[ aquarius records — Metal Black Metal ]

IMPORTANT (Please read to avoid confusion): Some items below may be tagged with a bold, red, all-caps OUT OF PRINT/UNAVAILABLE notice. This does NOT mean that all other items not so tagged are, in fact, in stock — or for that matter, in print and available, though there's a good chance they are. Some folks get confused on this point, and we can see why, so please read this for further clarification and other important before-you-order information. Unlike some mailorder websites, we don't have an electronic inventory system linked to our site, so you can't be sure of what we actually have or don't have in stock at any given moment without asking us — please email our mailorder department for availability status — or better yet, just go ahead and place your order using our shopping cart function and we'll get back to you with the status of each item. If you have general non-mailorder questions, email the store.

Showing results 1901 through 1950 of 2429.

We love when weird stuff just shows up in the mail, especially when that weird stuff turns out to be some grim, rhythmic, experimental blackened industrial avant-noise, like this, the first we've heard from Solitary Torture, whose sound is tough to describe beyond the above. Somehow super varied, but woven into a strange black sonic ritual, beginning with whipping winds, and some glitched out primitive rhythms, which is soon swallowed up by a blast of howling heaviness, before transforming into a swirling psychedelic blacknoise freakout, moaning vocals, and gristly electronics. At that point, we were sort of expecting this to be a straight up noise record, but instead, the second track unveils a melancholy, buzz drenched black metal riff, but instead of exploding into your standard blasting metal, in stretches way out, for the length of the track, spaced out and truancy and minimal and super hypnotic, the final minute or two erupting into some speaker shredding crush. The rest of the record splits its time between, grinding black electronica, post industrial thrum, woozy abstract black ambience, blurred grim riffage, strange minimal noise collages and dense, blasting blacknoise blowouts. Killer stuff for sure. Surprised this isn't on Crucial Blast. Needless to say, we only got a tiny handful of these, so not sure if/when we'll be able to get more. Comes housed in a DVD style case, with two xeroxed black and white inserts.

MPEG stream: Black Vomit
MPEG stream: Sick Man Lurking
MPEG stream: Vicious Hands

You'd never know from listening to Solstafir's Kold, that this Icelandic post-black metal horde began life as a Viking metal band, since now they traffic in something much more spaced out and psychedelic. We've never heard any of those Viking records, but this one is for sure kicking our ass. Barely even black metal, mostly their lineage tying them to the genre, the sound of Kold is droned out propulsive riff heavy space rock, think the Heads, Hawkwind, White Hills, the band locked into long stretches of totally hypnotic and propulsive heaviness, with guitar melodies pealing above the main riff. But they are heavy, and definitely metallic, crushing at points, but it's the vocals that will make or break it for most folks, totally emotional, anguished and passionate, a mournful wail, that fits perfectly when the band slow down to a waltzy doomy dirge, and offer a strange foil to the band's sound when they're pounding away full bore. Reference points would definitely have to include Katatonia, Lifelover, that sort of melodic post-metal heaviness, but these guys are definitely more psychedelic, letting many of the songs unwind into sprawling jams, many of them full on psychedelic metallic blues rock freakouts, others brooding drone drenched drifts, the vocals push the sound somewhere way more mainstream, they wouldn't be out of place on modern rock radio, so even at its weirdest or most distorted, when the vocals swoop in, the song immediately becomes more accessible, which is not at all a bad thing, in fact it's a nice balance to the way-more-gnarled and blackened parts that pepper the whole record. Might be too poppy for some metalheads, but if you're looking for something heavy AND melodic, epic and psychedelic, this might do the trick!

MPEG stream: 78 Days In The Desert
MPEG stream: Kold
MPEG stream: Pale Rider

*** COLLECTIBLE USED VINYL *** Only 125 of this version pressed! White Smoke vinyl. True Epic Doom mastery. Media: NM Sleeve: NM

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

SORRY.

From the frozen North, and no, not Scandinavia, we're talking Quebec, the other grim frosty North, comes French Canadian doom flecked black metal outfit Sombres Forets, who manage to spin a thick black web of depressive buzz that rivals the blackened buzzscapes of fellow dark souls Xasthur, Make A Change... Kill Yourself and of course Burzum. Sad and sorrowful, melancholy and mournful, this is not so much harsh and hateful as it is desolate and despondent. The sound is black, but the mood is doom, with occasional stretches of rumbling dark ambience, distant washes of soft focus keyboard, finger picked clean guitar figures, and subterranean whir. But it's the dirgey riffs, and the dour, depressive melodies, so emotional and miserable, so strangely catchy and haunting, that make these songs resonate so deeply. They almost sound like sad pop songs wrapped in spikey black cloaks and wreathed in a thick black fog. Beneath the surface, huge swells of doomic miserablism lurk, a faint shadow beneath the roiling blackness, rhythms shift and shudder, but ultimately, this is a bleak and strangely introspective journey through a damaged and damned black soul, rendered in blur and buzz. So dark, and dolorous, funereal and forlorn, and yet so strangely dreamlike and lovely.

MPEG stream: Le Royaume
MPEG stream: L'Abime
MPEG stream: Vents Des Desespoirs

Record number two from Canadian black metal depressives Sombres Forets, whose debut, was definitely one of our favorite black metal records of last year. A gorgeous blown out miserablist wash of black buzz that definitely gave other aQ faves like Make A Change� Kill Yourself, Xasthur and Burzum, a run for their money. This disc takes that frosty washed out black sound and pushes it even further out, buzzier, fuzzier, more distorted and even more dreamlike. The brief opener sets the stage, thick swirls of keyboards throb and swell, the sound so blown out the notes distort as if burning from within, a sweet sad melody, wreathed in distortion and reverb, that quickly gives way to he record proper, the guitars thick and buzz drenched, churning over a wash of melancholy keyboards, which soar dramatically like a chorus of angels, adding a strange Arvo Part-ish vibe to the proceedings. But even minus those keyboards, the songs here, much like on the last record, are so moody and melancholy, but still super intense and powerful. Some tracks feature acoustic guitar interludes, with the acoustic guitar continuing on into the song proper, winding itself in and around the loping buzz. The production is strange, at once thick and heavy, but also a bit murky and gauzy, the effect being that the record seems a bit blurred, a little washed out, which only adds to the lonely dreamy quality. Strip away the vokills, and the distortion, and these songs would most likely reveal themselves as heartbreaking minimal folk ballads, or depressive pop gems, but dip them in filth, wrap them in distortion, and run them through with harsh howls, and suddenly, your wallowing in some epic, majestic, depressive blackness. The final track is quite strange as well, all acoustic, a simple strummed minor key progression, peppered with occasional flurries of floor tom, some cymbal shimmer, but for the most part, simple and stripped down and strangely striking.

