[ aquarius records — Metal Stoner Doom ]

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 1551 through 1600 of 1809.

Another month, another installment of the UK's long-running metal-must read, Terrorizer. On the cover, looking like he just was in some sort of accident (or battle?), Nergal of Behemoth fame. Inside, stuff pertaining to such fine bands as Yob, Watain, Candlemass, Cerebral Ballzy, Evile, Gojira, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Anthrax, Obituary, Today Is The Day, and more! Comes with not one, but two, cd samplers.

Read all about such extreme metal mavens as Meshuggah (on the cover), Cannibal Corpse, Aura Noir, Saint Vitus (ooh, new album in another couple weeks!), Bolt Thrower, Split Cranium, Alcest, Angel Witch, Grand Magus, Paradise Lost, Black Breath, Soulfly, Mastodon, Orange Goblin, Shining, and many more. Comes with the usual free cd sampler disc, and there's also an Electric Wizard 'poster' inside.

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

SORRY. Wish WE were going to Bloodstock... or any of the other crazy metal festivals they have across the pond in August. Well we can live vicariously through the pages of UK metal bible Terrorizer, who put Behemoth's Nergal on the cover as part of their festival preview. Also this ish: Watain, Nile, Eyehategod, Grand Magus, Gama Bomb, Deicide, Mayhem, Cradle Of Filth, Nachtmystium, Old Man Gloom, Dimmu Borgir, and plenty more metal faves, big and small, black and death, etc. etc. Plus, it as usual you get a free "Fear Candy" sampler cd.

Metal magazine madness! Terrorizer is the other glossy metal monthly we always turn to, this time with Dani Filth from Cradle of Filth looking kinda goofy (of course) on the cover. Also: 20 years of Darkthrone, Napalm Death, Grave, Sonne Adam, Dragged Into Sunlight, Anaal Nathrakh, Nuclear War Now! (label festival preview), Swans, God Seed, and more. Includes the usual "Fear Candy" cd sampler stuck to the front as well.

A couple of years ago some of us here at Aquarius befriended a visiting Belgian guy, a big fellow with a waxed handlebar mustache named Steve. That is, the guy was named Steve, actually, not his mustache. But if his mustache had a name we wouldn't have been surprised -- it was quite a striking 'stache. ANYWAY, we knew that in addition to being a record collecting fiend, Steve was a musician and that he played in a band, but somehow we didn't discover until much later that his band was called Thee Plague Of Gentlemen (is that some sort of punning reference to the BBC comedy?) and they were proponents of something that we love so much: sheer HEAVINESS! We learned this when they did a now out-of-print 7" single for Southern Lord, that we decided sounded like an unholy union of SUNNO))) and Killdozer! While we haven't really kept in very close touch with our Belgian friend (if you're reading this, hi Steve, how've you been?!), we have definitely been on the look-out for more from his band. Well, here it is! A full-length cd of downtuned sludge and gargling vocal wail. Total doom. Something along the lines of Cathedral (circa Endtyme), Electric Wizard, Unholy Trance, Celtic Frost, and Winter. Slow and grinding and a little bit psychedelic, with occasional bursts of speedier brutality. Riff-heavy, feedbacking doom extremity that means business. This disc is enhanced with two Quicktime videos of the band performing live. That's the aforementioned Steve singing and playing guitar, the bald guy with more beard now than moustache. And he's wearing a Magma t-shirt!

MPEG stream: Your Love Is King (Of The Dead)
MPEG stream: The Ocean Has No Sides

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

SORRY. Prior to the classic "Stream From The Heavens" disc on Avantgarde, this Finnish band of early '90s doom metal pioneers (along with Australian contemporaries Disembowlment, establishing the sound later taken up by bands like Skepticism, Ras Algethi, and Shape of Despair) released the appropriately Lovecraftian titled "Fhtagn-nagh Yog-Sothoth" demo tape, circa '91. Now it's available on cd, in a nice cardboard mini-lp style package. These are different songs from what's on the (also recently-reissued) "Stream" album. Moody doom / doomy mood music, slow, heavy, full of cosmic angst and horrific beauty.

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

SORRY. Lost dooooom metal classic, circa '92, finally reissued. Finland's Thergothon play super slow, morose, keyboard-abetted doom metal that must have been a big influence on fellow countrymen Skepticism. With cosmic, H.P. Lovecraft-inspired lyrics. Darkly beautiful melancholy. For fans of Skepticism, Ras Algethi, Disembowlment, Esoteric.

