[ aquarius records — Metal Black Metal ]

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

SORRY. Debut full length from these St. Vitus style doomsters. For fans of Reverend Bizarre.

You'd probably never guess listening to this, the debut from a mysterious trio called Gauchiste, that one of the guys here plays guitar in Loincloth, whose recent Iron Balls Of Steel record for Southern Lord was a huge hit around here, but even with that sort of metal pedigree, one that does in fact extend to all three members, you won't find any churning math rock metal mayhem here, or even pounding downtuned chug, instead, this trio specializes in a haunting hybrid of minimal electronics, abstract soundscapery, and droned out avant metal, that more resembles some strange soundtrack than a metal record proper, the whole thing meticulously assembled mostly via computer, using the various sounds in different ways to produce all manner of timbres and textures, evoking a gorgeous hauntological dread, that is seldom found in more traditional metal. The opener is a noxious cloud of blurred guitar buzz, skittery cymbal shimmer, and buried double kick drumming, that initially sound more like some strange chittering insect, it's definitely metal, but a sort of smeared abstract offshoot, with those drums fading out gradually, eventually leaving dense slabs of heaving chordal thrum and post industrial shimmer. The follow up track starts out like it's gonna ooze into some sort of dense doomic creep, but instead blissed out into a billowy cloud of ethereal ambience, washed out drones, and buried processed vox, while elsewhere on the record, deep rumbles pour forth like some sort of downtuned sonic avalanche, the occasional metal vokills, are appropriately growly and gruff, but they're suspended in a sort of blackbuzz stasis, with the most metal moments more reminiscent of a group like SUNNO))), or even more appropriately, like some obscure Cold Meat black ambient outfit. Guitars seem to be the main instrument, but they're rarely left in their distinctly guitar-like form, instead, deftly transformed into what sounds like whirring organs, or smeared blackened hum, over which the group lace skittery glitches and machinelike rhythms, rarely propulsive, or even strictly that rhythmic, more another textural element, to add to the already bleak atmosphere that infuses pretty much every moment. The last two tracks probably best sum up the group's sound, slipping from glimmering dreaminess, almost orchestral at moments, to blurred blackened ambience, and finally to super dense drone, a harsh, haunting, abject sprawl of super cinematic malevolence, that should most definitely appeal to metalheads and dronelords alike. The packaging is stunning, the lp in a deluxe, heavy paper, weirdly cut multi-panel jacket, the cd-r (why a cd-r and not a real cd we do not know), in a cool hinged metallic case, with a plastic front panel, the disc visible through the plastic.

MPEG stream: Viols
MPEG stream: Choeur L
MPEG stream: Autist Hammer
MPEG stream: Stop Believin

Sure, we've all heard plenty of viking metal. Every black metal dude somehow miraculously has that Norse warrior blood flowing hot through their veins. "Sure, we're from Idaho, but OUR ANCESTORS WERE MIGHTY VIKINGS!!" Blah blah blah, longboats, funeral pyres, horned helmets, whatever, now it's time for some RAW CELTIC FOLK METAL!! And not just any sort of raw Celtic folk metal, no this is totally deranged and demented and damaged folky buzzy Celtic black metal. Think Benighted Leams, Urfaust and the like, but flavored with a heap of Celtic fiddles and jaunty folk rhythms. The riffs and melodies are distinctly Celtic for sure, but they are drenched in tinny buzz, wrapped in a warm cloak of blackness, a folky black blast, not all that strange on their own, but then the vocals come in and all bets are off. The vocals are of course of the chanting, sing songy, sea shanty, steins hoisted variety, but the way they're recorded transforms them, and this whole record into something completely different. A soaring dramatic croon, a cross between Urfaust's over the top Ethel Merman-ish warble (Gauhaert does indeed include at least one member of Urfaust!), Circle's Mika Ratto and an anguished black metal moan, but they sound like they were recorded at the bottom of a 10 million gallon iron cistern, a dense cloud of reverb and overtones, the vocals soar and reverberate, until they are a huge swirl that overtakes the music completely, when the vocals stop briefly, the music re-emerges as if stepping out of a fog bank, before the vocals kick back in and the song becomes a dense grey hued swirling smear of sound. There are also a couple of ambient tracks, dark dreamy rumbles, with strange chordal swells and wheezing organs, mournful horns, mysterious and elegiac in its sorrowful trudge. But those are brief respites amidst the dizzying flurries of wild and bizarre Celtic blackness. So weird, but really fucking cool.

MPEG stream: Blaasbalg Der Zwijnen
MPEG stream: Bealach Na' Marbh

Another flood of new tapes, all black and very mysterious, this one from the strangely named Geheimnis. Das Negras Montanhas begins with long drawn out drones and monk like chants before the band launches into its ultra lo-fi black metal buzz. The drums way down in the mix, never blasting really, just sort of pounding away, the guitars way up front, cycling through fuzzy black riffs, very hypnotic, the vocals buried in the mix, a sort of rumbling grumbling gurgle, the strangest part of this tape are the non-metal interludes, fading in and our fairly abruptly, the chanting, the sound of surf crashing, winds and insects, often fading out after only a few seconds, sometimes going on for minutes, eventually the black buzz returns, fading in and lurching into action, another midtempo lope through droning black forests and wide open expanses of bleak black soundscapes. The sound is hissy and lo-fi, but very motorik, sometimes almost sounding like a black metal Circle. Riffs repeating over and over, occasionally slipping into some strange upper register filigree before returning to its glorious black trudge.

Not to be confused with the German Geist, whose record we reviewed here a few years back, this Geist is from Israel, and this record, their full length debut, is a furious, tortured, sickening blast of hateful buzz drenched brutality, in fact the sheer blown out, super distorted buzziness ranks up there with groups like Wrath Of The Weak, who at one point we proclaimed as "THEE buzziest black metal band around". The guitar tone here is prickly and crunchy and wreathed in hiss, insectoid and gristly, the sort of guitar sound we can't ever get enough of, that swirling black buzz wrapped around buried blasting beats, harsh howling vox, and some soaring epic melodies, the band blasting along at light speed, only to slip into a woozy seasick dirge, the buzz seeming to ooze and expand, wrapping its inky tendrils around the warbly minor key melodies and the super creepy echoey ambience. And hell, that's just the first song. Apparently these tracks were recorded live, and left mostly unaltered, to capture the raw fury and unrelenting abject misery of their sound, and it definitely worked. A cascade of in-the-red heaviness, that definitely headphones to truly appreciate it, impossibly lush buzzscapes, doomy swirling almost psychedelic dirges, all manner of haunting spectral sounds, voices, chordal swells, all woven into the bands super distorted blackbuzz crush. And sans those headphones, via just speakers, the sound borders on the Merzbow-ian, each song a swirling squall of face melting heaviness and hellish soul shearing buzz. But it's not all noisemetal punishment, these guys infuse their hellish howl with some gorgeous atmospherics, and some twisted downright catchiness, soaring and majestic one second, haunting and melancholic the next, not to mention some cool proggy almost Voivod-y angularity, and some dense washes of smeary shimmer. At times the sound does veer into something more lurching and lumbering, like the punishing death march of the final track, but the majority of Der Ungeist is spent blasting and buzzing through thick clouds of dense, black hole buzz. So awesome.

MPEG stream: Mord
MPEG stream: Von Blut
MPEG stream: Der Wald

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

MPEG stream: Galeere
MPEG stream: Einen Winter Auf See

An absolutely killer slab of ultra raw, filthy and primitive lo-fi murky black metal. Lots of crusty riffing, blasting drums buried in reverb and tape hiss, bizarre grunted vocal spew, guitars that buzz and warble, and go from insectoid shrillness to tarpit filthiness often in the same song, and loads of low end bassy throb and other bits of random lo-fi 4 track production weirdness that make this freaky and fucked up. While on the surface this sounds like classic old school minimal buzz and blast black metal, stripped down and blown out, Bone Awl, Beherit, Von, Abruptum... The weird thing is, and maybe this is supposed to be a secret, but we're pretty sure that the man behind Geistus is in fact a former member of doomlords Yob! Hard to believe, but true! You won't hear that much Sabbathy sludge here although once in a while the songs slow down into a gorgeously doomy tarpit trudge, but it's never long before the band lurch back into action, and resume their harsh minimal pummel. So fucking great, the perfect balance of true kvlt blackness and slightly off kilter weirdness. For fans of all things simple and sludgy and brutal and black and crusty and filthy and EVIL!!!!

Profound Lore offer up yet another slab of twisted death metal, this one from a Canadian duo called Gevurah, whose sound is a furious, gnarled, downtuned, blackened, furious churning heaviness. After a brief lumbering doom-ic intro, the band immediately launch into a sonic onslaught that belies the fact that there's just two guys making all this noise. Unlike much of the blurred, twisted death metal we've been obsessing over of late. Gevurah lace their black death with plenty of melody, the songs often shifting into dark expanses off woozy melodic midtempo drift, but just as often exploding into Deathspell style atonal gnarled black noise, and returning here and there to that lurching doom-ed pound that opened the proceedings, but in all three cases, those elements are woven seamlessly into Gevurah's relentless, and furiously frantic death metal churn, the result is actually something that often transcends the tropes of every day death metal, transforming Gevurah's debut ep into something much more varied, more textured, and ultimately much more satisfying, and definitely the sort of blackened death, that might just appeal to folks who don't always find themselves digging death metal so much...

MPEG stream: I. The Essence Unbound
MPEG stream: II. Flesh Bounds Desecrated

With a name like Ghash, we kind of expected some sort of old school crusty punk, but this is some seriously unhinged and hateful buzzing blackness. Beginning with a weird ambient dronescape, complete with guttural growls and anguished wails, the band quickly stumbles into some of the strangest midtempo black metal we've heard in a while. Minus the drums, we'd be in serious Abruptum territory, simple riffs, repeated over and over, hovering in swirling fields of black ambience, with completely fucked up, reverb drenched, demented vocals, the sound is so abject and miserable, mournful and hopeless. The ultimate depressive suicidal blackness, but the drums... the drums change everything. Super simple and rigid, no fills, hardly any cymbals, just a never wavering machinelike midtempo beat. It's so relentless it sounds like it must be programmed, and the riffs are locked in perfectly with the drums, making it sound like this black buzz machine. A neverending loop of riff and drum beat, while over the top those vocals wail and howl, so doused in effects they sound like strange animals howling at the moon. Completely bizarre but totally mesmerizing. AWESOME.

