[ aquarius records — Metal Black Metal ]

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From the twisted mastermind behind outsider weirdo black metal one man band Cloak Of Displacement, comes this debut from the oddly monickered T. Bjorklund Quartet, a CoD offshoot of sorts, oddly named for several reasons, one, it's not a quartet as far as we know, and T. Bjorklund is not his name, but by now we should have come to expect that sort of whatthefuckness from Mr. CoD, which bleeds right over into the music here, which is a sort of abstract free jazz, black noise weirdness, imagine wild squalls of lo-fi super distorted shredding, like a more damaged Mick Barr, that matched by some wildly abstract 'free' drumming way off in the distance, not to mention some blown out, croaked alien vokills, everything wrapped in an insane amount of tape hiss, as if it were recorded on a 1950's dictaphone, the end result being like a Faxed Head jazz record, or some abstract black metal record melting down and going totally haywire. But for all the damaged shred and abstract fuckery, the sounds do become strangely hypnotic, murky and muddy and blurred. There seems to be some bass going on too, that surfaces part way through, but the weird thing is, it doesn't sound played, it almost sounds like another record is playing with just bass on it, and that's where it's coming from. The sound does swing wildly all over the place, from weird electrified ambience to full bore noise, to what sounds -almost- like black metal, our favorite bit maybe being near the end, where that strange bassline, thrums beneath a field of high end sine wave skree, while the vocals howl maniacally, the bass getting louder and louder, as if someone was jamming in another room, and just opened the door. Some seriously weird shit for sure. But if you've dug all the other Cloak records, or alternately are a jazzhead who somehow made it through this whole review, than check this out, we love it, but it's definitely on the 'difficult' side. Packaged in a hand pasted digipak style sleeve, LIMITED TO 20 COPIES, we have 15 of those, all hand numbered, with a hand written 'free jazz' insert.

MPEG stream: Excerpt

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

SORRY.

This has got to be one of the best black metal album covers EVER. A close-up of two corpsepainted mouths, drooling thick, viscous blood. Nice. Blazing fast, old-school black metal. Almost all blast beats and shrieks (the vocals sounding quite a bit like Cradle

RealAudio clip: A Hymn To Grand Darkness
RealAudio clip: Of Blackest Witchcraft

We like to think we have pretty good taste in music, but lately we've discovered something pretty strange. Many of our favorite records we discovered, even pursued, after being told that they were terrible. Not sure what it is, but when a review of some record is so completely harsh, sometimes we think the reviewer just missed the point, or that the work being reviewed was just too strange to be properly described by the average review. In one instance, we read a review of a record by a black metal band we already really liked, and the reviewer gave it a ONE out of a possible TEN, going on at great length about why the record was so bad. But strangely, all of his complaints about the songs and sounds did nothing but make us more and more intrigued. After months of trying to track this record down (the label had folded and it was never properly released) we did finally get our hands on a cd-r copy, and you know what? It was absolutely amazing. Fucked up, sure. Retarded? Maybe. But by now, you know that's the sort of stuff we love (it was Old Forest if you must know, but we have had no luck tracking down the band or the label, and we'd be more than willing to put it out ourselves! Old Forest, if you're reading this get in touch!). A similar thing happened with this, the latest from USBM outfit Black Funeral. A review we read complained that their otherwise kick ass grim and cult black metal, had morphed into a noisy, almost industrial sound, a buzzy blurry blast that was apparently too weird and not really 'black metal' enough. We were immediately envisioning a band that sounded like Spektr or Blut Aus Nord. Which would be a very good thing for sure. Other reviews described Ordog as "tuneful white noise", "Nargaroth or Graveland combined with Einsturzende Neubaten", another compared them to Benighted Leams (!!!). But it was the review that described Ordog as sounding like an untuned AM radio that really pushed us over the edge. And you know what? It sounds a little like ALL of those things!! This is definitely black metal. Appropriately harsh and buzzy. But from there all bets are off. A disturbing exploration of some mysterious fog enshrouded pit of despair. The vocals are harsh and way up in the mix, over weirdly atonal riffing and machinelike programmed drums. The melodies drift and drone, some almost sound like the most melancholy Depeche Mode song bits transplanted into a way more creepy and harrowing black metal wasteland. But the path through each track is a meandering circuitous journey, one fraught with peril. Wide expanses of fuzzy haunted mansion keyboard, jagged shards of metallic what-the-fuck laid over monster like growls and thick drones, rippling sheets of warped black noise, and a gritty and dense wall of fuzz draped over EVERYTHING. You can definitely here Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, Benighted Leams, but the twisted and looped buzzdrone aspect really reminds us of Wold, but where Wold were more spacey and ambient, Black Funeral apply the same sonic approach to a more blackened buzz. So fucking awesome! The whole record is thematically based on the occult, Persian mythology, Satanism and especially vampirism, two tracks actually feature lyrics written by convicted serial killer / cannibal Nico Claur, to whom the record is also dedicated. Weird. And non-music related tidbit. Black Funeral is in fact 2/3 female, which is most definitely an anomaly in black metal (and the band photos inside definitely had the AQ metal boys swooning. Black Funeral's Lux Ferro and Dana Dark are some seriously ultrafoxy, gloomy, gothy raven haired black metal queens of the underworld!)

MPEG stream: Harbingers Of Pestilence
MPEG stream: Hymn To Ahriman
MPEG stream: Mummu Chaos

The last Black Funeral record, Ordog, was one of our favorite black metal records of last year. We already liked the band quite a bit previously, but with Ordog, the buzzing blackness was transformed into some sort of experimental black noise metal, reminding us of bands like Spektr and Blut Aus Nord and Phobos, a sort of processed industrial vibe, lots of drones and ambient interludes peppered with machine like riffing and all sorts of black atmosphere. We should be used to it by now, but while we were blown away, much of the BM community shied away, not at all digging Black Funeral's new damaged direction.� So we were pretty psyched to finally hear Waters of Weeping, the brand new record, to see where they took their black sounds next. And as much as we were secretly hoping they would do something super radical, WoW is actually more of a straight ahead black metal record, but then it's all relative. This is still plenty weird, just compared to Ordog, it's a bit more traditionally black and buzzy. The sound and the vibe are very reminiscent of Xasthur and Leviathan and the like, the new wave of depressive black buzz-ers, with long drawn out minor key dirges, dense clouds of washed out buzz, loping blackened dirges, dense convoluted song structures, lots of creeped out ambience, but thankfully, here and there lurk some of that crumbling industrial blackness left over from Ordog. In fact, those are probably our favorite moments, like track 4, "Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell � HOD (Smal/Adramalech) � Mercury", an almost Godflesh worthy ultradistorted industrial dirge, with strange processed alien growls and pounding percussion, all wrapped up in buzzing synths and FX drenched guitars. But then the next track is a classic, old school sounding slab of relentless black metal buzz. But before you know it, we're on to track 6, and back to Ordog territory, "Lord Of The Dead � Tiphereth (Belphegor/Paimon) Tagahrim" another slowed down, black industrial buzz drenched plod that is SO fucking dismal and bleak and amazing. The more we listen to this disc, the more it all sounds so perfect. More and more and more like some meticulously assembled black artifact. The buzzing blackness spilling into the industrial pound, long streaks of minor key dirge wrapping inky tendrils around bursts of relentless black blasts... It's hard to explain exactly, but any of these tracks, take on their own, sounds pretty dang great, but taken together, as a sort of hellish suite, an extended ritual, they mesh into a�grim and black, buzzy and blown out, haunting and soul wrenching sonic journey...

MPEG stream: Nehemoth � Malkuth (NAMVTh) - Earth
MPEG stream: Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell � HOD (Smal/Adramalech) � Mercury

From the same label that brought us the amazing Animus disc a while back, a gorgeously buzzy depressive melancholic chunk of emotional blissed out blackness, comes this, the debut from Black Hole Generator, a blackened supergroup of sorts, featuring members of Taake, Grimfist, Aeternus and others. Unlike the washed out dreamy buzziness of the Animus record, Black Karma is a furious frosty blast of ultra technical riffing, strange atmospheres, loping doomic passages, grand sweeping melodies, gnarled alien vocals and convoluted arrangements with plenty of weird stop/starts and confusional tempo changes.� We have to admit, we were a bit skeptical at first because of the band name. It made us think of some cheesy industrial black metal band, all programmed drums and recycled death metal riffing. But this is anything but. You can almost imagine some strange planet, floating in space, wreathed in ice and debris, blood red in the blackness of space, bizarre lights barely visible through the planet's hazy atmosphere, closer investigation though reveals that this is no planet, instead, it's some sort of aeons old machine, assembled by a mysterious ancient race, designed to create an endless series of black holes, which over time, will swallow up everything in the universe, enabling said race to begin anew, creating new worlds from the black void left by the Black Hole Generator. A black and barren universe designed to mirror their ancient home. Black Karma is the soundtrack, futuristic and furious, but grim and frosty and and subtly bizarre.� Each song a chapter of that epic tale, every chapter a maelstrom of�relentless buzzing riffage, so blown out they're nearly transformed into a furious black ambience. The rhythms careening from light speed blur to loping seasick groove, blast beats underpinning thick shards of jagged distorted grind, occasionally slipping into some strangely catchy hook, before being blown apart into another dense cloud of black buzz. The vocals crawl and slither everywhere, like weird eyeless alien beasts, emitting�guttural moans and weird strangled crooning that sounds a little like a throat singing Popeye. Here and there, the blackness recedes, revealing�stretches of super dreamy melodic black bliss, arpeggiated melancholy melodies hovering over churning metallic swirls, before the Black Hole Generator sputters to life once more, and Black Karma slips right back into staccato bursts of machine gun like rhythms and planet razing streaks of black metal brutality. Awesome.