MPEG stream: The Forest
MPEG stream: La Nuit

Sorc'Henn's last disc, Harmonium Pieces & Dead Reveries, which was released on Faunsabbatha, the more 'metal' sub label of Ruralfaune, wasn't actually a metal record, more a dark dronescape, whirring expanses of Lustmordian Wolf Eyes style post industrial buzzing black shimmer. This latest Sorc'henn disc, released on Crucial Bliss (another sub-label, this time of Crucial Blast) is even more removed from anything metal. And in many ways anything dark. At least the 21 minute opener, which plays out like an Argento soundtrack composed by Oval, all shimmering layers, and skipping cds, looped ambience, that glimmer and glistens, a bit of Philip Jeck, a little Tim Hecker, all fuzzy and crackly melodies locked into haunting loops, while over the top, a child's voice whispers, and in the background bits of bird song. Truly creepy, but simultaneously quite lovely, totally mesmerizing, would have been happy if this track was stretched out to fill the whole disc. Odds are you'll find yourself listening to it over and over, luxuriating in its haunting mystery, eyes closed, picturing some old crumbling estate, surrounded by dark forests, a child peeking from the heavy curtains in an upstairs window. After that, the sound gets even more fuzzed out and crackly, a warm washed out hiss, speckled with bits of crackle and pop, a slowly unfurling minimal melody way off in the distance, the sound of thundering low end drifting by like black clouds, warm whirring organs, bits of electronic glitch, deep throbbing reverberating buzz, all leading up to the 27 minute long final track, a totally demented black musickal ritual, deep rumbles, growled Darth Vader like invokations, bits of industrial clatter, squalls of hiss, whirling streaks of effects, detuned guitars, woozy melodies, thick waves of crumbling buzz, slivers of feedback, creaking and groaning machinelike ambience, distorted chimes, disembodied vocals howling and moaning, a truly harrowing black and bleak soundscape, finishing off with a brief snippet of an old timey French piano ballad, adding even more mystery to the song's already eerie and mystical vibe. Like all the Crucial Bliss releases, packaged in a cool 3 panel full color fold over sleeve.

MPEG stream: Dodsdansen, Life Of An Island Lad
MPEG stream: Enez Varv Faaro

In a world full of tiny labels, it takes a lot to stand out, whether it's some amazing and mysterious sounds or super unique and hand made packaging. And if anything RuralFaune as shined in both respects, a crazy collection of some of the weirdest noisemakers in the world, and some seriously amazing, and in many cases, fragrant, packaging. Hand printed, painted, folded, pasted, held together with string or wire, often filled with branches or flowers, scraps of paper, seeds or bits of plant matter, many of them very strong smelling, all of them amazing. Well, Bruno, the man behind RuralFaune, was really getting into heavy music, and decided that maybe RuralFaune was not the place for such musics, so he started FaunSabbatha, a new label dedicated to heavy, creepy, dark music, metal, metallic, or just plain evil. Four new releases, each one outrageously limited, gorgeously hand packaged, and gone before you know it. Sorc'Henn are from France, and their particular brand of heaviness, as the title of their disc suggests is all about the harmonium, the piano, and lots and lots of drones. The opening track is a thick cloud of piano overtones, lots of sustain and reverb, a single funereal chord, struck over and over and over, the tones blending into each other, the overtones building up until it's some sort of doomy sonata. The second track, is a bleary buzzy blur, very Tim Hecker-ish or Oval-like, but with vocals that sound like the growls of some wild beast, a gurgling rumbling grrr. A bit like a pride of lions fronting Lustmord, very haunting and very very weird. But at the same time, strangely pretty. The next two tracks are thick layered drones, the first dreamy and blissy, lots of soft melody and dreamlike drift, the second is a blurred black metal, buzzing riffage doused in effects and overloaded, until the riff melts into its surroundings with the overall effect being a throbbing pulsing blackened swell. The awesomely titled "Where Does The Breath Of The Dead Pianist Come From ?" ironically enough features no piano at all (as far as we can tell), instead sprawling into some grinding Wolf Eyes-ian industrial plodscape, with plenty of dirge-y whir and distorted crunch. The second to last track "Grand-Harmonium Du Diable" is just that, a creepy lo-fi harmonium drift, the instrument wheezing demonically, haunting minor key melodies escaping like a demon's heavy breathing, an evilized version of the harmonium work of Gurdjieff or Nitsch. Finally, the disc finishes with "Huelgoat And The Droning Stones", a 10+ minute underwater dirgescape assembled from swooping backwards notes, murky and warbly and hypnotic, that fades to silence, before returning as a minimal muddy grinding low end melody that unfurls until the very end... SUPER LIMITED!! ONLY 66 COPIES!!!! In a spray painted cardboard sleeve, housed in a printed oversized paper jacket, all in a plastic sleeve with little bits of branches!

MPEG stream: Toulgoat
MPEG stream: Took Their Rise In Funerals

Record number two from this unlikely black metal offshoot. Which makes sense when you realize that the black metal band that Soror Dolorosa frontman Andy Julia calls home, as drummer, is none other than the twisted French 'faerical blasting punk' outfit Nuit Noire. But even that band's outsider barely black metal status couldn't have prepared us for Soror Dolorosa, which is only black in that it's the color of the clothes, and the black eyeliner these guys don, as they unfurl some fantastically retro gloom/goth/death rock, that as we mentioned in our review of their first album, sounds SO genuinely gothic, that we're guessing even some gothrock veterans could be fooled into thinking these guys were from back in the day. We mentioned groups like Christian Death, Specimen, The March Violets, the Virgin Prunes, we'd probably add the Abecedarians, and Kommunity FK, and heck why not Bauhaus and Joy Division and even Interpol. Cuz for all the retro eighties worship and gloom pop revivalism, NOBODY does it as good as these guys, right down to the bass tone, to the deep crooned dramatic vocals, the meandering spacious compositions, loping and low slung, spidery guitar melodies, simple propulsive drumming, lush reverby production, and gorgeous songs, not heavy, not weird, just dark and dreamy and dramatic, channeling classic cold wave and goth rock bands of the past, creating their own contemporary death rock sound that owes as much to the Cure as it does to the more subterranean goth rock of old. Unlike their first record, which seemed to retain much of the urgency and raw energy of the black metal scene that birthed them, this latest album is simultaneously more polished and more restrained, less crunch, and buzz, and more shimmer and jangle, the verses unwinding and meandery, the choruses epic and majestic, but still restrained and minimal. And the songs too might be even catchier, but subtly so. There's no overt immediate hit like "Beau Suicide" from the first record, but instead, ALL of the tracks here blossom on repeated listens into the sort of songs that get played to death, and make it on to that break up mix tape, dour and dark, and miserably blissed out. The song "Soror Dolorosa" almost cribs the exact bass line from the Abecedarians' biggest hit, but here, the band instead stretch it out, and pile on layer after layer, keening guitar melodies, a dark melancholy croon, clouds of cymbal shimmer, until the song slips into a woozy bit of softly tribal drift, all warm guitar whirl, before launching into a darkly propulsive gloom rock churn. Our favorite track though might be closer "Broken Wings", which almost sounds like the best Katatonia song ever, but slowed way down, with all the distortion stripped away, the dramatic vocals so powerful and moving, the guitars thick and textural, all the while a thick driving bass line pulsing beneath the surface, a dark, doomy goth pop dirge that plays out like some miserablist slowdance moperock, cinematic in it's own way, evoking wandering in the pouring rain, watching the city lights blink off one at a time, of heartbreak, of loss and even death, a gorgeously lush yet emotionally bleak ballad, that is the perfect finish for this modern gloompop/gothrock classic.