We were all prepared to write this review thinking that this Ghast, from Wales, was in fact, the same as the Ghast whose last two split albums we had reviewed recently. The sound was quite different, but hey, bands do that all the time. Thankfully, we dug a little deeper and discovered that indeed there are two different Ghasts, one French Canadian, one Welsh! This Ghast is the one from Wales, and since they are in fact not the Ghast we already knew and loved, they are totally new to us, but there's plenty of room in our shrivelled black hearts for two different Ghasts, which is a good thing as we're starting to think we love these guys too. Where the -other- Ghast traffic in a crumbling lo-fi slow motion blackened doom, the Welsh Ghast, on So May The Curse Bind, their first proper full length, up the black quotient quite a bit. Right out of the gate, opening track "Crawl, Blighted And Afraid" explodes in a flurry of punkish blast beats, harsh vokills and buzzing frenzied riffage, raw and primal and a bit lo-fi, this is definitely frosty and grim sounding, but before too long the band can no longer resist the black hole pull of doom, and the tempo slows to a lurch, the blast beat transforms into a pound, the riff churns and chugs, occasionally, spinning out into little squalls of furious buzz, the melodies minor key and epic, a relentless black doom dirge, that shifts back to blasting buzz to finish off in a blaze of blackened fury. The rest of the tracks follow a similar path, veering back and forth between stumbling chaotic frenzy and lumbering doomic crush, buried within the murk and the mire though are haunting hook filled melodies and surprising guitar harmonies, which add a bit of texture and color to the blurred blackness. A few of the tracks slip into a D-beat pound, others stretch out into woozy seasick almost-waltzes, while "Pale Robe" slows everything waaaaay down for a weary depressive crawl through clouds of Burzumic buzz and spidery minor key guitar melodies, a sort of black doom ballad, melancholy, miserable, and weirdly beautiful.

MPEG stream: Crawl, Blighted And Afraid
MPEG stream: Give Your Wrists

This Ghast thing continues to confuse. There's the sick and sludgey Canadian Ghast, and then there's these guys, a Welsh blackened doom horde whose sound is similar enough to keep us constantly wondering if we've got the right Ghast. Both bands traffic in slow and low and heavy, serious doooooom for sure, but the Canadian Ghast are filthier and crustier, more a twisted sludge, like Bunkur or Moss, whereas these guys are more classically black doom, their sound melodic, but still grim and black, flitting easily from epic doomed trudge to frenzied blasting blackness. We've been digging their May The Curse Bind record A LOT (it was also just reissued as a swank double lp!) and had been DYING for more, and finally here it is, in the form of Terrible Cemetery. First, how amazing is the name Terrible Cemetery, it almost sounds like one of the guys in the band let his kid name the record, grim and scary maybe, but also sorta dorky, which just makes it cooler. The music though does sort of evoke a scary cemetery, the opening track a haunting loping bit of midtempo minor key blackness, with a KILLER main riff, seriously harrowing, lumbering melodic doom, rife with sick guitar buzz, plodding drum pound and maniacal screeching vocals, the second half finds the sound shift into full on black metal, with still more killer riffage, weirdly melodic, wound around a relentless blast beat, and more shrieked vox, total classic (c)old school black buzz for sure, raw and filthy and EVIL. The 20 minute title track is up next, "TERRIBLE CEMETERY", and right away it sounds like it, buzzing bass plod, spare skeletal drum pound, then clouds of frenzied buzzing guitar, howled demonic vokills, the vibe mournful and menacing, a gorgeously abject miserablist black doom death march, super emotional and intense and heavy, the track explodes in a brief stretch of gnarled black buzz, the guitars droned out and melodic, lending the blackness a strange sense of melancholy, only to shift back into a gorgeously epic plodding dirge, again epic and majestic and gloriously fraught with emotion, and like the first track, totally classic black metal flecked TRUE DOOM!! TROOOOOOOOM!!

MPEG stream: O Akhea Rheon
MPEG stream: Terrible Cemetery

We're pretty sure we have this Ghast thing all sorted out, there's a Ghast that's Welsh, and whose May The Curse Bind just got reissued on vinyl, who traffic in a sort of doom laced black metal, then there's this Canadian horde, whose sound is way more filthy and fucked up, a sort of glacial blackened crawl, all downtuned sludge, crumbling distortion, and harsh gurgled demonic vokills, not to mention the strange swirl of grit and grime and buzz and hiss that seems to surround everything they do like a glorious black sonic cloud of hiss and crackle. And that's precisely what you get on these two tracks, two extended filthfests, crushing, lumbering dirges, each a lurching sonic behemoth, howling and hateful and despondent and depressive and heavy and brutal as fuck. These ultradoom crawls creep malevolently along, the vocals sometimes doused in reverb, sometimes just grunting and gurgling demonically, melodies played out over minutes, buried in the murk and mire, super dynamic, and a little bit bizarre, especially the second track, the vocals sounding almost like a Muppet, the sonic death march being bombarded by strange electronics and streaks of skittery static. Pretty goddamn great. These guys should really get the same love bands like Moss and Bunkur and Corrupted do... We'd never heard of Abandoner before, but apparently, they're a sort of blackened post industrial drone outfit made up of members of US doom sludge juggernaut Unearthly Trance. Weirdly enough, UT would have been a perfect sonic match for Ghast, maybe too perfect, so instead, we're treated to, or punished by, Abandoner's caustic soundscapes, all wild bolts of feedback, strange processed noises, loads of buzz, and rumble, guitars not so much played and allowed to spew gouts of crunch and howl and skree, everything wrapped in a hazy field of murky thrum, laced with damaged electronics, noisy, but not NOISE, more like a sort of even more twisted, less melodic Wolf Eyes? But definitely cool stuff, and an interesting foil to Ghast's monstrous downtuned black doom trudge.

MPEG stream: Le Bouc Noir
MPEG stream: Lament For Gilroy

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

SORRY. Some seriously grim blacknoise weirdness here... We first heard from Ghast on their split with Yoga, we were pretty obsessed with both bands and have been on the hunt for more from both ever since. So Ghast have returned, on yet another split, offering up two more loooong tracks of their unique not-quite-doom, a dirgey crawl, that spends as much time shimmering and buzzing as it does pounding and lumbering. The opener here is 21 minutes of grinding corrosive soft buzz, think Tunnels, Wolf Eyes, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, that sort of thing, deep whirring low end, drifting beneath clouds of metallic buzz, plenty of fuzz and hiss, beneath it all, there does seem to be some sort of thick tarpit like riffing, but it's WAY down, more like a distant drone than anything overtly metal, but it does lend the track a serious sense of dread and foreboding, as if any second the track might splinter into pieces and explode into crushing doom, but it never does, instead ratcheting up the tension, like the soundtrack to some super abstract foreign horror film. An actual rhythm dose seem to develop, but it's cobbled together using hissy white noise, ominous whirring synths, buried and blurred vocals, and a super drawn out low end melody, creeping and creeping before the low end drops out leaving just a sea of high end electrical buzz, and weirdly enough the sound of sheep (!). The second track clocks in at nearly 12 minutes, and again, is more ambient than anything, bits of crackle, melted tape loops, field recordings, processed electronics, all blurred into a strange undulating drone, peppered with fragments of melody, some buried riffing, which finally crawls up from the murk, and the band, for the first time in nearly half an hour, launch into some lurching lumbering doom. But the sound is not massive or crushing, instead, it remains murky and muted, more bass heavy than anything, if there is guitar it's tuned WAY down and is locked in with the rumbling bass, the rhythm mechanical and machinelike, with a definite industrial vibe, the track slipping into brief stretches of ambient drone-like shimmer, before the band lurches back into action, pounding away, stripped down, but still heavy and doomy and mysteriously grim. Rape-X existed until now, as an MP3 file someone sent us a looong time ago, a half hour slab of blown out metalnoise, industrial drone weirdness. We'd notice it on the computer every once in a while and fire it up, and always think, "wow, this is pretty great, I wonder when they'll have a record". Well here it is. And Rape-X is a pretty good match for Ghast, seeing as they traffic in a similarly abstract doomy ambience, falling closer to Wolf Eyes or Blue Sabbath Black Cheer than any classic sort of doom. The vocals are huge part of the sound, and are harsh and super processed, demonic and maniacal sounding, giving the track a bit of a Whitehouse feel, ranting and proselytizing over a constantly shifting backdrop of blackened noise and droning harsh ambience. A glorious metallic cacophony, wreathed in hiss and skree, a bit like a way more static Sunroof!, the sound roiling and churning below the surface like some rough black sea, while that hellish voice continues to testify, the unholy scripture from some lost black gospel. Caveat Emptor, though: these have a pressing defect, it's minor, but it's definitely noticeable. The band was contacted about it, but apparently there's some bad blood with the label, so there will never be a new, corrected version, so we figured we would list it anyway, since otherwise it's pretty amazing, and the defect is so slight. Basically, the problem is, there's a digitial click at the beginning of each track. Annoying, distracting, yes, but it doesn't affect the songs themselves, so if you can handle that (you can also edit out the clicks yourself on your computer when you import it into your iTunes or whatever), then by all means pick this up, some seriously abject and harrowing doom-ed blacknoize.

MPEG stream: Tetanos
MPEG stream: Civil Servant: I The Cop

Yoga is a pretty unlikely name for a black metal band. But then Yoga from Portland, Oregon are a pretty unlikely sounding black metal band. So much so that we're not even sure they really are black metal. Or metal. But they are. Sort of. The sound of Yoga takes the lo-fi practice space recordings of grimmest of the BM outfits, and combines it with the murky muddy noise drenched blur of bands like Wold. But then take it even further rendering their sound so muted and lo fidelity that even when they're blasting furiously, it still sounds like a busted music box or an old black metal 78. And then there's the fact that Yoga spend a good amount of their time not blasting blackly, but instead, crafting synth heavy Goblin style film music, all throbbing bass and buzzing synths, creepy minor key melodies and tons of haunting ambience. Those songs too are wreathed in a foggy night-on-the-moors sort of murk, which ties those songs closely to the more blackened ones. The strange combination of grim and Goblin, the tripped out fucked up recording quality, the damaged arrangements, the looped hypnotic quality, turn Yoga into something totally out there, most likely way to abstract and psychedelic and deliriously lo-fi to appeal to folks �looking for grim buzzing blackness, but for the rest of you, if you can try to imagine some impossible mix of Philip Jeck, Wold, Goblin, the Skaters and some of the super weird EEE unblack bands, all produced by John Maus and Ariel Pink, then you will flip for this. The other band on this split, Ghast, are also not at all typical black metal, although they are much more distinctly metal than Yoga. Their sound is a super spare, slow motion blackened doom, still plenty lo-fi, the drums murky and down in the mix, the guitars more of a distant moan, sometimes soaring to the forefront, before drifting off again, the vocals super distorted and effected and harsh. All around this plodding blackness, creepy drones soar and shimmer, wail and keen, offering up a mournful abstract backdrop for Ghast's miserablist blackdoom. There's also a live track, where Ghast's sound is transformed into a crumbling blown out blackened drone, sounding almost like a metal band playing from behind a brick wall, the whole thing captured using a mic in a bucket of dirty water. The result is pretty fantastic, only the drums are at all identifiable, and then just barely, all the other instruments have been transformed into a mesmerizingly damaged, murky, muddy, sludgey pulsing drone. Awesome. We got these direct from the band, and got the last copies, so once we run out, we might not be able to get more...