MPEG stream: The Age Of Anxiety
MPEG stream: When Hell Is Full The Dead Shall Walk The Earth
MPEG stream: The Screaming Skull

Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes). The legions of hell shall now tremble before you, they will supplicate themselves before the newly appointed, Mr. Evil Lord of The TWENTY RANDOM BLACK METAL TAPES. You are the blackest. The most foul. You truly are the embodiment of unspeakable audial evil. You are a cassette tape warlord. Your tiny speakers spew blackness. Your ear buds are a direct link to the dark one... There will indeed be a final battle. To the death, the future of mankind hangs in the balance. It will not be determined by the number of demons in your army, the number of horns on your head, the sharpness of your blade or the quickness of your tongue, NAY, the deciding factor will undoubtedly be cassette tapes. It has been written. IN THE BIBLE!! Or somewhere, but it has been written: "The more tapes you have, the more prepared you shall be for battle. You shall not be defeated easily, those twenty tapes are like a huge flaming pentagram, warding off all who would dare challenge you." But as we warned you before, be wary of he with more than twenty black metal tapes. He will be your ruination. His twenty five or even thirty tapes will spell your doom. The only way to defeat him is to ORDER ALL THE TAPES. If you dare. And, if you daren't, well, then, you shall just take your chance with twenty!!!! BE NOT AFRAID!!! Twenty is indeed a whole lot!! Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price. That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future. Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right! ----* ----* Selected New Arrivals : ----*

Once again, we got a whole batch of killer black metal cassettes, too many to review, but all of them weird and grim, buzzing and black. Some are super fucked blacknoise, others are damaged stumbling outsider black buzz, while others are old skool blackness, raw and hateful and brutal, while still others fall somewhere in between. But all of them cool. Andee again bought one of each if that makes you feel any better (his room is starting to look like it did in high school, minus the Motley Crue and W.A.S.P posters, who thought at 37 he'd be contemplating buying a "cassette rack" for all his tapes). This six pack is for the slightly more serious black metalhead. Six tapes is a like dipping a toe into the darkside, having an itsy bitsy peek at the blackness that lurks beneath, 6 tapes says you just might be serious. You might one day pledge your allegiance to the dark lord. The again you may not. 6 tapes, you could go either way. But 6 plastic slabs of grim and brutal black buzz stuffed in your Walkman will definitely be plenty to while away long nights skulking around graveyards, and definitely enough to keep your car stereo buzzing on the way to see where Anton LaVey's house once was or to burn down a church or whatever. All hail YOU! Remember, only tapes that have NOT been reviewed are eligible for the grab bag and the bargain price. That means we pick, it is random, and it will not include any tapes you have seen on the AQ list, or any tapes scheduled to be reviewed in the near future. Also, this is a whole new batch of tapes, none of which we have had before, so even if you grab bagged a few lists back, you can go for it again and not worry about getting the same titles. All right!

Fuck yeah, another awesome new metal mag (new to us at least, they're on currently on issue three), this one hailing from Chicago, and BMoTA is full on old school style classic zine action, folded 8 1/2" x 11" paper, stapled in the middle, photocopied, and brimming with cool underground shit, most notably, a super lengthy interview with SF eco-terrorist drum and dulcimer black metal one man band Botanist! There's also Alaskan (!!) black metallers Bound By Entrails, aQ fave electro-black metal / black noise weirdo(s) Jute Gyte, Kentucky black metal horde Merkaba (who recently released a split with another aQ fave, Wheels Within Wheels), Canadian black metal duo Skagos, a Sutekh Hexen show review, and a handful of record reviews. Fans of Oaken Throne, Chips & Beer, Rape & Honey, Convivial Hermit, Gallery Of The Grotesque, etc. can now add Black Metal Of The Americas to their essential metal mag reading list!! LIMITED FIRST RUN OF JUST 55 ISSUES!! Each one hand numbered!

A while back we reviewed issue number three from this awesome Chicago zine, focusing on, as the title suggests, Black Metal of the Americas, and while we first discovered that third issue (we missed out on the first two) via a big piece on local weirdo black metaller The Botanist, we ended up digging pretty much everything in that ish, some stuff we already dug, but some new discoveries as well. So here we are, a couple years later, and we've got not one but TWO new issues, and like the first, both are classic old school folded 8.5" x 11" style photocopied black and white, cut and paste, and like #3, tons of stuff to dig. Issue IV features an extensive interview with aQ faves Book Of Sand, there's an interview with Canadian black metal horde Aesahaettr, a piece on another aQ fave, Servile Sect, as well as pieces on one man, Velvet Cacoon related project Queen Of Heathens, Bastard Sapling and Cara Neir, plus loads of reviews! Issue V features more aQ faves, like Deafheaven and Dressed In Streams, as well as new to us names like Aksumite, Chrome Waves and Yellow Eyes, there's also a piece called "Intersections Of Discontentment In Black Metal And Emo" and another batch of reviews. Both issues essential metal mag reading, that again, belong on your shelf next to Chips And Beer, Rape And Honey, Convivial Hermit, Decibel, Terrorizer and all the rest...

Passenger is the debut full length from this Oakland based crusty melodic black metal project, comprised solely of onetime Deafheaven touring guitarist Gary Bettencourt; it's also the debut release from the label All Black, founded by current Deafheaven singer George Clarke. So with that sort of pedigree you may be expecting a platter of glorious soaring shoegaze tinged black metal / black metal tinged shoegaze, but Passenger is in fact a much grittier affair. After a brief intro of looming grinding noise pulsing over ominous shortwave radio static, this record launches into a pummeling, overdriven assault of blown out blast beats, anguished d-beat crust punk and mournful melodic black metal. At first one might be forgiven for thinking Black Monolith are yet another band in the orthodox Sargeist mold (albeit a very good one), but as the album grinds along other elements start creeping in - a driving uptempo punk rock beat provides a rigid spine to a hammering bittersweet riff, which in turn leads to a moment of throbbing ambient calm, before launching into the kind of crust punk / black metal hybrid that would make latter day Darkthrone proud. But then those haunting melodies start to seep in again, and as the blast beats re-emerge and the guitars pile on top of each other, the song shifts into something much more poignant and morose. The beauty of this album seems to blossom more and more as it progresses. By the album's midway point it seems to have accomplished the strange and dangerous task of morphing very subtly from some filthy black crust into an ethereal flurry of bittersweet melodies, driving hypnotic drums and buried muffled howls. And although those dirt-flecked HxC riffs are never far away, lending a genuine vitriol to the moments of comparative serenity, by the record's end the grit has given way to a complete immersion into gorgeous heavy post rock, like the heartbreak gleam of Deafheaven's Sunbather filtered through a much more huddled claustrophobic spectrum. The beauty hidden under layers of decay. Fans of the crustier side of melodic black metal (i.e. Panopticon, Ludicra, Lluvia) would do well to check this out. Highly recommended!

MPEG stream: Dead Hand
MPEG stream: Eris

Most long time readers of the aQ list are familiar with the stumbling weirdo surf guitar flecked outsider black metal of the German horde Varghkoghargasmal, whose peculiar brand of 'wooden metal' was a huge hit around here. So much so that our very own Andee released Varghkoghargasmal's Drowned In Lakes on his tUMULt label. Varghkoghargasmal mainman Avenger has more up his sonic sleeve, including not one, but two other projects on this week's list, one of which is this twisted blackened duo, appropriately monikered Black Priest Of Satan, which finds Avenger teamed up with the also awesomely named Molestor Kadotus, the two conjuring up a sound that's not all that far removed from Varghkoghargasmal actually. The drums are murky and stumbly, the guitars fuzzed out, the whole sound is loose, off kilter and home brewed, some seriously raw primitive satanic black doom, which is only further twisted by the crazed vocals, multiple vocal lines, some growled, others almost chanted, and still others soaring into shrieked falsettos, with voices overlapping, getting all tangled up, drenched in reverb and delay, giving the vokills, and the whole sound, a seriously dubbed out, almost psychedelic vibe. The music itself lurches from slo-mo black metal buzz, to sludgey Sabbathy doom, to lumbering chaotic thrash, always on the verge of collapse, and always wreathed in a seriously fucked up occultic ritualistic vibe, that makes this sound like some lost tape traded artifact from the late eighties or early nineties! Awesome.

