ARISTAEUS The Raven King (E.E.E Recordings) cd-r 12.98
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MPEG Stream: "The Raven King"
MPEG Stream: "The Battle"

ARKHA SVA Hymne (Satanic Propaganda) cassette 4.00
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More black metal cassette tape madness, this time from mysterious Japanese horde Arkha Sva, who offer up a series of super grim, ultra murky buzz drenched black rituals. Channelling the spirit of the black legions, Mutiilation, Belktre, Vlad Tepes, this is fierce and furious lo-fi blackness, the buzzing guitars a muddy swirl, the drums a throbbing murky pulse, all underpinning guttural strangled vocalisations, a swirling fuzzy black missive to the dark lord, there are some strange sonic surprises tucked away, like the WAY louder-than-everything-else high pitched scream and weird falsetto wailing in the first track. But for the most part this is just an awesome, droney blast of murky black buzz that is as hypnotic and space-y as it is blown out and brutal.

ARKHA SVA Mikama Isaro Mada (Total Holocaust) cd 12.98
Arkha Sva are another one of our favorite black metal bands, who for whatever reason, have yet to appear on our list save for one solitary cassette listed way back in 2006. But holy shit, these guys are amazing, from Japan, these guys, along with aQ faves Avsolutized (who it's rumored might share a member or two) as well as Manierisme, make up a whole scene that seems to be lurking well beneath the underground, but we can't imagine for long, as the music of these bands is mind blowing, at once beholden to the BM that came before, but so much its own entity.
Arkha Sva create a soundworld both buzzy and murky, lo-fi, with tangled arrangements, droney blasting blackness, so super atmospheric and evocative, managing to be grim and buzzy, but also haunting and intense, with some of the most insane vocals ever, a wildly operatic shriek, that will later define the band's sound, but here only pops up once or twice, more often existing as a harsh howled hellish growl.
This disc collects two early tapes from 2005, and finds the band much more raw and primitive and rough, the sound only hinting at the more outsider and avant elements that would surface later. But in 2005, Arkha Sva were creating super grim, ultra murky buzz drenched black rituals. Channelling the spirit of the black legions, Mutiilation, Belktre, Vlad Tepes (one of the Black Legions members does all the cryptic calligraphy on AS records!), this is fierce and furious lo-fi blackness, the buzzing guitars a muddy swirl, the drums a throbbing murky pulse, all underpinning guttural strangled vocalisations, a swirling fuzzy black missive to the dark lord, there are some strange sonic surprises tucked away, most notably the aforementioned WAY louder-than-everything-else high pitched scream and weird falsetto. But for the most part this is just an awesome, droney blast of murky black buzz that is as hypnotic and space-y as it is blown out and brutal. They even do a couple covers, Mutiilation and Belketre!
So so so recommended. And we suggest you do whatever you can to get everything you can by these guys, and we can guarantee that their next full length will be an epochal moment in black metal. People freaking out over Paysage and Darkspace and whoever else might just find themselves switching their allegiance.
And check out this awesome live clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpuBqeCdOCM
MPEG Stream: "Thou Disappear"
MPEG Stream: "Rekonquista"

ARKHA SVA / WINTER FUNERAL Mikalp Khis Bia Ozongon (Zyklon-B Productions) cd ep 15.98
More operatic and buzzing grim black metal madness from Japanese horde Arkha Sva, who team up here with a French BM band called Winter Funeral who we had never heard until now. More on the Arkha Sva tracks in a moment, odds are most aQ black metal freaks are already sold by the two exclusive AS tracks anyway, but Winter Funeral definitely deserve their due. This is some seriously twisted bizarre blackness. The track begins with almost indie rock sounding jangle and some tribal sounding drums, all beneath gorgeous choral hymns, a strange combination, but it sounds amazing. Creepy and haunting and really beautiful. A shirked vocal joins the fray, and the choral vocals drop out... leaving some frantic buzz, and then the band lurches into some more traditional blast and buzz. The sound is murky and muddy and muted, the vocals a grow, the guitar weirdly pretty, sounding like Alcest or Amesoeurs, until the screams return, maniacal almost operatic howls, which is what stylistically ties these bands together most, as Arkha Sva employ even more over the top operatic shrieks, but the bands do make a good combo. The end of the Winter Funeral track finds the weird minor key indie jangle returning, but this time all tangled up with the harsh demonic vox.
Then comes Arkha Sva, and of course, both tracks utterly rule. Fuzzy and blown out and a little lo-fi, chaotic drumming and tangled atonal riffage, and an insane array of shrieks, almost veering into Bathtub Shitter territory for a minute. But then the song breaks down into some cool convoluted, cinematic stop start thing, epic and strange, very dramatic and soundtracky, reminding us of a more black metal Devil Doll or Death SS. The second track is a creeped out doomy plod, the guitars anguished and jagged, the vocals a continuous howl / growl / gurgle, it almost sounds like black metal Black Flag, before the track explodes into more frosty grimness, the guitars a churning swirl, multiple vocals all over the place, growls and shrieks and another feral wail that's entirely over the top.
So fucking awesome. Equal parts traditional black buzz and fucked up far out blackened weirdness. We only got 15 of these, and it's been out for a little while so, once we run out, not sure we'll be able to get more.
MPEG Stream: ARKHA SVA "Bringer Of Hate Plague"
MPEG Stream: WINTER FUNERAL "Fallen From Grace"

ARKHA SVA / WOODS OF INFINITY Old Ugly Trees (Devoted Art Propaganda) 7" 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Holy shit, does Arkha Sva just keep getting weirder and weirder and better and better! These Japanese black metal freaks begin this latest assault with a tripped out swirly psychedelic intro, before the band launch into some super twisted POST-black metal, a loping super dramatic almost cabaret sounding avant metal, with super over the top crooned clean vocals, the guitars washed out and buzzy, the only hint of troo blackness are the occasional flurries of double kick, until finally those insane Arkha Sva vocals swoop in, impossibly high and totally operatic, a little eighties metal, soaring and shrieking, the band following suit, blasting into some filthy pounding blackness. The track's twisted and gnarled, and totally epic, with those vocals, easily the most amazing in BM, and this song is most definitely the best thing we've heard from these guys which is saying A LOT.
Woods Of Infinity counter with their own take on twisted dramatic blackness, super melodic metal with lots of synths, totally catchy, but all over the map, the vocals freaked out and manic, slipping from nearly spoken to crooned to shrieked, while the music soars majestically in the background, from midtempo Lifelover style black pop to almost symphonic sounding black metal, all the while the vocals never letting up. The second WoI track is a creepy abstract drift, all acoustic guitars, monk-like chanting, and more of those dramatic vocals, haunting and freaky, dark and mysterious and really cool.
Packaged in a super swank gatefold 7" sleeve, LIMITED TO 666 COPIES (of course), each one hand numbered...

ARKTHOS Knights Of The Eternal Sun (Supernal) cd 15.98
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ARMANENSCHAFT Psychedelic Winter (Primitive Reaction) lp 29.00
Now that doom legends Reverend Bizarre are dead and gone, main clergyman Sir Albert Witchfinder has time to dabble in about a dozen other projects, such as this one, primitive raw black metal outfit Armanenschaft. Sir Albert is in fact known as Ancient Fisherman here, as he and his partners Morbid Necrovore and Hyperborean Princess whip up a furious squall of filthy fucked up black metal. Most of the tracks are fast and furious, brutal and buzzing, although the record begins with a super spacey tripped out Tangerine Dream style synthscape before launching into some ultra raw necro buzz. The guitars are totally blown out, ultra distorted, relentless D-beat drums buried in the mix, the vocals a harsh howl that just as often slips into a super strange strangled wail. Super simple, super stripped down, Repetitive and hypnotic, definitely for fans of Bone Awl, Ildjaarn, Ash Pool, Akitsa and the like.
BUT, there's plenty of weirdness going on too. Long stretches of buzzing black noise, some slower doomy tracks with warped, almost twangy guitars, over looping rhythms and growled vocals, plenty of droning alchemical guitar rituals, crumbling dirges, and hissed inhuman vocals. One of our favorite tracks is one that is just drums and vocals, the drums super processed and locked into a looped D-beat, pounding away, the vocals maniacal and hysterical, going from shriek to moan to mumble to scream, and sounding like some possessed muppet. WOW. But even with all that weirdness, the core of the record is stripped down raw primitive black metal, thrashing and pounding, which we totally love. The weirdness only makes it that much better.
Hail the Ancient Fisherman. Highly recommended. Vinyl only. VERY LIMITED.