MPEG stream: Crystal Lane
MPEG stream: Autumn Wounds
MPEG stream: Damaged Dreamer
MPEG stream: Soror Dolorosa

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

SORRY. There's fast and buzzy and blurry. And then there's FAST AND BUZZY AND BLURRY. This Danish black metal outfit manage to pretty much outbuzz and outblur all their blackened brethren. Not sure if it's the riffs, or the songs, or the production, most likely all of those things, but Sortsind whip up an impossibly dense black metal blast that is so fast and fuzzed out all the riffs and blast beats drift together into a glorious fuzzed out droning blur. But close listening reveals all sorts of fucked up weirdness going on within. Cool arpeggiated guitars, occasional big boomy room reverbed drums, weird atonal circusy keyboards, and some of the weirdest harshest vocals ever, somewhere between some one shrieking in utter agony as they are being torn apart by some wild beast, or some super processed feeding back guitar. A weird high end wailing squealing animal like growl. SO weird. And perfectly matched to the harsh buzz of the music. Once in a while some crazy catchy Iron Maiden-ish harmony guitar part will surface out of the murk, but will quickly be sucked back down into the darkness. There are brief breaks in the mayhem, long stretches of haunted mansion creepy ambience, dreary swirls of mournful keyboards, howled anguished tortured soul vocals drenched in reverb, dreamlike passages of slow slithery minor key clean guitar, the resurfaces throughout the record, drifting beneath the thick fuzz like some wraithlike shimmer. But this record is all about the buzz and the fuzz and the blur, and for those of dying to buried alive in an ocean of bombinating black buzz, you probably won't do any better than this. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES. ALREADY OUT OF PRINT AT THE LABEL. WE HAVE ABOUT 20 COPIES...

MPEG stream: Vandrer Blandt Dodninge
MPEG stream: Blandt Gra Monumneter

Debut disc from the new band of ex-Dissection rhythm guitarist player Johan Norman, also featuring final Dissection drummer Tobias Kellgren. Dissection, as you may know, was the ultimate Swedish death/black metal band of the '90s (well, next to At The Gates), combining melody, speed, and a palpable sense of dangerous evil like none other. Unfortunately, Dissection met its demise after two albums when one member went to jail for murder! But his colleagues have formed Soulreaper (named after a Dissection song) to continue the tradition (as well as that of Morbid Angel, Slayer, etc.). Soulreaper even covers a song by pre-Dissection demo band Satanized.

REJOICE! New discs from I, Voidhanger have arrived! It's been a while since we've stocked material from our FAVORITE current metal label going, and when we did, it was gone almost immediately! So, while it's here, we have the newest release from Spectral Lore, a follow up to the double cd entitled III which we had a while back but never reviewed (and we have back in stock for those looking). On Gnosis, the lone Greek artist that writes and records all the music has really embraced the mystical, the spiritual, and the psychedelic elements of the powerful and EPIC black metal he's made up to this point. Unlike III, however, there are no vocals on Gnosis (or, if they are, they are buried in the mix), but it more than makes up for that with constantly shifting, hypnotic instrumentals that are far an above his best work to date. A definitely must for anyone into the recent spectacular release by Oranssi Pazuzu, or the sun-drenched black metal of early Alcest. Like everything else on I, Voidhanger, totally unique, simply spectacular and not to be missed!

MPEG stream: Dualism
MPEG stream: Gnosis' Journey Through The Ages
MPEG stream: A God Made Of Flesh And Consciousness

The first we heard from Greek one man ambient black metal horde was on a split with Swedish psychedelic black metallers Underjordiska, then offering a washed out black ambient counterpoint to Underjordiska's furious spaced out black buzz, so when we finally got this cd in, a digital reissue of a long out of print cassette, we were expecting another disc of washed out ambient blackness, and while there is a bit of that present, Spectral Lore knocked our blocks off with this collection of totally intense, outsider avant black metal buzz. After a two minute intro of delicate acoustic guitar, SL explode into a 24 minute epic, all stumbling crunch and grind in the beginning, before slipping seamlessly into soaring majestic epic buzzing black metal. The drums and vocals mostly buried beneath the frenzied riffage, weirdly minor key, haunting and space-y but thrashing and black and grim, until the sound shifts, getting muddy and murky, a loping midtempo pound that quickly shifts again, and stretches out into some woozy psychedelic folkiness, all warm buzzing guitars and crystalline melody, soaring strings, totally tranquil and dreamlike, before exploding in another frenzy of tangled and gnarled blackness, and so it goes, slipping back and forth, until finally the guitars coalesce into some classic metal sounding melody, then a weirdly Viking sounding blow out, before fading out completely, leaving a long stretch of hushed gauzey ambience. Heck that track alone would be worth $13, there's more packed into that 24 minutes than most bands manage in records twice that long, but there's so much more. The rest of the record is a balance between woozy melodic drift, and warped black heaviness, often the line between the two heavily blurred. Black buzz grows more and more indistinct until it sounds more like Nadja, a sort of shoegazey black drift, guitars unfurl, chords unfolding slowly one at a time, moody synthesizer strings drift over hushed minimal swirls of soft focus sound, guitars rumble and bombinate, building to soaring lysergic ur-drones, long stretches of muddy murk give way to crystalline sonic whispers, black metal roils and churns and explodes in streaks of near white noise, the sound and production constantly shifting, blistering and in-the-red one second, mumbled and washed out the next, the sound as much a part of the music as the music itself. Far out and epic, psychedelic and spaced out, ambient and black, and so goddamn good...