MPEG stream: We, As Shadows Of Satan
MPEG stream: Graves And Misty Mornings

For the 35th anniversary of Black Sabbath, Rhino unveils this massive box set collecting in their entirety the eight studio albums by the original Ozzy Osbourne-fronted Black Sabbath line-up. And that's just great, fantastic. But actually I (Allan) personally think something even more substantial is in order for the band that, more than anyone, invented heavy metal -- a physical monument, perhaps a Gothic cathedral to be built in Birmingham England, where their music could be constantly playing on hidden loudspeakers 24-7? Something like that. But then again, they are pretty much my favorite band of all time. There's not room here to explain why, but I'd say Sabbath are in a large part responsible for my fanatical interest in music of all kinds and thus my job here at Aquarius Records. Seriously. The heaviness, the riffs, the emotion, the sincerity, the originality, the love, the darkness, the mystery, the humanity... Black Sabbath stand above all others. So... anyway this box set gets a hardy recommendation from me. Basically, if you don't already have all the remastered cds of the Ozzy-era albums, then you should BUY THIS. It's a deal. 12 bucks an album, plus a felt-covered 78-page hardback book and a bonus DVD! And we're talking about some of the BEST ALBUMS EVER. Black Sabbath, Paranoid, Master Of Reality, Vol. 4, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, Sabotage, Technical Ecstasy, Never Say Die. Ask me to list the top 20 heavy metal albums -- nay, rock and roll albums -- of all time and at least the first six of these will be on it! (Actually, please don't ask me, but you get my point.) The DVD consists of four songs performed live on the German Beat Club TV show, with that great psychedelic early '70s video effects processing. You've probably seen "Iron Man" or "Paranoid" from this before, they show 'em on VH-1 or MTV sometimes. But there's also "Black Sabbath" (dig the extreme close-ups on Ozzy's anguished face as he sings) and their rockin' cover of "Blue Suede Shoes"! Sabbath fans might already have these, though, as they've been available before. The book contains lots of great pictures, a detailed Sabbath timeline, two lengthy essays about the original Sabbath's rise and fall, and (at last!) printed lyrics from all eight albums...the surreal drugged-out poetry of the Sabbath Bloody Sabbath lyrics in particular are brilliant. Lots to pour over here, and even a Sab fan like myself learned somethings (like, it's Tony Iommi, not Ozzy, coughing in the intro to "Sweet Leaf"). Maybe the one unnecessary thing in the book are the celebrity blurbs that litter the pages -- Sabbath don't really need the endorsement of Beck or Henry Rollins, do they?! And I also must complain that nowhere in the band history or timeline does the post-Ozzy Sabbath even get a mention: Ronnie James Dio at least deserves better than that! The whole set is packaged smartly in, of course, a black box. There's two smaller cardboard slip-case style boxes (labeled 1970-1972 and 1973-1978 respectively) that fit in there with the book, each of 'em holding four digipack cds, with the original album art. The cds themselves are remastered. Sadly, there's not much in the way of extras -- no bonus tracks to speak of (the only one being "Evil Woman" from the UK edition of their debut). But Sabbath weren't a band that recorded a lot of throw-away b-sides or un-issued song demos. After all, these eight albums were from a span of eight years, the first four from just 2 years. So they were quite prolific but it all ended up on their albums -- and what's so amazing is that there's no filler. For the first six albums at least, almost EVERY SONG is great, and contains a riff eternal. That's why they're gods. However, I do think that they could have dug up some live material (there's bootlegs of lots of good stuff) or the rumoured demos from pre-Sabbath incarnation Earth. Too much to hope for I guess. And the DVD could have included more than the Beat Club footage: what about the California Jam or Don Kirschner's Rock Concert or their promotional videos? Oh well. Again, that's only gonna matter to extreme fans like myself, everyone else should be more than satisfied with just the timeless, legendary music from the albums anyway.

MPEG stream: Solitude
MPEG stream: It's Alright

It's been a while, more than a year in fact, since we last got a batch of TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA, but it's finally that time once again. We were beginning to jones pretty hard. For those of you who can't quite figure it out from the name of the genre, this stuff is black metal, and psychedelic, and most (if not all) of the bands hail from Sheffield in the UK. Beyond that, this stuff is pretty hard to describe, from blown out grinding blackened psychedelic post rock to chugging in-the-red blacknoise to glistening soft focus krautdrone to pounding distorted sludge to processed machinelike buzz and stutter, and we're not even just describing the genre, most of the bands somehow manage to incorporate all of those elements into one fractured fucked up and seriously and gloriously schizophrenic sound. We'd been waiting for a proper real cd (non cd-r) release from any of these guys, and while there have been rumors of a new Ice Bound Majesty full length on tUMULt (!), it was Black Vomit who were ultimately immortalized in aluminum and plastic first, thanks to those twisted freaks at Rusty Axe. But even by Rusty Axe's already freaky standards, Jungle Death is some seriously twisted avant heavy black weirdness. The sort of stuff that will have your standard black metal knuckle dragger scratching his head and reaching for the nearest Dimmu Borgir cd. The metal component of black vomit is a sort of metal that sounds like it was cooked up by Tim Hecker, Philip Jeck, Aidan Baker and Justin Broadrick would have conjured up in some underground lair, with no small amount of black magic. Guitars that roar and howl, piled on top of one another until they're so thick, they threaten to collapse your stereo speakers like miniature black holes, the riffs grind and buzz, blurred and smeared into huge heaving walls of blown out white hot sound, usually weirdly processed too, so buried beneath the roiling surface, lurk all manner of electronics and glitch and hiss and static. Sometimes the heaviness stumbles into streaks of sonic black tar, slowing the sound down into some blown out glacial trudge, and even then, it's no ordinary doom, the sound glistens and glows, it's heaviness more a function of staring into some alien sun, the beams of light transformed into sound, wrapping you in thick sheets of effulgent buzz and black hued shimmer. The various bits of skull crushing heaviness are balanced by some of the coolest drone and ambient music we've heard, from the rumbling, muted and melodic low end intro, that sounds like some creepy krautrock bassline slowed waaaaay down, to the glistening glitched out sun dappled shimmer of "Conderlint5", with it's mysterious alien voices and skittery crystalline textures, to the moaning lonely spidery guitar drift of "Last Cries Of The Lost". The record starts out damaged, and just gets more and more fucked and freaked out as it progresses, looped tribal drumming wreathed in swirling static, laced with strange samples, gives way to stuttering processed electronic grind, which slowly transforms into a sea of warped drones and Oval like glitches, all smoothed out into an undulating underwater soundscape, wrapped in jagged shards of distorted crunch and sonar like beeps. A brief bit of indie jangle, all minor key strum and sad lilting melody, explodes in a flurry of crumbling stumbling ultra distorted post rock pound, before slipping into some almost Pop Ambient sounding drift, only to again transform into some impossibly twisted bit of cinematic mood music, complete with haunting strings, and dubbed out drums, finally opening up into "Dark Beloved Cloud", the longest track on the record, all Burzumy and murky and buzzy and blackened, woozy and off kilter, with more processed vocals, tons of effects, long stretches of tripped out psychedelic minimalism, before the pounding D-beat climax, and then a soft focus shimmery fade out, which leads directly into the record closer, a warm warped swirl of deeeeeep thrum, and slow moving melodic murk, again shot through with echo drenched voices and bits of electronic twinkle and glimmer, fading out into nearly 5 minutes of near silence. Weird. But so fucking mind blowing. Totally wiping out any boundaries between drone music and black metal and ambient noise and electronic grind and whatever other fucked up sounds these freaks fuse into their totally genius and totally unique TRUE SHEFFIELD BLACK PSYCHEDELIA!!

