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 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!!!

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"

SUFFER THE SHARDS OF THE LOST CULT OF SILENCE Cult Is Religion Vol. 1 (Video Horror Show) VHS + download 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
OK all you underground obscuro black metal freaks and obsolete format obsessives and fucked up video nasty collectors and super limited release weirdos, gather round this awesome audio/sonic artifact, you are definitely gonna want one of these. And you better act fast, cuz it's limited to 50 copies, and is already out of print, and we have the LAST 12 COPIES! Why should you care? Well for one, it's a brand new 30 minute improvised track of blasting droned out psychedelic black metal mesmer from some mysterious horde called Suffer the Shards Of The Lost Cult Of Silence, which features members of aQ black metal faves Woe and Absu, AND it's the soundtrack to a twisted nightmarish video collage, an eye popping video mashup of all manner of demented scenes from horror movies, sci-fi flicks, giallos, and who knows what else, a dizzying head spinning barrage of twisted imagery, the perfect accompaniment to STSOTLCOS's sprawling blown out black buzz, "inspired by the endless depths of infinite darkness", the sound lurching from noise drenched chaotic black pound to spaced out murky creep, to gnarled atonal doomic pound to blazing Norwegian style epic majesty, the whole thing lo-fi and wreathed in a cavernous gauze of blurred and blackened production, raw and grim and spooky and fucking awesome.
LIMITED TO 50 COPIES, each one hand numbered, in white clamshell VHS cases with two color hand screened inserts, recorded onto purple VHS tapes, and comes with a download code (just for the music) as well!

SUN OF THE BLIND Skullreader (Avantgarde) cd 17.98
Probably all anyone will really need to know about Sun Of The Blind is that it is the solo project of Zhaaral from mighty Swiss black metal spacemen Darkspace, and in fact that's all we really needed to know, when we first heard about this, we knew it had to be good, how could it not be? And thankfully our faith in this grim Swiss black warrior was not misplaced.
Don't be expecting any blazing buzzing black space metal a la Darkspace, or even wintery black frost a la Paysage D'Hiver, although you do get a little of each, there are similarities, in the use of ambience, of mood, and texture, but Sun Of The Blind is way more melodic, poppy even, the sound washed out and woozy, melancholy yet epic. The songs tend toward the midtempo, with some of the riffs and melodies, reminding us of a more amped up Jesu or Nadja, the same sort of lysergic shoegaze quality, clouds of interwoven melodies, gorgeous harmonies, all over a churning, mantric, hypnotic black groove.
Much of the record is spent drifting and droning, single notes and gently strummed chords suspended between sheets of blackened shimmer, while elsewhere, strange electronics and crumbling loops underpin woozy sun dappled minor key melodies, building to gauzy dreamlike dirges, or exploding into dense flurries of black crush.
Skullreader is warm and enveloping, a massive roiling melodic buzzscape that is almost more hypnotic than it is heavy, an utterly gorgeous collection of blown out black beauty that almost sounds like some impossible Darkspace / Katatonia hybrid.
Easily one of our new favorite black metal records for sure, and essential for any Paysage / Darkspace obsessives...
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Universe"
MPEG Stream: "Lord Of Mind"
MPEG Stream: "Fire And Thirst"

SUNCHARIOT Climbing The Avalanche (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ultra limited tape from this Vinland black metal horde, whose sound is anything but traditionally black metal, whether this is by design, or by chance, the sound of Sunchariot is a thick, washed out, blurred bit of murky buzz, that minus the bellowed vox, could very well be mistaken for a weirdly rocking bit of Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, the riffs smeared into warm gristly swells, the machinelike pound of the drums, buried under the heaving blackened swells of crumbling melody, and weirdly swoonsome synths, that only reveal themselves when the blast and buzz recedes. The vocals two, transform into a sort of raspy croon during those brief moments, only to revert to a gruff bellow. All the while, a second guitar unwinds a twisted bit of melody that sounds strangely processed, pulsing over the top, a sort of of twisted, atonal lead, that seems to be melting into the roiling blackness beneath it.
Definitely fierce and heavy and intense and most definitely black metal, it's also twisted and off kilter enough, that the sound here almost transcends black metal, and is transformed into some sort of buzz drenched apocalyptic folk, or some soft noise industrial dronemusic, the songs and melodies almost sounding like some mysterious traditionals all twisted up. And when the vocals also slip into the fuzz and buzz, it becomes even more blearily bizarre and darkly dreamy.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

SUNCHARIOT Suncross (Blood Honor and Strength) (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98
Tape number two from this local one man band, who as we mentioned in our review of his first tape, has an awesomely skewed take on black metal, as is evidenced again here, on the haunting delictae opening, a lilting melody that is repeated over and over, creating a trancelike mood, before the buzzing guitars swoop in, but again, in keeping with the warped blackness, the guitars here are muted and washed out and weirdly quiet, a hazy buzzy blur, undulating and pulsating, beneath bellowed vokills, the drums, if there are any, absolutely buried beneath a blackened haze, which is how the whole tape plays out, a blurry sprawl of droned out buzzscapes, the drums occasionally making an appearance, but revealing themselves as more of a distant buried pulse, the vocals too, here and there leap to the top of the mix, a wild monstrous demonic croak, the music still blurred in the background, the result is somewhere between a super raw, ultra lo-fi rehearsal tape, and some sort of avant experimental blackness, either way, we dig it a LOT, and we're imaging most of you into weirdo black metal will find this tranced out black metal minimalism right up your alley.
LIMITED TO 200 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered!

SUNN O))) 00Void (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 2cd 36.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The final installment in Daymare's comprehensive SUNNO))) reissue campaign, and probably the most eagerly anticipated, not just because 00 Void is one of their best, but because the extra bonus disc features the original record reimagined and recontextualized by dadaist sound sculptors Nurse With Wound.
00Void is in fact, SUNNO)))'s first proper album, the preceding Grimmrobe Demos, being just that, demos, but sonically, it picks up right where Grimmrobe left off, huge undulating slow motion riffscapes, epic, majestic, glacial, ominous and black hole heavy. Although it hardly seems necessary at this point, for those who have managed to somehow avoid SUNNO)))'s sonic influence, SUNNO))) began life as the world's first, best, only, (and last?) EARTH tribute band, emulating and bowing before the glacial "power ambient drone" metal of Earth, creating a little cult of the dronedoomdirge faithful, long before the hipster set caught on, but this record, as much as Grimmrobe before it made a case for SUNNO))) as their own entity, sure they owed every aspect of their sound to the band they were birthed to honor (still do really), but they managed to subtly imbue that same sound with their own influences and experience, creating something even more slow and low if that were even possible, setting yet another standard for heaviness.
So on 00Void, SUNNO))) indulge in pure unfettered doom, loosed from any sort of rhythmic constrictions, unmoored from traditional song structures, letting riffs and tones and pure vibrations emanate from their wall of speakers, like some monstrous black tuning fork, almost more a physical sensation than an aural one, but those movements of blackdrone infused with a musicality that blossoms slowly the deeper you allow yourself to sink. Suffocating, pummeling, crushing, oozing, but also soothing and beautiful. Maybe one of our favorite SUNNO))) records for sure. And if the pure grim heaviness of the three originals wasn't enough, 00Void also includes a cover (or, an interpretation, anyway) of a Melvins tune! Another band who were dabbling in slow motion heaviness long before it was cool...
This deluxe Japanese reissue is gorgeously packaged as always, swank matte finished textured paper gatefold, printed inner sleeves, insert with liner notes (all in Japanese), but most importantly of all, a whole extra disc, a complete reworking of 00Void by Nurse With Wound. Most folks probably never even made it this far in the review anyway, the mention of NWW remixing SUNNO))) in the first paragraph probably had most people scrambling for the add to cart button, but for folks who stuck it out, it's well worth rebuying 00Void again for the extra disc, as it's a fantastic disc of haunting drones and abstract soundscaping, constructed using the glacial doom of SUNNO))) as the building blocks, which is surprising considering how shimmery and serene much of this is.
The opening track is one long slow billow of sound, gentle clouds of muted metallic reverberations, deep resonant chiming tones, soft smeared bass notes, all blurred into a creeping drift, that is more Chalk or Coleclough than SUNNO))). The second track is evenmore abstract, isolating, or adding voices, peppering the dreamy drone with strange metallic clang, moaning horn like bleats, sprays of hiss and buzz, all over a warbly wandering bassline, the vocals driving the song at points, a nasally croon entangled in the tracks gauzy gurgle, the bass getting thicker and thicker, coated in grit and grime and hiss, the vocals effected and almost demonic, breaking glass, weird industrial clatter, and lots and lots of hisssssssss.
The final track, another gorgeously minimal drone, the sound of SUNNO))) smeared and blurred and muted into a hushed thrum, soft subtle layers shifting and blending, warm and rich and textured but simple and spare, near the end, voices and radio static surface, but still barely audible, another whispered layer beneath a sea of tranquil hushed whir. Pretty dang cool, even if it's fairly far removed from the sound of the original, but then again, that's sort of the mark of a good remix as far as we're concerned.
Be warned, we got a bunch but they'll probably go quick, so when we run out, be prepared to wait for us to get more from Japan.
MPEG Stream: "NN 0)))"
MPEG Stream: "Ra At Dusk"