MPEG stream: La Noche Del Terror Ciego
MPEG stream: Deep With-in The Cave Of Sesame
MPEG stream: Littlefoot

Must suck to be Ghast, considering that pretty much every review has to start with "not to be confused with the OTHER Ghast", so it probably sucks for the OTHER Ghast too. But in this case, we're not talking about the Welsh black doomlords, we're talking about the Quebecois black doomdronedirge horde Ghast, with an umlaut over the 'A', whose sound is a much more raw and filthy proposition, droned out and blackened, and who strangely enough seem to only release splits. Their first with avant black metal weirdos Yoga, their second with blacknoize horde Rape-X, and now, this one, a brand new split with Japanese ultra doom sludge outfit Zombie Blasphemy. As always, Ghast do not disappoint, offering up two lengthy slabs of abject, nihilistic slow motion creep, lumbering, lurching, troglodytic crush, the guitars massive sprawls of low end buzz, feedback everywhere, like Eyehategod doused in (more) cough syrup, a funeral crawl, a throbbing cloud of buzz and thrum, the vocals a beastly grunted howl, way off in the distance, keening high end skree plays out a melody stretched out over minutes, the riffing glacial and oozing and black, the track gathering momentum eventually, but peaking at a plod. Somehow, the other Ghast track is even MORE minimal and abstract, loose drumming laid over a haze of feedback and amp buzz, distant sirens, almost ambient, no riffs, just soft swirls of guitar noise, and some strange mewled vox, all the while the drums pounding sporadically and erratically, the last few minutes, the various strands seeming to come together to form something much more dense and droney, still black and abstract, but a strange sort of chanted sludge raga ritual. Awesome. We had never heard Japanese sludgelords Zombie Blasphemy before, but much like their sonic compatriots in Coffins, they traffic in slow and low extreme doom, with an awesome guitar sound, so distorted it sounds like your speakers are fried, the vocals an impossibly guttural grunt, this is Moss / Corrupted style doom, but even more sludgey and crusty, the guitars occasionally offer up wild tangles of unhinged spidery melodies, almost leads, draped over the woozy warped lumbering chug and churn, the band do crank the temp here and there, but even then, the sound is SO blown out, and low fidelity and in the red, it turns everything into a glorious blackened noise drenched buzzy blur, and when they unfurl some wild psychedelic leads during the final track, it almost sounds like some sort of Tim Hecker / Merzbow mash up. So good. Total metal noise drone doom radness. For sure need to hear more from these guys. And hell, wouldn't hurt to finally get a non split Ghast full length too. Totally recommended blast of twisted noise drenched extreme heaviness, two different, but equally twisted and genius takes on ultra slo-mo doom drone sludge...

MPEG stream: Jeanne D'Arc
MPEG stream: Cutthroth Machinery

Darkthrone fans, check it out! It's a solo album - or at least, a solo ep, about 25 minutes long, with 4 songs on it - from Ted Skjellum, aka Nocturno Culto, one half of that idiosyncratic Norwegian black metal institution. Why he called his solo project Gift Of Gods we don't know, why not just call it the Nocturno Culto Band when you've already got a cool name like that? We also don't know why he didn't just put these songs on a Darkthrone album, 'cause in the liner notes, ol' Ted says this is his outlet for making music in the vein of '80s heavy metal, but of course that (in part) has been what Darkthrone has been doing on their last 4 or 5 albums anyway. Certainly any of the four tracks here could easily have appeared as one of the Nocturno Culto contributions to this year's Darkthrone opus The Underground Resistance, which alternated songs written and sung by Nocturno Culto with songs written and sung by the other half of the Darkthrone duo, Fenriz. The only real difference here is that N.C. is playing drums instead of Fenriz, as well as handling almost everything else: guitar, bass, lyrics, & vocals. N.C. does get help from his pal K.A. Hudbreider on rhythm guitar, while K.A.'s brother provides guests vocals on one track. Punningly named opener "Enlightning Strikes" sets the tone, with its surging, doomic riffs and N.C.'s rasping vokills, singing lyrics that are both morbid and cosmic. It's heavy, headbanging stuff, which segues nicely into an equally heavy instrumental, the triumphant title track, again loaded with churning riffage as well as loads of glorious lead guitar. That's followed by the disc's most traditionally '80s sounding song, which turns out to in fact be a cover, a rockin' number called "Looking For An Answer", originally recorded by an obscure Swedish heavy metal band called Universe back in 1985. A pretty great song, actually, and it fits right in, even though N.C. brings in a ringer to handle the more melodic demands of the vocals (quite well done by the aforementioned brother). Finally the ep winds up with the downer, doomy "Last Solstice", a track lengthy and pounding like the opener. Pure melancholy majesty; the '80s metal being referenced here has got to be Celtic Frost. So, basically, if you liked The Underground Resistance (we did!), then you can consider this ep the equivalent of previously unreleased bonus tracks, quite worthy ones at that. Now we'll be looking for a reissue of Universe's album... Slipcased jewel case compact disc packaging (vinyl version AWOL at the moment).

MPEG stream: Enlightning Strikes
MPEG stream: Looking For An Answer

Another frosty blast of mighty white metal. Or unblack metal. Whatever you want to call it, this stuff is blacker in sound, if not in spirit, than much of the so called black metal that comes our way. And as if to prove just how un-evil they are, Glaciial have reclaimed the extra 'i' (like in Celestiial, Mutiilation, etc.) as if to spit in the face of the dark lord. No longer is buzzing black metal strictly the purview of Satan, a new movement of positive, Christian black metal has slowly been making waves, creating a totally mindblowing catalog of bizarre and super original black metal. Buzzing and brutal enough to appeal to the true grim warriors, but weird enough to have -us- all in a lather, and with a positive message that goes down a lot smoother delivered via a face full of corpse painted spike encrusted unblack buzz! Glaciial is a trio made up of three of the most active members in the Midwestern unblack metal scene, one part Light Shall Prevail (reviewed here a few lists back), one part Flaskavsae and one part Wrathful Plague and the result is again, fucking NUTS!!! The sticker on the cd describes this as fast and atmospheric black metal, but boy does that not nearly do this record justice. It is definitely atmospheric in that the buzz is so pervasive and blown out and thick that it smears into a massive slow shifting whirl of swirling buzz, even though the music it's wrapped around is blazing fast. And there are melodies, these songs have hooks like crazy, but they are buried under a million pounds of black buzz. But it's the vocals. What is it with all these unblack metal bands?! It's like they are all capable of singing in tongues. The Agathothodion we reviewed had some of the weirdest vocals we had ever heard, a moaning drifting croon, like a smeared falsetto. But the vocals here take the cake. We might go so far as to say most fucked and most amazing vocals EVER. A hissing rasp that alternately sounds like a Tuvan throat singer with a tracheotomy or a Sleestak. A swirling reverbed distorted raspy whisper that whips over the icy backdrop like some frozen arctic wind. HHHHHHHZZZZZZHHHZZZZZZZ. Awesome. And when the band slows down and dooms out it's seriously fucking frightening. Get down on your knees and bask in the divine unblack glory that is Glaciial!!

MPEG stream: Frozen Epitaph
MPEG stream: Atheistic Death
MPEG stream: Digging My Own Grave

Brand new split from these two purveyors of black filth, LA black metal trio Harassor, and Kentucky one man black metal outfit Glass Coffin. Harrassor start things off with a surprising bit of poppiness, the opening of "Promise Of Fire" is crazy catchy, sounding like it could explode into some sort of M83 / Weekend sort of noisepoppiness, but instead, the vocals swoop in, an inhuman shriek, and the sound splinters into some seriously grim blackness, but without ever really losing the vibe of that first riff, in fact, whenever that riff is present, it sounds like some sort of blackened shoegaze, but the song is in constant movement, lurching from chaotic thrashing black blast to churning death march doom, to Venom-ous black metal stomp, but eventually returning to THAT riff. Has us wondering what kind of noisy beauty these guys could whip up if they set their minds to it. But metal heads fear not, the rest of the Harassor half is furious, chugging black metal pound and thrashing, shrieking griminity, although we prefer their sound when it slows down, into a sort of black doom, which it does often, and these guys conjure up some seriously intense doomic ruminations, the sound perfectly murky and blown out. And we just had a chance to see these guys play a couple weeks back, and they were SOOO good. Glass Coffin start their side off with some classic sounding metal, a little lo-fi, some majestic leads, gruff vokills, before the sound splinters into something more raw and grim and urgent, buzzing insectoid riffing, weird brittle band room production, leads WAY up in the mix, twisted outsider lo-fi primitive blackness that definitely pushes all our raw BM buttons, but then the second track is TOTALLY different, a murky, muddy, frantic blast of black buzz, the drums buried in the mix, growled throat shredding vox, the sound still loose and chaotic and stumbly, the third track too, dramatically different production, but similarly buzzy and grim and hellish, but stick around for the final GC track, the weirdest of the bunch, black ambience beneath a buzzing riff, suspended in space, weird harmonics, a little bit cant post rocky, but also sort of damaged and abstract, a trippy droned out soft noise blackness, that had us wishing for WAY more of that! LIMITED TO 300 COPIES!! Includes a download code too.