MPEG stream: A Premonition Of Inevitable Doom
MPEG stream: Deluge From Hell
MPEG stream: Vigilance Night
MPEG stream: Constdernt

These oddly monikered aQ faves return with a brand new full length, and return to the True Sheffield Black Psychedelia fold, aka their original label Frequency Thirteen, after a release on aQ beloved and now sadly defunct label Rusty Axe. And what a return! Like past records, Black Vomit's sound is one that's tough to pin down, an ever shifting tangle of blurred and blackened sound collage, blown out super rhythmic noise rock, field recording flecked spaced out psychedelia, they pretty much all apply at one point or another, and impossibly sometimes all at once. It takes a while for things to get rolling, a weird creeping noise drenched into, all strange samples and shimmery layered low end, all glitchy and warbly, then some Sunroof! style high end raga drone, then finally, a thick low slung bassline slithers into action, beneath a black cloud of growling croaked disembodied vox, and then finally, true to the track's title "Forbidden Dub", the various sounds peel off, leaving just a tripped out spaced out dub, everything wreathed in echo and reverb, the drums careening wildly through clouds of cymbal sizzle, more mysterious samples, moaning guitar melodies, it's like a way more grim and blackened version of Sun Araw almost, a bastardized dub, that is teetering on the edge of collapsing into full on doomy dirge. Which is where things seem to be heading until the next track, "Riding Below A Sky Threatening Snow To The Very End Of An Empty World", explodes into what quickly reveals itself as some sort of fucked up dubstep jam, but Black Vomitized, so the sounds are all blurred and tangled, chaotic and abstract, a thick bass warble holding everything together, while beats stutter and stagger, and all of the other sounds blown out and in the red, before the record switches gears once again, laying down a bit of shimmery abstraction, before an avalanche of super distorted drums come crashing through a field of swirling electronics, the whole thing like an IDM Lightning Bolt. And so it goes, every song something entirely different, yet somehow linked to the song before it, and to the whole, a twisted songsuite of beats and buzz, of low end rumble and caustic crunch, slipping from synth heavy shoegaze blur, to tripped out reverb heavy space rock jangle, from creepy almost John Carpenter-ish soundscapery to bleary minimal low slung creep, and from distorted sun dappled dreambuzz ambience, to a final 20 minute slab of abstract synth-squelch, blur-bliss shimmer. So good. SUPER DUPER LIMITED too, ONLY 40 COPIES!! we got 20 of those, which won't last long...

MPEG stream: Forbidden Dub
MPEG stream: Riding Below A Sky Threatening Snow To The Very End Of An Empty World
MPEG stream: The Loneliness Of A Rainy Dawn Enshrouded Me Quietly

More True Sheffield Black Psychedelia!!! Which is quickly becoming our new favorite microgenre. As the name implies, the sound is black metal, psychedelic, and of course from Sheffield in the UK. Although black and psychedelic only barely scratch the surface of what's going on with these discs. Post rock, blacknoize, krautrock, furious grind, blissed out ambience, hypnorock, all tangled up into fierce blasts of whatthefuck atmospheric heaviness. We've already listed amazing releases from Ice Bound Majesty, Skultroll and a split between Dukkha and Black Vomit (see the reviews on the AQ website for more on Treu Sheffield Black Psychedelia). And we were so smitten with Black Vomit, we figured we'd track down more from them. So here's another blast of Black Vomit, this time teamed up with the equally distastefully monickered Rape Rack. Black Vomit start things off with some haunting ambience, that quickly gives way to some crusty fuzzy drone, eventually erupting into some fuzzed out metallic groove, which transforms into some grunting psych power violence, the programmed drums occasionally shorting out DHR style, a blur of garage fuzz pound, murky blackness, and relentless hyperspeed krautrock. After a brief bit of ambience, the band kick out the jams on a super space-y, hyper processed Circle-style jam. Hypnotic, and relentless, the riff wrapped in FX, the drums slipping from motorik pulse to furious blast and back again, over the top, harsh howled demon vox, a weird washed out blackened krautrock, that after another brief bit of drone tranquility explodes into some straight up black buzz. Awesome. Black Vomit are like Immortal's Blizzard Beasts crossed with Circle's Zopalki. We definitely need a full length from these guys. Rape Rack offer up their own take on black psychedelia, eschewing drums completely, for some intense textural black ambience, rough and gritty, hissy and crumbling, distorted and buzzing, melodies falling to pieces, being sucked under corrosive drones, the 16 minute epic that finishes things off, is smoother than all that, glistening shimmering cavernous expanses of digital buzz smeared into soft streaks of shadowy grey streaks. Not sure about the last track, it's definitely too heavy and fucked up to be Rape Rack, maybe it's the two bands together, but it's a killer, furious lightspeed buzz, processed and heavily effected, the vocals deranged and over the top, huge echo-y bellows howling in clouds of reverb and delay, threatening to drown out the din below. A furious black coda, that leaves us wanting WAY more.

MPEG stream: Dripping Red
MPEG stream: Witchtrial
MPEG stream: Gorgon

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Baphomet
MPEG stream: Under The Spell Of Black Moors

This is the stuff!!! Pure, grim, cult, frosty, necro, dirge-y, buzzing, midtempo, Burzumic and Mayhemic black metal from Russia! No keyboards, or corpse paint, or even long hair for that matter! Just simple, brutal, stripped down TRUE black metal. Swarming guitars, pounding drums, and anguished, tortured vocals (ala SF black metal legends Weakling) make up this nihilistic hellbrew of cacophonous brutality. Blackdeath are the brilliantly monickered duo of Para Bellum and Abysslooker, and Fucking Fullmoon Foundation will surely sate your unquenchable thirst for primitive grimness.

MPEG stream: Das Kriechende Chaos
MPEG stream: Unholy Church

The return of grim Russian black metal horde Blackdeath, the awesomely monickered brotherly duo of Abysslooker and Para Bellum, now joined by the much more simply named Maya, for this their most recent blast of glorious blackness. And glorious it is, and as fucked up and fantastically off kilter as past outings, the buzzing guitars in full effect, but the new drummer definitely pushing the sound into new and exciting directions. Intricate, and lush, but also raw and furious and weirdly prog, in fact, the vocals have always been super strange in Blackdeath, and this time around they're strange in a whole different way, loud, and dramatic, and crooned, way up in the mix, almost over the top, to the point that it almost sounds how we might imagine a black metal Circle might sound, the same sort of theatricality, proggy and operatic, a little bit like a black metal cabaret, and the music suits the new singing, not so frantic and frenzied as woozy and gnarled and twisted and atonal and abstract, the sound slipping from more traditional black buzz to this new tangled black squall, laced with organ, bits of warped ambience, surprisingly melodic leads, lumbering doomic plods rife with weird psychedelic spidery guitars, but still for the most part fuzzy and blackened and furious, blurred blasting, but the vibe completely altered by those incredible vocals. A little off putting for some most likely, but folks who like their black metal a bit bizarre, this batch of epic blasting black buzzery definitely fits the bill.

MPEG stream: Licht Ist Mein Tod
MPEG stream: Besessenheit Die Ich Brauche
MPEG stream: Die Verzweiflung Der Letzten Folter

Phobos is the 7th full length since 2001 from these Russian black metallers, who most folks probably know from their split with Leviathan, or longtime aQ list readers probably remember that Blackdeath feature two of our favorite named black metal musicians, Abysslooker and Para Bellum, not to mention that they also happen to have one of the few female drummers in black metal. And while in the early days, BD trafficked in super raw, grim black buzz, over the last few records, their sound has gotten weirder and weirder, coinciding seemingly with a sudden shift to the German language (which seemed odd for a Russian band). When we reviewed the last BD record, we mentioned that some of the parts sounded how we imagined a black metal Circle might sound, as well as pointing out the strange vocals, and the proggy arrangements, all of which are still present, in fact, if anything, the vocals have gotten even stranger, and the group's avant tendencies have definitely come to define their sound. The opener definitely hews closer to the classic Blackdeath grimnity of old, but as the song unfolds, it reveals itself to be a strangely technical, gnarled loopscape, with the main riff extremely cyclical, the sound churning and roiling, almost sing songy, which is accentuated when the leads come in, and follow along with the almost robotic riffing. And then the vocals go from black metal shriek, to dramatically howled, complete with lots of trilled 'r's, sounding, again, not unlike Mika from Circle, just way more metal. But the vibe is over the top, buzzy and black, but also twisted and a little avant. Which is actually how much of the rest of the record plays out, a sort of proggy black buzz, each track locked around a single riff, repeated trancelike, and more often than not, at some point splintering into something dizzyingly intricate, or warped and jagged. Unlike most bands whose weirdness stems from strange sounds, or unlikely sonic elements, the strangeness of Blackdeath is purely musical, working within a fairly well established set of sounds and tropes, they manage to twist those sounds all up, and arrange them in ways that are confusing, confounding, and manage to push both our grim black metal buttons, and our what the fuck, outsider black weirdness buttons at the same time. A rarity for sure. And while we could go through the record song by song, part by part, pointing out twisted little psychedelic filigrees here, damaged rhythms there, or the various warped textures, dizzying black prog arrangements, and super trippy melodies, that stuff is so well integrated, that it wouldn't make sense. It's quite a feat too, making all that weirdness sound like an inexorable part of the sound, all without taking ANYthing away from the pure grim black energy that oozes from pretty much every note here. Still one of our favorite black metal outfits around...