MPEG stream: The Thorns That Guide My Warpath
MPEG stream: Towards The Great Crossroad
MPEG stream: Recoiling Beneath The Waves

It's been five years since we last heard from these French outsider industrial black metal weirdos, with their last record Mescalyne, which was as freaky and as fucked as the two preceding albums, all three of which we consider to be pantheon-worthy examples of confusional twisted blackness. We weren't sure what to expect from this new one though, a lot can happen in five years, but we've certainly seen other bands change a lot, and sadly, there does seem to be a tendency for bands' sounds to grow less weird with time, which who knows might be an inevitable side effect of getting better at recording, or playing, or just wanting more from music than making seriously twisted sonic shit. Well, we should have know better than to worry about these guys, cuz it seems they're just as warped and damaged as before. In fact it took us a few minutes into the second track to truly be sure, the opener is all thick low end throbs, keening drones, tripped out effects, static and crumbling distortion, creepy samples, so we expected the second track to explode right out of the gate, but instead, it was more ambience, a creepy music box, lots of crackle and more static, and way down in the mix, what sounds like drums way off in the distance, shards of feedback, then the drums kick in, and it almost sounds like DJ Shadow or something, all distorted skitter over woozy samples, but then finally, BAM, the song splinters into twisted, inhuman industrial black buzz, lightning fast drumming that if it isn't a machine, the drummer is some sort of cyborg, the guitars warped and melty and psychedelic, the structure fractured and constantly shifting, not smoothly either, guitars cut out, stutter and burst back in, the sound swings wildly from lightning fast blast to stumbling doomy tangle, and back, the riffs, as in the past, are mangled and slippery, but here, the metal drops out again, and we're returned to that weird DJ Shadow music box thing, before again, bursting into more detuned black savagery, and so it goes, it's a ten minute track, and they cram a lot into it, lots of drones, and weird industrial breakdowns, there are hardly any vocals, but when there are, they seem to be just a wordless bellow, and that could be some weird guitar thing too, it's hard to tell, everything is chaotic and woozy, warbly and seemingly in constant collapse. And while there's SO much going on, that we could pick each and every track apart, and describe all the twisted fuckery these guys conjure up, that first track definitely sets the template, with the long tracks super progged out experiments in avant blackness, that once again, set these guys SOOO far apart from the pack, this stuff is SO fucking tripped out and bizarre, and gloriously and fantastically idiosyncratic, it's hard to believe a regular band of dudes could conjure up something this bafflingly brilliant. The whole record is super glitchy, almost like the player is malfunctioning, but really it's all part of their warped master plan, that creepy crackly music box effect employed throughout, often the main black buzz riff, rendered as some disembodied old time melody, often under some sort of disembodied chugging, but somehow, always seeming to lurch back into twisted black aktion. More than half of the record seems to be spent exploring specifically non black metal weirdness, in fact five of the nine tracks are more sort of ambient explorations, textural experiments, and the songs proper are constantly in flux, again spending much of the time drifting, droning or creeping, but when they do launch into their black buzz, it's an alien strain that is pretty difficult to parse, so it's probably best to just let yourself get lost in Spektr's confusional black soundworld. Black metal record of the year so far for SURE.

MPEG stream: Teratology
MPEG stream: The Singularity
MPEG stream: Cypher

In the AQ pantheon of fucked up freaked out damaged weirdo black metal, we're constantly having to re-assess which band or which record is truly the MOST fucked up, the most damaged. And it can change in the blink of an eye. Sometimes, deeper listening reveals some until now hidden reserve of completely what-the-fuck-ness in a record we already considered a classic, other times, a band who maybe was never all that weird, will unleash a new record that is utterly confounding, and the bands that tend to be our favorites, seem to keep pushing the limits of the genre, continually subverting the classic sound of black metal until it's all but recognizable. In many cases, we're surprised that some of those bands continue to be loved by metalheads. Necrofrost, Furze, Striborg, Blut Aus Nord, Dead Reptile Shrine, and of course Spektr, who with each new release, jumps right to the front of the pack. Mescalyne is no different. Were this not a 4 song ep, we'd probably already be trumpeting this as black metal record of the year, and heck, we might as well proclaim it black metal EP of the year. Even considering that black metal is only one small part of their overall, twisted and blackened sound. As always, very little information anywhere, just some cryptic photos, and the band introduced like this: "Thus, Speller are:". One member Hth, is credited with Infra B. Distrubance, lead and rhythm anomalies, programming, sampling and vox, while kl.K is credited with percussive manifest, sampling, programming, words of spell and vox. So with all that programming and sampling, you can safely assume, that the weirdness here has much to do with electronics and processing, but it's not as simple as all that. Spektr's vision is a gnarled chaotic tangle of impossible rhythms, backwards guitars, black ambience, and FURIOUS black buzz. It sounds a bit like someone computer was hooked up to the guys in Deathspell Omega, and was sucking various black bits from their bodies and electronically weaving them into some sort of blackened beast, hellbent on destroying the world. A mad scientist, working with black metal, in some hidden fortress, creating some Frankensteinian buzzing behemoth, a lurching, skittering blown out riffed monstrosity. The opener, "Hollow Contact", begins with dark ambient swirls, some industrial moan and creak, a bit of metallic drumming, giving way to an incredible fierce and in the red blast of black metal fury, the drums machine gun fast, the riffs so blurred and buzzy, they're almost a continuous drone, some weird dynamics, with the guitars flipped backwards, and then chunks of tangled arpeggiated woozy blackness sent drifting into the void. The second track is just as strange, beginning with an almost typical black metal drum beat, but beneath a layer of what sounds like record crackle, static, and hiss, and all sorts of whirring buzzing ambience off in the distance, separated by thick blasts of nearly impenetrable black buzz, until the song splinters into a stuttering hiccupping stop start breakdown, all tangled warped guitar parts, backwards drums, tons of space, and that weird blast of gnarled twisted riffage punctuating the slow crawl. The third track is all ambient, a dark confusional sprawl of black whirs, and disembodied sounds, mysterious voices, which leads perfectly into the final track, the mellowest of the bunch, still with that same sort of unhinged Deathspell sound, but more spread out, more sort of Ved Buens Ende-y, a sort of post rock groove overlaid with those woozy guitars, and some haunting industrial ambience, finally erupting into some hyperspeed buzzing blackthrash, even then, constantly pulled apart into the opening guitar vs. drums dizziness, finishing off with a haunting minute of high end drone, and hushed, panicked whispering. Words barely do this stuff justice. Listen to the sound samples. The sound of Mescalyne manages to be futuristic, and spaced out but still grim and black. Buzzy and brutal, but atmospheric and cinematic. This is the kind of fucked up forward thinking music, filmmakers should be using to score their films. Eyes closed, Mescalyne is a terrifying nightmare ride, through some hellish futuristic underworld, and needless to say another addition to the aQ fucked up black metal pantheon. And most probably, black metal ep of the year!