SUNN O))) Black One (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
As you may have noticed, the aQ speakers have been quite clogged of late with the black sonic tar of glacial doom and slow motion sludge, molten flows of downtuned guitars, rumbling bowel churning drones, impossibly slow and primordially plodding drumming, all tangled up in huge squirming, blackened riffs, like mammoths struggling to loose themselves from pits of black tar. We've also been quite obsessed with the more virulent strains of buzzing, bizarre black metal. Leviathan, Xasthur, Benighted Leams, Blackdeath, Deathspell Omega, Furze, Lurker Of Chalice and the like. But just imagine for a moment, if that river of sludge we love so much ran right through the darkened Nordic forest, or if you took all that buzz and fuzz and held it under a thick layer of black pitch, while it struggled desperately for breath, or if you took the bombinating blur of Burzum and slowed it waaaaay doooooooown, or better yet, what if Dylan Carlson of Earth grew up listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem instead of Hendrix and the Mentors. Well you'd probably get something like Black One. To be honest, what forms the basis of Black One is really not all that different than other SUNNO))) records. It's still a series of 16 rpm metal riffs, morphed beautifully into plodding hypnotic smears of metallic ambience. The blackness here comes from several sources: the art and the imagery for one, a very metal looking cover drawing, olde English fonts, O'Malley and Anderson have adopted properly metal monickers for the instruments used: axe subs, icy inverted crosswinds upon four string zamboni, grail, glacial winds, calls from beyond the grave! Then there is the presence of two current BM legends, Malefic from Xasthur and Wrest from Leviathan. That said, there are moments, where SUNNO)))'s immediately recognizable sludge does twist itself into more black metal shapes, and it's those moments that Black One truly taps into a direct line to the fiery abyss. Imagine listening to Immortal through some sort of time warp, where Blizzard Beasts is stretched into a single icy contrail spread out over 666 years, a hazy black cloud swallowing everything in its path. Add some truly frosty and fucked up vocals and ghostly guitars from Wrest and Malefic, all manner of gorgeous sonic filigree from Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi and noise guru John Weise, some text by Seldon Hunt, and that oh so familiar Sunn-y O'Malley artwork, lyrics via Dead (from Mayhem), Malefic, Wrest and Abbath (of Immortal) and you might just be looking at a truly and utterly black one indeed.
MPEG Stream: "It Took The Night To Believe"
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Realms (Of The Winterdemons)"
MPEG Stream: "Orthodox Caveman"

SUNN O))) Black One (Southern Lord) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally on vinyl, and what a chunk of vinyl! Two thick slabs of grey vinyl, housed in full color inner sleeves, housed in an incredibly thick gatefold, the kind that creaks and groan as you open it, on gorgeous textured paper. Wow! And as always SUPER LIMITED. We were able to get 50 copies on colored vinyl so act fast. Here's what we had to say about the music inside:
As you may have noticed, the aQ speakers have been quite clogged of late with the black sonic tar of glacial doom and slow motion sludge, molten flows of downtuned guitars, rumbling bowel churning drones, impossibly slow and primordially plodding drumming, all tangled up in huge squirming, blackened riffs, like mammoths struggling to loose themselves from pits of black tar. We've also been quite obsessed with the more virulent strains of buzzing, bizarre black metal. Leviathan, Xasthur, Benighted Leams, Blackdeath, Deathspell Omega, Furze, Lurker Of Chalice and the like. But just imagine for a moment, if that river of sludge we love so much ran right through the darkened Nordic forest, or if you took all that buzz and fuzz and held it under a thick layer of black pitch, while it struggled desperately for breath, or if you took the bombinating blur of Burzum and slowed it waaaaay doooooooown, or better yet, what if Dylan Carlson of Earth grew up listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem instead of Hendrix and the Mentors. Well you'd probably get something like Black One. To be honest, what forms the basis of Black One is really not all that different than other SUNNO))) records. It's still a series of 16 rpm metal riffs, morphed beautifully into plodding hypnotic smears of metallic ambience. The blackness here comes from several sources: the art and the imagery for one, a very metal looking cover drawing, olde English fonts, O'Malley and Anderson have adopted properly metal monickers for the instruments used: axe subs, icy inverted crosswinds upon four string zamboni, grail, glacial winds, calls from beyond the grave! Then there is the presence of two current BM legends, Malefic from Xasthur and Wrest from Leviathan. That said, there are moments, where SUNNO)))'s immediately recognizable sludge does twist itself into more black metal shapes, and it's those moments that Black One truly taps into a direct line to the fiery abyss. Imagine listening to Immortal through some sort of time warp, where Blizzard Beasts is stretched into a single icy contrail spread out over 666 years, a hazy black cloud swallowing everything in its path. Add some truly frosty and fucked up vocals and ghostly guitars from Wrest and Malefic, all manner of gorgeous sonic filigree from Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi and noise guru John Weise, some text by Seldon Hunt, and that oh so familiar Sunn-y O'Malley artwork, lyrics via Dead (from Mayhem), Malefic, Wrest and Abbath (of Immortal) and you might just be looking at a truly and utterly black one indeed.
MPEG Stream: "It Took The Night To Believe"
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Realms (Of The Winterdemons)"
MPEG Stream: "Orthodox Caveman"