Southern Lord resurrected and reissued this release a while back, but we just realised we hadn't yet listed it and figured that we really ought to, for the benefit of all you SUNNO))) obsessives out there who might have missed it. Thorr's Hammer was the deadly, doomful blackened sludge band that featured the SUNNO))) duo of Greg Anderson ("drones and sunns") and Stephen O'Malley ("crust and earth"), along with battledrummer Jamie Skes, subsonic attacker James Hale, and, last but certainly not least, vocalist Runhild Gammelsaeter. She being an authentic teenage blonde Norwegian and astonishingly capable of spewing gruff, vile vokills as ugly as she isn't. The band broke up when she went back to Oslo, which we're sure made them all very sad. But Thorr's Hammer left the legacy of 1998's Dommedagsnat album: four generally epick tracks of creeping, crushing dooom, plus for this reissue, a raw bonus track mpeg video of the band playing live in '95. So, get down in the dirt and get doomy with this, one of the blackened, gnarled roots of these guys' twisted family tree, other ropey branches being Burning Witch, Khanate, Goatsnake, and SUNNO))).

MPEG stream: Troll

Latest from these Louisiana heavies, and while it's not a 'proper' new album, it is another fucking fantastic collection of crushing sludge dirge bliss. The highlight of which, for us, might just have to be their cover of Nirvana's "Something In The Way". And yeah, Thou have covered Nirvana before (on Baton Rouge, You Have Much To Answer For they took on "Sifting") but the difference there, was that "Sifting" was already pretty heavy and sludgey, so to hear one of Nirvana's prettiest creepiest brooders transformed, is pretty awesome, and thankfully, they don't just play it straight, the verses are still hushed, the vocals a crooned whisper, the guitar and bass slithery and low slung, but when the chorus kicks in, it's MASSIVE, the best part being that they somehow mix throat shredding howled vox with warm clean "oooohhh"s, managing to keep the song broody and moody, while still letting it pummel and pound. Also included are a handful of tracks from the Summit sessions, as well as covers of two songs by a band called Pygmy Lush, from an aborted split, and like on past Thou outings, the band lace their downtuned dirgery with all manner of unlikely instrumentation, mournful trumpets, clouds of cymbal shimmer, symphonic percussion, but woven into long stretches of droned out drift, of rumbling crumbling low end, and almost post rock-y slow builds, as well as epic skull caving riffery, NOLA style sludge grooves, bursts of frantic double kick drumming, heaving avalanches of tarpit doom, but laced with surprising melodies, and lots of subtle textures, much like The Body, these guys are taking ultra-doom into whole new directions. "Cold World", one of the Pygmy Lush covers, sounds like an even more sludgey Melvins, with its super distorted riffage, and maddeningly repetitive structure, but it's crazy hypnotic in its own way, and then the piano comes in, and it manages to sound strangely haunting and pretty, while still churning and pounding away. The 2nd PL cover "There There" is another creepy crawl, that has us kicking ourselves for never checking out Pygmy Lush, cuz this one sounds like a weird little pop song transformed into something filthy and crusty, and hell it's Thou, so right in the middle there's a pretty little interlude all spidery clean guitars and shimmery ambience, even some violin it sounds like, but before long, it's right back into it, finishing off in a blaze of feedback doused churning black crush. And Thou always do it up packaging-wise too, and this one is no exception, a spot gloss printed old school tip-on style sleeve, with some super striking artwork to boot!

MPEG stream: Voices In The Wilderness
MPEG stream: Something In The Way
MPEG stream: Summit Reprise

What can we say? We love these Southern sludgelords, every record another fantastically grim pit of fetid sonic despair, crushing and pummeling and punishing heaviness, but still strangely catchy, few can really touch Thou, they're probably the most likely heirs to the Eyehategod throne, not that those guys would ever give it up, but still, that should give you an idea of what these guys are capable of. Baton Rouge is 4 loooong, sloooooow, looooow tracks of extreme doom sludge, the opener, "Baton Rouge, Louisiana", an insanely downtuned ultralow, barely moving expanse of amp buzz and chordal stasis, like SUNNO))) only SLOWER. Long streaks of squealing feedback pepper the glacial creep, it's almost like an ambient intro, but stretched out into a whole songs, a whole gloriously sludgey song! Up next is something a bit more propulsive, but only a bit. "By Every Hand Betrayed" is a grinding chugging beast, with a killer main melody, and some super dynamic riffage, the vocals thoughout, harsh and hellish, but buried within all this crunch and rumble are some awesomely melodic, nearly poppy bits, that sound a bit like Torche oddly enough. "Out of the Mouth of a Fool" is almost groovy, like Southern rock, melted down and dipped in black tar, woozy and hypnotic, downright speedy by Thou standards, that is until about 4 minutes in when it downshifts to ULTRAslow. But the final track is the deal sealer, a cover of Nirvana's "Sifting", which takes the already pretty sludgey original and totally transforms it into something even filthier and grimier and slower, but it sounds soooooooo rad, like playing the 45 at 16rpm, the combination of pop hooks and downtuned tarpit dirge is pretty tough to beat, and once again has us wishing their was actually a band that always sounded like that sort of extreme ultra sludge pop. But for now, we're perfectly happy playing this over and over and over and over. Killer packaging too!!!

Latest from these NOLA sludgelords.

