to murky ambient drift, the sound super lo-fi, raw and grim, but infused with a seriously sinister vibe, especially on the droned out ambient tracks, with Sin-Nanna growling over thick churning drones, and weird bits of random electronics, hiss and static, before finishing off with a brief blast of start and stop black buzz, with maybe the weirdest production of the bunch, the vocals heavily reverbed, almost dubby, and the drums, the snare sounds like a video game bleep, and the cymbals sound like old tin buckets, but those weird sounds are woven into some blurry murky blasts and a closing blast of atonal organ buzz. Weird and so cool.
So how does Striborg's Veil Of Darkness alter ego stack up? Pretty well in fact, although now we have an idea why Sin-Nanna required a different musical vehicle, as VoD is all ambient, laced with stretches of power electronics, and black buzz. Creepy and otherwordly, darkly droney, disembodied voices, swirling effects, tinkling melodies, sheets of static and thick swirls of buzz, wheezing keyboards, chanted monklike vox, and finally on the closer "Pure Black Energy", some seriously intense pure black sonic energy, an ultra distorted buzzscape constructed from what sounds like super processed drum machines, all chopped up and doused in effects and cranked WAY into the red, for a strange crunchy, crumbling bit of rhythmic weirdness, that sounds almost like it should be on a Will Over Matter record. Killer stuff, from both 'bands'.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: STRIBORG "Misanthropic Isolation"
MPEG Stream: STRIBORG "Path To The Gate Of Beliar"
MPEG Stream: VEIL OF DARKNESS "Pale Shadow Of The Undead"
MPEG Stream: VEIL OF DARKNESS "As The Mist Casts Across The Haunted Cemetery"

STRIBORG / XASTHUR split (Autopsy Kitchen) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another one of those records that barely needs a review. What self respecting black metaller would see the words Xasthur and Striborg on the same record and not instinctively reach for their wallet? We can only speak for the black metal nerds here, but we have been jonesing for this disc since we first hear rumor of it's impending release ages ago. And if just the mere fact that these two mighty black metal entities are doing musical battle on separate sides of the same 7" isn't enough, the fact that both tracks are fucked and amazing should be.
Striborg is in fine form as always, lo-fi, damaged, demented, noisy, stumbling, confusing, but oh so glorious. A plodding black dirge, vacuum cleaner guitar, practice space drums, blast beats that sound like they're being played on a cardboard box drum kit, hissy bursts of muted blackness, a bizarre black journey through the damaged musical psyche of Sin Nanna, ending in a killer, almost groovy, lurching dirgey outro.
Xasthur seems to be rising to Striborg's 'how lo-fi-can-you-go' challenge, pushing his sound so far down in the murk, it ends up sounding like a transistor radio playing at the bottom of a mud puddle. Probably the murkiest most lo-fi recording yet from Malefic, but if anything, it only serves to make the sound more evocative, more mysterious, and more strangely pretty. Those weeping guitars, mournful melodies, drums that sound like they were recorded from a million miles away, the whole thing is very dark and dim and forlorn, the perfect sonic foil to Striborg's weirdo black damage. And if we even need to tall you how essential this is, you need to march right down here and turn in your black metal credentials.
We're one of the only places selling this thing besides the label, and they are flying out of here, sure to be gone in no time, so grab one while you can.
Pressed on clear vinyl, LIMITED TO 800 COPIES!!!

STRING QUARTET TRIBUTE TO SLAYER The Evil You Dread (Vitamin) cd 16.98
Classic Slayer songs like "Dead Skin Mask", "South Of Heaven" and "War Ensemble" arranged for violins, viola, cellos and a bit of electric cello (hey is that cheating?)!!? Yep, high concept title here, pretty self-explanatory really. Apparently there's a String Quartet Tribute to just about every popular recording artist EVER -- for instance there's ones for Tori Amos, Fleetwood Mac, Nine Inch Nails, The Smiths... Andee's real partial to the String Quartet Tribute to Tool. Maybe we'll get to listing that one day, but we just couldn't help ourselves when we saw this Slayer one was released. After all, we're big fans of the Finnish all-cello band Apocalpytica, who've made their name covering Metallica and Sepultura. Byram figures that these guys doing the Slayer tribute are even better players than Apocalyptica. It's pretty cool. We thought that the violence and speed of Slayer might reduce their instruments to sawdust but they make the music their own, being metal it's quasi-classical anyway and comes off sounding nice and dark here, the speed adding a bit of Carl Stalling cartoon music hyperactivity. Neato. And there's a pretty cool bonus original done in the strings-meet-Slayer style as well, just to prove that these guys can write as well as play and arrange. Only real disappointment: "Raining Blood" doesn't get covered.
MPEG Stream: "Mandatory Suicide"