SUNN O))) Black One (Japanese Version) (Daymare) 2cd 30.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Besides Boris, SUNNO))) are the undisputed masters of the limited, the repackaged, the-must-buy-for-a-single-track, the must-have-every-color-vinyl, a crazy cult of completism. Almost every release by both bands, has seemingly been offered in multiple limited releases, slightly altered versions for Japan and the US, ridiculously limited runs, and impossible to get tour only editions. We put up with it, cuz, well, both bands rule, and continually kick our asses. And it's kinda fun chasing down weird hard to find releases and super limited editions. To a point.
We're happy to report, that unless you are one of the very lucky ones, saw the band on tour, or spent a fortune on eBay, then these three Japanese reissues are absolutely worth rebuying, as each one includes a bonus disc (or discs) that most folks probably never got their hands on. In fact, we were never able to get any of them for the store. So we'd wager lots of you will be super psyched to pick these up, even if you already have the Southern Lord version. Especially since buying the original versions on eBay would probably cost as much as these multiple disc Daymare versions, and they look amazing, re-designed packaging by Stephen O'Malley, printed inner sleeves, cool miniature lp style gatefold jackets, Japanese liner notes, obi's, really really nice. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES too, so these will probably not be around for long...
Black one includes La Mort Noir dans Esch/Alzette, a super limited (1000 copies) tour only cd, gone in a flash, within the first few dates of the tour, so even folks who made it out probably never even saw it. We never managed to get ANY copies at all, and it's been a super expensive eBay item ever since. The thing about La Mort Noir dans Esch/Alzette, is it might be even better than Black One proper! Recorded live in Luxembourg, the core duo of O'Malley and Anderson is augmented by Malefic of Xasthur on vocals, Dylan Carlson from Earth, the guy from Beaver on synths and Steve Moore on trombone (who also plays horns for Earth), and the set is monstrous, a dark and oppressive black dronescape, guitars are thick and glacial, the horns add another layer of buzz and throb as do the synths, Malefic shrieks and howls atop the din, it's pretty heavy and intense. And it sounds good enough that it we find ourselves digging it more than the album, and it sounds like it could very well have just been a second disc of a Black One double cd. Which, well, it is now!
And just in case you need the scoop on Black One, here's our review from when we first listed it:
As you may have noticed, the aQ speakers have been quite clogged of late with the black sonic tar of glacial doom and slow motion sludge, molten flows of downtuned guitars, rumbling bowel churning drones, impossibly slow and primordially plodding drumming, all tangled up in huge squirming, blackened riffs, like mammoths struggling to loose themselves from pits of black tar. We've also been quite obsessed with the more virulent strains of buzzing, bizarre black metal. Leviathan, Xasthur, Benighted Leams, Blackdeath, Deathspell Omega, Furze, Lurker Of Chalice and the like. But just imagine for a moment, if that river of sludge we love so much ran right through the darkened Nordic forest, or if you took all that buzz and fuzz and held it under a thick layer of black pitch, while it struggled desperately for breath, or if you took the bombinating blur of Burzum and slowed it waaaaay doooooooown, or better yet, what if Dylan Carlson of Earth grew up listening to Darkthrone and Mayhem instead of Hendrix and the Mentors. Well you'd probably get something like Black One. To be honest, what forms the basis of Black One is really not all that different than other SUNNO))) records. It's still a series of 16 rpm metal riffs, morphed beautifully into plodding hypnotic smears of metallic ambience. The blackness here comes from several sources: the art and the imagery for one, a very metal looking cover drawing, olde English fonts, O'Malley and Anderson have adopted properly metal monickers for the instruments used: axe subs, icy inverted crosswinds upon four string zamboni, grail, glacial winds, calls from beyond the grave! Then there is the presence of two current BM legends, Malefic from Xasthur and Wrest from Leviathan. That said, there are moments, where SUNNO)))'s immediately recognizable sludge does twist itself into more black metal shapes, and it's those moments that Black One truly taps into a direct line to the fiery abyss. Imagine listening to Immortal through some sort of time warp, where Blizzard Beasts is stretched into a single icy contrail spread out over 666 years, a hazy black cloud swallowing everything in its path. Add some truly frosty and fucked up vocals and ghostly guitars from Wrest and Malefic, all manner of gorgeous sonic filigree from Australian experimental guitarist Oren Ambarchi and noise guru John Weise, some text by Seldon Hunt, and that oh so familiar Sunn-y O'Malley artwork, lyrics via Dead (from Mayhem), Malefic, Wrest and Abbath (of Immortal) and you might just be looking at a truly and utterly black one indeed.
MPEG Stream: "It Took The Night To Believe"
MPEG Stream: "Cursed Realms (Of The Winterdemons)"
MPEG Stream: "Orthodox Caveman"

SUNN O))) Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord) cd 15.98
The first thing we thought when we threw this on, was, man, it's gonna be pretty tough to top Domkirke. The last SUNNO))) release, vinyl only, found the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley recording their low end Earth worshipping drone symphonies in an actual cathedral, incorporating the cathedral's church organ. Hard to imagine anything heavier.
For Monoliths and Dimensions, the duo drafted in all sorts of extra help. The usual suspects sure, Attila Csihar on vocals, guitarist Oren Ambarchi, but also, a veritable orchestra, French horns, violas, piano, hydrophone, English Horn, Conch Shell, double bass, and that's just on album opener "Aghartha", which on first listen sounds like the SUNNO))) of old, all churning low end, slow motion glacial riffage, but as the track progresses, the heavy riffage peels back, revealing, a sea of moaning horns, Csihar's haunting intoned vocals, creaks and groans, and the actual sound of water (the hydrophone?), eventually getting super abstract and minimal, before fading out completely.
"Big Church" features four guitarists (Ambarchi, O'Malley, Anderson and Earth's Dylan Carlson) as well as trombone, trumpet, organ, tubular bells and a choir!!! The choir giving the track a definite Arvo Part vibe, haunting and choral, drifting ethereally over the slow burning rumble of the multiple guitars, before locking into a strangely melodic almost slowcore creep.
"Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia)" features yet another expanded lineup, this time including a "Man choir", the track begins all standard doom, crushing lugubrious riffage, growled gurgled vokills, but the man choir's deep haunting chant adds a whole other dimension, creating a sort of choral doom hybrid, much like the other track, but this one remains much darker and heavier.
Finally, the record closes with Alice, this time with horns AND strings, and the song that probably is most responsible for describing this record as "SUNNO))) with strings". It starts out all woozy and twangy like some nineties slowcore jam, except for the Morricone-ish horn swells, the guitar crunches few and far between, the sound quite spare and skeletal, and weirdly enough, downright pretty, a shuffling slow motion drift, the whole thing surprisingly melodic, and spacious, quite possibly one of the loveliest (and most unlikely) SUNNO))) tracks yet.
SUNNO))) have done wonders with their limited sonic palette, who would have thought a one time Earth cover band would have survived this long, and resulted in such an impressive body of original work, but the group have grown and expanded and explored, they manage to incorporate all manner of sounds and textures and guest players, to realize their ultimate vision, while somehow keeping the core sound intact. We only just got this in, and we've been listening to it like crazy (which should tell you something), and the more we hear it, the more we dig it, especially that last track. Quickly becoming one of our fave SUNNO))) discs...
Incredible packaging as always. Deluxe booklet, exquisitely designed, with lyrics, lineups, diagrams, photos, illustrations, some of the pages vellum, all housed in a transparent printed vellum slipcover.
MPEG Stream: "Aghartha"
MPEG Stream: "Big Church"