ARRIVAL OF SATAN, THE Vexing Verses (Black Hate Productions) cd 10.00
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**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
We've said it before but it bears repeating, what is it with French black metal?! How is it that there are so many amazing bands? Like Norway, France has carved out a distinct and recognizable vibe and sound, and become a black metal powerhouse, so much so that just being from France gives a band some serious grim cred, and it's often well deserved, cuz really, the ratio of French BM that rules versus the ones that suck is pretty impressive. Thus we have the enigmatic The Arrival Of Satan, who besides being from France, have one other distinction that will no doubt endear them to faithful readers of the aQ list, they hail from Grenoble, not necessarily a black metal hotbed, EXCEPT for Diamatregon, and by extension, the various non black offshoots, Aluk Todolo, Gunslingers, GR & Full-Blown Expansion, and as might be inevitable in a scene as small as Grenoble's, The Arrival Of Satan just so happens to feature former Diamatregon drummer, Krukka!
But don't be expecting any sort of weird progressive freaked out psychedelic blackness, like Diamatregon's recent Crossroad masterpiece, the sound of Vexing Verses owes much more to the previous DMTRGN opus Blasphemy For Satan. It's a similarly face melting blast of furious buzz and blown out heaviness, the riffs a dronelike blur, the drums frantic and pounding, always on the verge of collapse, the vocals hysterical and hellish, but within this blurry blast lurks all sorts of weirdness, bizarre convoluted song structures, lurching start stop tempos, bizarre production, some of the tracks, even though they're buzzing and blasting away, manages to sound simultaneously warm and sort of pretty, the guitars will throb and pulse, sometimes dropping out entirely, leaving just the drums to pound away briefly, before lurching back into action, giving the sound a sort of woozy seasick vibe, the riffs are gnarled and twisted, atonal and off kilter, lending a sort of warped avant quality to the sound as well.
On the surface, Vexing Verses does indeed come across as a blazing blast of satanic slaughter and grim black fury, but beneath the blast and howl, the crush and pound, lurks a melted black heart of twisted pop flecked blackness, fucked up Burzumic buzz and a distinctly French, totally twisted what-the-fuck mentality. Grim and black enough for the true, freaky and far out enough for the rest of us...
MPEG Stream: "Tragic Awakening"
MPEG Stream: "Phantasms Of Hatred"
MPEG Stream: "For Psychiatry"

ARS DIAVOLI Pro Nihilo Esse (Debemur Morti) cd 15.98
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ARTIST 03 Album Title (Label) cd 14.98
This REDACTED black metal horde features the rhythm section of another BM band we reviewed a while back, and ARTIST 03, much like that band, offer up the same sort of classic Nordic sounding grim black buzz, right out of the gate, their cold atmospheric black metal reminding us of Satyricon, the production tight and slick, but the band have a definite flair for the ambience, creating dark creepy intros and outros, but unlike the usual wolves or wind or rain, it sounds like a seaside, or a harbor, the sound of lapping water, distant foghorns, deep rumbling tones, laid over what sound like field recordings, evoking some serious haunting dread before exploding in a frenzy of lurching super dynamic, mathy start / stop black blasting. Other tracks introduce what sounds like recordings from beneath the surface, a gurgling shimmer wrapped around rumbling pianos, and distant drones, again leading directly into some amazing blasting blackness, tight and heavy and epic, as much as we love raw and primitive and lo-fi, hearing a band this fast and furious sound this tight and heavy never gets old, and these guys DESTROY. Total depressive melodic black buzz majesty.
The record finishes off with a 16 minute sprawl of awesomely complex, gnarled, drone laced doomic black metal, that shifts from lurching crunch and stutter, to loping almost sea sick waltz, peppered with mysterious samples, totally intense and mysterious, eventually drifting into a soundscape of creaking ropes, plucked steel strings, the sound of waves and wind, a mournful seaside lament, the haunting sounds of sea and sky and storm.
MPEG Stream: "sample one"
MPEG Stream: "sample two"

ARTIST 09 Album Title (Label) cd 11.98
The posthumous debut from (and, thus, swansong of) REDACTED's most cult black metal act, ARTIST 09. Despite their REDACTED, non-forested, non-wintry origins, ARTIST 09 was a band capable of destroying the best Scandinavia has to offer (as we witnessed upon two occasions, when ARTIST 09 had the honor of opening the REDACTED shows by Norweigans REDACTED and REDACTED, and proceeded to make both bands look like punk rockers in comparison! ARTIST 09 were so much more epic and intense). All this without any of the ignorant posturing or hackneyed corpsepaint of their peers.
Ghastly, anguished vocals and bloodchilling keyboards combine with dual trebly buzzsaw guitars and inhuman trance inducing drumming to create an atmosphere of utter grinding grimness. ARTIST 09 draws upon '90s black metal in the Norwegian tradition (especially the raw and primitive likes of Darkthrone, Burzum and Immortal) and then creates uniquely fucked song structures of epic length (20 minutes per, in some cases).
And, like the best music, ARTIST 09 also transcends genre. In some ways, REDACTED possesses elements that can be considered akin to the avant garde, experimental creations of the Swans, Skullflower, Steve Reich, or even Yoko Ono. Imagine an extensive, utterly mesmerizing Hermann Nitsch piece, composed for black metal band.
It's a suffocating soundscape of riffing and drone. Subterranean satanic art rock that equals metal. Nihilistic, depressive and never ending.
Featuring REDACTED formerly of REDACTED as well as drummer REDACTED from local death metallers REDACTED (R.I.P) and REDACTED. And of course, REDACTED of...well, REDACTED. (And REDACTED / REDACTED / REDACTED / REDACTED) REDACTED black metal maniac/death rocker extraordinaire. ARTIST 09 is largely the result of his devotion to black metal dementia.
We are not engaging in baseless hyperbole when we say: this should be crowned black metal album of the year. Any year. EVERY YEAR! FOREVER!!!! Seriously. Essential.
MPEG Stream: "sample one"
MPEG Stream: "sample two"
MPEG Stream: "sample three"

ARTIST 10 Album Title (Label) cd ep 7.98
REDACTED!!
MPEG Stream: "sample one"
MPEG Stream: "sample two"

ARVAKH Art.1 - La Haine Par Dessus Tout (Le Crepuscule Du Soir) cd 11.98
Debut full length from this French black metal horde, and by now you should know how we feel about French black metal, hell you should probably FEEL how we feel. Needless to say, we love it. And these guys waste no time, no tinkly intro or haunting drone music to start things off, they just lurch straight into it, a blackened avalanche of suffocating sound, churning riffage, wild mathy drum damage, hellish vox, a blurred black tangled, that as the first track progress seems to open up into something much more epic and grand, culminating in a strange clean guitar crooned vocal interlude only to collapse into an even more frenzied blast of blackness, with a seriously fucked up production, so the whole thing sounds muddy and murky and washed out but still massive and heavy.
The tracks here are epic, and thus, have loads of parts, the sound leaning towards a progged out blackness, the guitars slipping into droned out buzz and then right back into tangled grinding fury, the sound following suit. The second track opens up with a weird bit of programmed drum machine, and what sounds dangerously like rapping, but it couldn't be, could it? It's all wreathed in a locust like muted buzz, only to splinter into another bit of blackened buzz, but the vibe remains strangely funky, in keeping with that opening drum beat, and while troo black metallers have probably stopped reading and looked away horrified, the rest of us, into twisted black whatthefuck, can revel in this weird Deathspell meets Ministry weirdness.
The third track offers up more of the same, seeming to take off from "Jesus Built My Hot Rod" era Ministry and fashioning it into something much meaner and way more black but never fully shedding that industrial groove. And yeah, we were taken aback at first, but we're actually digging this a lot. We're reminded of obscure Italian Industrialists La Muerte, but again, way more black and buzzy. The final track seems to return to a sound much more purely black, churning and buzzing and brutal, but again, as the song progresses, that industrial bent creeps to the fore, with stuttery stop start riffage, and pounding tribal drumming. Definitely a weird mix of sounds here, but then that's why we love French black metal, cuz they're so willing to be fucking bizarre and risk alienating the true grim hordes, and we're definitely digging it, but you have been warned...
MPEG Stream: "Art.1 - La Haine Par Dessus Tout"
MPEG Stream: "Art.2 - Inversion Des Valeurs"

ASCENSION Consolamentum (WTC Productions) cd 14.98
We weren't really sure what to expect from this record really, we were initially struck by the very un- black metal like metallic red and gold cover art, and rumors that this new German black metal band did in fact feature members of aQ beloved Katharsis (which did later prove to be true). But really all it took was the first couple tracks, the opener a haunting intro of sorts, all creepy blackened drones and strange industrial clatter, chanted gurgled vocals, the sound like it was recorded in some huge stone crypt, eventually guitars surface, and drums too, but instead of immediately launching into a wild blast of black buzz, the guitars build slowly, the drums pound, a weird majestic smoldering blackened post doom perhaps, turning into some classic metal, emotional minor key leads over true doom dirge, while black metal guitars swirl ominously in the background like black storm clouds on the horizon, a fantastically tense opener, that finally does explode into some frantic furious black chaos, and we're in total avant black heaven, the sound definitely situating itself somewhere amidst the black pantheon of Deathspell Omega / Katharsis / Funeral Mist / Necros Christos / Teitanblood, you get the picture, the riffs are slipper and gnarled, the drumming is inhuman and frenzied, the vocal a hellish howled belch, everything wreathed in frozen haunted atmospheres, the tracks rife with classic metal riffing, all manner of strange sounds, hysterical shrieks, bizarre samples, disembodied voices, machine-like clatter, but it's all blurred into a heaving wall of epic black crush, with a production that's MASSIVE and makes everything sound so utterly epic and punishing, but beyond the sound, the songs are incredible, the riffs some of the best we've heard, the sort of riffs you'll find yourself humming days later, the songs laced with melancholy melodies and twisted leads, wild psychedelic squalls that add a whole new dimension to the black buzz. Just listen to the sample for "Grey Light Sibling", pretty much everything we could want... and that main riff, holy shit, the strange soaring transcendental trill, the intense mournful melody, the super distorted almost industrial drum pound, we find it difficult to not just listen to that track over and over...
Definite contender for black metal record of the year (even though technically it came out last year), and some super sweet packaging.
MPEG Stream: "Open Hearts"
MPEG Stream: "Grey Light Sibling"
MPEG Stream: "Consolamentum"