STROKER Issue #2 magazine 4.00
2002 will be remembered for many things, one of them being the long-awaited second coming of San Francisco Mission District rocker 'zine STROKER, last heard from, like, three years ago. All heavy, all metal, and kinda ironic but that's the way we do things here in the Mission. The first issue featured reviews of only Scorpions albums, this time all the reviews are of the Metallica back catalog, including an appreciation of "Master Of Puppets" by our own Andee Connors! Let's find a juicy quote: "...I learned to play drums by listening to MoP on headphones and desperately playing along. I drove around with feathered hair in my first car, a Mustang, blasting Master Of Puppets. I'm pretty sure my first metal girlfriend and I had sex to Master of Puppets. And if we didn't, we sure should have." Metal girlfriend? (I think Allan's just jealous cuz he never had a metal girlfriend - Andee) Anyway, you have to buy the 'zine if you want to read the rest. The other Metallica reviews are quite entertaining & informative too. Like any good music zine (and this is one) you'll also find a bunch of band interviews, generally with some of the scuzziest metal throwbacks to have tread the boards at Lucifer's Hammer shows these past few years: The Mighty Thor, Raging Slab, Bloodhag, Hammers of Misfortune, and Electric Wizard. Oh, and Stroker also gets up close and personal with genuine rock star Kirk Hammett of Metallica. There's some juicy tidbits in there too. Rad rockin' readin'.

STROSZEK Life Failures Made Music (God Is Myth) cd 10.98
Latest disc from these Italian gloom rockers, the long running solo project of Claudio from aQ black metal faves Frostmoon Eclipse, but unlike the black buzz of FME, Stroszek traffic in something more dramatic and epic, subtle and subdued, with a sound hewing closer to Katatonia, or late period My Dying Bride, big riffs, huge moody melodies, lush arrangements, hushed almost whispered vox.
Slow and brooding, the songs are gradual smoldering builds, often exploding into a churning crunchy chorus, only to slip right back into some dour bass driven doom pop.
Life Failures Made Music is actually a lot heavier in parts than past Stroszek releases, making the Katatonia comparison even more apt, if you can imagine the same sort of bombast, but stripped of its dramatic vocals, which makes these songs sound so much more intimate and personal, still well produced, and lush, but the strange barely there vocals make it seem somehow less commercial, less accessible. And the songs themselves are darkly gorgeous, repetitive and cyclical, with super catchy melodies, and some really nice guitar playing, and super solid drumming. Definitely not cult or grim or even all that heavy, but it certainly hits the spot if you're looking for something moody and morose and a bit metal.
MPEG Stream: "The Unlucky One"
MPEG Stream: "Gone By The Fall"
MPEG Stream: "Undead Hotel"

STROSZEK Songs Of Remorse (God is Myth) cd 10.98
Metal bands gone acoustic, tend to be pretty 'blah' affairs, especially in black metal. Simple strumming often reveals that minus the wash of buzz and the blasting drums, black metal doesn't hold up very well, especially when pared down to -just- acoustic guitar. So we were a bit wary when we heard about this 'acoustic' side project from Claudio of Frostmoon Eclipse (who we love BTW), but we were knocked for a loop, as this isn't really acoustic, and beyond that, it's a gorgeously creepy, weird and dark, grim ROCK record. Shades of Opeth for sure, but also Angels Of Light, Sixteen Horsepower, Katatonia and the like. The acoustic guitar is central to the sound, but there are huge cascading distorted stretches, the drums are massive and dense, crushing and complex, the vocals are a whispery croon, the whole thing so moody and minor key. Each track a slow build from mathy folky post rock to bombastic dramatic epic, the melodies so perfect and catchy, even in the heavier parts, the acoustic guitar surfaces in dense little tangles, over a tribal drum pattern, a complex sonic interplay that often erupts into super emotional swells, with the lead guitar pealing off gorgeous guitar lines, the whole band whipped into a frenzy before settling back down into a dark strummed meander.
The more we listen to this, the more it definitely sounds like a more post rock Katatonia. That sort of super dramatic bombast, the super catchy, strangely sad and haunting melodies, but the metal here is dialed way back, minus a few end of song blow outs, most of the record is spent darkly brooding, the sound gorgeously melancholy, a mournful drift that wouldn't be at all out of place on your shelf between Red House Painters, Woven Hand, Katatonia, Kiss The Anus, Crippled Black Phoenix, Blood And Time, Jeffrey Luck Lucas and Earth.
MPEG Stream: "A Nightmare In Partille"
MPEG Stream: "Color Of The Street"