SUNN O))) Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord) 2lp 30.00
NOW ON VINYL!!! And holy crap is this some gorgeous over the top packaging, thick vinyl, insanely heavy gatefold jackets, all housed in a printed vellum slipcover to emulate the cd design. Here's what we had to say about Monoliths and Dimensions when we first got it in...
The first thing we thought when we threw this on, was, man, it's gonna be pretty tough to top Domkirke. The last SUNNO))) release, vinyl only, found the duo of Greg Anderson and Stephen O'Malley recording their low end Earth worshipping drone symphonies in an actual cathedral, incorporating the cathedral's church organ. Hard to imagine anything heavier.
For Monoliths and Dimensions, the duo drafted in all sorts of extra help. The usual suspects sure, Attila Csihar on vocals, guitarist Oren Ambarchi, but also, a veritable orchestra, French horns, violas, piano, hydrophone, English Horn, Conch Shell, double bass, and that's just on album opener "Aghartha", which on first listen sounds like the SUNNO))) of old, all churning low end, slow motion glacial riffage, but as the track progresses, the heavy riffage peels back, revealing, a sea of moaning horns, Csihar's haunting intoned vocals, creaks and groans, and the actual sound of water (the hydrophone?), eventually getting super abstract and minimal, before fading out completely.
"Big Church" features four guitarists (Ambarchi, O'Malley, Anderson and Earth's Dylan Carlson) as well as trombone, trumpet, organ, tubular bells and a choir!!! The choir giving the track a definite Arvo Part vibe, haunting and choral, drifting ethereally over the slow burning rumble of the multiple guitars, before locking into a strangely melodic almost slowcore creep.
"Hunting & Gathering (Cydonia)" features yet another expanded lineup, this time including a "Man choir", the track begins all standard doom, crushing lugubrious riffage, growled gurgled vokills, but the man choir's deep haunting chant adds a whole other dimension, creating a sort of choral doom hybrid, much like the other track, but this one remains much darker and heavier.
Finally, the record closes with Alice, this time with horns AND strings, and the song that probably is most responsible for describing this record as "SUNNO))) with strings". It starts out all woozy and twangy like some nineties slowcore jam, except for the Morricone-ish horn swells, the guitar crunches few and far between, the sound quite spare and skeletal, and weirdly enough, downright pretty, a shuffling slow motion drift, the whole thing surprisingly melodic, and spacious, quite possibly one of the loveliest (and most unlikely) SUNNO))) tracks yet.
SUNNO))) have done wonders with their limited sonic palette, who would have thought a one time Earth cover band would have survived this long, and resulted in such an impressive body of original work, but the group have grown and expanded and explored, they manage to incorporate all manner of sounds and textures and guest players, to realize their ultimate vision, while somehow keeping the core sound intact. We only just got this in, and we've been listening to it like crazy (which should tell you something), and the more we hear it, the more we dig it, especially that last track. Quickly becoming one of our fave SUNNO))) discs...
MPEG Stream: "Aghartha"
MPEG Stream: "Big Church"

SUNN O))) White2 (Southern Lord) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now on lp! Packaged in a gorgeous gatefold sleeve and pressed on two slabs of (of course) white vinyl! This vinyl edition also adds one track, the 18 minute "Decay [The Symptoms Of Kali Yuga]" that previously only appeared as an mp3 bonus on Southern Lord's "Beast Of" Attila Csihar cd. Aside from that addition, what we said about the cd version applies, as follows:
And the vibrations continue...like the ice age envisioned in that recent movie The Day After Tomorrow, White2 by Earth-worshippers SUNNO))) has finally arrived to obliterate all life foolish enough to have futilely flourished in the interim since the release of their previous album White1 last year. It's doom time, folks. For the unprepared among you, we should explain that the Earth just mentioned is of course the band not the planet, with Earth (and SUNNO)))) being the lowest of the low, sub-Melvins, drone-out, heavy-riff-ruling outfits around. Earth came first, but over their last few albums SUNNO))) really have moved beyond the Earth tribute phase, and certainly crossed over from the metal realm into the indie-rock and avant-experimental spheres as well, with an Arthur magazine sponsored tour and write-ups in The Wire to prove it. Maybe they're now the hipster "metal" band of choice but we won't hold that against them -- they're freaking good! (Believe it or not, we hear that some folks in Poland have formed a band in tribute to SUNNO))), known as MOOND)))! If they release anything we can get, we'll let you know.)
White2 was recorded at the same sessions as White1, which saw the core SUNNO))) duo of guitarists Stephen O'Malley (Khanate, Burning Witch, Lotus Eaters) and Greg Anderson (Goatsnake, Engine Kid) augmented by guests including Rex Ritter (Jessamine) and Joe Preston (Thrones, Melvins, Earth itself) both of whom appear on this disc. White1 also featured a recital by none other than head Head Julian Cope. He's not present on White2, but in his place they've installed someone perhaps even more pagan: vocalist Attila Cishar, the Hungarian black metal icon best known for fronting Norway's infamous Mayhem on their classic De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas album!
This disc ("optimized for blackened sub-bass systems" just so you know) clocks in at 63 minutes, divided amongst three long tracks, the first of which, "Hell-O)))-Ween", starts things off as you'd expect: it's a sonic glacier, prime Earth-styled SUNNO))) drone-grind. But track two, "bassAliens" moves into weirder, more abstract territory, a haunting, cave-dwelling improv whose electric noises could be the awakening of some cosmic Cthulhoid monster. Then the last and longest track "Decay2 (Nihil's Maw)" ups this album's quota of terror and beauty both. A spacey, droney, dark dreamscream from the throat of Attila... White2 is metal maybe, experimental yes, and quite a scary success. The farther-out stuff on this disc could be and has been rightly been compared to the music of Keiji Haino, cloaked in the same blackness. From riffage to ritual, recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Hell-O)))-Ween"
MPEG Stream: "bassAliens"

SUPREMACY Satanic Reich (Total Holocaust Records) cd 14.98

MPEG Stream: "Beast Of Satan"

SURT Muspellsheimr (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Super limited tape from this local one man band, who traffics in a sort of folk flecked lo-fi acoustic blackened ambience, all darkly strummed acoustic guitars, shimmering synths, spidery melodies, disembodied voices, whirling atmospheres, the sounds wreathed in reverb, everything just a bit warped and woozy, reminds us a bit of an acoustic ambient version of German black metal weirdos Varghkoghargasmal, a stumbling bit of windswept kosmische drift, that slips easily from hushed mesmer to urgent tension, the sounds unfurling dramatically and cinematically, occasionally slipping into long expanses of spare and sparse, almost chamber music sounding minimalism, but just as often a sprawling bit of chiming strum that sounds like a black metal interlude that blossomed into a full song, lots of soft focus haze and warm tendrils of tape hiss, while the guitars emit soft melodic tangles and blurred gauzy ambience.
LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

SURT Ragnarok (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Folks went a little crazy for the debut tape from this one man black metal band, enigmatically called Surt, who trafficked not so much in black buzz and a sort of haunting folky ambience, all blackened and mysterious, we could barely keep those tapes in stock, and we were all ready to review this second tape, when he sort of disappeared, and the tapes got harder and harder to restock. But since we were left with FIVE copies of tape #2, we figured we'd list it, so at least a few of you who dug the first tape could get your hands on this one.
And just like the first one, the sound of Surt remains, folky and ritualistic, some sort of subterranean Appalachia, mostly steel string guitar, lots of echo and reverb, the sound rhythmic and cyclical, mesmerizing and repetitive, all over a backdrop of subtle swirl and hushed ambient shimmer, the sound slipping from strident and urgent to hushed and drifty and psychedelic, swaddled in swirling barely there synths, giving it a distinctively kosmische vibe for sure.
These are limited to 100, hand numbered, but as we mentioned above, we have five copies, and not sure if we can ever get more, so grab one while you can...