ASGARD ROOT Inaugural Issue - Spring 2008 magazine 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The world can always use another great metal magazine. Sure we've got Terrorizer, Decibel, Salt and Rock-A-Rolla and definitely a few others, each with their own slant, and specific focus, but heck, there's plenty of amazing metal music happening so we'll always welcome another mag, and being the music nerds we are, we just love reading about bands and of course reading record reviews!
Thus we have Asgard Root, who specialize in "black metal / doom / dark ambient / drone / philosophy / literature / dark art" and indeed their inaugural issue is chock full of all of the above, and the list of the contents practically screams aQ!
Exclusive interviews with Wolves In The Throne Room, Ludicra, Abigor, Orthodox, Elysian Blaze, Forgotten Tomb and new-to-us UK doom outfit The River. Also an interview with Alex Kurtagic, the man who runs Supernal Records, and the mastermind behind weirdo black metal outfit Benighted Leams!
Plus there are tons of record reviews, lots of cool creepy photos, artwork and poetry, so obviously a labor of love, and the fact that they love lots of the same kind of stuff we do, makes this well worth investigating.
The layout is a little strange, but sure it will tighten up in the future, but a very small complaint, considering all the kick ass stuff in this first issue. We're already looking forward to the second...

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

ASH BORER Cold Of Ages (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
A brand new record from Arcata black metallers Ash Borer, and more importantly, their first album with a title! Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find a review of the recent vinyl reissue of AB's debut 2009 demo, which we mistakenly listed last time as being the vinyl version of their 2011 full length (the confusion due mostly to both records being self titled and having nearly the same artwork).
On Cold Of Ages, the band continue to hone their sound, still delivering their black buzz missives in the form of lengthy sprawling epics, the shortest here clocking in at 11+ minutes, the longest 18 minutes. And as on previous records AB are masters of crafting majestic longform blackbuzz epics - "Descended Lamentations" opens the album with a long stretch of softly pulsing ominously minor key synths, over a barely there rhythmic churn, wreathed in clean guitar swirl, and a gauze of crumbling distant buzz, haunting and harrowing, the song proper doesn't kick in until three minutes in, but when it does, it's a furious thick, heavily layered blasting blur, rife with all manner of melody, and surrounded by a strangely shoegazey halo of soft focus production, that smoothes some of the edges and gives the sound more of a washed out vibe, which suits the music for sure. Dizzying and cyclical, woozy and psychedelic, halfway through the track shifts to a more midtempo pound, before blissing out completely, unfurling a sort of droned out abstract doomic dirge, which gradually builds back to the initial buzzing blackness.
"Phantoms" starts off all midtempo and minor key, a Buzumic riff swaddled in thick swirls of layered guitars and howled vox, everything again washed out and strangely sun dappled and glimmery, but like all these songs, the music is constantly shifting, here it flits to churning chug, to furious buzzing tangle, to soaring almost black metal Godspeed and finally to hushed delicate ambient dronescape. "Convict All Flesh" is the longest track here, and starts off with an ominous and stately riff, suspended in the ether, before it's joined by more guitars, creating a strangely psychedelic layered raga like ur-drone, which is soon dragged into motion by a creeping doomdirge rhythm, everything swaddled in distant synth swirl, slowly building to a seriously furious bout of black buzz, and throughout the rest of the track seasawing back and forth, although the best bit is the middle stretch where the group weds a furious blast beat to the doomy opening guitar creep, and an equally doomy chiming guitar melody, piling layer upon layer of buzz and crumble, creating a strange bit of black psychedelia that hover somewhere between furious blast and abstract drift, which could have (and maybe should have) gone on forever, but instead it eventually swallowed up but a billowing cloud of blackened static riffing, a haunting droned out coda.
Finally, the record finishes off with "Removed Forms", starting off all tripped out almost dubby guitar melodies, choral female vocals, drifting over a dark expanse of almost Barn Owl like sinister dusky twang, before exploding into a blur of brittle high end buzzing blast, mesmerizing and almost looped sounding, before splintering into a creeping Burzumic dirge, and building to a dense, mathy, layered final movement, the various elements peeling away, leaving, thick slabs of buzz drenched guitar to churn in a dark droned out finale.
MPEG Stream: "Descended Lamentations"
MPEG Stream: "Removed Forms"

ASH BORER Demo 2009 (Vendetta) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We mistakenly listed this two weeks back as a repress of the 2011 full length by these Arcata black metallers, due in no small part to the fact that up until their brand new full length (Cold Of Ages, reviewed elsewhere on this week's list), all of their releases were self titled, and often featured no artwork except for the band logo. So, to correct ourselves: this record is in fact, an lp reissue of the group's two song 2009 demo, originally released as an insanely limited cassette.
Two side long epics, each as heavy on the post rock and the black metal buzz, the A side starting off with a loping slow build minimal intro, before eventually exploding into a droned out blast, the lo-fi recording giving the sound a washed out almost shoegazey vibe, which would definitely remain a big part of their sound. Even the blasting buzzy parts super melodic, the song occasionally breaking down into long stretches of minimal drift, rife with spidery clean guitar melodies, the track working its way to a killer chugging old school classic metal sounding outro. The flipside begins with some soaring high end guitars, drifting over loping slo-mo riffage, and chiming harmonics. Like the A side, it soon splinters into a full on blown out black blast, laced with wild proggy drumming, and woozy sing songy melodies. The breakdown in the middle a chugging bit of midtempo churn, again beneath soaring melodies, slowly building back up to a final blast of melody infused black buzz. Still some of our favorite Ash Borer material, and definitely already displaying a fully formed sound, that would only become more full realized with every release.
Housed in a super swank letter pressed jacket, and yeah, very likely EXTREMELY LIMITED.
MPEG Stream: "Drukne"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled"

ASH BORER s/t (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
Originally released as a super limited cassette on Psychic Violence in 2011, then a little later, on Pesanta Urfolk as a limited lp, and now finally, this killer collection of avant, droned out, post rock flecked, West Coast black metal, is available on cd, via the kick ass Profound Lore label. Here's what we had to say about the record when we reviewed the lp reissue, complete with our usual Ash Borer rant about how all their records are self titled and how it drives us crazy!
What is it with bands not naming records? We're all for the 'self titled' record, but when they're ALL self titled, it gets a little confusing. By record number two or three at least start numbering 'em, fer chrissakes. Anyway, another rad reissue from this West Coast avant black metal horde, that was so limited on its initial release, we never managed to even see a single copy. This monumental chunk of progressive blackness, opens with a lumbery dirgey doom, that pounds and creeps, beneath anguished wails, before exploding into some of the most intense and emotional black metal we've heard, due in some part we would imagine to the structure and the melody, unlikely for most black metal, in fact, it almost sounds like post rock sped way up and blackened, soaring and hauntingly melodic, majestic and moody, these blasts are separated by still more emotional sonic stretches, midtempo sprawls of soaring guitar trills, and angular math rock riffs, all wreathed in black beneath grim howled vokills, before closing with a blast of frenzied riffage and a final movement of dirgey weirdly melodic doomic plod.
The sound then shifts, unfurling a field of shimmery synths and smoldering angular guitar melodies, before launching into another stretch of frantic blasting buzz, here alternating between furious blackness, blissed out reverbed psychedelia and churning mathy doom, the record epic and constantly shifting, but woven together into a single epic movement, the final part of which might be the best bit on the record, a slow build blackened post rock, that eventually explodes into a totally epic blowout of blackened Godspeed-style majesty.
Super cool packaging, emulating the deluxe Pesanta lp version, a black mini gatefold, with liner notes on the inside, and the AB logo on the front cover printed in red metallic foil!
MPEG Stream: "In The Midst Of Life, We Are In Death"
MPEG Stream: "Rest, You Are The Lightning"

ASH BORER s/t (Pesanta Urfolk) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
What is it with bands not naming records? We're all for the 'self titled' record, but when they're ALL self titled, it gets a little confusing. By record number two or three at least start numbering 'em, fer chrissakes. Anyway, another rad reissue of a tape from this West Coast avant black metal horde, that was so limited on its initial release, we never managed to even see a single copy. Originally put out in a run of 150 copies on Psychic Violence, this is our, and quite possibly your, first exposure to this monumental chunk of progressive blackness, opening with a lumbery dirgey doom, that pounds and creeps, beneath anguished wails, before exploding into some of the most intense and emotional black metal we've heard, due in some part we would imagine to the structure and the melody, unlikely for most black metal, in fact, it almost sounds like post rock sped way up and blackened, soaring and hauntingly melodic, majestic and moody, these blasts are separated by still more emotional sonic stretches, midtempo sprawls of soaring guitar trills, and angular math rock riffs, all wreathed in black beneath grim howled vokills, before closing with a blast of frenzied riffage and a final movement of dirgey weirdly melodic doomic plod.
The B side starts off all shimmery synths and smoldering angular guitar melodies, before launching into another stretch of frantic blasting buzz, here alternating between furious blackness, blissed out reverbed psychedelia and churning mathy doom, the record epic and constantly shifting, but woven together into a single epic movement, the final part of which might be the best bit on the record, a slow build blackened post rock, that eventually explodes into a totally epic blowout of blackened Godspeed-style majesty.
LIMITED TO 777 COPIES, pressed on 160 gram red vinyl, housed in super swank matte black gatefold sleeves, printed on the front and back in red metallic foil.