MPEG stream: Hollow Contact
MPEG stream: Mescalyne

Finally back in print and available again, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Hewre's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem: Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite new weird black metal records!

MPEG stream: II
MPEG stream: III
MPEG stream: IV

There's a certain strain of black metal, that concerns itself more with black than metal, more with texture than heaviness, more with mood than any sort of musical rules. Those are precisely the sorts of black metal bands that send us spinning. Bands that transcend their genre, or are seemingly oblivious to the fact that they might belong to any genre at all. Such is the case with mysterious black metal outift Spektr. We discovered their debut a couple years back and proudly proclaimed it THE WEIRDEST BLACK METAL RECORD EVER. Since then it's been practically raining bizarre black metal, Furze, Rehtaf Ruo, Dead Reptile Shrine, Hidden, Urfaust, Circle Of Ouroborus, all most definitely black, but each with their own take on what black metal means. And sounds like. This new Spektr record, however, takes up right where the last one left off, and effortlessly outweirds them all. But their mission is not to be weird. This is not calculated, purposeful, ironic, or in any way untrue to their vision. And it's not that sort of damaged inept weirdness. The music is too dense, and complex and varied and lush and just too impossibly and truly weird to be anything but the musical expression of someone's twisted vision. It's like how truly insane people are the ones who don't realize they're insane. And Spektr are most definitely insane. The cool thing about Spektr, is that they seem to be some sort of experimental ambient project, with occasional bursts of black metal, as opposed to the other way around. More than half the record seems to be made up of drones, and static and white noise and intercepted transmissions, short wave radio, found sounds, soft subtle rumbles and strange rhythmic interference. When the metal does kick in, it tends towards a seasick lurching midtempo buzz, a lumbering blackened beast, that sort of stumbles and careens wildly out of control, occasionally slipping into a galloping blast, but quickly settling back into a slow sort of lope. Their metal is just off kilter enough to balance their experimental tendencies, and Spektr don't shy away from busting out with a black blast for only a few second before getting back to the drone at hand. And oh the drones! The gloriously twisted ambience. So dense and multilayered. Creaking and crackling, swelling and slithering, often punctuated by industrial pounding, strange rhythms, glitchy hiccups and stutters, but just as often a smoldering warble, a low end dirge of glacial hum and creepy crawly gurgle and whir, voices drift up from the murk, as do strange song fragments and bits of malfunctioning electronics, it's like walking through some black skied wasteland, the ground strewn with all manner of debris, the air thick with smoke and ash, The view fuzzy and indistinct, distant tolling bells, cymbal sizzle that sounds like sprinklers in a moonlit field, all these bits of sound, these ambient fragments, woven together into a truly ominous world of dark sound, the background to a truly bleak and buzzy black metal framework. The more we listen to this, the less -weird- it seems, scary maybe, haunting, harrowing, dark, dreary, creepy, ominous, ghostly, unnerving, and mysterious most certainly, oh okay, and quite a little bit weird too. A definite contender for our favorite new black metal record! The disc also includes a video, playable on your computer, for a track not on the cd. And it's a strange one as you might expect. The music is all dark drones, with weirdly jazzy drums way up in the mix, shuffling over a fuzzed out Burzumic riff that sort of ebbs and flows, a fuzzy distorted wave. It never fully kicks in, but it never completely blisses out. It sort of teeters back and forth between dark jazz and glacial black fuzz. It's a little like a black metal post-bop Bohren, sort of. The track shifts partway through and becomes a strange sonic kaleidoscope of creepy orchestra music, garbled ambience and a haunting martial rhythm played on tympani's. The accompanying video is gorgeously grainy, all darkness and shadows, like some rare damaged print of a lost silent horror film, the film stock so degraded that various chunks of light and dark take on ominous shapes, the end result, the visual equivalent of an old crackly record. Totally mesmerizing.

MPEG stream: The Violent Stink Of Twitching Terror
MPEG stream: His Mind Ravaged, His Memory Shattered
MPEG stream: Whatever The Case May Be

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Traccia II
MPEG stream: Traccia III
MPEG stream: Traccia X

We've had records from some hateful, extreme, heavy and truly black bands in the past but Stallagh definitely out-hate and out-black them all. Named for WWII concentration camps (the extra 'g' and 'h' stand for 'global holocaust'), this Dutch blackdoom industrialnoise horde, are often compared to Abruptum, for their extreme and ultra personal approcach to music making, but they take it even a step farther. Not content with harsh hateful vocals, Stalaggh actively set out to recruit mental patients and convicted murders, by using connections working in mental hospitals and carefully planning their recording sessions to coincide with the two days a month patients are allowed to leave the hospital. Woah. The main vocalist featured on the first 30+ minute track (originally released as Projekt: Nihil) is a convicted murderer who stabbed his mother 30 times when he was 16 years old, and subsequently spent the next 11 years in prisons, juvenile detention facilities and mental hospitals. Apparently he suffered from an extreme aggresion disorder, anorexia nervosa and a host of other mental problems. During the recording sessions he indulged in very excessive self-mutilation while howling and wailing through all his hate and pain and fury. Sadly, he killed himself mere months after the recordings were made. The second half hour track (originally released as Project: Terrror) features vocals from three different mental patients, one female. Wow. That's some seriously intense and messed up shit for sure. A rare and maybe problematic instance of music that straddles that blurry line barely dividing art and exploitation, a stretching of the boundaries, an exploration of how far one can go to tap into primal emotions and create music that is emotionally pure, no matter how hard it is to listen to or understand. But the results do definitely convey that hate and despair and misery, which probably can only actually be attained by going to such great lengths. This stuff is so bizarre and so fucked up but somehow strangely beautiful as well. The sheets of noise smear and shift, occasionally attaining an almost drone like quality (albeit an extremely harsh one) . Nihilistik Terrror is a massive, mind frying, soul shattering, freaked out, slab of droning, fuzzy, buzzy, whitenoise brutality, not black metal, not even metal really, more a sort of industrial noisescape, most definitely black, and bleak and harsh, but these are not songs, they are slow shifting sonic fields of squealing shrieking distortion, grinding ear shredding ambience, crunchy and gritty and NOISY! Definitely one for the extreme noise fanatics and lovers of the harsh and brutal, but black metallers who dug later Abruptum might check this out as well. There might be riffs here, maybe even songs, but if there are, they are buried under an impossibly dense ocean of sound, layer after layer of white hot noise and sonic sludge, all swirling maniacally around the terrified, vitriolic, angry, hateful, freaked out howls and screams of real human beings with truly damaged psyches. So intense! Includes both original releases, remastered and sonically even more harsh and aggressive, with a previously unreleased bonus track.