SURT / URUK HAI split (Brotherhood Of Light) cassette 5.98
Super limited split, on local tape label Brotherhood Of Light, featuring one man black ambient alchemist Surt, who we've featured before on the aQ list, and who just so happens to be the man behind the BoL label, here teamed up with Austrian ambient soundscaper Uruk Hai. As might be expected, the packaging is very abstract and minimal, the track listing non existent, so it's hard to figure out which tracks are which, but it hardly matters, the sound a brooding, synth heavy shimmer, a sprawling warm blackness, slowly unfurling minor key melodies, all hazy and gauzy and washed out, sinister and ominous, but with a mysterious warmth, the vibe a little bit medieval too, reminding us in places of aQ fave Dark Ages, with majestic chordal swells, giving way to haunting medieval melodies.
The flipside (again, not to sure which is which), is a much more melodically dense affair, lush tangles of melody, distorted and blown out. grinding low end, heaving swells of crumbling synths and spidery melodies, a churning, dense slow motion wall of sound, that drifts from hushed near shimmer to caustic black ambient crush, the tones pulsing and pulsating, overtones galore, a dizzying swirl of abstract psychedelic ambience, that is ultimately more avant experimental than black ambient. Killer stuff!
LIMITED TO JUST 66 COPIES!! Each one hand numbered.

SUTEKH HEXEN Behind The Throne (Magic Bullet) cd 10.98
Latest black sonic ritual from this SF trio (formerly duo), and like the last record, Larvae, which came out on Handmade Birds, Behind The Throne continues the group's evolution away from the blacknoise that defined their earlier sound. As we mentioned in our review of Larvae, the band seemed to spend a surprising amount of their time lately not blasting or buzzing, instead, conjuring up some surprisingly lovely ambience, and that's true here too, although the ambience here is less shimmery and abstract, and more like some sort of blackened dronescapery, thick swaths of guitar buzz, and dense swells of processed vocals, creating something that's both haunting and hypnotic, dense and intense, it's not really until about 7 minutes into the first track (which fills up the whole first side of the vinyl), that the band finally do unleash some black metal, but when they do, it's a dense blurred buzz, so blurred and blown out it almost sounds more droney and washed out than grim and heavy, but the crazy thing is, the band haven't even started, as a couple minutes later, they somehow explode again, the sound splintering into a weird almost industrial sounding black chug, a grinding, howling maelstrom of black buzz and churning psychedelia, that quickly fades out leaving just a long stretch of crumbling noise, distant vocals, tolling bells, and crackling staticky ambience.
The second track / B side is another sprawling epic, this time bookended by some creepy industrial ambience, what sounds like jangling chains, plenty of rumbles and creaking high end, all smeared into a blackened ur-drone, soon guitars drift in, but not riffs, more like black chordal clouds, that hover darkly, before finally coalescing into proper riffs, but like the first track, the riffs are so distorted and blown out, the 'black metal' here is more of a blackdrone blur, that even with headphones reveals very little of what's going on in Sutekh's roiling black soundworld, the guitars murky and muddy one second, harsh and caustic the next, the vocals a buried bellow, and if there are drums, they're buried so low they just add to the general cacophony. The track churns and chugs, and at one point sounds almost like a sonic approximation of a locomotive, clattery and industrial, but still wreathed in a swirling blackbuzz fog, before the blackness dissipates, leaving just the strange ritualistic ambience that opened the track.
Super swank packaging, full color photos of some sort of altar ritual, candles and chalices and knives, all wreathed in shadow, with all the texted printed in a clear reflective spot varnish.
MPEG Stream: "I. (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "I. (excerpt 2)"

SUTEKH HEXEN Behind The Throne (Magic Bullet) lp 15.98
Latest black sonic ritual from this SF trio (formerly duo), and like the last record, Larvae, which came out on Handmade Birds, Behind The Throne continues the group's evolution away from the blacknoise that defined their earlier sound. As we mentioned in our review of Larvae, the band seemed to spend a surprising amount of their time lately not blasting or buzzing, instead, conjuring up some surprisingly lovely ambience, and that's true here too, although the ambience here is less shimmery and abstract, and more like some sort of blackened dronescapery, thick swaths of guitar buzz, and dense swells of processed vocals, creating something that's both haunting and hypnotic, dense and intense, it's not really until about 7 minutes into the first track (which fills up the whole first side of the vinyl), that the band finally do unleash some black metal, but when they do, it's a dense blurred buzz, so blurred and blown out it almost sounds more droney and washed out than grim and heavy, but the crazy thing is, the band haven't even started, as a couple minutes later, they somehow explode again, the sound splintering into a weird almost industrial sounding black chug, a grinding, howling maelstrom of black buzz and churning psychedelia, that quickly fades out leaving just a long stretch of crumbling noise, distant vocals, tolling bells, and crackling staticky ambience.
The second track / B side is another sprawling epic, this time bookended by some creepy industrial ambience, what sounds like jangling chains, plenty of rumbles and creaking high end, all smeared into a blackened ur-drone, soon guitars drift in, but not riffs, more like black chordal clouds, that hover darkly, before finally coalescing into proper riffs, but like the first track, the riffs are so distorted and blown out, the 'black metal' here is more of a blackdrone blur, that even with headphones reveals very little of what's going on in Sutekh's roiling black soundworld, the guitars murky and muddy one second, harsh and caustic the next, the vocals a buried bellow, and if there are drums, they're buried so low they just add to the general cacophony. The track churns and chugs, and at one point sounds almost like a sonic approximation of a locomotive, clattery and industrial, but still wreathed in a swirling blackbuzz fog, before the blackness dissipates, leaving just the strange ritualistic ambience that opened the track.
Super swank packaging, full color photos of some sort of altar ritual, candles and chalices and knives, all wreathed in shadow, with all the texted printed in a clear reflective spot varnish.

SUTEKH HEXEN Daemons (Dead Section) 7" 11.98
Latest blast of blurred blacknoise brutality from this SF duo, whose records seem to disappear in a heartbeat, every one a ridiculously limited microedition, this new 7" no different, already sold out and out of print, we got 20 copies, and will most likely not be able to get more.
Which is a shame, cuz this is maybe SH's most melodic and distinctly black metal record yet. Frantic riffing beneath super distorted vox, a blurred tranced out almost blacknoisedrone, until the drums kick in, but when they do, it's less like a blastbeat, and more like another layer of blurred low end buzz, the guitars churning relentlessly within a cloud of black/white noise, super repetitive and cyclical, but the melodies continue to seep through, mournful and minor key, buried beneath thick swaths of roiling blackness, the sound murky and muddy and surprisingly warm for being as intense and blackened as it is.
The flipside is another surprise, all echoey and industrial, more processed vokills, this time though draped over clean guitar strum and a clattery machine like rhythm, the overall vibe brooding and downright doomy, a sort of creepy black ambient industrial maybe? There's an even more surprising second half, laced with clean, post rock-ish guitars, some death march ultradoom plod and creepy, cinematic piano-like melodies, the oozes and drifts darkly before disappearing in a haze of Merzbow worthy buzz, a thick swirling cloud of roiling blackness.
LIMITED TO 253 COPIES!! We have less than 20, so grab one before they're gone...