ASH BORER / FELL VOICES split (Eternal Warfare / Gilead Media) lp 14.98
This killer two way avant black metal split, previously only issued as a crazy limited tape, now available on vinyl! Comes with a nice printed insert and a silkscreened patch too...
Originally released to coincide with a recent tour, this split (and the tour it commemorated) teams up Ash Borer from Arcata with Fell Voices from Santa Cruz. A seriously brutal and kick ass Northern California USBM match up for sure. We've raved about Fell Voices before, but this is the first we've heard from Ash Borer, who sound pretty perfect alongside their sonically similarly brethren, offering up a 21 minute side long black metal epic, that slips smoothly from soaring, frenzied majestic black metal riffery, to woozy, loping, but still super distorted and raw, postrock flecked doom, to swirling black ambience, to lumbering spaced out psychedelic drift, lacing shimmery sheets of washed out guitar over plodding minor key melancholy, before building gradually back into a dense tribal crush, and then finally another bout of thrashing black buzz.
Fell Voices fill up their half of the tape with another single sidelong jam, which much like last year's self-titled lp, unfurls a dark, brooding epic bit of blackness, beginning with a cloud of looped muted riffage, streaks of burnished feedback, slowly swelling and swaying, stretched out into some serious droniness, before some warped minor key guitar melodies, and buried in the mix blast beats surface, not turning the song into blasting blackness, instead just adding some strange texture to that deep black drone, the song wavery and woozy, until finally the band kicks in full bore, but even then, it's not typical black metal, it's super mathy, and intricate, lots of dynamics, all spaced out, guitar harmonics drifting over insanely dense drumming, and riffage so blurred and black, it almost just sounds like pulses of blacknoize. The song seems to coalesce into a driving blast of murky black thrum, bits of melody surfacing from the blurred black expanse, super tranced out and hypnotic and most importantly, especially in a genre like black metal, totally twisted and unlike almost any other BM we've heard.
LIMITED TO 750 COPIES! Pressed on 180 gram vinyl.

ASH BORER / FELL VOICES split (self-released) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Got the last copies ever of this killer split, direct from the bands, limited to just 100 copies, released to coincide with their just wrapped up Summer tour, and which teams up Ash Borer from Arcata with Fell Voices from Santa Cruz. A seriously brutal and kick ass Northern California USBM match up for sure. We've raved about Fell Voices before, but this is the first we've heard from Ash Borer, who sound pretty perfect alongside their sonically similarly brethren, offering up a 21 minute side long black metal epic, that slips smoothly from soaring, frenzied majestic black metal riffery, to woozy, loping, but still super distorted and raw, post rock flecked doom, to swirling black ambience, to lumbering spaced out psychedelic drift, lacing shimmery sheets of washed out guitar over plodding minor key melancholy, before building gradually back into a dense tribal crush, and then finally another bout of thrashing black buzz.
Fell Voices fill up their side of the tape, with another single sidelong jam, and much like last year's self-titled lp, unfurls a dark, brooding epic bit of blackness, beginning with a cloud of looped muted riffage, streaks of burnished feedback, slowly swelling and swaying, stretched out into some serious droniness, before some warped minor key guitar melodies, and buried in the mix blast beats surface, not turning the song into blasting blackness, instead just adding some strange texture to that deep black drone, the song wavery and woozy, until finally the band kicks in full bore, but even then, it's not typical black metal, it's super mathy, and intricate, lots of dynamics, all spaced out, guitar harmonics drifting over insanely dense drumming, and riffage so blurred and black, it almost just sounds like pulses of blacknoize. The song seems to coalesce into a driving blast of murky black thrum, bits of melody surfacing from the blurred black expanse, super tranced out and hypnotic and most importantly, especially in a genre like black metal, totally twisted and unlike almost any other BM we've heard.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES, each one hand numbered. Already out of print. Last copies EVER!

ASH POOL Black Bondage In The North (Paragon) 7" 4.50
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another ultra brief blackened missive from the blacknoiserock duo Ash Pool (half of which just so happens to be noisemaker Prurient), after a totally mindblowing cassette on Tour De Garde. Ash Pool spew forth some sort of primitive and raw thrashing blackness, a strange hybrid of black metal and noise rock. Blasting furiously one moment, loping along almost melodically the next. On the tape, the damaged demented sonic assault was peppered with brief bits of melody and jangle, all of which are even more evident on this brand new single.
Side A is an ultra raw grimy black sludge stomp, murky and fuzzy, the vocals howled and blown out, so much so that they send the meters even more into the red, swallowing all the other sounds whole, a pounding relentless groove, almost like a blackened Brainbombs. But even at its most brutal, Ash Pool can't seem to help letting weirdly melodic riffs and stretches of jangle guitar slip into the otherwise harsh and hateful proceedings. So much so that here and there the sound is almost poppy, but it's easy to miss as everything is so slathered in grimy production and gritty distortion.
The B side begins with just jangly guitar and simple tribal drumming, surprisingly pretty, a loping shimmering smear of tranquil poppiness, that is of course eventually totally obliterated by a wash of black thrash and buzzing sludge....

ASH POOL For Which He Plies The Lash (Hospital Productions) cd 12.98
The return of East Coast USBM duo Ash Pool featuring Dominick Fernow of Prurient, which is what usually has people expecting something WAY noisier, along the lines of WOLD or Nekrasov or something, a sort of white noise infused with elements of blackness and buzz, but in fact the sound of Ash Pool is way more "poppy" than you might expect, aligning itself with the raw black energy of groups like Akitsa. Ash Pool definitely used to traffic in ultra raw, primitive BM, but on For Which He Plies The Lash, things seem to have taken a turn, with a more polished sound and some distinctly more accomplished songwriting, that includes some awesomely off kilter riffing, and lots of what the fuck weirdness.
Take the opening track "Holocaust Temple", which begins with a killer start/stop lurch, before exploding into full on manic buzz frenzy, but then there's some crooned clean vocals, that remind us of Borknagar, a weird juxtaposition for sure, but it works, it's just totally changes the vibe, as the music and the harsh vox are relentless and almost looped sounding, pounding away. The song shifts gears, and veers into a seriously poppy stretch, with some awesome guitar playing, and crazy catchy melodies, sounding a bit like In Flames gone black metal, and then suddenly, the song grinds to a halt, and they kick out this crazy folky / polka riff, and the songs becomes almost jaunty, the vocals even more maniacal, the bass bloopy and woozy, the whole song a sort of black waltz, before lurching into the home stretch with a blast of venomous black fury. Holy shit, so awesome, and so fucking weird.
And the rest of the record follows suit. "A Sacrifice Consumed By Fire" begins with a hysterical shriek before slipping into a warped doomy lumber, that eventually becomes more and more jagged, and furiously blastingly obtuse. "Big Bang Black Metal" is downright black 'n' roll, with a super rocking groove, and monstrous grunted vox, as well as a tripped out bridge, all Eastern sounding, with a weird temp change and spidery melody.
The whole record is one awesome musical mindfuck, equal parts troo grim heaviness, warped poppiness, sludge doom driven chug, and out there what the fuck, but all deftly woven into one seriously cohesive chunk of fucked up blackness.
And as if to just seal the deal, the record closes with quite the confusional two-fer, the downtuned shriek laden seasick creep of "Moon Rose Over Sobibor", slipping from doomic lumber, to stuttery chug and back again, before finishing off with the oddly titled "On The Rings Of Saturn Adam And Eve Conceive Cain" which is mostly a filthy slab of midtempo grimness, oh except for that one part where the song cuts out suddenly, leaving a weird, swirly sci-fi organ driven pound, which then underpins the next stretch of soaring majestic riffage, before the band finally leap back into the fray, finishing off with a stretch of frantic frenzied freaked out heaviness.
Fucking awesome stuff. And definitely not where we expected Ash Pool to head next, but these guys just keep getting better and better, and we're pretty sure For Which He Plies The Lash is probably gonna be a contender for black metal record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Holocaust Temple"
MPEG Stream: "A Sacrifice Consumed By Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Big Bang Black Metal"