MPEG stream: One
MPEG stream: Two

Second disc from this Dutch black ambient doom outfit and it's just as harrowing and horrific as the first. For more on the band and their strange ways, see the review of the last record Nihilistik Terrror elsewhere on the website. But, in a nutshell, these guys are brutal, harsh, extreme and really fucking scary. Musically as well as in their modus operandi. Not content with coaxing the harshest of sounds from their instruments (there are instruments?) and emitting harsh demonic howls and hysterical maniacal shrieks themselves, these guys managed (through some dubious connections) to recruit a handful of inmates, in local psychiatric hospitals, to supply the 'vocals' and much of the artwork. And it sounds like it. Stalaggh's sound is a harsh swirling drone drenched freaked out noise, raw and hissy, loads of buzz and shriek and industrial whir, all whipped up into a dense stormcloud of sound, but it's the vocals that truly disturb, and this time they're everywhere, male, female, howling, moaning, weeping, wailing, sometimes barely audible, sometimes ferociously way up in the mix, always completely freaked out and brutally intense. This is like wandering through some old school mental institution, wandering the halls, all set to the sounds of SPK or Throbbing Gristle. This is the sound of human suffering, not just musically, but in every way, this is hate and confusion and misery and loneliness and sadness and despair and depression all channelled into a single 35 minute track. This record is sad and scary, and thus pretty fucking amazing. It definitely takes a strong stomach, and a lot of mental resolve, and some seriously iron clad ears, but it ends up being worth it. Very little music is this raw and intimate and frightening and seriously scary. It's really pretty fascinating, as well as a little bit repugnant, definitely hard to listen to, but almost equally hard not to. Limited to 100 copies, each one hand numbered and the inside features a reproduction of a piece of artwork drawn by one of the mental patients. [The digipaks are all a little worn on the edges, but that's how they all came...]

MPEG stream: Projekt Misanthropia (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Projekt Misanthropia (excerpt 2)

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

SORRY.

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

SORRY.

'80s retro sci-fi sexiness from these would-be Teutonic (actually Texan) clubgoin' droids known as Starchaser Network... two thirds of whom (Equitant and Proscriptor) are also key members of cult black metal thrash masters Absu!!! Actually that's not so strange, really, since we're already familiar with other Absu side projects that displayed far-from-black-metal tendencies. Absu drummer Proscriptor's solo recordings had their art-rock and new wave elements -- he even did covers of both Flock Of Seagulls and the Art Bears! There also has been two unusual offerings of Electro pastiche from Absu guitarist Equitant. Definitely if you dug those Equitant discs, you should check out Starchaser Network, whose influences are similar: Eno, Gary Numan, Kraftwerk, Pet Shop Boys, Egyptian Lover, Detroit Techno, etc.... yeah, apparently these guys were listening to more than just thrash back in the '80s. Thus all the darkly poppy, spacey-synthy, computer-grooved stuff here, with its decadent/deviant discotheque vibe. We'd recommend skipping track one, "Sintro", though, as it is by far the weakest, mainly due to some unfortunately cringeworthy vocals. They should have left it off, rather than putting it first! The rest of the disc is better, and while much of this may quite well be a bit tongue-in-cheek, only on that first track does it seem like "the joke's on them". We wish that they would have included instead their rumored cover version of the theme from the the '80s TV show Knight Rider (which should give you some idea about where they're coming from conceptually!).

MPEG stream: Midnight Prowl
MPEG stream: Nachricht

Another killer, baffling brilliant chunk of bizarre blackened death metal from Australia courtesy of Profound Lore, and as we've mentioned before, we're especially picky when it comes to death metal, so for us the more twisted and complex, damaged and demented the better, which is probably why we're digging this Stargazer record so much, probably helps to put it in perspective knowing that Stargazer just so happens to feature several ex-members of twisted costumed Aussie death metal weirdos Portal. Granted this is not nearly as noisy or twisted, but it does share a similarly off kilter approach to death metal. The first track along manages to neatly summarize the Stargazer sound in less than 6 minutes, a flurry of frantic riffing, a burst of murky blasting chug, some tangled convoluted stop/start dynamics, howled vox, squalls of dizzying confusional death metal freakout, some wild squiggly leads, little bits of NWOBHM melody, some cool stuttery chugs, and wild frenzied drumming, weird bits of doomy half time plod, weird stretches of really loud rubbery bass, like crazy rapid bass solo style basslines, a cool classic metal breakdown that quickly gets all weird and twisted and tangly, laced with some surprising melody, and finally a weirdly industrial sounding finale, all low slung bass throb, peppered with wild bursts of drum/guitar dervish, that grinds to a halt, only to spit out one more surprise blast right before the finish. Holy shit. How can you not love this stuff? The rest of the record follows suit, a super complex, but still melodic onslaught of furious grinding metal, of muddy murky blurred heaviness, pounding mathy proggy drumming, tangled warped melodies, very Eastern sounding at times, bits of classic metal, and of course bass, lots of bass, way up in the mix, woozy and busy, and adding a distinctly off kilter and atypical edge to the groups already twisted death metal sound... Seriously kick ass stuff, we can't get enough, and we find ourselves listening to this over and over like crazy non stop, definite new metal favorite for sure...

MPEG stream: Red Antlered Radiant
MPEG stream: Passing Stone - Into The Greater Sun
MPEG stream: Formless Face Of The Timeless Faceless