MPEG stream: Der Letzte Untergang
MPEG stream: Also Sprach Schopfer-Psychopath
MPEG stream: Lucifer Rising

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

SORRY. While we're waiting to get restocked on the cd version of this killer split (in the next week or two!), which flew out of here after our last list, we managed to get 30 copies of the picture disc vinyl version. Unfortunately that's all we're ever gonna get, so as always, act fast! Hard to know what to say about Leviathan that we haven't said already. Quite possibly the most innovative outfit in black metal today. The man behind Leviathan, Wrest, has taken traditional black metal and turned it into something new and strange and completely out there, while somehow remaining totally grim and true to the black metal tradition. Here, he is teamed up with Russian black metal group Blackdeath, who specialize in extremely primitive buzzy and blurry black metal a la Burzum, Darkthrone and the like. The most remarkable thing about Blackdeath besides their simple droning fuzzed out riffs, and frosty atmosphere, is the vocals, a weird raspy warble, that slips from black metal shriek to weirdly anguished falsetto, reminding us a lot of SF BM legends Weakling. And the guitars are so thick and buzzy and blown out that you almost can't hear the drums, which lends the whole thing a super hypnotic drone quality that we LOVE. As if playing off of Blackdeath's primitive grimness, Leviathan hits right back with four tracks of his own full on grim buzz, but as with everything he does, no matter how true and grim the sound is, no matter how blasting the drums or buzzing the guitars are, there is always lots of stuff going on beneath the surface, or in the arrangements, not always easy to explain, just this intangible something that makes Leviathan's sound so unique and so much creepier and intense. Minor key melodies, weird stretches of industrial ambience, strangely affected vocals, haunting drones and bizarre soundscapes, all woven into the already twisted framework of Leviathan's uniquely hellish black metal. WE WERE ONLY ABLE TO GET 25 COPIES. ONCE THEY ARE GONE, THEY ARE GONE FOR GOOD!!!

MPEG stream: Der Absolute Bose
MPEG stream: Derision

Folks may not be able to pronounce Ithdabquth Qliphoth, and probably have no idea what it means, but that most definitely didn't keep the recent IQ disc from being a runaway hit around these parts. And heck, we sort of knew it would be, being heavy, noisy, blown out raw black metal from Russia, steeped in bizarre mythologies, the sound as fractured and fucked up as it is grim black and buzzing. So in the interest of digging deeper into the Qliphoth mythos, we managed to track down a handful of these splits, not new, released back in 2006, but until now we had given up hope of ever getting them for the store. But here they are, we have about 20, not sure if there are more to be had, so if we run out (when is probably more realistic), please be patient as we try to get our hands on more, cuz needless to say, fans of freaky black metal and weirdo outsider blackness, as well as ANYONE who bought that Qliphoth disc, will most likely want (NEED!) this too. Which is not to say that it sounds anything like Ithdabquth Qliphoth, because it doesn't really. The Hammer Ov Qliphoth here is wielded by Al-La-Sht-Orr, one half of the IQ duo, and his half of this split is a mournful, midtempo, doom drenched black metal. Minor key guitars, simple circular riffing, the vocals a murky growl, the drums simple and solid, the pace a glacial crawl, sometimes slipping into a slowish midtempo plod. Super evocative and atmospheric, morose and moody, probably more for folks into depressive miserbalist doooooom than black metal, but fear not, it's harsh and grim enough to retain much of its blackness. Three tracks, the first two loping dismal dirges, surprisingly melodic, the main riffs almost punky if they were faster, but slowed down, it almost sounds like Darkthrone at 16rpm, slightly dissonant, mesmerizingly repetitive, droney, the final track might be our favorite, a super sloooooow, spaced out plod, the vocals and guitars locked into a strange sea sick slow motion rhythm, tons of space, the bursts of crushing heaviness held together by spidery guitar melodies, the whole thing suffused with buzz and hum and grit, super distorted and in-the-red, but weirdly melodic and pretty. Worth it already for sure. But the other half of the split might be even better. It's definitely weirder, and way more twisted. Blackness hail from Belarus, and are a duo, which only stops making sense once you hear them, since they sound to these ears, like one guy, a guitar and a 4 track. Ultra raw, stripped down buzzing black metal, but just guitars and vocals, no drums, no keyboards, almost like some sort of black metal Jandek. Our listening to scratch tracks from some classic old school BM record. The riffs are awesome, brittle and grim and definitely lo-fi, the vocals harsh and WAY up in the mix so they totally overpower the guitar, a surprising amount of melody though, very harsh and haunting, but really cool, odds are you've probably never heard anything like this, and hell we're dying to hear more. LIMITED TO 280 COPIES. We have about 20. Might be the last copies we can get. Packaged in one of those oversized super jewel cases, with nice full color textured inserts, and each copy hand numbered.

MPEG stream: V.I.T.R.I.O.L.
MPEG stream: Hierogamy WIth Kali
MPEG stream: Monotheistic Supremecy
MPEG stream: Sepher Qliphoth

Limited to 250 copies, 80 gram vinyl!!

With a name like Blasphemous Crucifixion, you should know what to expect - raw, buzzing black metal with a nice suicidal feel to it. This one man (presumably) hate machine cranks things out in a highly noisy, atonal way with a pretty pronounced punk influence. In fact, this sounds a bit like some of the Russian black metal we dig so much (early Old Wainds, Nav, Meti Bhuvah), which is indeed a very good thing. While the songs on Crude Burial, expanded with some demo tracks from earlier years, sound like they were recorded in an air raid shelter during an actual air raid AND in a blizzard, you can plainly hear all the instruments creeping their way out of the mix like they are gasping for air, so it never gets too noisy to where this will be mistaken for some experimental artsy black metal. There's nothing too ornate about Blasphemous Crucifixion, nor does there need to be. This is some harsh, negative stuff, super primitive and free of all the progressive bullshit than can ruin so much black metal these days, and with song titles like "Urine-Soaked Tombstone", "Disgusting", and "Self-Inflicted", you should know whether or not this is your bag. We say hell yeah. Coming to us from the always right on Rusty Axe imprint.

MPEG stream: Urine-Soaked Tombstone
MPEG stream: Poisoned Water
MPEG stream: Broken Flower

We had never heard this Italian black metal band before, but based on the first few minutes of opener "All'ignato" we were expecting this to be a sort of Alcest / Amesoeurs kind of thing, indie jangle and minor key melancholia wreathed in back buzz, and hell, we're all for that, and when the heavy guitars kick in on that first track, we're in heaven, chugging, soaring, blissed out buzz, the melodies mournful, the vibe darkly depressive, the sound like a way heavier Katatonia, all that was left was to hear the vocals, and we were most definitely expecting a sort of deep dramatic croon, but these guys had other ideas, suddenly exploding into some epic, furious, blasting black buzz, frenzied and frantic, insectoid riffing over insane drumming, but that mournful minor key vibe dragged along for the ride, the combo super potent, hellish and heavy, grim and black, but still majestic and epic and emotional. The vocals a gruff demonic bellow, the overall effect classic second wave black metal, the production thick and bombastic, the arrangements almost symphonic, a bit proggy, with the songs slipping from classic metal gallop, to lumbering almost-doom, to fierce lightning speed blasts and back again. All the songs here are super varied, mixing a dark melodicism, with some serious grim black energy, the occasional keyboard adding dramatic chordal swirls, drifting beneath acoustic guitars, folky interludes giving way to pounding dirge-y buzzing melancholia, in turn giving way to spaced out loping clean guitar post metal meander, all chiming melodies, and woozy basslines, but the sound always seems to return to some variation of a furious blast black buzz, the band striking a delicate balance between its two sonic sides, ending up with a pretty potent combo, one that is definitely black and buzzy enough for the grim hordes, but with just enough melody and emotion to keep it from being just another cookie cutter black metal record. And we find ourselves digging it more and more with every listen.

MPEG stream: All'ignoto
MPEG stream: In Memoria
MPEG stream: Echi

This slab of black metal grimnity was originally unleashed upon the world by Sweden's Total Holocaust label. After being out of print for some time, it's now reissued in a digipack by a new label. Our prior review: I know we talk about buzzing, primitive, grim and frosty black metal all the time. What can we say? We love that stuff. But this Blodulv record is sooooo grim and ridiculously frosty and utterly primitive. And buzzing! Don't forget the buzz! The guitars are just a swarm of buzzing metal mosquitos, filling your ears with hellish blackness. The tempos are mostly mid, even the blast beats remain just on the edge of midtempo, and the vocals are hyper distorted, to the point of sounding like modulated white noise. And the riffs! The riffs hum and whir and drone, like some sort of devilish lullaby, a hypnotic siren's song that lulls you into a trance like state, all the easier for their satanic message to sink in. For fans of Burzum, Darkthrone, and all manner of ravishing grimness.