ASH POOL For Which He Plies The Lash (Hospital) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL!!!
The return of East Coast USBM duo Ash Pool featuring Dominick Fernow of Prurient, which is what usually has people expecting something WAY noisier, along the lines of WOLD or Nekrasov or something, a sort of white noise infused with elements of blackness and buzz, but in fact the sound of Ash Pool is way more "poppy" than you might expect, aligning itself with the raw black energy of groups like Akitsa. Ash Pool definitely used to traffic in ultra raw, primitive BM, but on For Which He Plies The Lash, things seem to have taken a turn, with a more polished sound and some distinctly more accomplished songwriting, that includes some awesomely off kilter riffing, and lots of what the fuck weirdness.
Take the opening track "Holocaust Temple", which begins with a killer start/stop lurch, before exploding into full on manic buzz frenzy, but then there's some crooned clean vocals, that remind us of Borknagar, a weird juxtaposition for sure, but it works, it's just totally changes the vibe, as the music and the harsh vox are relentless and almost looped sounding, pounding away. The song shifts gears, and veers into a seriously poppy stretch, with some awesome guitar playing, and crazy catchy melodies, sounding a bit like In Flames gone black metal, and then suddenly, the song grinds to a halt, and they kick out this crazy folky / polka riff, and the songs becomes almost jaunty, the vocals even more maniacal, the bass bloopy and woozy, the whole song a sort of black waltz, before lurching into the home stretch with a blast of venomous black fury. Holy shit, so awesome, and so fucking weird.
And the rest of the record follows suit. "A Sacrifice Consumed By Fire" begins with a hysterical shriek before slipping into a warped doomy lumber, that eventually becomes more and more jagged, and furiously blastingly obtuse. "Big Bang Black Metal" is downright black 'n' roll, with a super rocking groove, and monstrous grunted vox, as well as a tripped out bridge, all Eastern sounding, with a weird temp change and spidery melody.
The whole record is one awesome musical mindfuck, equal parts troo grim heaviness, warped poppiness, sludge doom driven chug, and out there what the fuck, but all deftly woven into one seriously cohesive chunk of fucked up blackness.
And as if to just seal the deal, the record closes with quite the confusional two-fer, the downtuned shriek laden seasick creep of "Moon Rose Over Sobibor", slipping from doomic lumber, to stuttery chug and back again, before finishing off with the oddly titled "On The Rings Of Saturn Adam And Eve Conceive Cain" which is mostly a filthy slab of midtempo grimness, oh except for that one part where the song cuts out suddenly, leaving a weird, swirly sci-fi organ driven pound, which then underpins the next stretch of soaring majestic riffage, before the band finally leap back into the fray, finishing off with a stretch of frantic frenzied freaked out heaviness.
Fucking awesome stuff. And definitely not where we expected Ash Pool to head next, but these guys just keep getting better and better, and we're pretty sure For Which He Plies The Lash is probably gonna be a contender for black metal record of the year...
MPEG Stream: "Holocaust Temple"
MPEG Stream: "A Sacrifice Consumed By Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Big Bang Black Metal"

ASH POOL Genital Tomb (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.98
From the demented man behind the abrasive noise assault of Prurient comes the blackened buzz of Ash Pool. And holy shit is this some of the best stuff we've ever heard in a while. Fans of stuff like Bone Awl and Ancestors will freak for this. It's not just the songs but the sound. Simple riffing, but recorded super hot, and drums so high in the mix they pulse and throb all thick and distorted, vocals harsh and hateful that swallow all the other sounds whole. The riffs are killer, old school but blown out and noisy as fuck. When the band locks into a black blast, it's almost an impenetrable droning buzz, but then out of nowhere the band will shift gears into some weird super melodic bridge, or some midtempo groove. A seemingly impossible blend of melancholy melodiousness, buzzing black thrash and super saturated ultraviolent noise rock. Awesome.

ASH POOL Saturn's Slave (Hospital Productions) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Oh man, have we been dying for this, more blown out primitive super raw black metal fury from the man who is Prurient and who also runs the kick ass Hospital Records store and label.
Like past Ash Pool releases, this is super fast, super heavy black metal informed by noise music, drawing on bands like Akitsa and Ildjarn, but filtered through a decidedly modern noise based mindset. The strange thing is, how goddamn poppy and melodic and catchy this stuff is. You would think just the opposite what with the noise pedigree and all, but fuck it if this isn't some of the heaviest, buzziest, most furious, and catchiest black metal EVER.
Two short sharp blasts, the first, begins just how we would hope, raw frantic riffing, the guitar super distorted and buzzy, the drums distorted and blown out, the vocals howled and shrieked, everything totally saturated and in-the-red, but there's plenty of midtempo chug chug chug to balance out the furious blasts, and a few seconds in, it's impossible to ignore how catchy it is, the main hook is a killer, melodic, stick in your head catchy, but somehow it doesn't take away from the blackness or the grimness at all. Poppy, yet buzzy and black.
The flip side follows suit. Raw, feral, blown out, black, but the guitars start sounding weirdly NWOBHM, unfurling weird little harmonies amidst all the buzzing and blasting, the arrangement a lurching start and stop, weird and mathy and fucked up and totally black, but those guitars sound like they were lifted out of an Iron Maiden song, and the thing is, it's a fucked up hybrid that should absolutely not work, but it does, and it's part of what makes Ash Pool so good. These two songs will only tide us over for so long, we NEED another full length.
Cool black and white covers, blue vinyl. And yeah, probably crazy limited.

ASH POOL World Turns On Its Hinge (Hospital Productions) cd 12.98
Finally! The first proper full length from these NY based, ultra sick, primitive black metal noise merchants. Everything we've heard so far we've dug like crazy, a single and a tape, each filthy and dripping with blown out black buzz and pounding punkish riffing. This full length is more of the same, and if anything ups the ante sonically.
Meaner, heavier, thrashier, filthier, more raw and primitive and blown out, and like the other records, still poppy and weirdly catchy. This is most definitely black metal, but a crushing primitive D-beat style BM, following a similar sonic path as fellow black hordes Bone Awl, Ancestors, Akitsa, Malveillance and the like.
Ash Pool is one part blacknoise outfit Prurient, so you knew there was gonna be noise, but the noise here is deftly harnessed into roiling black riffs and blasting beats, woozy, dizzying seasick blasts of relentless pound, furious and fierce, the production thick and blown out, in the red, crumbling distortion and murky reverb everywhere.
But this isn't just the same song over and over, set the instruments to blast and let the record play out. No these songs are varied and bizarre, occasionally epic and dramatic, sometimes so fast and brutal it borders on pure noise, sometimes a Brainbombs style caveman pound, sometimes a weird minor key mathrock jam, always appropriately blown out and noisy, but now and then the songs veer into strange, creepy, almost pretty territory, a slow and loping doomic lurch, with minor key melodies that manage to be mournful and funereal but still jagged and buzzy. Winding melancholic lopes that just sort of meander and chug abstractly. But it's never long before the tracks splinter into jagged shards, with the song exploding into another stretch of raw toxic pummel, the vocals doused in FX and convulsing wildly atop the relentless riffage. And every once in a while, the band lock into some crazy melodic groove, and for a brief moment you almost forget you're listening to some harsh and hateful black noise outfit.
Hard to explain how great this stuff is, it all manages to be so visceral and intense, emotional and depressive, melodic with losing it's flesh-peeling edge, so sonically varied without losing its focus, the slow songs are perfect bridges between the speaker shredding streaks of black brutality, but even when things are chaotic and on the verge of collapse, the songs still manage to be catchy and melodic and heavy as fuck.
MPEG Stream: "Sin Of Life"
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion Fantasy"
MPEG Stream: "Vices Triumph Over Wisdom"

ASH POOL World Turns On Its Hinge (Paragon) lp 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now on vinyl, the amazing debut full length from these NY based, ultra sick, primitive black metal noise merchants. Everything we've heard so far we've dug like crazy, a single and a tape, each filthy and dripping with blown out black buzz and pounding punkish riffing. This full length is more of the same, and if anything ups the ante sonically.
Meaner, heavier, thrashier, filthier, more raw and primitive and blown out, and like the other records, still poppy and weirdly catchy. This is most definitely black metal, but a crushing primitive D-beat style BM, following a similar sonic path as fellow black hordes Bone Awl, Ancestors, Akitsa, Malveillance and the like.
Ash Pool is one part blacknoise outfit Prurient, so you knew there was gonna be noise, but the noise here is deftly harnessed into roiling black riffs and blasting beats, woozy, dizzying seasick blasts of relentless pound, furious and fierce, the production thick and blown out, in the red, crumbling distortion and murky reverb everywhere.
But this isn't just the same song over and over, set the instruments to blast and let the record play out. No these songs are varied and bizarre, occasionally epic and dramatic, sometimes so fast and brutal it borders on pure noise, sometimes a Brainbombs style caveman pound, sometimes a weird minor key mathrock jam, always appropriately blown out and noisy, but now and then the songs veer into strange, creepy, almost pretty territory, a slow and loping doomic lurch, with minor key melodies that manage to be mournful and funereal but still jagged and buzzy. Winding melancholic lopes that just sort of meander and chug abstractly. But it's never long before the tracks splinter into jagged shards, with the song exploding into another stretch of raw toxic pummel, the vocals doused in FX and convulsing wildly atop the relentless riffage. And every once in a while, the band lock into some crazy melodic groove, and for a brief moment you almost forget you're listening to some harsh and hateful black noise outfit.
Hard to explain how great this stuff is, it all manages to be so visceral and intense, emotional and depressive, melodic with losing it's flesh-peeling edge, so sonically varied without losing its focus, the slow songs are perfect bridges between the speaker shredding streaks of black brutality, but even when things are chaotic and on the verge of collapse, the songs still manage to be catchy and melodic and heavy as fuck.
The lp version includes super striking new artwork and an lp sized insert!
MPEG Stream: "Sin Of Life"
MPEG Stream: "Crucifixion Fantasy"
MPEG Stream: "Vices Triumph Over Wisdom"