MPEG stream: Promise Of Fire
MPEG stream: The Deathless Urge
MPEG stream: Satanic Sacrifice
MPEG stream: Order Of The Rusted Chalice

MPEG stream: The Kingdom Of Flesh And Decay
MPEG stream: Above As It Is Below

French black metallers Glorior Belli continue down the lefthand path, moving ever further away from the Deathspell style angular black buzz that defined their early sound toward something that sounds more, well, like Pantera maybe, or Down? Crazy we know, but their last record, The Great Southern Darkness paired the aforementioned black buzz, with some serious rocking, as in Southern rock, as in shit kicking, skull stomping, BIG riff, hard RAWKing heaviness. And c'mon, this new one is called, Gators Rumble, Chaos Unfurls, how can you not expect more of that blackened heavy rock? Which is precisely what you get on opener "Blackpowder Roars", with a killer main riff, totally Sabbathy, spidery stoner rock leads, bellowed vox, that veer dangerously close to Phil Anselmo territory, there's even some total wailing super rock clean vocals, that get a little Alice In Chains, and this is all fucking awesome, imagine those bands but heavier and blacker, and this is IT, and it sounds killer. But maybe it seems like they've yet to commit wholly to this new sound, cuz the second track slips right back into gnarled black metal buzz, and these guys are still masters, the sound fierce and fucked up and furious, fans of DSO, Katharsis, Funeral Mist, this is your shit, oh wait, at least until the swinging kick ass Southern rock breakdown a minute or so in, and then it's right back into more atonal black buzz. What the fuck! So killer. The new sound so much more seemingly integrated into their old sound, the shift between the two, as natural as anything, the songs eminently more headbangable, the grooviness not at all taking away anything from the black fury, if anything, it seriously just makes it that much more ROCKING. And then they go whole hog balls out stoner groove, like on "Ain't No Pit Deep Enough", it's like the heaviest stoner rock EVER. And so it goes for the rest of the record, with the blackness more serving the stoner rock than the other way around, check out "A Hoax, A Croc" - a jam later day Corrosion Of Conformity would have killed for, like a supercharged ultra heavy Allman Brothers blowout, that eventually erupts into something blacker and buzzier, only to slip right back into that main riff. Holy fuck, this is fast becoming our new favorite records. Troo grim hordes be damned, this shit KILLS, so catchy, so heavy, so groovy, stoner metallers who never gave black metal a second glance, this is THEE record that will change your mind. And if you like the idea of blackened groovy stoner metal heaviness, this might be your new favorite too.

France pretty much has the market cornered on modern progressive black metal. Deathspell Omega obviously, Hell Militia, Amesoeurs, Alcest, Peste Noire, Mutiilation, Blut Aus Nord, Aluk Todolo, Spektr, Angmar, Wolfe, and now you can add Glorior Belli to the list. Deathspell fans will go apeshit for these guys, their buzzing blackness is all mathy and post rocky, songs lurch and sway, some songs are thick furious blasts, relentless and dense with black grit, the sound massive and crushing, while others are sprawling post black doomscapes, the guitars unwinding into fractured melodies, the drums stuttering through convoluted tempos, and even the blasting black numbers, more often than not splinter into super angular blackmath workouts. Manifesting The Raging Beast somehow manages to be raw and grim, but simultaneously super dense and incredibly heavy, the production is incredible, the guitars are thick streaks of luminous melody, wound into black thunderbolts, the drums sound like sticking your head in a cement mixer full of anvils, as much as we love us some super lo-fi tinny 4-track buzz, it's kind of awesome to have a record sound this powerful, especially a black metal record. The riffs are kick ass, and catchy, and the band are not afraid of a groove, so much of the record is spent lurching through weird black waltzes or swinging in strange time signatures before exploding back into soul shearing blasts. And it's that balance between relentless black onslaught, and strange tangled weirdness that keeps this record sounding so amazing. Definitely for fans of DSO, Funeral Mist, Katharsis and other like minded progressive black metal hordes...

MPEG stream: From Darkness There Springs Light
MPEG stream: Deadly Sparks
MPEG stream: Sinister Resonance

What is it about France? For years now, this unsuspecting nation has been churning out some of the most vile, merciless, and best black metal on the planet. Groups like Deathspell Omega and Blut Aus Nord have set a new standard that expertly blends bizarre, progressive experimentation with a blackened attack that only a fool would criticize for not being "true". The results are undeniable, and it should be clear that among those redefining black metal for a new age, the French are at the top of the heap. For some reason, Glorior Belli has yet to receive the attention bestowed on many of their countrymen, but, Satan willing, things will definitely change with the arrival of Meet Us At The Southern Sign, the band's third album. Glorior Belli may not be the weirdest of the bunch, but FUCK do these guys know how to conjure up the perfect blend of crushing brutality with a well defined sense of off kilter, seasick melodies and an overall approach that simply rocks. With that said, this album does come across as something different, but not in a "listen to my oscillator" kind of way. Maybe the weirdness here is relative, since we're talking about a band that is relentlessly metal at the heart of it all, but Glorior Belli's more lumbering numbers, such as opener "Once In A Blood Red Moon" almost come across as what present day Earth might sound like if they gave it all up to the dark side. It's hard to come out and say this, surely many will disagree, but some of this *almost* moves with the flow of the blues. It's doomy. It's dirgey. It sounds like the black metal version of waking up in your trailer with a horrible hangover after a night of intense drinking at the local shithole. Mainman Infestvvs's guttural croak is surprisingly similar to the legendary bark of John Brannon, most famous for his work with hardcore gods Negative Approach, but ALSO revered as the crooner for bluesy post-punk crew the Laughing Hyenas. Of course, the artwork could also confirm this bluesy presence, as could the song titles themselves. And then, holy shit, without even looking beforehand, we notice a peculiar song title... "In Every Grief Stricken Blues", another behemoth of mid-tempo, down and out goodness. Fuck, first Diamatragon's Crossroad, now this. Maybe we're in the early stages of a new sub-genre? With all that said, it is certainly impossible to ignore how insanely, overwhelmingly METAL this is. Fear not, for there are plenty of lightspeed blast beats, grinding dual guitars, and heavy as fuck winding bass grooves, which add a weird mathy element to the maelstrom. All contribute equally to the potent, concentrated assault of Glorior Belli, making this one of the best metal albums of the year. So unbelievably, incomprehensibly awesome, we're stilll trying to wrap our heads around it all...

MPEG stream: Once In A Blood Red Moon
MPEG stream: The Forbidden Words
MPEG stream: Meet Us At The Southern Sign

We've been trying to track this down for ages after reading about Glorior Belli in Terrorizer. Assorted comparisons to Dissection and Watain and Deathspell Omega and the like had us practically foaming at the mouth. Finally after months of searching we finally managed to get a bunch of these in. The first thing we noticed was how much it looks like the Watain records, or any of the releases on N.E.D. (home to DSO, Ondskapt, Funeral Mist, etc), with a cool woodcut on the cover, arcane black and grey graphics, vaguely religious imagery, everything sort of distressed looking, as if it was taken from some long buried parchment. But what the hell, this band probably -should- be on N.E.D., it would be a perfect fit. Buzzing super technical, ultra raw blackened thrash, with darkly melodic breakdowns verging on post rock, lots of majestic riffing, and stretches of super blasting buzz! The whole thing though has a strangely melodic bent that helps it stand out from other black metal records, an almost indie-rock quality to the melodies, somehow super catchy while at the same time being suffocatingly black and grim. Quite a feat indeed. Anyone who has been digging Watain, Deathspell Omega (especially the newest one), Funeral Mist, or any of that stuff NEEDS this for sure!

MPEG stream: O Laudate Dominus
MPEG stream: Poisoned Flesh

We've mentioned it before, but it seems like few can touch French black metal when it comes to originally and innovation, whether it's the gnarled twisted post rock flecked ritualistic blackness of Deathspell Omega, or the industrial drone drenched black buzz of Blut Aus Nord, and on past records, French horde Glorior Belli seemed to hew close to DSO's sound, the same sort of mysterious progressive blackness, that was until their 2009 record Meet Us At The Southern Sign, where GB established themselves as perhaps the strangest of the French BM bunch, infusing the usual black blasts and grim buzz with all manner of not-specifically-black-metal elements, whether it's sort of a twangy bit of moody meander, or punkish vocal howls, or some downright nearly blues sounding moments, not to mention a penchant for rocking, and we're not talking buzzing and blasting, we're talking rocking as in rock music, like shredding leads, classic (even Southern at moments) ROCK, which was a subtle element way back when, but recently, especially on this new one, has come to play a bigger and bigger part in GB's sound. In fact much of The Great Southern Darkness is spent rocking and not blasting or buzzing, the opening one two punch of "Dark Gnosis" and "Secret Ride To Rebellion", includes very little of what one might describe as buzzing black metal, instead, there's lots of midtempo rocking, even some doomy dirgery, with slippery seasick riffage and classic metal melodies. And then check out "They Call Me Black Devil", which starts off with some Joy Division / Earth like low slung twang, before launching into what sounds like some post metal Neur-Isis-y groove, the harsh demonic vokills, the only thing really defining the song as black metal, and then the track shifts into a killer mathy super melodic breakdown, hell, pretty much any band on Relapse would kill for a part like that, which speaks to how good these guys have gotten musically, as they toss off parts like that constantly, without batting an eye. And while you're at it, there's also "Negative Incarnate", which indeed has an appropriately EVIL title, but is almost total classic rock, complete with super melodic leads, and a groove that won't quit. But then the second that song ends, comes the band's harshest blast, the furious opening to "Bring Down The Cosmic Scheme", but that grim buzz doesn't last long, as the track shifts gears into something totally melodic and totally crazy catchy, lurching back and forth between blackbuzz and melodic blackened rock. And not to overly stress the lack of actual black metal, the band do offer up plenty of grim blackness, like on the aforementioned track, but more often then not, even at their blackest and buzziest, the sound is infused with something distinctly not black, or there's inevitably some crazy poppy / proggy / ROCKING part is right around the corner. And to be honest, in a world of buzzing and blasting black metal clones, it's records like this that end up sticking the most. And while it took a few listens to really get into what these guys were doing, once we did, we began to have trouble understanding why more bands didn't actually do something similar. Might not be black metal record of the year, but just might have to make up a blackened heavy rock category, cuz we're digging this like crazy.

Fans of the damaged and deranged, the truly warped and mindbending, the freaky, fucked up and plain baffling, by now should be well acquainted with the mysterious master of the guitar synth, and his bevy of bewildering outfits, two of which we've reviewed on past AQ lists, this being the third, in what we can only imagine is some sort of insane trilogy. Xynfonica came first. A "classical" record, completely composed and performed on the guitar synthesizer. A tripped out, outsider slab of post Peter And The Wolf classical deconstructed, atonal and so so so difficult, oh and did we mention that the other part of the equation was seemingly incongruous raspy evil metal vocals? A totally not-right combination, but for those of us who dig that sort of stuff, it was pretty unbeatable. Then there was the HUGE booklet of lyrics, complete with FOOTNOTES!!! Then came Shevalreq, part two in the "trilogy", his 'world music' record, where the same atonal angular tones and notes, the howled raspy vocals, were this time wrapped around faux tablas and various other ethnic percussion instruments. If anything, it was even more fucked and amazing. Not to mention the over the top cover art, with miniature jousting knights on horseback ON TOP OF various dat machines and other studio gear. WTF? So while we anxiously awaited part three, we were fairly sure nothing could top Shevalreq. But oh were we wrong. The new one is called Gluttony, the name of the record: Collapse Of The Roman Republic, another epic tale of war and death and love and betrayal, this one being his quote unquote jazz record, and fuck if it's not the most amazingly fucked up record EVER. Now in addition to the metallic rasp, the stumbling angular melodies, are lots of synthesized horn stabs, crooning synthesizers, faux vibes and marimbas, synth oboes, synth bassoons, all peppered with some serious twisted tangles of Greg Ginn-esque guitar squall, usually draped over some woozy, smoky dive bar synthjazz. It still sort of sounds like Peter And The Wolf, but it also sounds like the score for some mystery noir z-movie thriller, ripe for some sort of Sam Spade voice over, but instead you get a voice over from some growling bile spewing demon, and the tracks lope on endlessly, the melodies, maniacally off kilter, the whole thing so brilliantly baffling it's almost impossible to listen to the whole thing, but we've come close. Very very close. Absolutely recommended, but ONLY for those who can handle stuff like this. You know who you are.