SUTEKH HEXEN Empyraisch (Vendetta) lp 16.98
When we recently reviewed this on the last list, we went on and on about how sonically, the band seemed to be returning to their noisier, more abrasive roots, after a pretty steady trajectory toward a sound more polished and melodic. We only later discovered that there was a much more obvious reason for this 'shift' in sound, and it was that these were in fact old recordings, and Empyraisch was in fact a compilation of sorts, gathering up all the tracks from the super insanely limited and long out of print 7"s the band released over the last couple years, as well as a rare compilation track or two.
We'd imagine most of you were like us, and were unable to snag any of those rare 7"s, or perhaps only managed to track down one or two, so this should still be of interest to even the most obsessive SH fans, but fair warning to the folks who did manage to get em all. For the rest of is though, this is a godsend (devilsend?)...
This Bay Area black metal / noise outfit dig deep into the crypt for these grim blacknoize rarities, a gloriously dizzying mix of blurred noise drenched black buzz and haunting atmospheric ambience...
The opening track introduces Sutekh Hexen at their noisiest, the initial stretch of washed out buzzing blackness giving way to pure face melting black noise, unrelenting and devastating. Which is a bit of foreshadowing, since this collection obviously represents the group at their noisiest and grimmest.
The rest of the side unwinds in blasts of corrosive noise, this time underpinned by low drones and chant like vox, adding some melody and color, however subtle, to the proceedings, everything burred into a Tim Hecker-ish haze. Side one closes with a blast of extremely harsh black metal, the buzz and any semblance of riffage, nearly buried beneath an avalanche of grinding psychedelic noise.
The B side lets Sutekh Hexen flex those soundscaping muscles, at least briefly, opening with a stretch of droned out thrum, a soft black swirl, drifting ominously, only to disappear in a squall of torrential blackness, a wild roiling black hole of sound, that eventually dissipates, allowing the harsh vokills to slip to the fore, then the buried rhythms, but again, it all bleeds into an extended sprawl of black metal murk, woozy and blown out, blurry and dense, trailing off into a cloud of grim black energy.

SUTEKH HEXEN Larvae (Handmade Birds) cd 13.98
The sound of this Bay Area blackmetal / blacknoise duo-turned-trio continues to evolve, and in surprising directions on this, their latest in a flurry of extremely limited releases over the last year. Beginning life as purveyors of dense speaker shredding noise, informed by, but not necessarily sounding much like, black metal, it seemed more a case of black metal riffs buried beneath sheets of white noise and crumbling industrial detritus, and blast beats recorded on a crappy cassette tape and played back through a Walkman, and again, buried beneath a punishing wall of sound. But with every record, the sounds seem more composed, perhaps less antagonizingly harsh, with more time spent creating atmospheres and ambience, than actually buzzing and blasting, which again is the case on Larvae. The opening track, begins with 3+ minutes of shimmery ominous ambience, laced with strange insectoid clicks, the guitars, when they do surface, unfurl soft strummed streaks of chordal whir, beneath which lush swells undulate drowsily, it's at about the 4 minute mark, that the song splinters, and explodes in a dense blurred barrage of furious murky black buzz, that while heavy, is also soft focus enough that it nearly has more in common with Tim Hecker or folks like that, until the group crank up the sound once again, and it becomes full on black metal, that lasts less than a minute, and the band return to the haunting drift that opened the record, before one final time, blasting through the last two minutes, the guitars a black blur, the vocals a fierce monstrous bellow, the drums, if there are any, buried in the mix, a heaving wash of noise drenched heaviness, that manages to be massive, but still weirdly textural.
The relatively brief second track applies the group's corrosive crunch and black atmospheres to something much more dirgey and dismal, a churning industrial tinged creep, the sounds blown out and in-the-red, a tangle of black noise / white noise and industrial crush somehow sculpted into a lumbering black doom, peppered with squalls of blaring FX drenched ear shredding skree, but also underpinned by all manner of layered drones and disembodied voices.
The final track, clocks in at a whopping 15 minutes, and again, finds the band easing into it, unfurling a hushed bit of blackened dronescaping, again flecked with strange clicks and skitterings, the guitars drift in, this time sounding like some sort of Appalachia, draped over streaks of muted crumbling crunch, the song sprawling out into an epic chunk of black folk drift, tangled voices, swirls of hiss and thrum, all wreathing the steel string buzz of the acoustic guitar, until at about the ten minute mark, everything is swallowed up by an avalanche of frenzied black buzz and frantic riffing, so dense and tangled that again, sans headphones the riffs all bleed into one thick roiling cloud of sound, eventually coalescing into an almost classic metal sounding chug, a murky hypnotic dirge that churns malevolently to the record's end.
Both the cd and the lp come in super swank, and gorgeously designed packaging, the artwork abstract in all blacks and greys, with the text printed in clear spot varnish ink, designed by Sutekh Hexen member Kevin Gan Yuen and Dwid Hellion from hardcore legends Integrity. The cd is limited to 500 copies, the lp is already sold out and out of print, so these are the last vinyl copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "Isvar Savasana"
MPEG Stream: "La Det Bli Lys"

SUTEKH HEXEN Larvae (Handmade Birds) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The sound of this Bay Area blackmetal / blacknoise duo-turned-trio continues to evolve, and in surprising directions on this, their latest in a flurry of extremely limited releases over the last year. Beginning life as purveyors of dense speaker shredding noise, informed by, but not necessarily sounding much like, black metal, it seemed more a case of black metal riffs buried beneath sheets of white noise and crumbling industrial detritus, and blast beats recorded on a crappy cassette tape and played back through a Walkman, and again, buried beneath a punishing wall of sound. But with every record, the sounds seem more composed, perhaps less antagonizingly harsh, with more time spent creating atmospheres and ambience, than actually buzzing and blasting, which again is the case on Larvae. The opening track, begins with 3+ minutes of shimmery ominous ambience, laced with strange insectoid clicks, the guitars, when they do surface, unfurl soft strummed streaks of chordal whir, beneath which lush swells undulate drowsily, it's at about the 4 minute mark, that the song splinters, and explodes in a dense blurred barrage of furious murky black buzz, that while heavy, is also soft focus enough that it nearly has more in common with Tim Hecker or folks like that, until the group crank up the sound once again, and it becomes full on black metal, that lasts less than a minute, and the band return to the haunting drift that opened the record, before one final time, blasting through the last two minutes, the guitars a black blur, the vocals a fierce monstrous bellow, the drums, if there are any, buried in the mix, a heaving wash of noise drenched heaviness, that manages to be massive, but still weirdly textural.
The relatively brief second track applies the group's corrosive crunch and black atmospheres to something much more dirgey and dismal, a churning industrial tinged creep, the sounds blown out and in-the-red, a tangle of black noise / white noise and industrial crush somehow sculpted into a lumbering black doom, peppered with squalls of blaring FX drenched ear shredding skree, but also underpinned by all manner of layered drones and disembodied voices.
The final track, clocks in at a whopping 15 minutes, and again, finds the band easing into it, unfurling a hushed bit of blackened dronescaping, again flecked with strange clicks and skitterings, the guitars drift in, this time sounding like some sort of Appalachia, draped over streaks of muted crumbling crunch, the song sprawling out into an epic chunk of black folk drift, tangled voices, swirls of hiss and thrum, all wreathing the steel string buzz of the acoustic guitar, until at about the ten minute mark, everything is swallowed up by an avalanche of frenzied black buzz and frantic riffing, so dense and tangled that again, sans headphones the riffs all bleed into one thick roiling cloud of sound, eventually coalescing into an almost classic metal sounding chug, a murky hypnotic dirge that churns malevolently to the record's end.
Both the cd and the lp come in super swank, and gorgeously designed packaging, the artwork abstract in all blacks and greys, with the text printed in clear spot varnish ink, designed by Sutekh Hexen member Kevin Gan Yuen and Dwid Hellion from hardcore legends Integrity. The cd is limited to 500 copies, the lp is already sold out and out of print, so these are the last vinyl copies we'll be able to get...
MPEG Stream: "Isvar Savasana"
MPEG Stream: "La Det Bli Lys"