ASHDAUTUS Where The Sun Is Silent (Full Moon Productions) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

ASHES Funeral Forest (Supernal) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "The Suffering Mists"
MPEG Stream: "Forest Funeral"

ASHES Hymn To A Grey Sky (Supernal.) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another awesome Supernal release from a few years back that we never managed to review until now. Loyal AQ list readers should already be intrigued just based on the fact that some of our all time favorite black metal records and dark ambient drones have come courtesy of Supernal, Benighted Leams, Drudkh, Hate Forest, Dark Ages, Fall Of The Grey Winged One, Contra Ignem Fatuum and on and on. We're happy to report that Ashes fall into that category of black metal we just can't ever seem to get enough of, that freaked out midtempo, stumbling, damaged, demented, outsider black metal. Imagine Benighted Leams if they were a little dronier and a little more ambient, leaning a bit more toward Burzum instead of Darkthrone.
Weird warbly melancholy acoustic guitars, wavering keyboard ambience, totally fucked up drumming, spastic and stumbling, totally damaged drum programming, all wrapped in a blissed out stumbling black metal buzz, and topped off with some of the most fucked up vocals EVER, a guttural, super processed, creepy insectoid gurgle. Hymn To A Grey Sky is tracked as a single 47 minute track, which is usually annoying, but in this case, we can't imagine NOT listening to the whole thing at once. Long expanses of distant keyboards and simple martial drumming, buzzing loping Burzumic buzz with circusy keyboards way down in the mix, more of those creepy vocals draped over the top, dizzying confusional double bass drum programming, dreamy soft focus drone interludes, a big stretch right in the middle of the record of nature sounds, running water, insect buzz, birds chirping, rustling leaves before stumbling back into a killer midtempo buzz drenched black metal dirge, complete with muted classical guitars, some weird dark ambient In The Nursery style timpani and synthesizers, drifting into an almost new age coda to yet another one of the weirdest slabs of damaged blackness to come our way!
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 1"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 2"
MPEG Stream: "Excerpt 3"

ASHES Yggrasil (Supernal) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Final release from longtime aQ favorites Ashes, a one man black metal band from the UK, whose particular brand of metal was decidedly damaged and demented. But a lot has changed in the 2+ years since Hymn To A Grey Sky. Here's how we described that record:
Weird warbly melancholy acoustic guitars, wavering keyboard ambience, totally fucked up drumming, spastic and stumbling, totally damaged drum programming, all wrapped in a blissed out stumbling black metal buzz, and topped off with some of the most fucked up vocals EVER, a guttural, super processed, creepy insectoid gurgle.
Sounds good. It is good. In fact one of our favorite discs on the always kick ass Supernal label. But here we are a few years on, and while many of those elements are still present in Ashes' sound, it's not nearly as fucked up or freaked out, which is not necessarily a bad thing, just different.
The opening track is a chunk of lilting acoustic folk, urgently strummed acoustic guitar, fluttering flute, a very dark and dreamy intro, until track two kicks in, and we're off! The rest of the record is a series of buzzing midtemo blasts of Burzumic lope, super simple riffs, the drums equally simple, pounding relentlessly, the vocals a more traditional demonic rasp, that sometimes turns into more of a hissy shriek, and even occasionally a Viking-like croon, in the background keyboards soar majestically, the melodies grandiose and epic, and thankfully the drums still have a bit of stumble in them, and the riffs seem to always break into a more dynamic weird sort of chug, before resuming their droning buzz. A gorgeous buzzing soundworld of foresty blackness, very reminiscent of Woodtemple and Graveland, but even more stripped down and simple.
And then there's the last song. Which sounds like NOTHING on the rest of the record, but is so weird and epic and doomy and gorgeously fucked up, we sort of wish there was a whole record of stuff like this. The drums a slow motion plod, the guitars not so much riffing as a constant blackened blur, thick whirring rumbling distorted bliss, totally washed out and dreamy, and so so so divinely droney. Then the vocals, a soaring clean croon, not growly or evil in the least, totally melodious and epic, singing a gorgeous hook, buried in the mix. Folks into all that new shoegaze black metal will go nuts for this track, almost worth it just for the one song alone, even though the rest of the record is pretty fantastic.
This marks the final release by Ashes, who are as of now defunct, but let's hope the man behind Ashes is working on new music, and let's hope it sounds like this final chunk of black bliss.
MPEG Stream: "Yggdrasil"
MPEG Stream: "Fenrir Unbound"
MPEG Stream: "A Darker Horizon"

ASKA / HYPOTHERMIA Melankoli / Abuse Myself (I Want To Die) (Unjoy) 7" 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Killer match up between two AQ faves, Hypothermia (who we've raved about in the past) and Aska, who have yet to grace our list (until now!). Massive, brutal, abysmal, blackened doomic buzz from both, Aska even tackle a GG Allin cover and dedicate it to Poison Idea's Pig Champion. Awesome.

ASTRAL WOMB s/t (Frequency Thirteen) cd-r 7.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of two new releases from the Frequency Thirteen label, home of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, as in aQ faves like Black Vomit, Ice Bound Majesty, Skulltrol, Dukkha, Rape Rack and others. Elsewhere on this week's list you'll find the new record from Torture Gnosis, a tripped out disc of celestial lo-fi psychedelic synthscapery and blackened cosmic dronemusic, but this here, the debut from Astral Womb, is exactly the opposite, although from the band name we were maybe expecting something 'astral', but instead these guys kick out some serious noiserock grindprog jams, churning downtuned heaviness, wild octopoidal drumming, buzzing guitar crunch, the songs wildly intricate, the band slipping from churning chug to furious grind to mathy metallic pound to lumbering dirgey doom to dense stop/start dynamics. Like some twisted lo-fi hybrid of the Fucking Champs, the Ruins and Loincloth, with some Lightning Bolt thrown in for good measure. It's like math rock, noise rock, grindcore and maybe a little death metal all tangled up into a lurching chunk of wildly rocking avant heaviness. The recording super lo-fi, giving the sound a seriously raw vibe, and be sure and stick around for the last track, an sprawling 8+ minute math heavy progged out epic, that pretty much pushes all of our heavy rock buttons, furious and frenzied, mathy and heavy, loads of stop/starts, even some weird clean guitar jangle, but for the most part, lurching and lumbering, pounding and blasting, the sort of jam that's a total set ender and leaves the crowd a sweaty bloodied exhausted mess. So killer.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Silent Mindless And Blind"
MPEG Stream: "Black Iron Prison"

ASTROFAES Dying Emotions Domain (Negative Existence) cd 13.98
Of all the Ukrainian black metal hordes we love, all of which seem to share members, be it Drudkh, Blood Of Kingu, Hate Forest, Nokturnal Mortum, Lucifugum, Mistigo Varggoth Darkestra and the like, Astrofaes seems to be the only one we've never reviewed, which is definitely a shame, since most of the black metallers around here dig that band as much as any of the others. So in some weird way this almost seems appropriate, even though the band has released six full lengths, their 1998 debut will be the first one to make it on the list. Recently reissued by Negative Existence, Dying Emotions Domain should most definitely hit the spot for fans of any of the above mentioned outfits, and since it's their debut, it's the most raw, the sound simultaneously lo-fi but also impossibly heavy, the guitars super distorted, the sound informed by lots of classic metal as well as more grim blackness, the riffing definitely not run of the mill black metal, the chugging and churning peppered with cool little licks and trills, the guitar so blown out the sound is transformed into a blurred in-the-red warmth, as opposed to a frosty buzz, everything underpinned by soaring majestic synths, the vocals buried in the mix, the drums pretty kick ass but down in the mix as well, it's all about those riffs and that crazy super saturated guitar sound, just check out the sample below for "Fiery Mysticism" and you'll know just what we mean. They also cover a Celtic Frost track and pretty much make it their own, there are also some hints of the folk that would inform later bands, but for the most part this is just a pretty serious slab of blown out blackness, that anyone into buzzing old school black metal (Ukrainian or otherwise) will probably dig big time.
MPEG Stream: "Fiery Mysticism"
MPEG Stream: "At Nightfall"