You can definitely tell a lot about a band by the names of records and song titles. Case in point: Gnaw Their Tongues. Some song titles: "My Body is Not a Vessel, Nor a Temple. It's a Repulsive Pile of Sickness", "And There Will Be More of Your Children Dead Tomorrow", "Blood Spills Out Of Everything I Touch", "Sound the Horns, the Water is Poisoned". Some album titles: Spit at Me and Wreak Havoc on My Flesh, Preferring Human Skin Over Animal Fur, Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh, Spasming and Howling, Bowels Loosening and Bladders Emptying, Vomiting, and now this, An Epiphanic Vomiting of Blood. But then what is it exactly that we can glean from these titles? That the men in Gnaw Their tongues are demented? Sick? Depraved? Probably. But where titles like this might lead one to assume the music attached to the above words would be some sort of hateful harsh white noise, or some sort of near unlistenable Whitehouse worship, the truth is, Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the few bands with an utterly distinctive and recognizable sound. There are very few bands we can think of, even amongst our favorites. You will absolutely never confuse the music of Gnaw Their Tongues with any other outfit. And conversely, you will never hear something that is not them, and assume it is, because NOTHING sounds anything like Gnaw Their Tongues. So much so that even explaining their sound in a review is fairly difficult. The last GTT review, we resorted to a tale of hell and hellbound journeys, of total annihilation and utter destruction, of death and decay and misery, all in a bid to evoke the same sort of images and visions, thoughts and feelings that are evoked by the sounds these guys produce. It's definitely not black metal, but it is most certainly black. If forced to describe their sound in some succinct, and non-rambling manner, it might be cinematic operatic orchestral avant industrial doom. But since we can ramble, it might be easier to dig a little deeper. Every song is epic, like little films, sounds evoking images, evoking thoughts and emotions, horns and orchestral stabs, flutes and strings, are as much a part of the sound as guitars. Probably more so. Thick gristly slabs of buzzing low end, crawl beneath pummeling percussive plod, operatic vocals soar and wail, bits of electronic glitch and whir drift in and out, guitars are downtuned and allowed to spread like toxic oil spills, tracks are peppered with bits of dialogue, and snippets of films, found sounds and mysterious textures, occasionally, harsh hellish blackened shrieks join the fray, as do bits of dark ambience. There is plenty of space, the sound managing to be expansive and open, as well as claustrophobic and suffocating. It's a bit like a black metal Arvo Part, scoring a lost Hitchcock thriller, so totally intense and emotional and epic, rife with nervous tension and extreme dread. Whenever the sound verges on white noise, or total implosion, the sound abates, leaving Bernard Hermann-ish strings, or some bit of cryptic dialogue, or some strange disembodied rhythm, before spilling forth again like black vomit. The layers of blasphemous sound piling up like blackened bodies, buzzy and filthy and grime-y but so composed, not really that chaotic at all, a controlled chaos perhaps, each sound painstakingly placed to help paint that blood red picture. An impossible blend of metal, choral, industrial, electronic, ambient, drone, noise and blackness, a gorgeous, and gorgeously infernal concoction, every record, another chapter in some sick saga, hell swallowing the surface dwellers, misery and mayhem overtaking humanity, death and pestilence, the world a graveyard for humanity, such utter depravity conveyed in such epic and dementedly brilliant sounds, which is precisely why Gnaw Their Tongues is quickly becoming one of our favorite bands going�

For years now we've been singing the dark praises of this twisted one man band, whose sound is an ever-shifting sprawl of cinematic blackened noise-doom weirdness. Delivering noxious blurts of industrial crush, wrapped around stately marches and harrowing ambience, moments of almost soundtrack-ish tranquility give away to heaving waves of crumbling power electronics or stumbling caveman pummel. As much as we love Gnaw Their Tongues, even we had trouble keeping up with his output, a barrage of singles and splits, cd-r's and cassettes, driving the obsessive completist music nerds here mad. Well kudos to Crucial Blast for gathering up all of those odds and ends, onto one double disc, and like the releases proper, Collected Atrocities is another malevolent sonic beast, one that fits comfortable between Reeking Pained and Shuddering and An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood, which is where much of this stuff falls chronologically anyway, those familiar with either of those records no what sort of glorious epic filth is in store, those who are not, should be prepared for what is essentially a hellish soundtrack, to the most terrifying film never made. Strings shimmer amidst a cacophony of clang and clatter, loops warble and mutate, samples drift in from the ether, vokills howl and shriek behind veils of black thrum, and rib cage rattling low end threatens to turn your bones to dust, it's like a melting symphony colliding with a black metal band dosed on some seriously bad psychedelics, a harrowing sonic swirl, dizzying and darkly delightful, broodingly beautiful in places, but painfully punishing in others, Mories, the man behind GTT, conjuring up some insane alternative musical universe, one that evokes the maddest of hallucinations, and as we must have mentioned before, these SHOULD be the scores to twisted arthouse horror flicks, even though ultimately they don't need any visuals at all, it's that rare sort of sound that opens some primitive portal in your brain, unleashing your imagination, and sending it spiraling into the darkest depths of your blackened soul. Packaged in a super swank 6 panel digipak, with some very cringeworthy artwork.

We almost missed out on this one completely. Limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. Whew! Since we discovered this band we've become pretty obsessed. As have you all, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical, their last record, the recently reviewed An Epiphanic Vomiting Of Blood (they have a knack for titles too) is pretty much a shoe in for record of the year. Have a look at that review for some serious gushing. This 3 song ep, is GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality. The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy. Packaged in a mini 3" dvd-style case, with full color artwork, and pressed on a black cd-r. Limited to these 40 copies, once they're gone, might be tough to convince them to make us more again...

MPEG stream: Blood Drenched Altars
MPEG stream: Knife... Martyr... Despair

It seems almost criminal to release something so limited by a band as hyped as these guys (or this guy) are lately. But there you go. 100 copies. Already sold out. We got almost half of them, but even just in the store they've been flying out of here. So you should know what that means by now. Thankfully, all the hype is well deserved and then some. Gnaw Their Tongues is one of the grimmest, sickest, darkest, most gloriously fucked up outfits going, mixing black ambient drones, dirgey sludge, buzzing black metal, abstract industrial, even mixing in bits of dialogue and snippets of opera and random other weirdness, the result a totally baffling and bewildering headfuck, that manages to creep the shit out of us, but somehow keep us listening over and over and over and over. Devotion though is a departure, ditching much of the metal of past releases, as well as most of the song structure, and opts for something much more static and ambient, but no less heavy, these four tracks are thick swaths of dark torturous throb and groan, creaks and shimmers, rendered in crumbling greys and hoarse ghostlike wheezes. It's like an aural tour of some mysterious catacombs, built from skulls and rotting flesh, the bleak atmosphere rife with the sounds of strange machinery, the tortured cries of the doomed, a veritable symphony of cacophonous crashes and deafening blasts of blown out buzz, boiled down into a primordial ooze and smeared into gorgeously lush waves of corrosive grinding crush, a bristly brutal blur that slithers and undulates like a pit full of black snakes. The packaging is appropriately grim and black and bleak, and fancy, as are most At War With False Noise releases, printed cd-r's housed in a two sided washed out black and white gatefold sleeve, decorated with goats and candles and bloodshed and naked women, tucked in an oversized A5 sized black cardstock gatefold jacket, with a barely legible black on black vellum cover, all in a plastic outer sleeve. And again, limited to 100 copies, already out of print, blah blah blah...

MPEG stream: Devotion
MPEG stream: Canibalis

Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed.� They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten.� Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick.� That filthy black musick was this, the first recorded document by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track.� The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and Amacoma all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, untiil your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this� whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning� back into the fray.� "29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment.� Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it.

MPEG stream: Leichenbergen
MPEG stream: And The Waters Shall Prevail Upon The Earth