SUTEKH HEXEN Larvae (Analog Worship) cassette 8.98
Now available on cassette!!
The sound of this Bay Area blackmetal / blacknoise duo-turned-trio continues to evolve, and in surprising directions on this, their latest in a flurry of extremely limited releases over the last year. Beginning life as purveyors of dense speaker shredding noise, informed by, but not necessarily sounding much like, black metal, it seemed more a case of black metal riffs buried beneath sheets of white noise and crumbling industrial detritus, and blast beats recorded on a crappy cassette tape and played back through a Walkman, and again, buried beneath a punishing wall of sound. But with every record, the sounds seem more composed, perhaps less antagonizingly harsh, with more time spent creating atmospheres and ambience, than actually buzzing and blasting, which again is the case on Larvae. The opening track, begins with 3+ minutes of shimmery ominous ambience, laced with strange insectoid clicks, the guitars, when they do surface, unfurl soft strummed streaks of chordal whir, beneath which lush swells undulate drowsily, it's at about the 4 minute mark, that the song splinters, and explodes in a dense blurred barrage of furious murky black buzz, that while heavy, is also soft focus enough that it nearly has more in common with Tim Hecker or folks like that, until the group crank up the sound once again, and it becomes full on black metal, that lasts less than a minute, and the band return to the haunting drift that opened the record, before one final time, blasting through the last two minutes, the guitars a black blur, the vocals a fierce monstrous bellow, the drums, if there are any, buried in the mix, a heaving wash of noise drenched heaviness, that manages to be massive, but still weirdly textural.
The relatively brief second track applies the group's corrosive crunch and black atmospheres to something much more dirgey and dismal, a churning industrial tinged creep, the sounds blown out and in-the-red, a tangle of black noise / white noise and industrial crush somehow sculpted into a lumbering black doom, peppered with squalls of blaring FX drenched ear shredding skree, but also underpinned by all manner of layered drones and disembodied voices.
The final track, clocks in at a whopping 15 minutes, and again, finds the band easing into it, unfurling a hushed bit of blackened dronescaping, again flecked with strange clicks and skitterings, the guitars drift in, this time sounding like some sort of Appalachia, draped over streaks of muted crumbling crunch, the song sprawling out into an epic chunk of black folk drift, tangled voices, swirls of hiss and thrum, all wreathing the steel string buzz of the acoustic guitar, until at about the ten minute mark, everything is swallowed up by an avalanche of frenzied black buzz and frantic riffing, so dense and tangled that again, sans headphones the riffs all bleed into one thick roiling cloud of sound, eventually coalescing into an almost classic metal sounding chug, a murky hypnotic dirge that churns malevolently to the record's end.
MPEG Stream: "Isvar Savasana"
MPEG Stream: "La Det Bli Lys"

SUTEKH HEXEN Luciform (Wands) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally, the debut full length from this Bay Area black metal / blacknoise duo, who in recent months have garnered a whole lot of hype, based on a flurry of killer (albeit insanely limited) releases, and a recent West Coast tour, which found the duo playing outside of the Bay Area for the first time ever. And while we've raved about everything we could get our hands on from these guys, this is definitely the band's finest moment, albeit, weirdly their least noisy. But noisiness is all relative. Cuz this is still plenty noisy, it's just compared to some of their previous releases, and their blistering liver performances, this stuff is far removed from that black metal Merzbow sonic attack that defined their early days.
Here, the noise takes a backseat to the black metal, which is actually a good thing, the riffing, and prerecorded blast beats, weaving a woozy washed out buzzscape, which on their own, would make the sound a sort of soft focus Wold, all washed out and blackly buzzy, but over this blackened foundation, the duo add heapings of noise, the vocals, processed to oblivion, sound like gouts of white hot buzz, more guitars, extra layers of blackness, it's as if the black metal core is at the center of a swirling cloud of jagged, caustic blacknoise, the two seeming to function independently for the most part, but the band create dramatic dynamics with the twisted mix, which finds, various elements dropping out, only to erupt and explode back into action moments later, or the black metal riffing getting fused to the blacknoise creating a harsh wall of sound, which just as quickly separates leaving the blast and buzz to pound furiously, shadowed by streaks of hiss and hum, the sounds dramatically stereo panned too for further twisted effect.
The stretches of ambience are darkly effective, as are the weirdly mournful clean guitar parts, the band obviously capable of creating mood and mystery, and when the buzz kicks in, none of that mood or mystery is lost, instead, it's absorbed into the frenzied black chaos which transforms the sound into something more than noise, more than black metal, it's a darkly epic, strangely textured assemblage of buzz and blast, howl and pound, the sound a living black entity, sonic chaos given form, this is the real transcendental black metal, all should be worshipping before the altar of the priests of Sutekh Hexen.
LIMITED TO 350 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "The Great Whore"
MPEG Stream: "In Worship, They Weep His Name"

SUTEKH HEXEN Ordo Adversarial (Wands) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This local black metal / drone-noise duo have been cranking out recordings like crazy, not that you would ever know it, as all of them were released as lavishly packaged, outrageously limited cassettes (and all in batches of something like 50 copies). Finally, the band seem to be making waves beyond the WAY underground, and a comprehensive reissue campaign is under way, as well as a whole spate of about-to-drop new releases. But THIS, this is the first recording we've been able to get from these guys to list, and fans of noise drenched blackness, and super distorted psychedelic heaviness will be in heaven (hell?). A blasting, blown out, ultraviolent blend of raw, primitive black metal buzz, dense drones, lysergic psychedelic atmosphere and caustic abrasive blacknoise, these two tracks require iron ears, a black soul and preferably some headphones to get lost in SH's bizarre black cacophony.
"Bled Thy Likeness" is a blurred and muted expanse of crackly, staticky black thrum, murky and muddy, a writhing, swirling sprawl of hazy washed out minor key riffage, laced with streaks of soaring guitars woven into a background of distorted black ambience, eventually exploding into a whitenoise drenched blast of heaving, crumbling, ultra distorted blackdrone crush, hellish shrieked vokills smeared into undulating sheets of Merzbowian buzz, all underpinned by a haunting monkish chantlike melody, adding a strange bit of melancholy mystery to the harsh hellish buzz.
"Murmur" is just as intense, a wild frenzied blown out assault of fierce and fucked up blacknoise chaos, the shrieked vox distorted and processed into another layer of furious buzz, tangled up in the frenzied berserker riffing, the whole sound a twisted, gnarled tangle of face melting, ear shredding, soul shearing fury, the song somehow blossoming part way through into something subtly more melodic, the blacknoisebuzz and grim black-blast infused with a strangely lush and warm melodic undercurrent, a deep sonic swell, rife with epic black metal majesty, but nearly suffocated by the caustic clouds of brittle buzz and in-the-red roar overhead.
LIMITED TO 400 COPIES. Super striking, thick black and white jackets, and printed on nice heavy vinyl...
MPEG Stream: "Bled Thy Likeness"
MPEG Stream: "Murmur"