AT THE HEAD OF THE WOODS / BLOOD OF THE BLACK OWL split (Handmade birds) cd 12.98
We've long been fans of both of these artists, James Woodhead, aka At The Head Of The Woods, and Glass Throat Records head honcho Chet Scott, aka Blood Of The Black Owl, as well as their collaborative project, The Elemental Chrysalis, a quick search on the aQ site will find much we've written about all three projects over the last several years. This super limited cd on Handmade Birds (run by R. Loren from Pyramids) finds both groups offering up a bit of a teaser for their prospective full lengths. Up first is ATHOTW, with another sprawling bit of ritualistic ambience, all haunting and otherworldly, ethereal vox over whirring organs, and simple percussion, blurred buzz, even some psychedelic wah guitar, the sound slipping from an almost improvised sounding slow build, to an FX drenched psychedelic space dirge, the transition seamless, the final few minutes of the track, space and heavy and fantastically psychedelic and transcendent. Easily the most epic ATHOTW track yet!
Blood Of The Black Owl counters with his own bit of sonic ritualism, all shakers and fluttery flutes, deep drones and distant shimmer, channeling the spirit if Native American musics, the sound drifts and hovers, until the vocals come in, a strangely out of place demonic croak, that adds some serious menace to the proceedings, that voice soon joined by more voices, all over spidery guitar melodies, and a creeping slowcore rhythm, the song slowly building and brooding, laced with what sounds like spacey theremin and deep distant rumbles, culminating in a distorted coda, all crumbling distortion, dirge like drum pound, swirling FX and soaring vox.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Housed in a cool oversized sleeve, with striking skull/antler artwork.
MPEG Stream: AT THE HEAD OF THE WOODS "Here I Stand"
MPEG Stream: BLOOD OF THE BLACK OWL "Visions Of Strix Nebulosa"

ATAVIST Alchemic Resurrection (Rise Above) 10" 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Doom devotees, could we have your attention? We've got a handful of these remaining in stock, a 2-song 10" ep from English sludgelords (and frequent Nadja collaborators) Atavist, released earlier this year on vinyl only, limited to 333 copies. Actually it's really only one song, the downtuned dirge "Alchemic Resurrection", parts a and b, spread over both sides of this 10", nearly 15 minutes of misery.
It's so punishingly slow and heavy that it's pretty hard to tell if it's supposed to play on 33 or 45... they both sound good, and even at the faster speed it's pure sludge.
This comes on black wax speckled with sparkly flecks, like a star field or goldschlager or metallic dandruff.

ATELECINE A Cassette Tape Culture (Pendu Sound) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
LAST COPIES! Now OUT OF PRINT, except for this small handful. All the remaining copies have slightly damaged covers (mostly bent corners), hence the reduced price, vinyl is pristine, last chance to pick up one of these twisted beauties...
Most people probably know Sasha Grey for what she is most (in)famous for, and that would be for being a porn star. Even folks who don't know porn stars might still know Grey as an actress, who recently starred in Steven Soderbergh's film Girlfriend, and has been on HBO's Entourage, but few probably know her as a musician (although aQ customers might remember she sang on a Current 93 record!). And we're not talking cheesy club diva, a la Tracy Lords, crooning terribly over bad house music, no we're talking as a proper musician, one who apparently has been making music since she was a teenager (influenced by KMFDM and Throbbing Gristle), and whose current group aTelecine is some sort of blackened industrial avant drone sound collage thing, that would put most of the current crop of experimental musicians to shame. The label hypes Grey's music as being heavily indebted to groups like Nurse With Wound and Coil, and while we're tempted to think this is just the label trying to make the band seem 'cooler' and more authentic, it only takes a few minutes listening to aTelecine's new full length to realize, it's not all that unlikely. This stuff is dark, and corrosive, haunting and fierce, otherworldly and intense, a little bit industrial, a little ambient, a little witch house-y, a little black metal, doomy and new wavey and seriously dark, a dizzying churning cauldron of field recordings, samples, loops, electronics, distorted guitars, programmed beats, FX drenched vocals, throbbing basslines, plenty of glitch and clang and rumble and buzz.
If you're anything like us it'll just take a single song, the first one we heard (even though this is aTelecine's 3rd or 4th record), the super creepy, super intense "I Came, I Sat, I Departed", a lumbering blackened industrial creep, all downtuned chug, low slung slither, laced with some seriously fucked up and freaky hissed whispery vokills, the sound crunchy and glitchy, but super hypnotic. The song gets more and more chaotic, with anguished howls, more distortion, the song seeming to crumble before our ears into a hellish reverb drenched miasma. Terrifying and incredible.
The rest of the record stacks up pretty well too. "A Cassette Played" is all woozy low end and rumbling bass over snippets of crowd sound, a sort of collaged dark wavey drift, with some super minimal skittery Autechre style fractured beats, a sprawling expansive dronescape, laced with skitter, and ominous synth swells, strangely cinematic keyboards, the sound becoming almost John Carpenter-esque near the end, before slipping directly into "Chroeg Xen", which sounds like Steve Reich or Terry Riley as interpreted by the current crop of retro futurist sci fi new wavers. "Elijah's New Sun" is a fluttering field of hiss and static, of shortwave interference, buried synth pulses, strange processed vocals, and minimal synth melodies way off in the distance.
"It's All Write" is an avalanche of song fragments, woven into a woozy, series of melodic swells, streaks of buzz, bits of sampled voices, a minimal barely there beat, slowly unwinding like some out of focus sonic charnel house. "Kitchen Light" is a surprisingly lovely bloopy bleepy bit of spacey synthiness, while "Never Was A Dreamer (vox)" is a swirling synthy crawl, all whispered tangled voices, and layered shimmery drones. "She Is Beautiful" is another bit of sci fi synthery, which leads into the short closer "Some What Daft", a gorgeous creepy glitchscape, of muted melodies, fractured drones and alien squelches, all over a sort of krauty pulse, the sort of track that we would have loved to see go on way longer. Which is pretty much how we feel about almost every track here.
Sure, the fact that aTelecine is Sasha Grey's band is the hook, but it hardly matters really, besides bucking the convention of actresses turned terrible musician, or certainly porn star gone pointlessly mainstream, this stuff is incredible, dark and dense and extremely well crafted, occasionally playful and mysterious, but more often fucking chilling and intense, and definitely makes it plain for all to see, that if Grey ever did decide to give up her day job, as sad as that would be, at least we'd have more of this amazing music to look forward to.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "I Came I Sat I Departed"
MPEG Stream: "A Cassette Played"
MPEG Stream: "It's All Write"
MPEG Stream: "Some What Daft"

ATRIARCH Forever The End (self-released) cd 9.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Hey, blackened doom dudes and dudettes, we know you're busy spinning your new Yob album 24-7, but if you don't want to wear Atma out, here's something else you might like, from the folks (Seventh Rule) who last brought us Batillus.
Atriarch are an outfit from up in Portland, Oregon, and deal with the depression of living there (all the rain!) by making this bummer music, downer stuff for sure. And HEAVY. Though this is their debut, Atriarch aren't exactly newcomers to the underground sludge scene, their singer is from Trees, and also the bassist was in Graves At Sea. So they know what they're doing, and what they're doing is making some atmospherically arty, anguished ultra-doom!!!
There's four songs, adding up to 36 minutes (this is obviously intended for two sides of vinyl, which Seventh Rule has released in quite handsome form, though we also have cds in different, handmade packaging, self-released by the band). It's kinda like one looooong song though, and we mean that in a good way... a depressive, occasionally violent journey into the realms of grim gothic darkness, Atriarch employing harsh vokills (and some use of mournful "clean" vocals too), droning synth, somber slow-mo drum pummel, soft-loud dynamics, sad melodies, and of course crushing distorted guitars, to convey their dire emotional message of the foreverness of the end. Should appeal to anyone who might dig a bleaker, blacker metal version of Cough, Atavist, the aforementioned Yob, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Fracture"

ATRIARCH Forever The End (Seventh Rule) cd 11.98
New pressing, new packaging! Here's what we said the first time, last year:
Hey, blackened doom dudes and dudettes, we know you're busy spinning your new Yob album 24-7, but if you don't want to wear Atma out, here's something else you might like, from the folks (Seventh Rule) who last brought us Batillus.
Atriarch are an outfit from up in Portland, Oregon, and deal with the depression of living there (all the rain!) by making this bummer music, downer stuff for sure. And HEAVY. Though this is their debut, Atriarch aren't exactly newcomers to the underground sludge scene, their singer is from Trees, and also the bassist was in Graves At Sea. So they know what they're doing, and what they're doing is making some atmospherically arty, anguished ultra-doom!!!
There's four songs, adding up to 36 minutes (this is obviously intended for two sides of vinyl, which Seventh Rule has also released in quite handsome form). It's kinda like one looooong song though, and we mean that in a good way... a depressive, occasionally violent journey into the realms of grim gothic darkness, Atriarch employing harsh vokills (and some use of mournful "clean" vocals too), droning synth, somber slow-mo drum pummel, soft-loud dynamics, sad melodies, and of course crushing distorted guitars, to convey their dire emotional message of the foreverness of the end. Should appeal to anyone who might dig a bleaker, blacker metal version of Cough, Atavist, the aforementioned Yob, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Fracture"