NOW REPRESSED AND AVAILABLE AGAIN AT A CHEAPER PRICE!! Here's our review of the Die Mutter reissue when we first listed it back in 2009: Two long out of print cd-r's from our favorite symphonic black doom noize combo, gets the ultra deluxe reissue treatment. Both Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, originally released on Corps-Morts (the first thing we ever heard from GTT), and Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh originally released on Universal Tongue, are both represented here in full, and on top of that, there are THREE unreleased bonus tracks, so even folks who have those original cds will probably want this, not just for the bonus tracks (although that might be enough), but to have those two out of print cd-r's on a proper cd!! Gorgeous packaging too, super striking 6 panel digipak, comes with a GTT sticker too. Not sure how we first heard about Gnaw Their Tongues, pretty sure a customer recommended them, but believe us when we say that the words Gnaw Their Tongues had barely left their lips (or maybe more accurately, the words had barely left the email and reached our cerebral cortex) and we were already smitten. How could they not rule with a name like that? The question was merely HOW they would rule, dark and creepy? Heavy and harsh? Doom? Blacknoise? Drone? Howabout all of those?! Oh yeah, it's almost like someone snuck into the AQ barracks in the middle of the night to scan our minds and see what kind of bands we dreamed about, the bands our subconscious really wished existed. They took all the data back to their lair, the one hidden beneath that big scary mountain, and spent years analyzing it, and creating equations, chemicals, compounds, months in an underground lab, until eventually the whole project was forgotten. Until years later, when a record store employee was hiking and discovered the ruins of some old, well, it looked like a fortress, maybe a lair, and decided, against all the wisdom gleaned from a million after school specials, to explore. Way down deep in the dusty recesses of this old forgotten lair, this record store feller discovered some sort of portal, rusted shut it seemed, and adorned with messages in some strange language, an alien tongue if you will, they looked like warnings, but what the heck, shit like that only happens in horror movies, so the feller went about trying to unlock the portal, and after what seemed like ages, the lock clicked, and the rusty metal swung open, and suddenly all was blackness, and dripping red, and agony and misery, and hell embodied on earth, in the form of this filthy black musick. That filthy black musick was in fact these two musical documents by these mysterious black beasties known as Gnaw Their Tongues. Who on Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen, spew forth a caustic noxious ultradoom. A black metallized lurch and stumble, harsh, hellish vocals buried beneath an avalanche of corrosive guitar, strange alien ambience, and mechanical monster drumming. Horrible and grotesque and dizzyingly brutal, but with tiny vestiges of beauty and melody, occasionally visible through the dense black sonic fog. Stretches of distorted doom verging on the beautiful, separating gut wrenching squalls of utter black chaos. And that's just the first track. The second is like the first, only fast. Really fast. Like sticking your head into the middle of a lightning storm. Like Velvet Caccoon and Wold and AmacomA all playing simultaneously, at full volume, broadcast through Konono's PA, until your ears bleed, but it's not all pain and suffering, this whirling world of sound is again strangely melodic, twisted into some almost pop like shapes, but always quickly bathed in blackness and sent spinning back into the fray. "29 Needles" is a step away from the end, and is some sort of industrial plod, a garish landscape of bleak brutality, sparse ultradistorted percussion, clouds of caustic whir, creepy ghostlike voices, the sort of sounds that make Wolf Eyes sound like the Carpenters. A musical death march through a world of fire and death and destruction, of keening musical misery and downtuned sonic punishment. Finally, the prophecy is complete with once the sounds of "Die Mutter Wahlt Das Todtenkleidchen" reach the ears of mortal man. The plants wither and the sky grows dim, our hearts beat slower and our blood begins to boil, the earth begins to crack, and slowly we sink into the depths of the underworld, and this is the sound that the end of all things makes. A lonely slowed down low end caterwaul, a rumbling whir peppered with jagged streaks of harsh noise, thick swells of coruscating sonic malevolence, storm clouds of hiss and buzz, a pounding skull splitting din from the heavens, an electrical storm that singes every nerve in your body, leaving you paralyzed, supine, blind, and mute, with only your ears ringing painfully, just barely able to make out the dying gasps of life as we know it. Then came Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh. We almost missed out on it completely. The original version limited to 100 copies or so, we tried to order 40 and were informed they only had a handful left. So we begged and pleaded, and the label agreed to press up 40 more copies just for us, and thus for you. But those were gone before we knew it. Which is why this reissue is such a godsend (satansend?) Since we first discovered this band we had become pretty obsessed. As have the aQ blacknoize minions, judging from how quick we sell out of Gnaw records. They're heavy, they're super fucked up, it's not just black metal or sludge, it's some head spinning hybrid equal parts abstract industrial, ambient collageblasting blackness, hyperspeed grind, blackdrone, harsh and hellish, but strangely musical. Dawn Breaks Open Like A Wound That Bleeds Afresh finds GTT at their most black metal. The first two tracks, while laced with bits of orchestral grandeur, and blown out crumbling bliss, spend most of their time blasting away, but even then, there are bits of melodic flair here and there, the distortion is so thick and intense, the whole thing threatens to blur into some thick whirring drone, the opener has a killer breakdown groove, utterly majestic and epic, before flitting back to the black blast. The second track is another blackened monster, furiously thrashing and convulsing wildly, but it too is peppered with bits of glimmering effulgence, and a middle breakdown where distorted guitars are pitched up and allowed to shimmer ominously like some Bernard Hermann score, before the metal drops back in, transforming the track into a pummeling slow motion Godflesh style industrial dirge that eventually launches itself back into a furious burst of grim brutality. The final track is the creepiest of the bunch, long drawn out synth drones, wavering ominously, wrapped in bis of whir and metallic buzz, samples distorted and effected drifting amidst the swirling black ambience, the moodiness eventually overtaken by a thick wave of white noise distortion and what sounds like voices screaming in terror, finally splintering into a hellish black frenzy. As mentioned in the introduction to this review, in addition to the reissued tracks, this version of Die Mutter also includes three new, unreleased tracks. The first is a gorgeous post industrial orchestral crawl, heaving horns, crunching metallic percussion, guttural vocalizations, blasting beats, exotic strings, long stretches of haunting cinematic ambience, heavy and harrowing, the production fucked up and fractured, the sound woozy and wonderfully grim. The second is more of the same, a lumbering death march painted in broad swaths of majestic strings, buzz drenched guitars, all wrapped around a super spare machinelike pound, fuzzed out Goblin like synths, like a Bernard Hermann score gone haywire. And finally, the awesomely titled closer "I Am The Lord And There Is No Other; I Make The Light, I Create Darkness" (GTT definitely have a way with song and album titles), a slow burning bit of black ambient drift, distant drones, creepy keyboard shimmers, dark layered waves of low end rumble, epic swells of soundtracky creepiness, while all throughout, the track drifts through sprawling fields of mysterious creaks and groans, clatter and crunch. Occasional squalls of orchestral percussion tangle with blurred bits of otherworldly whir, all streaked with sweetly sorrowful strings. So good. If you're new to Gnaw Their Tongues, and you're into sounds blackened and brutal and bizarre and fucked up and noisy and creepy and epic, then you couldn't find a better place to start than this, and yeah, GTT fanatics, you're definitely gonna want this, even if you have the cd-r's, as we mentioned above, this is some of the best GTT material, finally on a proper cd, but even more importantly, this would be well worth $10 even if it was just a 20 minute / 3 song ep containing only the bonus tracks.

MPEG stream: Leichenbergen
MPEG stream: And The Waters Shall Prevail Upon The Earth
MPEG stream: Blood Drenched Altars
MPEG stream: Knife... Martyr... Despair

As we may have mentioned before, with every Gnaw Their Tongues release, we find ourselves once again struggling to describe the blackened filth and abject cinematic doom contained within. Fans already know what they're in store for, and will most likely want more, need more even. The music of Gnaw Their Tongues is the sort of grim black sound that inspires some strange unquenchable hunger for more. A mysterious desire to fall ever deeper into the abyss, to explore GTT's hellish sonic underworld, each record a dizzying assemblage of crushing industrial dirge, of glacial black metal buzz, of clattery, chaotic blacknoize, of weirdly operatic choral music, all woven into some sort of pitch black musical ritual. L'Arrivee De La Terne Mort Triomphante is merely the latest miserable missive from the black soul who sits on a black throne, made from charred bones, as he gnaws tongues, drinks blood, and as a choir of demons serenades him with these sick sick sounds, but in some ways, L'Arrivee does differ from past releases, in that more than most, it allows the classical element room to breathe. GTT was always some sort of demented Arvo Part / Abruptum hybrid, mixing strings and choirs into the swirling black miasma of crush and thud and buzz and howl, and on L'Arrivee, the orchestral / cinematic side for maybe the first time, does battle with the blackened heavy side, the result a surprisingly dynamic, darkly cinematic chunk of dramatic over the top blackness. One can almost envision this as some sort of crazy Hermann Nitsch style opera, flames and blood, and carcasses, everything dripping with black ichor, lit from below, the shadows like living black beasts, the sound the perfect reflection of those images, booming timpani, moaning sorrowful strings, symphonic swells, operatic voices, mournful pianos, a sort of epic bombastic chamber music, the heaviness and buzz and black occasionally pulled back, allowing the pianos and strings time to unfurl, before quickly being swallowed up again. The sound here too seems a bit more lush, more produced, cleaner, but without losing any of the filth. We might go so far as to say this is the most accessible GTT release to date, but then it's all relative, this is still some seriously crusty, devastatingly brutal, menacing and mean black doom misery, but deftly woven into something more melodic, more emotionally charged, where past GTT records were simply hateful and hellish, pummeling and punishing, L'Arrivee De La Terne Mort Triomphante is something more, an epic, intense journey, the soundtrack element can't be understated, this totally plays out like the score to some insane, and insanely harrowing epic, a tale of death, and lost souls, and the end of humanity, and total annihilation, but as with all great epics, there continues to be hope, a glowing ember, that sits at the middle of it all, waiting to be discovered, and to perhaps eventually triumph, or perhaps to perish and disappear into utter and unending blackness. Quite possibly the most epic black doom cinematic symphonic noise metal opera EVER.

MPEG stream: L'Arrivee De La Terne Mort Triomphante
MPEG stream: Les Anges Fremissent Devant La Mort

We've gotten to the point with every review of a new Gnaw Their Tongues record, where we're essentially at a loss for words, if you have a look on the aQ site at past reviews, you'll see these sprawling ultra wordy descriptions that read like some sort of sinister poetry, because really, that's the only way to describe the twisted sound world of cinematic black doom outfit Gnaw Their Tongues, the work of a single man called Mories, who as we've established in the past, must be one twisted fellow. Cuz no one that wasn't utterly demented and deranged could create sounds like this. We have the genre in iTunes for this as 'Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom', which is as succinct a descriptor as we could come up with. And is fairly accurate. Odds are if you're a fan, you can't get enough, and you're gonna want this one too, after all these sorts of sick sonics engender obsessiveness, trust us, we're totally under Mories' thrall as well, and greet every new slab of twisted genius filth, like some bowl of rotting porridge slipped between the bars of our cell. We beg for the darkness, we imbibe of the blackness, we devour the sounds we are given. But for those new to this bleak world of chaotic sonic mystery and abject cinematic noise, have a gander at the song titles, "Human Skin For The Messenger's Robe", "Urine-Soaked Neophytes", "Fallen Deities Bathing In Gall", "Bonedust On Dead Genitals", "The Storming Heavens As A Father To All Broken Bodies", which should give you at least a rough idea of the spirit of GTT, now imagine those sentiments rendered in sound, and you have Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus, which in English translates as "with blood and whip, we worship the dark", which again, should leave no doubt as to what lies beyond the blackened gates, a world of churning black metal offal, of demonic symphonies, the sound of Gnaw Their Tongues is precisely what we would imagine Satan's symphony must sound like, epic and majestic, but utterly bleak and blackened, the sound swirling and blurred, erupting into thick gouts of black buzz, but just as often collapsing into something more akin to the score for a bloodletting. The sound does occasionally let up, but it's usually only to build tension, offer dynamics, or unveil the sound of some poor wretch retching, or the cries of people as their skins are flayed, Gnaw Their Tongues is a torture chamber in sound, but so exquisitely rendered, we often find ourselves wondering why Mories isn't scoring every twisted horror film in Hollywood, probably because these sounds are too evocative, and paint too much of a distinct picture, that the need for actual images is practically null. The thing with GTT records, is that often, there's too much going on, and the can become a head spinning wall of sound, a swirling roiling cauldron of black noise, but more often the balance is just right, and Mories' creation is perfectly balanced, equal parts buzzing blackness, abject doom, and haunting symphonic mesmer, a melding of horror score, outsider abstract doom metal and epic classical music, and Per Flagellum Sanguemque, Tenebras Veneramus seems to be maybe the most perfect specimen yet, spending less time grinding and howling and blasting and buzzing, and more time conjuring up some seriously soul stirring ambience, and some blackly symphonic sonic horror. As always, utterly intense, ridiculously epic, and has us wondering what kind of demented mind can conjure up such glorious filth, and then actually creates it. Grim genius!