MPEG stream: Desolate
MPEG stream: Stronghold

Blodulv just continue to get more grim, more frosty, more creepy and blackened. How that's even possible at this point is beyond us. The last record, appropriately titled II, was about as grim as it could reasonably get, and yet their sound gets more and more impenetrably dense and buzzy. And we love it. This is most definitely not blazing fast black metal, this is more of the Burzum midtempo hypno-drone-buzz school. A doomy dirgey thrashy blackness, pulsing and throbbing, loping along with occasional stretches of grime-y vitriolic tarpit sludge. The vocals are recorded so hot and so blown out it sounds like the singer is standing right there in your face, shrieking with all his might, showering you with spit and sweat and blood (eww). So intense and so intensely black and heavy.

MPEG stream: Burial
MPEG stream: Imperial Sanctum

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

SORRY.

Blood Cult are as far as we know, the only purveyors of Redneck Black Metal around, or maybe more accurately the only ones who admit to it. And Blood Cult are damn proud of being BM rednecks, as their apparent theme song "Redneck Black Metal" proves (oh, and it's printed in huge letters along the spine of the cd!). This is the first proper release from this Illinois horde after a slew of cd-r, cassettes and demos. Definitely their best -sounding- record by a long shot, equal parts splatter rock, crossover, early black metal, NWOBHM, and thrash. Think Venom, D.R.I., the Accused -- primitive and thrashy, noisy and chaotic, with some killer riffs n' some splattery chaotic drumming. They're definitely a little tongue in cheek for sure with some of the lyrics and song titles ("The Moweaqua Coal Mine Disaster", "Cheap Guitars", "Illinoisan Thunder", etc.). This boasts some killer catoony artwork too, from the same label that brought us Enbilulugugal!!

MPEG stream: The Moweaqua Coal Mine Disaster
MPEG stream: Redneck Black Metal

We first heard from Blood Escutcheon, aka Thaniel Lee, on a recent split cassette with weirdo black metal aQ faves Cloak Of Displacement, BE's modus operandi then was a blurred and blackened soundscape of blacknoise and grimdrone, which seems to continue here, with Lee weaving epic expanses of feedback wreathed low end thrum, big billows of metallic buzz drifting through abject, almost industrial wastescapes, like a more metallic Wolf Eyes, the same sort of post apocalyptic, blackened skies, end of days sonic vibe. But like the split, just strap on some headphones and sink into the abyss, and the whirring vacuum cleaner like buzz blossoms upon closer inspection, the sounds softening, the edges blurring, the sound much prettier, and warmer than on first listen. A softly roiling world of layered tones and swirling overtones, of buried melodies and constantly shifting textures, it's noise, but soft noise, dreamlike noise, the sort of noise that lulls and mesmerizes, a hypnotic sprawl of otherworldly soft focus dreamlike chaotic drift, that in some realms would be the perfect music to sleep to. A gorgeously gauzy stretch of grim black mesmer, that should appeal to dronelords as much as metalheads. LIMITED TO ONLY 20 COPIES!!!! We have 15 of those! Each one is hand numbered, and housed in a hand spraypainted sleeve, with a photocopied insert.

MPEG stream: Excerpt

Ukrainian black metallers Blood Of Kingu continue down the lefthand path, as their sound continues to move ever further from their earlier folk flecked roots, and if anything this latest one might be the best, and weirdest of the bunch so far, the new sound darker, and more denser, seemingly more raw and minimal the production too, lo-fi, but not shitty BM lo-fi, instead, all the sounds blur and bleed and ooze like some huge squirming slithering hell borne entity. But it's not just buzzing and blasting, although there is of course plenty of that, there's also some weirdly majestic percussion, just check out the opener, which seems locked into some seriously mesmerizing black buzz murk, even the vocals, are closer to a monstrous death metal cookie monster bellow, but all of those sound, when combined with the production, transform into some twisted dizzying psychedelic blackness, that at one point, explodes into something surprisingly (and subtly) melodic, complete with bombastic percussion booming in the background, while the guitars wind around each other into epic trills, and there even seems to be some buried shred, and then again, the song switches gears, and somehow gets faster and more furious, relentless and mesmerizing. Some of the coolest, weirdest, most original black buzz we've heard in ages. And fear not, they haven't ditched their obsession with Sumerian and Egyptian mythology, nor have they totally abandoned the folky interludes, but you'll be hard pressed to think of any of that stuff once you're immersed in BoK's fucked up outsider black metal soundworld. Check out the second track, beginning with some haunting folkiness, but soon explodes into some seriously intense buzz, but when the vocals come in, they're a weird sort of choral croon just below the surface, and then later on, most of the buzz is peeled back, leaving but booming percussion, paired with relentless double kick drumming, some moaning guitar melody, and minimal vokills, it's crazy effective and evokes the creepiest of atmospheres, before swooping right back into it. Holy shit. We had forgotten how much we love Blood Of Kingu, and yeah, sure we love Drudkh, and Hateforest, and Lucifugum and Kladovest, and Astrofaes, and all the other bands these guys have played in, but Blood Of Kingu just might be the coolest, and the weirdest. And this record just might be our favorite so far...

MPEG stream: Crowned Scarlet Moon Is Waiting for Eclipse
MPEG stream: He Who Is Not To Be Named
MPEG stream: Mother Hydra

It's been a while since we heard from Ukrainian black metallers Drudkh (and all of their albums seem to be currently out of print sad to say) or ambient side project Dark Ages (and of course Hate Forest, another band featuring the same members has been split up since 2005). So what has Drudkh mainman Roman Saenko been up to for the last little while? Why crafting an epic black metal album based around Sumerian and Ancient Egyptian mythology and histry of course! And this is it. Blood Of Kingu, a swirling blackened blast of buzzing guitars, blasting drums, buried vocals, soaring melodies, and the occasional traditional folk interlude. The root sound is not that far removed from older Drudkh or Hate Forest, but imagine that sound a bit more lo-fi, a little more drenched in buzz, the riffing more looped and cyclical, the mood more majestic and epic, and you'll get an idea of the Blood Of Kingu sound. Each track is a drone drenched slab of relentless riffery, furious and lightning fast, the drums careening chaotically beneath a thick layered wall of frenzied buzz, the vocals chanted and almost like throat singing, super low in the mix, giving the proceedings a sort of ritualistic vibe, with each song made up of only really one or two parts, creating a super tense, ultra hypnotic black metal mesmer, with the guitars swirling occasionally into gorgeous surprisingly melodic harmonies, while below, the track continues to churn and thrash violently. Fans of Drudkh and Hate Forest and other Ukrainian black hordes absolutely need this, as do folks who love their black metal drone-y and hypnotic and trancelike.

MPEG stream: Your Blood, Nubia! Your Power, Egypt!
MPEG stream: Mummu Tiamat
MPEG stream: Stronghold Of Megaliths, Thorns And Human Bones

Record number two from this Ukrainian black metal horde, fronted by Roman Saenko, who plays or played in some other bands you might be familiar with, Hate Forest, Drudkh, Dark Ages, Lucifugum, and featuring members of Kladovest, Astrofaes, Lutomysl, Definition Sane, it's like pretty much the whole Ukrainian scene is represented here. But Blood Of Kingu is definitely Saenko's baby, a seething, blasting, filthy, hateful black metal baby at that. Still focused thematically on Sumerian, Egyptian, Tibetan and Indo-Aryan mythologies, the big change this time around is sonic, a way heavier production, as well as more metal and less folky interludes. The first record, De Occulta Philosophia, was marked by ambient breaks between most of the tracks, rhythmic and abstract, folky and moody, a method that seemed more about atmosphere and vibe than sheer power, but if anything on Sun In The House Of The Scorpion, Blood Of Kingu has managed both, evoking mood and atmosphere big time, but cranking up the crush, the riffs are massive, the sound is epic, dense and thick, blurred and droney and trancelike. The vocals are deep and bellowed and shamanistic, the songs are cyclical and repetitive, ritualistic and totally hypnotic, thick slabs of crumbling buzz and relentlessly blasting beats, a howling furious heaviness that few other black metal outfits could ever hope to achieve. The bulk of the record is frantic and frenzied, but the various tracks are infused with haunting mysticism, swirling atmospheric ambience, even the grimmest blackest parts exuding a strange spiritual quality, culminating in an awesome cover of Beherit's "The Gate of Nanna" complete with chanted monk-like vocals, long stretches of plodding doomy dirge, blasts of insanely frantic blasting buzzing blackness, some seriously demented effects drenched demonic vokills and a suffocatingly grim and bleakly abject atmosphere, a killer cover truly worthy of the original. Fantastic Zdzislaw Beksinski cover art (same guy who did the artwork that adorned Leviathan's Verrater)!! And dedicated to the memory of H.P Lovecraft, of course...