SUTEKH HEXEN & ANDREW LILES Breed In Me The Darkness (Merzbild) cassette 9.98
This latest batch of tapes from local label Merz Tapes finds the label expanding and rebranding, now known as Merzbild, and no longer limiting themselves to cassettes. It is however this most recent batch of cassettes we're here to discuss. In this case, it's this collaboration between SF black metal / blacknoise outfit Sutekh Hexen, and long time Nurse With Wound collaborator Andrew Liles.
There would be a time when Liles remixing a black metal band would seem crazy, but the fact is that at this point, SH are really only tangentially black metal, as they spend much of their time weaving dense dronescapes, or sculpting bursts of feral ear splitting noise into tense and intense walls of blown out sound, granted, there's still plenty of blast and buzz, but it's often obfuscated and recontextualized. Each side of this tape seems to offer up both the original track, and then Liles' reworking. On the A side, SH unfurl a dense blurred rumble, peppered with muted bombastic thuds, and subterranean pulses, buried voices, and a tranced out sprawl of undulating layers, blacks and greys, haunting and harrowing, a sound that's bleak and abject, the perfect launching point for Liles, who takes that track and stretches it from a little under 6 minutes, to almost 18, making the focal point a haunting, reverbed piano, drifting in soft billowing clouds of what we take to be the original track, letting the occasional drum blat leap out, or spidery tendrils of industrial buzz, gnarled tangles of voices speaking in tongues, and then suddenly, at about 10 minutes in, the song is transformed into what sounds like a sort of industrial rock? Chugging metallic guitars, big drums, all over that churning Sutekh brood, there's even some psychedelic guitar leads, unclear if somehow those sounds were buried in the original track, or if Liles just went nuts and essentially turned SH, at least briefly, into a weird industrial metal band, but then suddenly, it all fades away, leaving the track to slither ominously to the end, trailing a cloud of buzzing detritus in its wake. Wow.
The flipside finds SH exploding right out of the gate with a blurred blast of black buzz, murky and swirling and dizzyingly dense, before settling into another long sprawl of black ambient drift, much more haunting, abstract and serene. And again Liles takes SH's 5 minutes and more than doubles it, the whole thing, a brooding blackened driftscape, the tones oozing and rife with what sounds like some sort of demonic chorale, a blurred black raga, laced with sheets of harsh noise, jagged shards of processed vocal hiss, building to an impossibly dense and noisy, speaker destroying crescendo, that sounds like multiple Herman Nitsch compositions playing at once, atonal, droned out, and weirdly mesmerizing, underpinned by what sounds like organ or calliope, the vibe very cinematic, the sound collapses into a cacophony of smashing bottles, before beginning the slow build again, this time to a blown out, smeary drone, seemingly constructed from the blast and buzz of the original, but here recast as something more Tim Hecker like, massive crumbling distorted swells, and granular sheets of sound rife with melodic murk, gradually collapsing into a strange stuttering digital freakout, and one final burst of smashing glass.
Super sweet packaging, printed silver-on-smoky-clear tapes, reflective silver on swirly green and black J-cards.
MPEG Stream: "We Once Walked Upon These Coals (...To Save Us From Satan's Power Mix)"
MPEG Stream: "Selling Light to Lesser Gods (He Is Risen Mix)"

SVARTAHRID As The Sunrise Flickers (Napalm) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
More grim-faced black metal from a crew of modern-day Vikings. We'd never heard of them before, but I don't think this disc is their debut. They rock harder than most, and boast a great cold sound (very 'Frosty', one could say...). Energetic AND majestic, good stuff for fans of the genre!

SVARTPEST Ved Den Drabelige Inngang Til Helvete (Baphomet) cd 11.98
If you were wandering around in the cold Norwegian wilderness and found a dark cave inhabited by a tribe of trollish troglodytes who just happened to have their own black metal band and were in the middle of a really good, raw and evil rehearsal session, with nasty distorted guitars (I guess they have a portable generator) and still-bloody animal bones and skulls for percussion, THAT's the Svartpest experience. Svartpest, a severely anti-Christian crew of two or three some of whom also play in bands like Gorelord and Wurdulak, says their music "is based upon the ancient hymns of the primitive cavemen that once lived on the mountains and fjords of Norway" and certainly the cavernous atmosphere and primal grunt of their third album "Ved Den Drabelige..." gives us no reason to disbelieve 'em. They really do use bones and blocks of wood for percussion, alongside more usual black/Viking metal components like rasping vocals, blasting drums, and buzzsaw guitar riffing. What makes this great is how the metal parts are made even more powerful and majestic by the band's forays into ritualistic creepiness of a more ambient, malevolent hippy nature -- it's like Mayhem crossed with that 60's ESP band Cromagnon at times. (Note to Baphomet label: next time, don't let the cavemen themselves master the cd, 'cause that's probably why there's careless little "digi-farts" left in between the tracks.)
MPEG Stream: "I Skapelsen Av Det Kolde..."
MPEG Stream: "En Hyllest, Til Norge Vaart Land"

SVARTTHRON Soundtrack to My Solitude (ISO666) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SVEDHOUS Agaric Plot (Misanthropic Art Production) cd 13.98

SVETOVID Valhallan Dreams (Werewolf Promotion / Hammerbund) cassette 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We had never heard Canadian black metal horde Svetovid before, but we got this, their debut full length, from the same place we got recent BM cassette faves from Surt, Sunchariot, Gnieu, and Lascowiec, so were pretty excited to check them out, and weren't sure what to expect from the haunting acoustic folk intro, a lilting and slightly stumbling bit of Appalachian sounding fingerpicked melancholia, which lead directly into an avalanche of crumbling blackness, a swirling, whirling wall of sound, infused with a surprising amount of melody, the drums buried in the mix, the vocals a reverbed croak, but the guitars, dense and lush and layered, and while buzzy, almost more soaring and shimmery, the blackbuzz blossoming into something almost shoegazey, that minus the vox, might be something you'd hear on Starlight Temple Society. Blissed out blackened heaviness that is as poppy as it is buzzy, whether it's intentional or not, but we're digging it a LOT. And actually, maybe not all of the record is that poppy or blissed out, once we got done listening to that first track about ten times, the sound gets darker and meaner, chugging and churning, the vocals a sinister monstrous bellow, but somehow, the sound is still melodic, almost as if someone was used to the chordal structure of pop music, and was applying it to black metal, but the result is something grim and black, but warm and fuzzy and washed out, that track, not at all blasting, instead swirling and shimmery, the guitars tranced out and cyclical, the sound nearly psychedelic. We could go on and describe all the tracks here, but the sooner this review is done, the sooner we can strap on our Walkman, get away from this computer and dig in to the rest of this tape.
LIMITED TO 320 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.

SWINE Marked By The Baron (Vanguard Productions) cd 9.00
Sale priced! It's strange what a huge influence Bay Area black metallers Von ended up being on pretty much everybody. Not really all that surprising really, they did after all totally destroy. Filthy and grimy and so heavy and primal and raw. It seems like every black metal band has at one time or another covered Von, there was even a full length tribute, and of course, there have been about a million bands who did everything in their power to channel the spirit and ferocity of Von, one of the most successful being Swine, the Von worshipping side project of a guy called Swine appropriately enough, frontman for Hateful Abandon, whose most recent record, Famine (Or Into The Bellies Of Worms), a collection of blackened gothic gloom, we highlighted a while back.
On Marked By The Baron, it's Satanic Blood Angel time, ALL the time, blasting drums supplied by a furious frenzied drum machine, the guitars thick and gritty, buzzy and intense, the vocals drenched in reverb and effects, grunting and growling, as much as howling and shrieking. The sound manages to be weirdly moody and dramatic too, with moaning guitar melodies drifting over the churning black filth below, giving most of the tracks a weirdly wistful vibe, considering how fast and furious the rest of the music is. Rapid fire, frenzied and relentless, pounding and punky, but so atmospheric and with such a vile vibe, and that aforementioned moody melancholy, culminating in the final track, that dips into some super emotional classic sounding doom, even slipping into some mournful clean guitar, and after a few minutes of silence, returning with a bit of washed out dreamy drone, weird.
But beyond those little bits of strangeness, this is some gloriously heavy, harsh, beautifully depressive, raw blasting blackness.
MPEG Stream: "Black Soul King"
MPEG Stream: "Beast Call"
MPEG Stream: "Tusk Toothed"