MPEG stream: Hic Est Enim Calix Sanguinis Mei
MPEG stream: Human Skin For The Messengers Robe
MPEG stream: Urine Soaked Neophytes

What might you glean from an image of a shepherd with a ram's head cradling a baby lamb, standing amidst a flock of sheep, or what appears to be an image of Jesus or a saint or angel, also with a ram's head? What if those images were accompanied by phrases like "Rend Each Other Like Wild Beasts, Till Earth Shall Reek With Midnight Massacre", or "Then Shall They Come, Oh Master, Shrieking From Red Battlefields To People Thy Dark Realms", or "In Sullen Silence Stalks Forth Pestilence"? Well if you've been reading the aQuarius list for a while, you'd no doubt realize that this must be another filthy blackened sonic missive from our favorite master of cinematic black doom, Gnaw Their Tongues. Three new tracks, all lengthy and dense and brutal and hellishly symphonic, we've struggled to describe the sound of GTT in the past, it's not doom, or black metal, although it incorporates bits of both, it's the strings and horns and haunting ambience, the weird samples and film clips, the strange arrangements that play out more like orchestrations than jams, that make Gnaw Their Tongues so singularly fucked up and genius. Side one is all hellish deep drones wrapped around distant foghorns, or some sort of inhuman cries, layered atop dense rumbles and muted industrial percussion, tense, ominous, harrowing, building to a crushing cacophony, like a Godflesh record played at 16 rpm, alongside a soulful strings record playing at 8 rpm, the horns bleating and skronking and moaning beneath the heaving machinelike pound. Bursts of blasting buzzing crunch pepper the doomscape, as do super distorted harsh howls, and all manner of tangled melody, like some symphony of filth and crust, a creeping lumbering abstract soundscape, with a super haunting horror movie outro. The 2nd side is more spacious and doomy, but no less intense, bits of backwards melody lace the stumbling pound, like some Bernard Hermann horror movie score gone haywire, all screaming strings, screaming voices, mysterious samples, all gorgeously abject, but hauntingly beautiful, the mournful horns, the dramatic stings, and the crumbling black wall of sound carrying everything forward and dragging it down to hell. Gorgeous packaging, the aforementioned ram headed figures on the cover, with a heavy printed inner sleeve, and pressed on thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Almost out of print, these are most likely our last copies ever... NOTE: All jackets slightly damaged, not enough to distress most folks, but anal record collectors beware!

It was inevitable that these two would team up. Gnaw Their Tongues' blackened symphonic cinematic doom, and Alkerdeel's grim doomdirge and tranced out black buzz definitely sound like a recipe for some sort of sick sonic genius, and this 20 minute jam seems to confirm that theory, a slow, grinding blackened sprawl, dense Teutonic thrum, and gurgled monstrous vocals, a black drifting intro to some full on slo-mo funeral doom, lumbering tarpit trudgery, anguished howls over melting sludgy riffage, all wreathed in what sounds like shimmering strings. Abject and miserable, but infused with a weird cinematic heft, this deathlike creep oozes ominously, a downtuned deathmarch, that is suddenly transformed into something almost spacey, the distortion dialed back, leaving just rumbles and shimmers, and low end drifts, the vocals now a hissy whisper, everything blurred and smeared into a black cloud, suddenly exploding into full on, blasting black metal chaos, noisy, and heavy reverbed, a dizzying squall of buzzing and blasting musical mania, the sound growing subtly more melodic, slowing down too, with some almost-groove added to the mix, but still loose and ramshackle and seemingly perpetually on the verge of total collapse, and then the sound transforms again into a killer blast of roiling murky churn, that's more tranced out than buzzy, that too dissipates, leaving another wildly thrashing stretch of blackness, before a burst of white noise howl, obliterates everything, leaving just a gorgeous bit of pulsing melody infused noise to wind down, the various sounds receding into the blackness, eventually leaving just some gurgling low end, and a chorus of demonic vokills, all over a murky, muddy bed of churning synth flecked black blur warble.

MPEG stream: Dyodyo Asema

Not sure about you, but when we rip cds into iTunes to put on our iPods, we long ago ditched the traditional genre descriptions and began making genres of our own, that more accurately reflected what the music really sounded like. A quick glance at our iTunes library reveals genres like African Psych, Rembetika, Experimental / Minimal / Classical, Powerviolence, Funereal Dooooooom, Gore Grind, Finnish Avant Rock, Electric Sitar Garage Psych, Gooom, Cinematic Space Psych, Psychedelic Space Synth, and then of course one genre, reserved specifically for Gnaw Their Tongues, Industrial Symphonic Cinematic Black Doom. Which if you've yet to hear this twisted one man band, should definitely give you an inkling of what you're in for. On this split though, much of the symphonic, bombastic element has been dialed way back, in favor of something much more bleak and minimal, a creepy distorted black ambience, laced with all sorts of creepy field recordings and industrial clatter. Eventually this abstract drift coalesces into something much more intense, a furious blast of full on blacknoize, crumblingly distorted and seriously blown out, processed vox wound into the roiling blackened mix, all underpinned by a dark lurching rhythm. The vocals eventually morph into voKILLS, the background black abyss becomes more intense, a churning glitched out crumbling buzz, that threatens to swallow up all the other sounds, and eventually does. GTT is matched up with Corephallism, who we had never heard before, which is apparently a solo project of one of the guys from Boston noise outfit Twodeadsluts Onegoodfuck, which had us expecting some harsh noise, but instead, the first begins with long layered synth tones, and deep sonorous chants, blurred hazy rumbling drones, the vibe is almost liturgical, at least until a cascade of crumbling static explodes into action, bringing with it, some crzed demonic vocal rasps, the match up of the almost serene synths and the crumbling, crackling, hissing howling noise is pretty potent, an ends up making it more listenable than you might think. The second track follows a similar pattern, but the noise triumphs this time around, the background a slow rumbling chordal swell, hypnotic and woozy, over which is laid a sheet of feedback drenched white noise skree, and more buried vokills, and while this track is much harsher, that pulsing low end background manages to balance the noise, and make it more droned out mesmer than ear destroying pummel.

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

SORRY. Latest from Bay Area black metal duo Lascoiec, a split with a band (person) called Gnieu, from Belarus, who we had never heard before, but who, after about a minute of the first track, might just be one of our new favorite bands. After a brief bit of doomic creep, the song erupts in a flurry of twisted tangled buzz, the drums a chaotic stutter, the riffs, so blurry and black, they're just a wall of thrum, while a strange melody, played on another guitar, or a keyboard, hard to say, flutters and flits and gets all tangled up, and eventually the sound seems to coalesce into something more traditionally buzzy and black, but then continues to constantly shift and transform, exploding into impossibly fast burst of blackbuzzblur, the drums completely bizarre, skittery and super intricate, the sound stumbling into wildly chaotic crush, before exploding again in a wild squall of bleary eared blur, there seems to be some keyboards too, but instead of making obvious keyboard noises, they just thicken the sound, adding texture and buried melody, the result is something warm and washed out, epic and majestic, black and buzzy, and in its own way sort of free and abstract, but also weirdly haunting and pretty, without losing any of its grim mystery. As the record progresses, the sound remains firmly in some sonic netherworld, guitars are swathed in reverb, unfurl surfy almost riffs, only to slip into a weird bit of minimal ambient jangle, before building to some sort of dirgey drift, only to again lurch into an explosive sprawl of warped blackness. Pretty sure we're gonna have to track down every single thing from these guys. And we haven't even gotten to the Lascowiec side, who start things off with a bit of natural ambience, a dreamy bit of folky guitar over birdsong, lilting and dreamy, laced with some subtle mysterious sounds and effects, but for the most part very pretty, only to abruptly switch to some murky minor key black buzz, the sound warm and washed out, the vocals a buried demonic croak, the sound haunting and majestic, grim and depressive, and like all the Lascowiec we've heard managing to sound both intense and black, yet weirdly haunting and lovely, could be partially the production, wrapping everything in a gauzy veil of blurred shimmer, but it also seems to be the melodic structure and the arrangements, definitely frantic and frenzied, but muted and a muddied, dreamily lo-fi, but without ever losing its blackened brutality. A pretty fantastic split, a new discovery (and obsession) and an old favorite, both sides getting much repeat play around here for sure. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

A furious fifteen minute blast of unholy blackened war metal from France. Four tracks of grim chaotic lo-fi evil. Buzzing blasting brutality tempered by occasional midtempo dirges and old school thrash metal. Howled blasphemies and Burzumic buzz over galloping drums and swarming stun guitars. Only have a few of these so act fast!

MPEG stream: Tormentor 666
MPEG stream: In The Name Of The Black Lord

Another blast of twisted black metal weirdness from Finland, from long time aQ faves, one man BM weirdo Dead Reptile Shrine, and fellow one man black metal outfit Goatmoon, who just happen to be finally making their aQ list debut. And as you might have surmised, 'weird Finnish black metal', could very well mean that this is not at all like the black metal you're used to, and in this case you'd be right. Goatmoon, who in the past have shared a split with another aQ fave, the truly insane/brilliant Ride For Revenge (in fact, Mr. Goatmoon is a member of the RfR live band), offers up the nearly 25 minute title track, which is barely black metal at all, instead, the first 4 minutes is all acoustic guitar, draped over swirling winds, sounding a little like a Nordic Six Organs or something, that is until the guitars fade out, leaving just the wind, then some tribal drums, howling wolves, and then what sounds like some alien gypsy ritual, buzzing guitars that sound very Eastern, the percussion bells and shakers, the only real black element is the howled demonic vox, otherwise it sounds more like Amps For Christ, that is until that fades out, leaving just piano, a mournful lament drifting over that same whipping wind, then that distorted gypsy folk sounding buzz returns, this time with crooned clean vocals added to the mix, before everything fades out, leaving just a soft swirling expanse of melancholy synths, a meditative dronescape, haunting and dreamlike, drifting darkly though the ever blowing wind. So amazing, twisted and far out. Finland! Which brings us to Dead Reptile Shrine, who like Goatmoon, confound and confuse, here offering up a thick swirl of hazy psychedelia, minimal percussion beneath a cloud of tangled looped buzz, a weird disembodied distorted voice buried in the mix, the sound tense, never quite offering release, instead, a continual crescendo, epic and majestic and gorgeously haunting, before giving way to the stripped down minimal stumble folk of the next track, reverbed notes drift over electronic buzz, the vocals a caveman grumble, before a second vocal swoops in strident and powerful, the track flecked with steel string guitars, atonal melodies, monstrous whispers, a creepy chunk of haunting black folk mesmer. And so it goes, the sound definitely seems to exist in some warped abstract folk continuum, stumbling looped rhythms, distant fluttery flutes, detuned finger picking and fractured folk strum, eventually subsumed by some almost blackened buzz, and ridden by echo drenched sung/spoken vokills, the next track is about as close to proper black metal as DRS get, but as you might imagine that's not very close, with a black metal riff slowed way down and gradually unraveling, while various bits of percussion or shaken and rattled, and strange chant like croons swirl all around, until finally, DRS finish things off in a cloud of keening almost Skullflower like guitar, peppered with tiny bits of percussive glitch, thick low end rumbles, and a strange voice that almost sounds like he's speaking while breathing in, warped and weird, and pretty amazing in fact, a haunting, confusing bit of black ambient ritualism, and pretty much what we would expect (if one could really expect anything) from Dead Reptile Shrine. Of course, unadventurous black metallers should steer clear, but everyone else, whether you dig anything weird and Finnish, or love blackened outsider folk, or twisted deconstructed folk flecked black metal or like us want ANYTHING from either of these bands, this comes HIGHly recommended.