Some of you may laugh at the mention of an "Australian sound" in music, but when you take a look at the continent's musical output since the '60s, it's pretty clear that after taking cues from the rest of the world and putting their own spin on things, Australians have no doubt arrived at a pretty unique and insular sound, especially in the metal department. You have dISEMBOWELMENT, Portal, Grey Daturas, Halo, Vorak, Paramecium, and then the bands represented on this asskicking split full length, a reissue of a cd from way back in 1999: StarGazer and Invocation (featuring members who went on to play in the aforementioned Portal). Both bands whip up a frenzy of blackened death metal that is mindbogglingly technical and totally fucked, but never too weird for its own good, and it's hard to imagine any self-respecting metalhead not losing it over this split. StarGazer start things off with their strangely esoteric blend of black and death metal. The music and "lyrix" to their side of the split date back to the early '90s, giving the band some years to flesh out their evil ideas into songs that sound, at times, IMPOSSIBLE. The guitars are thick and burly as fuck, the bass is dirty and distorted, and man do the drums sound great - no triggers here, just a dude who obviously knows his way around a drumkit. Super distorted punkish guitars, insane blasts and phlegmy growls all merge into a thick stew of relentlessly concentrated EVIL that also rocks pretty damn hard. The intense riffs and song structures here are pretty much incomprehensible, and if you needed any proof that there's more going on here than your average metal band, just listen to the "Outroduction" that concludes StarGazer's side, a melancholy, spacey ambient piece played in reverse. Killer stuff here. Next up is Invocation's contribution, accompanied by the information that "Invocation has no political/racial views, WE HATE ALL LIFE!!!" Nice. The band, three dudes with crazy looks in their eyes and the intent to kill, definitely deliver the goods. Not quite as bizarre as Portal, Invocation nonetheless create insane blasts of avant garde death metal with tons of weird changes and totally skewed instrumentation that you might expect to find on a prog record. Not that you will be mistaking Invocation for Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, as the thrashing intensity and ridiculously tight playing will throttle you violently and put you in the shithouse with your neighbors for sure. Best of all is how "real" it all sounds, with guys who certainly know what it takes to ascend to the next level of metallic awesomeness without the need to succumb to any overproduced bullshit. Oh, and for the curious, H.A.S.T.U.R stands for "Horrific Ancient Sumerian Traditional Usurpurs [sic] Remembered". Something we can definitely get behind. We can thank the folks at the awesomely named Bird Of Ill Omen Recordings for rescuing this one from the darkened vaults of time and unleashing it upon an unsuspecting world ten years after the fact. HAIL!

MPEG stream: Slither
MPEG stream: Taming Leeches With Fire

The thing that usually makes a band stand out. REALLY stand out. Is the vocalist. It can make or break a band. A mediocre band can become great the minute a singer opens his mouth. But that same moment can just as easily send us diving for the eject button. In black metal vocals rarely make or break the band, as the sonic breadth is quite narrow, growling monster like grunts or shrill demonic shrieks. Or maybe somewhere in between. But a black metal vocalist CAN send a band spiralling into bizarre baffling outsider metal territory, and those are often the bands that we find ourselves digging the most. There's the Ethel Merman like croon of Urfaust, the atonal tuneless Jandekian warble of Circle Of Ouroborus, the anguished shriek of Weakling, the sorrowful over the top wailing of Silencer or early Bethlehem. ALl of these bands are great, but what makes them REALLY great is their abstract off kilter demented approach to the vocals. Thus we have Sterbend. The music is awesome, a blurry Burzumic buzz, midtempo, a moody black blur, relentless simple drumming, huge washes of melancholic keyboards, buzz and buzz and more buzz all over everything. But it's the vocalists that push this WAY into the world of damaged demented whatthefuck black metal. A howling anguished agonized scream, squeal, shriek, hard to know what to call it, take the high pitched wail of Weakling, mix it with the over the top caterwaul of early Bethlehem mix in some shrieking terrified teenager a la Bathtub Shitter, and then up the hysterical level a hundred fold, and now we're talking. Wild and insane and so creepy and fucked up sounding. It's so completely over the top it almost sounds truly terrifying. Track three is the ultimate demonstration of the vocals dedication, opening with a symphony of screams, the vocalist's multi-tracked shrieks of anguish colliding and mixing and swirling into an ear splitting head spinning frightful cacophony before the dirgey black metal buzz kicks in. Woah. Pam thinks it sounds like some fucked up county fair Haunted House, and it sort of does, but the sort of haunted house you never come out of alive!!!! Weird and wacked. And really amazing. For a limited time we have the super limited, hand numbered (500 copies) silver silkscreened solid black jewel case version. Once those are gone it's back to the rregular jewel case version with you!

MPEG stream: Depressing Paths Through Fullmoon Forests
MPEG stream: Einsamfeit

Man do we love Russian black metal, Old Wainds, Nav, Ithdabquth Qliphoth, Meti Bhuvah, Blackdeath, Forest... A few years back we discovered this one man band and lost our shit, it definitely sounded Russian, but at the same time it sounded like none of those other bands, we were so blown away. That record, Vadrer, from 2007, became our unequivocal black metal record of the year. In the last three years, all we've heard from Stielas Storhett was a couple tracks on a three way split, that if anything just made us more anxious for a new full length, and while this is not it, it IS two new songs, two new long songs, two parts of a single longer song, and it RULES, if anything, Stielas Storhett have only gotten better since we last heard from them. So what's the big deal? Haunting cinematic strings, soaring and dramatic, give way to dense, blasting, sorrowful black metal buzz, thick and gnarled and utterly frosty and epic, the main melody totally majestic, trancelike and mesmerizing, we could listen to 10 seconds of this on a loop FOREVER. Not sure what it is about it that makes it so special, but it's definitely magical, the usual black buzz blast is laced with woozy arpeggiated melodies, the vocals are appropriately harsh and hellish, but seem infused with extra pathos, super emotional and intense, and the song itself, the arrangement, loping, midtempo, depressive and melancholic, lurching and lumbering with a cool little stuttery chug, and a washed out seasick breakdown that sends the guitar into high end ur-drone skree, before slipping back, before it begins to slow down, the vocals getting more and more intense and hysterical, the guitar soaring, cool harmonics and melodies drifting above the now doomy crawl, finally fading out. The second 'movement' begins with weird high end guitar filigree, and some mysterious voices speaking in Russian, and then the song lurches into action, a weary depressive plod, with more gorgeous soaring harmonies, almost like a way blacker Opeth or Katatonia, the song stays moody and moving until about 5 minutes in and the song bursts into full on blast mode, frenzied and frantic, quickly slipping back into a more melodic chug, with some amazing harmonized guitar leads, total classic metal, so epic, finishing off with more of the cinematic strings from the beginning. Holy shit. This guy is amazing, this record is incredible, it may be only 17 minutes long, but it accomplishes more in that time than most other BM bands can pull off in a career. Let's just call it BLACK METAL EP OF THE YEAR!