STROSZEK The Wild Hunt (God Is Myth) 3"cd-r 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
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"

STRUCTURE OF LIES Abacus (Deep Six) cd ep 7.98
Formed by ex-members of two late, great Arizona underground metal bands (screamo outfit Unruh and crusty doomsters Wellington), Structure Of Lies now unleash their debut ep featuring five tracks of their unrelenting metal mastery. Structure Of Lies is at heart a death metal project, one that's quite baroque and complex (hence the mathy title), with a lot of "crossover" appeal to the punkier grind/metalcore scene. Blackened, raspy, guttural vocals tear from the singers throat while melodic "true metal" guitar solos erupt from the raging thrash-fest (is the guitarist the guy pictured on their website in the Iced Earth t-shirt?). It's like a brutal death metal version of Megadeth. F'n great. Equally for fans of Death, Dissection and Converge!
RealAudio clip: "A Virtue Of Silence"
RealAudio clip: "Four Pinnacle Peaks"

STUMM I (Aesthetic Death) cd 13.98
We sure do love Finland. And boy do we love slow motion sludgy doom. So it makes perfect sense that this here disc would find its way into our grubby gloomy doom loving mitts. Stumm are a glacial power trio that traffic in that sort of harsh ugly crusty death doom dirge sludge we've come to dig so heavily. We just can't seem to get enough. It's metal sure, heavy and downtuned, but a lot of the appeal, very much like the blurry buzz of black metal, is it's proximity to pure drone! As the guitars get lower, and the songs get slower (or conversely faster and blurrier) riffs become stretches of slow shifting sound, hypnotic and dare we say soothing. Not entierely like a doom metal Steve Reich or a sludge Terry Riley. Most of us would just as likely fall asleep listening to the most recent Moss record as we would a Coleclough or Chalk record. And Stumm are carrying on that fine tradition. A harsh raw nihilistic doom metal that drones and buzzes and pulses, slithers and lurches more than it rocks.
There's got to be a way to designate sheer impossible dooominess. In the past we've just added more 'o's to the word doom, 20 'o's, 40 'o's, but where does it end. Eventually there will be a band so slow and sludgy, the whole review will be a single word, doom, but with 11,342 'o's. We're tempted to give Stumm a rating based on the multiple 'o' doom scale, but this this disc is not just a single sludgy smear of sound, it's definitely doooooooooom (let's stick with 10 'o's for now), with most of the record, stumbling and staggering, all druggy and dizzy, a 16rpm creep through a thick forest of buzzing E strings and drumming that sounds like it's being dumped out of the back of a cement mixer. But here and there, the clouds part, revealing a bit of sky through the dense canopy of oppressive heaviness, be it a bit of clean guitar or some warm warbly bass... hell, who are we kidding, those moments are so brief and fleeting they're only there to lure you in and set you up for a massive pumelling, frozen like a deer in the headlights, looking skyward, eyes reflecting that tiny glimmer of sunlight, before moments later Stumm take your head clean off with a spiked and sludgy iron bar, as a million 'o's begin to rain down from the sky, like metallic black hail, burying you beneath a crushing, suffocating mound of doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.............
4 songs. 35 minutes. Mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher, Flux, OLD, etc.)
MPEG Stream: "Chokehold Narcosis"
MPEG Stream: "Biting The Hand That Feeds"