MPEG stream: Those That Wander Amidst the Stars
MPEG stream: Cyclopean Temple of the Old Ones
MPEG stream: Incantation of He Who Sleeps

Not to be confused, as we sometimes (almost) do, with brutal black metallers Book Of The Black Earth, who also have a new album out, soon to be reviewed here as well. This band is the one whom we last heard sharing a dirgey split 12" with Celestiial. Here's there new full-length and, as we expected, it's some serious doom metal/post rock/black metal/ambient hybrid wyrdness from the same guy responsible for the shamanic, organic drones of Ruhr Hunter. Ok, the first track, "Spell Of The Elk", mostly (gruffly) spoken and atmospheric, is cool enough but mainly serves as a 9-minute intro to track 2, "Crippling Of Age", when things really get intense, the guitar kicks into gear, the hammer drops, the fuzz explodes, the totemic blood of this black owl flows thick and dark. This is musick full of creepy guttural croakings, seasick shoegazing droned-out riffery, and some seriously doooooomic plod, along with sudden yet graceful dynamic shifts from apocalyptic destructiveness to introspective dreaminess, yeah!!! Many of these nine fairly lengthy tracks seem like ceremonial mini-epics, with gentle keyboard melodies wandering in from some obscure '70s Italian horror flick soundtrack, haunted by heavy doses of fuzzed out riff-sludge, providing a terror-struck background to the disturbing internal monologue (prayer?) played out by the anguished, echoed vokills. So much of this is surprisingly beautiful, so much of it fantastically fuzzed. The mystic moodiness is enhanced by foresty flutes and bone rattles from Native American / New Age ritual amidst all the industrial-strength dirge. This is part Neurosis, part Godspeed, part Burzum. Maybe part Bohren, and even part Thuja too! Well, possibly an aboriginal Thuja, when it really quiets down and spaces out and enters the Dreamtime. One of those "metal" records we recommend to a wider audience of adventurous listeners for sure.

MPEG stream: Crippling Of Age
MPEG stream: He Who Walked Away From The Fire And Laughed As He Bled
MPEG stream: Void

The ritualist forest flecked dark ambience of the band Ruhr Hunter has always managed to somehow transcend its ambient classification and appeal to the metal crowd as much as to the ambient drone crowd. Not sure what it is, the foresty bent, the bold Teutonic iconography, the music's distinctly dark elements, or maybe folks could just tell that some metal was lurking within them thar dark drones... And as if we needed proof, along comes Blood Of The Black Owl, the buzzing black metal project of Chet Scott, the man behind Ruhr Hunter. And true to form, this is no run of the mill black metal band, Scott expands his baritone guitar / drums palette to include stuff like thunder gong and brass tubular bells, organ, young ox horn, antique celestaphone, environmental recordings and black clay ocarina. It's almost like a blackened metallicized Ruhr Hunter. The sound is an hypnotic, repetitive midtempo Burzumic buzz, often slowing down to a dirge like crawl, each track a relentless trudge through mud and swamp, thicket and forest, the riffs looping and cycling, mantra-like, the vocals a guttural growl one second, an anguished wail the next, in the background are howling wolves, birdsong, strange percussion, a truly mysterious black brew. Much of the record dips into dark ambience, and being that this is basically Ruhr Hunter, those passages are captivating, a dark dreamy ambient interludes underpinned in places by slow motion riffing, in others by chantlike vocals, and still others by throat singing, it's all very haunting and mournful, but this is NOT a RH record, so those brief passages are merely transitions, the songs themselves, the riffs and the melodies, weave their own dark magic, dismal and depressive, as doom as it is black, a mesmerizing fuzzy landscape of black riffs and simple pounding rhythms, gloriously bleak, strangely dreamlike, and most definitely imbued with the spirit of some ancient black forest.

MPEG stream: Kills In Timber
MPEG stream: The Thunderous Hooves Of Two Goats In The Sky

You gotta respect a band when they thank their friends AND their enemies for inspiration. Certainly when it's a black metal band, because Sweden's Bloodline - featuring alumni from Naglfar, Shining, and Ondskapt - have channeled a good deal of misanthropy and concentrated hatred to produce an album of plodding, doomridden black metal with a couple extra heapings of all out negativity. The guitars are like napalm, the singer's got a great classic black metal scream, and even though they might hate to hear it, these songs are just plain catchy, filled with awesome riffs and moments of soaring guitar leads that stick in your head. Every once in a while, they will bring in some disturbing soundclips and whispy synths, which provide a nice contrast to the evil sound that defines most of Hate Procession. There are also moments of cold, windy ambience that make you pretty much want to curl up in a fetal position and die in the nearest snowbank. The tempos never reach the lightning fast speed that so many black metal bands go for, with the band instead focusing their energy on establishing a steady pound that helps bring out a quality many bands neglect - TRUE HEAVINESS. These songs are burly as fuck, and the steady beat in "Jerusalem Addio" and the industrial, stuttering rhythm of "Day Of The Vulture" are all Bloodline needs to put the posers in their place. If the songs themselves weren't enough to fill you in on Bloodline's nihilistic m.o., the plethora of disturbing images should help to explain everything. Maybe a bit too extreme in certain parts for the casual observer, but those who like their metal mean will certainly find this much to their liking.

MPEG stream: The Great Becoming
MPEG stream: Jerusalem Addio
MPEG stream: Day Of The Vulture

The oddly monickered Blue Hummingbird On The Left are part of a new black metal movement, or scene, based in California, called the Black Twilight Circle, who seem to be loosely modeled after the infamous Les Legions Noires aka The Black Legions, which included Mutiilation, Belketre, Aakon Keetreh, Torgeist, Vlad Tepes and plenty more. The scene itself consisted of a handful of members, all of whom performed under different names, and in different combinations as different groups. Similarly, The Black Twilight Circle includes the groups Volahn, Ashdautas, Axeman, Arizmenda, Kallathon, Kuxan Suum, Dolorvotre and others, as well as these guys, Blue Hummingbird On The Left. Might seem like an odd name at first, until you discover it's actually a translation of the name Huitzilopochtli, an Aztec war god, okay, well it's still an odd name, and even more odd (and cool) is that these guys also incorporate FLUTE into their black buzz. Originally released as a super limited (and now out of print) cassette and finally available again, on vinyl (also limited of course), Bloodflower is a collection of three blasts of raw, primitive, lo-fi blackness, the guitars a black blur, the drums a chaotic stumbling blast, the vocals a crazed maniacal bellow, occasionally slipping into a freaked out almost falsetto wail, the flute seems to just shriek in the background on the opening track, but on the second track, it flutters and flits offering up a sort of Native American sounding melody, which is quickly swallowed up by an avalanche of lumbering pounding black buzz. The title track is the riffiest of the bunch, starting out all downtuned and chuggy, before exploding into another stretch of pounding black fury. Fucking awesome. And anyone who likes their black metal raw and lo-fi, should definitely dig way deeper into the Black Twilight Circle. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! Each one hand numbered.

MPEG stream: Cuauh Youalli (Eagle Nights)
MPEG stream: Southern Rules Supreme

Latest in the Doom Mantra series of super limited lps comes from black noise duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer (after previous installments by Colossloth, Worship and Wicked King Wicker, as well as future releases planned for Dead Raven Choir and The Throes Of Darkness) and is split between previously released ultra limited and now way out of print rarities and new unreleased material, as well as featuring a handful of guests including Mason Jones and Rubber O Cement!. Unlike the last few BSBC releases, this time the guys dial back the noise assault, focusing instead on texture and mood, still plenty noisy, but this time the noise is doled out much more judiciously. The opening track sounds like it was composed using busted electronics and field recordings of actual battles, sirens wail and explosions erupt under cloud of static and glitch, wrapped in thick billows of black thrum. The rest of the side plays out in swells of washed out minimal drift, shot through with streaks of caustic noise, intercepted voices, groaning detuned guitars, melting synths, building gradually to a full on industrial chaos-scape The flipside begins with a looooong blast of caustic blur and buzz, murky slowed down vocals, thick waves of hiss, everything churning and roiling, crusty and noisy and brutal, heavy on the drone, built a bit like a low end Whitehouse, some strange demon with a tracheotomy proselytizing over a hellish din, soon joined in by what sounds like terrified screams, and the sound of flames on flesh. Really really creepy. As the side progresses it grows a bit more abstract, a drifting sea of crumbling distortion and blurred hiss, some grinding rumbles and buried almost-melodies, soft noise tangled up with deep black industrial dronemusic., before stumbling back into a blown out hiss drenched dronescape, harsh and heavy and intense and BRUTAL. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Packaged in super nice silkscreened covers, with a printed insert inside...