MPEG stream: SKD I
MPEG stream: SKD II

Instead of leaving it for the end of the review like we usually do, we'll come right out and say it right at the beginning. BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR. Without a doubt, the debut release from Russian one man band Stielas Storhett, has stormed past all the other black hordes, and secured the number one spot on our best metal records of the year list. Even though technically it came out last year, we only just discovered it a few weeks ago, so as far as we're concerned this is IT. List rules be damned! And it seems very unlikely that any record will be able to top it. What is it exactly, that makes Vandrer... so amazing then? At first, we thought it was one of those BM records AQ seems to love so much, you know, the sort of damaged and demented, stumbling and fucked up, weirdo outsider black metal. But the more we listened, the less 'weird' it sounded, and the more it seemed to transcend the usual descriptors. In many ways it is fucked up and demented, but instead of being blatantly weird or experimental, the weirdness was part and parcel of a super personal, carefully crafted sound. A blown out wintry buzz, furious and fuzzy, relentless and over the top, but infused with mournful melodies and strange sonic layers. Lots of killer guitar harmonies, but buried in seas of sizzling cymbals, in the red drums, and some of the most gloriously distorted guitars EVER. The opener is a majestic epic, as sorrowful and melancholy as it is frosty and grim, with sweeping guitar melodies, and a loping, sort of stumbling rhythm, complete with long stretches of gorgeously bleak clean guitars over simple shuffling drumming. The second track counters with some of the most intense and furiously fuzzed out blackness ever set to tape. A killer riff that is immediately swallowed up by a swirling cloud of black buzz and chaotic drum damage. But even within this dense squall of mayhemic fury, lurk all sorts of haunting melodies and unlikely sounds, an army of ghostly shapes and sonic spectres, the musical version of wandering through bleak landscapes and fog enshrouded graveyards... The rest of the record veers between those two sonic sides, the blown out buzz, and the lilting depressive moodiness, from the weird depressive Katatonia like dirge of the instrumental "Nymane" (instrumental that is, except for some strange buried-in-the-mix, moaning and heavy breathing) that reminds us of a super tense emotional scene from some Dario Argento film, to the closing number "Dieses Eis Wird Niemals Schmelzen", which begins like some SUNNO))) style downtuned guitar buzzscape, before the drums kick in and the guitar splinters into strange syncopated chugging, while over the top drifts a gorgeous creepy guitar melody, eventually coalescing into a midtempo Burzumic trawl through some miserable sonic world of lost souls and damned spirits, to the epic seasick lurch of "Stille Weisse Wildnis", with its swords being unsheathed sound (a la Satyricon), its strange Fripp-like guitar interlude, and its stumbling stop start arrangement, and all blackened points in between. There are even a couple of covers, Darkthrone's "Unholy Black Metal", which is pretty true to the original but supercharged and doused with even more grim buzz than the original, and Burzum's "Erblicket Die Tochter Des Firmaments" which is an all time classic, but given Stielas Storhett's sonic makeover, insanely distorted and heavily affected vocals, and a million more layers of buzz, and a production that noises it up so much that minus the drums, it could be some killer Merzbow black metal track.

MPEG stream: Der Letzte November
MPEG stream: Vandrer...
MPEG stream: Grafin Dammerlicht
MPEG stream: Schmerzerfullter Zorn

We went pretty crazy for Stielas Storhett's Vandrer... record, reviewed way back in 2007, unabashedly proclaiming it BLACK METAL RECORD OF THE YEAR. We recently revisited it, and fuck, it still destroys, so much so that it's hard to imagine it wouldn't be black metal of the record of the year no matter what year it came out and no matter what records it was up against. We've been hankering for more ever since. And finally, the Dark Lord has answered out prayers. Two tracks, both unreleased, both completely amazing and like the full length before, pretty fucked up and freaky. The weirdness here though is more the strange almost major key melodies that swirl around the loping blackened dirge. The guitars are angular, buzzy, the drums pounding, the vocals more a sort of drawled howl, but here they're set amidst some strangely poppy and melodic guitar leads, the two parts mesh seamlessly. but still it's hard to wrap our ears around it. Like a Stielas Storhett pop jam, a Khold like groove, still black, but damn is it catchy and poppy. Later the track gets a little darker, and chuggier, but still the sound is strangely epic and majestic, and black hearts be damned, weirdly happy sounding. Which in itself is bizarre, but beyond that, it's a pretty stellar slab of melodic blackness. The other Stielas track is more buzzy and frenetic, but still strangely major key, even some bad ass almost Iron Maiden sounding guitar harmonies. The track veers back and forth between more traditionally grim blasts, and as if SS mainman Damian T.G. is struggling sonically, a musical battle between good and evil, pop and metal, depression and misery, effusive positivity and happiness, who knows, maybe he got a girlfriend since last time we heard from SS. Either way, it's a strange development but, man do we like it. Been listening to these two tracks nonstop! While two new tracks from Stielas Storhett is more than enough reason to pick this up, this three way split does actually feature two other Russian bands we had never heard before. Liholesie, whose sound is a sort of Pagan folk, percussive and dramatic and a bit Renn Faire sounding, but pretty intense and emotional nonetheless, and Mor, whose sound is a strange blend of melodic post rock, and abstract black metal, leaning more toward the former most of the time, we hear bits of Katatonia's epic doom pop. maybe a little Lifelover (although nowhere near as strange), heavy, super well produced, darkly dramatic, even at it's blastiest and buzziest, their sound is still rife with pop and gloom and a gloriously dark tension, although their final track manages to be pretty black metal indeed. A truly weird comp, but a winner for sure, more Stielas Storhett obviously, and two more cool obscure Russian bands to quite possibly obsess over....

MPEG stream: Taedium Vitae
MPEG stream: Kola Cross
MPEG stream: Barbarians (Hosts Of The North)

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

MPEG stream: Dark Promises (Are Always Kept By Satan)
MPEG stream: Demons

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

SORRY.

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

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

MPEG stream: Black Desolate Winter
MPEG stream: Depressive Hibernation

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

MPEG stream: Wrapped In A Cacoon Out Of Harm's Way
MPEG stream: Race Of Apathy
MPEG stream: Through The Veils Of Darkness
MPEG stream: Descending From A Black Sky

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

MPEG stream: Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery
MPEG stream: Light Anomalies In The Phantom Woods
MPEG stream: Ghostwoodlands

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

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

MPEG stream: Nefaria
MPEG stream: Somnambulistic Nightmares
MPEG stream: Garmonbozia
MPEG stream: Beyond The Shadow Of Silence ('95)

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

MPEG stream: Nocturnal Emissions
MPEG stream: Despondent Cries
MPEG stream: Under Black Rain
MPEG stream: Through The Dark Fog

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

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

MPEG stream: Ektoplasmic Dreams
MPEG stream: Solitude
MPEG stream: The Grandeur of Melancholy

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

MPEG stream: Southwest Passage
MPEG stream: Human Extinction

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

MPEG stream: Within The Depths Of Darkness And Sorrow
MPEG stream: Beneath The Fields Of Rapacious Blood
MPEG stream: Spiritual Catharsis

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

MPEG stream: A Lonely Walk In A Desolate Cold Pine Forest
MPEG stream: The Foreboding Silence
MPEG stream: Somnambulistic Nightmares Return