STUMM I (Blind Date) lp 15.98
We just realized we had a handful of these in stock and for some reason never actually listed the vinyl version when we listed the cd way back when. Be warned we only have a few of these and will most likely run out real quick...
We sure do love Finland. And boy do we love slow motion sludgy doom. So it makes perfect sense that this here disc would find its way into our grubby gloomy doom loving mitts. Stumm are a glacial power trio that traffic in that sort of harsh ugly crusty death doom dirge sludge we've come to dig so heavily. We just can't seem to get enough. It's metal sure, heavy and downtuned, but a lot of the appeal, very much like the blurry buzz of black metal, is it's proximity to pure drone! As the guitars get lower, and the songs get slower (or conversely faster and blurrier) riffs become stretches of slow shifting sound, hypnotic and dare we say soothing. Not entierely like a doom metal Steve Reich or a sludge Terry Riley. Most of us would just as likely fall asleep listening to the most recent Moss record as we would a Coleclough or Chalk record. And Stumm are carrying on that fine tradition. A harsh raw nihilistic doom metal that drones and buzzes and pulses, slithers and lurches more than it rocks.
There's got to be a way to designate sheer impossible dooominess. In the past we've just added more 'o's to the word doom, 20 'o's, 40 'o's, but where does it end. Eventually there will be a band so slow and sludgy, the whole review will be a single word, doom, but with 11,342 'o's. We're tempted to give Stumm a rating based on the multiple 'o' doom scale, but this this disc is not just a single sludgy smear of sound, it's definitely doooooooooom (let's stick with 10 'o's for now), with most of the record, stumbling and staggering, all druggy and dizzy, a 16rpm creep through a thick forest of buzzing E strings and drumming that sounds like it's being dumped out of the back of a cement mixer. But here and there, the clouds part, revealing a bit of sky through the dense canopy of oppressive heaviness, be it a bit of clean guitar or some warm warbly bass... hell, who are we kidding, those moments are so brief and fleeting they're only there to lure you in and set you up for a massive pumelling, frozen like a deer in the headlights, looking skyward, eyes reflecting that tiny glimmer of sunlight, before moments later Stumm take your head clean off with a spiked and sludgy iron bar, as a million 'o's begin to rain down from the sky, like metallic black hail, burying you beneath a crushing, suffocating mound of doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.............
4 songs. 35 minutes. Mastered by James Plotkin (Khanate, Phantomsmasher / Atomsmasher, Flux, OLD, etc.)
MPEG Stream: "Chokehold Narcosis"
MPEG Stream: "Biting The Hand That Feeds"

STUMM / LOINEN split (Kult Of Nihilow) lp 15.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
It says right there on the sleeve: "100 percent Sludge". They had us at 100 percent sludge. Ummm, anyway, two of Finland's sludge rock heavyweights team up, each taking a side of this here 12", and each, surprisingly, doing something new and unique with their bit of sludge. Not that we wouldn't have loved another slab of slow motion dirgery, but we're even more psyched to see what weird shapes, some of this sludgedoomdrone can get twisted into.
Up first is Loinen, whose lp we totally flipped over a while back. They of the crushing doom with Scott Walker style vocals. Yep! You remember now? Well, here they try another something, also completely different, their side begins with a super distorted bass riff, spread way out, allowing for lots and lots of space, and in those spaces, there are strange chanted choral vocals, female, repeating the same pattern over and over, inexorably tangled up with the plodding riff. It's all very mysterious and hypnotic and continues on for nearly three quarters of the side, at which point the vocals finally come in, a strangled alien croon, alternately growling and sort of moaning, and it's not until nearly the end of the side when the drums finally kick in, and for the first time it begins to resemble the aforementioned 100% sludge. A lurching doom trudge with now croaking vocals all wrapped around that relentless distorted bass line. Finally, right at the very end, the track explodes in a frenzy of freaked out chaos, drums everywhere, feedback squealing and shrieking, the track dissolving in a blast of blown out brutality. Weird and quite cool.
So how do fellow countrymen, and masters of their own particular brand of sludginess, Stumm, respond? With yet another strange take on sludge, there's, at least for this lp side, is downright pretty. Thick swaths of washed out guitar rumble and soaring streaks of feedback all tangled and up like some gorgeous alien melody, not harsh at all really, more just strange sounding, and really quite beautiful, the first time we've heard feedback so skillfully sculpted, underneath, drums are simple and spare, it's more about atmosphere and mood it seems, a thick heavy dreamy drift. Right in the middle there's a brief burst where the guitars get more jagged and angular, and some howling shrieking vocals swoop in, but before you know it, they've swooped right back out, and the track is again drifting darkly, a strangely soft sludge shimmer. So great.
LIMITED TO 265 COPIES!!! These are the only copies we can get. Once they are gone, they are gone for good. Packaged like the Loinen 12", in a similar eye melting black and white high-school-binder tweeker pen and ink cover, with crazy art by Loinen member G.G., a tripped out world of strange figures and weird text and upside down crosses, and squiggles and creatures and who knows what else...