MPEG stream: Winterforest
MPEG stream: The Threshold Of Choice
MPEG stream: Across The Morbid Chaparral

Rusty Axe is one of the few cult underground black metal labels that can seemingly do no wrong. "Raw Fucking Metal" is what they do, and they do it better than almost anyone else. Always with a demented twist, all of their bands damaged and demented in their own way, some seriously fucked up, others just with a unique vision, but a seriously outsider aesthetic, which obviously appeals to the AQ sensibility. In the past, we've had Rusty Axe releases from damaged modern doom masters The Wizar'd, the putrid metallic black noise of Enbilulugugal, and the Midwestern redneck black metal of Blood Cult. And the recently released Rusty Axe sampler has had us chomping at the bit to hear more from Baphomets Horns, Defecated Corpse, Demonic Mortuary and of course Finisher (best band name ever?). To hold us over, we've got the latest release from Puerto Rican church burners Godless, an actual cd (not a cd-r) of ultra primitive blackblackblack lo-fi buzz. Definitely steeped in the Norwegian tradition, Godless have been around since 1990 and were the first black metal band from Puerto Rico, and they definitely sound like it. Church Arsonist is like a black metal time capsule from the nineties, Mayhem, Emperor, Darkthrone, Immortal, extreme Ant-Christian buzzing epic black metal majesty. Black guitars soar and squirm over relentlessly thrashing blast beats, incredible riffing, that goes from jagged razorsharp brutality to blown out dirgey doom, harsh howled vocals way down in the mix, insane dizzyingly manic leads, the whole disc peppered with bits of ambient sound and strange samples, chanting monks, machine gun fire, nighttime forest sounds, World War 2 news clips, dive bombing planes, there seems to be a distinctly warlike element to Godless as well, which actually suits their sound (just as much as the church burning, anti-Christian themes), which spends much of its time loping along at a buzzing Burzumic midtempo, super anguished and bleak, downtuned guitars evoking sorrow and misery, but with every miserable dirge countered with a blazing blast of blackness. Incredibly cool booklet and art, lyrics and photos, and check out one of the band members, in full medieval cloak/tunic, chainmail and tights, gauntlets on both hands, clutching a mighty broadsword, leaning into the fire (although in the live shot he's wearing jeans and a venom t-shirt, but who can blame him, playing live in chainmail and tunic is rough...) An awesome, classic modern slab of blackened primitivism. Grim. Check. Cult. Check. Black. CHECK.

MPEG stream: Church Arsonist
MPEG stream: Fur Diejenigen, Die Vom Kriegsraben Gerufen Wurden

The return of these blackened psychedelic doomdrift dronelords, with their second record for Utech, and what appears to be the second Heavy Fierce Brightness record, the first being a limited lp only release from a while back, the soundtrack to an art installation (we still have a last few copies, act fast!), this one a new proper full length cd, this HFB further described as Spells Of The Sun, three new tracks, nearly 50 minutes of rumbling low end mystery and abstract avant blackness. The ritual begins with the 8 minute sort of introduction "Spells Of Shadow", a smoldering sprawl of metallic buzz, and muted industrial throb, all manner of grinding metallic crunch, and swirling spaced out effects, the sound corrosive and distorted, but still hypnotic and soothing, a thick undulating black drone, the various layers surprisingly active, spinning off sparks and constantly changing tone and timbre, all the while underpinned by a hazy high end shimmer. Blackened dreamy dronemusic of the highest order. "The Opening" unfurls yet another expanse of lush layered blackness, hazy and washed out and gorgeously mesmerizing, but before you know it, the song shifts gears and the band kicks in, pounding drums, distorted guitars, a sort of doomy lope, hypnotic and propulsive, wrapped around streaks of high end skree and feedback, then the vokills come in, SUPER distorted, the whole thing splintering into a blown out black squall, the main lumbering riff and rhythm still in place, but all around it, blackened clouds of crunch and chug and whir and buzz swirl and shimmer, a strangely pretty bit of motorik blackness. The metal fades out leaving traces of melody, stretched out into hazy smears of softly kaleidoscopic sound, some hushed minimal droney drift, only to explode once again into some dense doomy pound. Finally, the 21 minute title track finishes things off, a sprawling layered dronescape, that shifts slowly from glassy almost new age-y minimalism, from soaring howling psychedelic squall to crumbling distorted doomdronedirgedrift, from keening high end ur-drone, to wild storms of swirling feedback and finally to murky minimal shimmer. As always, gorgeous stuff. Packaged in cool oversized black and white four panel poster sleeve with artwork by Locrian's Terence Hannum.

MPEG stream: Spells Of Shadow
MPEG stream: The Opening

In a world (our world at least) full to overflowing with drone records, dirge records, doom records, and yes, dirgedoomdrone records, the mysterious Gog have somehow always managed to transcend. From their very first release, the subtly spectacular Noriah Mills, Gog have continued to mine similar territory as so many other soundmakers, but with the resultant whole so much more than its constituent parts. The music of Gog, while on the surface, perhaps seemingly simple, minimal, abstract, is the sort of sound that requires deep listening, upon which, the guitars then reveal themselves as so much more than electronic tone generators, the long strands of feedback and the layers of dense billowy buzz, so much more than just texture and timbre. And while on past releases, the band hinted at something a bit more black, their occasionally blissed out ambience drifting into darker and darker greys, on Mist From The Random More, the band have fully committed, creating what for them is a haunting otherworldly black metal suite, a droned out, blissed out, buzz drenched, almost static expanse of smoldering grimness, shot through with glimmering glistening effulgence, a bit like wrapping a black gauze around an exploding sun, the results, again, transcendent. The record begins with a gorgeous, slow burning bit of guitar drone, that owes more to the kosmiche sounds of krautdrone than the downtuned glacial fug of more doom-ed entities. These guitars soar and shimmer, warm gouts of feedback enfolded by deep rich sheets of coruscating soft focus heaviness, any other band would stretch this out to fill up a whole album, and rightfully so, we'd probably be gushing just as much if Gog chose to do the same thing, but these Sunroof-ian solar sonics are only part of Gog's grand vision for Mist From The Random More. The title track, taking up the bulk of the record, finds Gog fully immersing themselves in black metal, or at least their (very) loose approximation of what black metal is, or could be. The sound is grim, and frosty, but only in the sense that it reflects much of the black metal that came before, in every other way, it's anything but, the guitars glow, the riffs are fluid, organic, wrapped in a soft burnished buzz, that reminds us a bit of Jesu or Nadja, but the arrangement is more Necks. In fact, a shorthand descriptor might be "a black metal Necks", which if you're anything like us, would be all it would take. Simple skittery minimal drumming, almost looped sounding if it weren't so abstract, beneath a roiling cloud of layered guitars, grinding and whirring and hissing, and within that cloud, some gorgeously melancholic low end melodies, difficult to describe the strange blend of loveliness and heaviness, but there it is, a distinctly lovely heaviness, washed out and blurry, and hypnotic and epic and melodic, within this seemingly static structure, the sound swings and slips through various incarnations, moving from total blurred buzz, to a more slowcore lope, always wreathed in swirling clouds of blackened shimmer, until the end, when the track explodes in climax of effects drenched psychedelic churn. The closing track offers a chance to decompress, a strange assemblage of soothing tones, shot through with streaks of feedback, very cool and clinical, almost a Raster-Noton sort of sound, there's a brief burst of super distorted crumbling sonic chaos, almost Merzbowian in its intensity, transforming into a haunting post industrial doomscape, before again returning to the relative tranquility of the first few minutes, eventually leaving just a single upper register tone, which also finally fades into the shadows. Another fantastic record from Utech (after a whole mess of incredible releases, including last list's Aluk Todolo Record Of The Week), gorgeous packaging, an abstract skull, rendered in some kind of white dust (cocaine?), on a spare black background, a gatefold with printed liner notes inside, and yes, probably limited...

MPEG stream: Night Zoe
MPEG stream: Mist From The Random More

Superior black metal with raspy vocal screams, buzzing guitar, symphonic masses of sound, and an undefinable weird vibe. Long an unknown, unsung masterpiece. Austrian black metal obscurity Golden Dawn originally released "The Art Of Dreaming" in 1996 on the now-defunct Dark Matter label and it was just about impossible to find even when it was in print. It's been a favorite of Andee and Allan ever since one of the guys in Weakling turned 'em on to it a few years back, and have always wanted to track down copies to share with AQ customers. Of course we were thrilled when out of the blue, Napalm reissued (& remastered) this disc, and also -- ohmigod -- released a brand-new second Golden Dawn album, which we'll review here next time. For now, though, just bow down to this one. It's just an incredible piece of idiosyncratic metallic dark art, with majestic medieval riffs, bizarre keyboard interludes, and schizoid changes (from techno-ish jams to Magmoid choruses to gothic folk). We'd compare it to Satyricon or Cradle Of Filth maybe, it's certainly that good, but unlike anything else exactly. Solid, original black metal. Anyway, now it's got a second chance to be recognized as a classic. This reissue's got so-so new artwork (definitely not up to the amazing art and design of the original digipak release, oh well -- I think they stole that cover art and had to change it), but the tracks are the same as the original, and is thus highly recommended. MPEG Download: "My Confession To War" [/audio/goldendawnmyconfession.mp3]

MPEG stream: My Confession To War