ATRIARCH Forever The End (Seventh Rule) lp 13.98
Hey, blackened doom dudes and dudettes, we know you're busy spinning your new Yob album 24-7, but if you don't want to wear Atma out, here's something else you might like, from the folks (Seventh Rule) who last brought us Batillus.
Atriarch are an outfit from up in Portland, Oregon, and deal with the depression of living there (all the rain!) by making this bummer music, downer stuff for sure. And HEAVY. Though this is their debut, Atriarch aren't exactly newcomers to the underground sludge scene, their singer is from Trees, and also the bassist was in Graves At Sea. So they know what they're doing, and what they're doing is making some atmospherically arty, anguished ultra-doom!!!
There's four songs, adding up to 36 minutes (this is obviously intended for two sides of vinyl, which Seventh Rule has released in quite handsome form, though we also have cds in different, handmade packaging, self-released by the band). It's kinda like one looooong song though, and we mean that in a good way... a depressive, occasionally violent journey into the realms of grim gothic darkness, Atriarch employing harsh vokills (and some use of mournful "clean" vocals too), droning synth, somber slow-mo drum pummel, soft-loud dynamics, sad melodies, and of course crushing distorted guitars, to convey their dire emotional message of the foreverness of the end. Should appeal to anyone who might dig a bleaker, blacker metal version of Cough, Atavist, the aforementioned Yob, etc.
MPEG Stream: "Plague"
MPEG Stream: "Fracture"

AUDIOPAIN The Switch To Turn Off Mankind (Vendlus) cd 11.98
"Faster to death with the throttle at max / as I introduce Mr. Neck to Mr. Axe". Yeah! With lyrics like that, and a headbanging maelstrom of speedy riffs to match, this is Thrash Metal all right! But unlike a lot of today's self-professed "old school" thrash bands, Norway's Audiopain aren't primarily an exercise (however deadly) in '80s nostalgia. It's retro thrash, yeah, and they did title one of their older discs 1986, but we get the idea that they're thrashing with no regard for trends, in a more modern, blackened way, maybe 'cause they don't present themselves in formula thrash fashion (at least not on record, we don't know what they look like live). The imagery of their cd packaging isn't about spikes and leather and fists in the face. Or nuclear bombs and radiation symbols. It is dark and evil looking, signifying "extreme" metal for sure, but doesn't try to look like an old Kreator or Nuclear Assault album, y'know? It's a lot artsier than that (though not as creative as the unique packaging of their previous album for Vendlus, 2004's The Traumatizer). However, when you hit "play", you'll hear that this sure IS thrash metal, that would have given any moshpit back in the eighties quite a workout. 100 percent aggro, heads down, faster than a shark, razor-sharp, thrash-til-death metal, that will have your neck thoroughly wrecked before the 27 minutes of violently concentrated force on this six-song cd have barely begun.
And while the lyric quoted at the start of this review (from the title track) is certainly the sort of thing an Exodus or Destruction would have come up with back in the day, much of the rest of the lyrics here are way more cryptic and oblique, with seeming themes leaning towards the black metal side of things, anti-religious and evil and obviously misanthropic. You get the idea that Audiopain wishes there was indeed a Switch To Turn Off Mankind. And if we sell this to any kids, their parents will surely be looking for the switch to turn off Audiopain...
MPEG Stream: "Alliance"
MPEG Stream: "Holy Toxic"

AUFKREMA Rehearsals 2002-2003 (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.98
Strange and mysterious rehearsal recordings from this Canadian black metal horde, most notable for the fact that it's all improvised. As the liner notes proclaim: "We think there should be more spontaneity in black metal and extreme music in general and this release is a tribute to the primal energy and chemistry we felt and experienced while playing/recording." Hear! Hear! And while this is all improvised, don't be expecting super abstract weirdness and ambient black drone, no this is still raw and kvlt black metal, grim and buzzing, with some super killer riffing and some seriously awesome drumming. Strangely recorded too, murky practice space production. The guitars thick black smears, and the drums super blown out and in the red, but still kind of washed out and muddy, and when the blasting double kick drums come in, it's less like a staccato dut-dut-dut-dut-dut-dut than a massive roiling wave of low end speaker shredding thrum.
We only have 6 or 7 copies of this, and we're not sure if we can get more when we sell out...

AUGRIMMER Autumnal Heavens (Northern Silence) cd 10.98

AURA NOIR Deep Dreams Of Hell (Karmageddon Media) cd 21.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

MPEG Stream: "Released Damnation"
MPEG Stream: "The Rape"
MPEG Stream: "Broth Of Oblivion"

AURA NOIR Hades Rise (Peaceville) cd 15.98
A good metal record can do a lot of things. But it really takes only one thing to make a great metal record. That it tears your face off. (Or melts your ears, or wrecks your neck, or whatever metaphor for the physical response to loud, violent, headbanging riffage you choose to use.) And by that metric, this latest from Norway's Aura Noir is a pretty great piece of work. Total mid-paced blackened thrash mastery!
Featuring former members of black metal legends Ved Buens Ende, Dodheimsgard, Ulver, Satyricon, and Mayhem (among others), this band originated during what might be considered the first thrash metal revival, in the mid/late '90s. Now we're in the midst of another wave of nostalgia for good old '80s thrash, and thus these guys cannot be accused of being trendy or jumping on the bandwagon! The rasping death grunts, chainsaw guitaring, and blazing drum kit devastation found here is all authentically old school, at least older than the new school of old school... raw n' ugly and hella catchy too. For fans of speedy '80s slayers like Destruction and early, Frost-ier Coroner, with maybe more of a rock n' roll Venom/Motorhead vibe mixed in. The dissonant guitar licks twisted into tracks like "Iron Night/Torment Storm" give this a bit of left-field Voivod-y weirdness as well. More modern reference points could be fellow Norwegian retro-thrashers Audiopain, and the more recent, metal/punk Darkthrone output (one song here is called "South American Death", shades of DT's "Canadian Metal"). We should mention that one track features a guest guitar solo from Danny Coralles, but even those of you not so metal-obsessed enough to know or care about who that is (he's from the band Autopsy, duh), might well still enjoy the heck out of Hades Awaits for the basic, brutal pleasures it provides. We dare you not to headbang. Impossible.
MPEG Stream: "Hades Rise"
MPEG Stream: "Gaping Grave Awaits "

AURA NOIR Increased Damnation (Hammerheart) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not a new album from these Norwegian black metal thrashers, but a re-release of their rare 1995 debut mini-cd "Dreams Like Deserts" with the addition of a bunch of previously unreleased tracks, including a few live tracks and two recordings with Fenriz of the illustrious Darkthrone on vocals! Aura Noir's guitarist plays in black metal legends Mayhem, and the band also features members of weirdos Dodheimsgard and the even weirder Ved Buens Ende (who we'd rather see a new release by, but what can you do?)... "Increased Damnation" is indeed a great speedy slice of artful blackened thrash metal, however.
RealAudio clip: "Towers of Limbs and Fevers"

AURA NOIR The Merciless (Tyrant Syndicate / Peaceville) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We're excited about this album for a few reasons: 1) it's the first release from a new imprint called Tyrant Syndicate, run by none other than Norwegian black metal godfathers Darkthrone themselves! 2) besides that, we were already fans of Aura Noir -- a band featuring members of Mayhem, Ved Buens Ende and Dodheimsgard. And oh, and most importantly, 3) it is a merciless (yes it is) blackened thrash attack, with a nasty grin and a death-grunt for every poser mowed down by their onslaught. Blazing guitars, thumping tubs, and a Darkthrone-approved n' authenticated old school attitude! Venomous.
MPEG Stream: "Funeral Thrash"
MPEG Stream: "Sordid"

AURVANDIL Ferd (Eisenwald) cd 12.98
Originally released as a super limited cassette, one of our recent black metal faves now available on cd!! Here's what we had to say about Ferd when we first reviewed the tape version back in 2010:
The first we heard from French black metal crew Aurvandil was on a recent split with the Weakling worshipping Dead As Dreams, we described them as sounding very Norwegian, very Burzumic, drum machined buzzy midtempo blackness, and we were definitely primed to hear more, which brings us to this, the latest from Aurvandil, originally released on the same label as the Murmuure, a past Record Of the Week, Aurvandil is not nearly as twisted or bizarre, but still totally slays. After a lengthy, folky almost Viking sounding intro, all lilting acoustic guitar and programmed drum machine, the band burst into a buzzing electrified version of the same song, an odd way to kick off your record, especially considering that the next track EXPLODES in a frenzy of impossibly blasting frantic blackness, the programmed drums so fast they almost become a drone, the guitars frenetically riffing along, totally trancelike, a series of swells, beyond the furious buzz and black blast, it's mesmerizing and hypnotic and relentless, even when the track shifts gears, it's to another strangely frenzied blast, but it's not that simple, the guitars are still buzzing madly, but beneath the guitar a melancholic synth drifts and shimmers, and then the drums and vokills come back in, and it's a weird, hard to describe black metal that is impossibly intense, but also washed out and dreamy, a totally strange combo, that could not work, but instead, transforms this into some sort of ambient blackness, that still buzzes and blasts, but without shattering the strange spellbinding energy the songs invoke. There are strings, and cellos, and mysterious voices, the arrangements seem simple, but they are definitely simple in unexpected ways. The record finishes off with another weirdly folky chunk of blasting blackness, but the three songs in between those folky bookends, nearly 30 minutes, are an incredible suite of psychedelic avant trancelike black metal dronemusic, that would probably be ranking first in our new black metal obsessions, if it weren't for that Murmuure, but hell, it's a seriously close second!
MPEG Stream: "Peregrination I"
MPEG Stream: "Over The Seven Mountains"