As more and more folks (foolishly & unfortunately in our view) choose to forgo physical media for immaterial downloads, it seems like it's as important as ever to make records special, as much collectible objects and storage devices for sound, as much cool tangible artifact from a band we care about as simply a conveyance for that band's music. And we're constantly amazed at the sort of incredible and unique packaging we see pass through aQ. Perhaps none more so that Equation Records who are constantly pushing the design envelope, with no regard for profit, hell, no regard for even breaking even, for them it's all about the art, the object, every release something special, that will be treasured, both for the sounds within, and all the amazing craziness that surrounds those sounds. Which brings us to this. Amazing and crazy just scratches the surface. Three years in the works, an extended production rife with problems and complications, some deftly (and cleverly) incorporated right into the artwork. The record is in fact being sold significantly -below- its actual cost, which was appropriately exorbitant, based on the ridiculous and fantastical packaging. But before we get to that, let's talk music. This extreme packaging couldn't have been paired with a more appropriately extreme band, the Seattle doomdronedirge duo Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, whose infamous live Halloween night set is the focus of this release, presented here on a one sided silkscreened lp, a sidelong expanse of harrowing blackened minimalism, crashing gongs and billowing clouds of cymbal shimmer, buzzing metallic thrum, that reminds us of an Organum record gone haywire. The metal buzz gradually processed into deep rib cage rattling drones and ominous low end tones, eventually melodies creep in, and the sound is transformed into an abject tarpit doom, peppered with blown out blasts of percussive crunch, and bursts of Merzbowian white noise, but always settling back into a deep, ominous thrum. Lion roar rumbles give way to keening moaning black buzz, downtuned and crumbling, all weirdly mournful and melodic, the whole thing laced with tortured vox, seriously harrowing and amazing. And as if that weren't enough, there's also a single sided 7", with an etched B side, the music a crumbling wall of super distorted power electronics style crunch, grinding slabs of corrosive textures and heaving buzz blurred into a weirdly meditative, but still seriously corrosive drone. And as if that STILL weren't enough, there's also a cd (not a cd-r), collecting a handful of rarities from various tape releases and splits, as well as some unreleased jams, the sounds varying from percussive post industrial pipe fight bombast, to droned out feedback drenched ambience, and from militaristic minimalism, to grinding blacknoise blowouts. Phew. NOW we can talk about the packaging, which we should preface with the word MAGNETS!!! ("Fucking magnets, how do they work?!"), more on that in a second, but if you want a visual accounting of the packaging, check this out: http://youtu.be/ZthdRUqd68w So yeah, there is a one sided lp, with a silkscreened B side. There was an issue with the silkscreening, so there's an insert affixed to the sleeve, explaining the situation. There's also a red vinyl 7", one sided, etched on the B side, and the aforementioned cd of rarities. The 7" comes in a proper picture sleeve with two 7"x7" pro-printed card inserts, the cd comes in it's own proper sleeve as well. Also includes is a silkscreen turntable slipmat, as well as a 12" by 24 poster. Add in 4 stickers, a 2-sided 12" pro-printed card insert, and two separate silk screened covers, each one affixed with magnets, the two sleeves magnetically adhered! There's also a 2" pin, a numbered certificate, all of this is housed in a thick PVC sleeve, sealed with a circular sticker, and on the front, is a sticker, with a description of the record in Latin, and a translation in English. Wow. Needless to say, this is a beauty, an extravagantly conceived and executed labor of love, that is even more impressive when you hold it in your grubby little paws. LIMITED TO 235 COPIES!!! Guessing this won't be around for long!

MPEG stream: The Boundary Between The Living And The Deceased Dissolved
MPEG stream: The Sense Of Violence
MPEG stream: Man Is The Bastard
MPEG stream: Demise

Don't let the title fool you, Bonkers In Yonkers might have you imagining some sort of party band playing a happy hour with Jell-O shooters, but nope, you all should know by now what to expect from both of these noise making beasties. We've give much love to both bands on the list over the years, so this is a pretty dream match-up for us. And instead of a split, this is the BWSKBWC Big Band, with everybody going at once, teaming up for two lovely ditties entitled "Born To Hate" and "Scum Licker", kicking up a roiling, shrieking, brutal avalanche of distorto-brutality. Vocal shrieks, gristly electronics, huge, churning, crumblingly distorted riffage, loads of feedback, and ear shredding skree, total electro-noise mega-doom-destruction. Punishing and kinda fucking awesome. LIMITED TO 300 COPIES. Bright green tapes with silkscreened J-cards.

Latest from these misanthropic French black metallers, loooong time aQ faves, this is the first in a planned trilogy, and finds the band sounding more intense, corrosive and chaotic than ever, with some of the most twisted, gnarled riffs we've heard from these guys, all woven into epic sprawls of discordant, dissonant, hyper technical, drone drenched industrial flecked blackness. Of course, their sound exists in a sonic space similar to their black metal countrymen Deathspell Omega, particularly in their obtuse riffing and dense masses of sound, not to mention their post rock tendencies, but BaN continue to stretch the boundaries of their already ever shifting sound, and straight away, they erupt into a head spinning, ultra complex wall of bludgeoning black metal, the riffs seeming to detune as they're played, the melodies unraveling, the whole sound teetering on the edge of collapse, tense and so so dark, some avant black hole buzz for sure, the first few minutes exhausting in its relentlessness, until finally the song breaks down into a weirdly melodic and slightly mellower post rock tangle, all wavery buzz and woozy harmonies, some strangely psychedelic leads, the sound oozing and melting, only to splinter and collapse right back into another dizzying blast of tangled riffs and impossibly chaotic drumming, the guitars almost sounding like their being played with a slide, slippery and warbly. The vocals kept to a minimum, letting the warped music carry much of the weight, but this is Blut Aus Nord, so the band slip seamlessly into a bit of industrial drift, all hushed low end shimmer, haunting sine wave like melodies, and programmed rhythms, and hell, that's just the first song. The rest of the record follows a similarly dark and twisted path, although the band do infuses their bouts of grinding black density and spaced out post rock infused drift with heavy stretches of minimalistic dirgery, as well as some surprisingly melodic, classic metal sounding parts, but of course, the next burst of gnarled black chaos is never far off, the record constantly shifting from epic and majestic, to haunting and atmospheric, to furious and frantic, to smoldering and melodic, to crushing and absolutely terrifying. Definitely as good as any of their past records, and a killer start to the new trilogy, the record closing with a surprisingly not black metal closer, a serious stretch of slow building post rock, sounding like a slightly more metallic Mogwai or Explosions In The Sky, tense and dramatic, moody and darkly mysterious.

MPEG stream: Epitome I
MPEG stream: Epitome II

Anyone paying attention will know that in the past few years, the unlikely nation of France has been churning out some of the most progressive, intelligent, and best black metal around. There's Deathspell Omega, Peste Noire, Spektr, and of course, the mighty Blut Aus Nord, a shadowy group who seamlessly blends synthy ambience with a relentless, yet interestingly controlled black metal assault. Seasick guitar riffs, plodding, often midtempo drums, and vocalist Vindsval's vile black metal rasp (and occasional operatic chant, no shit) meet up in an unholy union of strangely structured songs that are at once hallucinatory, majestic, and beautiful. Blut Aus Nord possess a unique, cyclical style of songwriting, and even though we have no idea what they are saying, it is evident through titles that each song fits within a well defined philosophical theme. With names like "This Formless Sphere (Beyond the Reason)", "...the Meditant (Dialogue With the Stars)", and "Elevation", it's clear that the band's interest goes beyond any sort of juvenile take on Satanism, instead seeking to make sense of an endlessly unfathomable universe. Their albums seem to exist as esoteric and surreal dream worlds, and the band's intense, psychedelic approach isn't as much furious as it is contemplative. Within this potent mixture, they are also surprisingly "rocking". Memoria Vetusta II - Dialogue With The Stars (part I, Fathers of the Icy Age, was released waaaaay back in 1996) starts with "Acceptance (Aske)", a GORGEOUS synthscape that sets the moody atmosphere for the next hour. It was interesting to watch customers enter the store during such a beautiful and melancholy piece, only to be hit with the loping, super blackened approach that kicks off the next track, "Disciple's Libration (Lost in the Nine Worlds)", which over the course of 9 minutes, manages to perfectly encapsulate everything that is so great about this band. The impeccable production on this album certainly adds to its greatness. Clear and spacious, the music within sounds as if it has existed forever, created by a group of immortal mystics, not, you know, a couple of guys from France. In the end, we are presented with what will undoubtedly be one of the best metal records of 2009.

MPEG stream: Antithesis Of The Flesh (And Then Arises A New Essence)
MPEG stream: The Alcove Of Angels (Vipassana)
MPEG stream: Acceptance (Aske)