Another band of slow heavies from New Orleans, following in the deep muddy footprints of the original NOLA sludgelords Eyehategod, and while Thou do in fact share much sonically with their legendary forefathers, they inject way more melody into the proceedings, some stretches are downright pretty, still caked in filth and crust, but weirdly melodic and pretty. In fact in some ways, Thou seem to be drawing on true UK doom for inspiration as much as their fellow NOLA noisemakers, Paradise Lost, old Cathedral, My Dying Bride, sure the vocals are harsh and throat shredding, the drums a lugubrious pound, the rhythm a lurching almost groove, but the melodies and the arrangements almost soar at times, the sound epic and massive, the melodies expanding what might otherwise be more of the same old sludge, in fact there are long stretches of undulating heaviness where the riff becomes a sprawl of near static buzz, and harmonies glisten and drift over the top, but it's never long before the band slip back into their grinding downtuned lumber and pummel. Fans of the usual dooooooomy crawl will not be disappointed, if you love Moss, Monarch, Corrupted, Trees, Bunkur, you'll pretty much definitely dig this, but Thou mix it enough to maybe convince some of the more skeptical freaks out there, that there's more to sludge than just pummel and pound. Definitely recommended.

MPEG stream: The Work Ethic Myth
MPEG stream: An Age Imprisoned

Full length number three from these Louisiana heavies, and it just might be their weirdest, most experimentally sprawling and prettiest release yet. It seems like we're in the age of post doom, or avant doom, with bands moving well beyond the sounds that have so far defined them. We recently featured The Body's latest record as our Record Of The Week, which at its core was a sludge/doom record, but incorporated a choir, multiple drummers, drum machines, strange editing and collages, horns, all adding to the whole, but never taking away from the band's sound, or the ultimate heft and heaviness of the music. A delicate balance for sure, one that Thou seem poised to strike as well, with Summit. But it's not like they weren't a weird band anyway, they definitely had their own take on the ubiquitous post metal / sludge metal thing, even transforming a classic Nirvana jam into their own gnarled and twisted chunk of downtuned crunch. The changes here though are not as dramatic as those undertaken by the Body, the band offer up some blackened blastbeats right at the beginning of the record, there's piano, viola, trombone, other horns, female vocals, but most of those are all contained in a single track, an interlude of sorts, a hazy bit of slow building jazzy warble and drift, wreathed in clouds of cymbal shimmer and peppered with muted percussion, a brief respite amidst the otherwise thunderous proceedings. Some of those elements do show up elsewhere, but they're super subtle, and easily overwhelmed by the surrounding heaviness. No, the main change seems to be a shift toward melody, where as before the band veered most frequently into serious abject crust-sludge Eyehategod territory, here, they tend more toward the post metal / metallic post rock end of the spectrum, unfurling majestic slow building Isis / Pelican style epics, still dipping occasionally into some filthy dirgery, but mostly crafting gorgeously soaring downtuned almost symphonic sounding heaviness, sounding at times almost like a black metal Explosions In The Sky, and other times slowing things down, dialing back the chug and crush, and resembling some sort of extra heavy sludgy slowcore outfit. But it suits them for sure. Summit definitely plays out as the perfect mix of pretty heaviness and fierce brutality, with just a smidge of experimental weirdness thrown in for good measure. Another fantastic record from a group who pretty much only make fantastic records, some seriously epic sludge and surprisingly listenable ultra heaviness, fans of all those post metal combos like Rosetta, Baroness, the Body, Grails, The Ocean, Angel Eyes, Tides, Souvenir's Young America, Mouth Of The Architect, Irepress, Indian, Conifer, who have yet to discover Thou, this is the record for you....

MPEG stream: By Endurance We Conquer
MPEG stream: Grissecon
MPEG stream: Prometheus

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

SORRY.

Slowly and oh so surely, more sludge oozes out... A couple weeks ago, we highlighted an album, Peasant, by this slow and low (and yet sometimes lovely) sludge-metal outfit from the swamps of Louisiana. Well, we had gotten THIS Thou in first, though, and after leapfrogging it to list the more recent Peasant we want to highlight Tyrant too. That's right, if you liked Peasant, you'll love Tyrant. Gilead Media is responsible for this cd, handsomely packaged in one of those miniature LP style gatefold sleeves, containing music originally released on (now out of print) vinyl last year by One Eye Records, plus two tracks that came as a tour-only bonus cd-r with that LP. What we said about Peasant goes for its predecessor, too. Thou is ultra-doomic, super-gloomic all right, with crawling distorted riffage and wretched vokillz... they definitely share some DNA with neighboring NOLA sludgefathers Eyehategod, but there's also something warm and fuzzy about 'em too. Maybe that's not the intention (you wouldn't get that idea from their despairing, downer lyrics) but somehow their slabs of crunching, feedbacking heaviosity are infused with enough melody and softness and ambient quietude that the blanket of post-apocalyptic ash spewed by Thou is sorta snuggly, their brand of nuclear winter almost a cozy one. And that's what makes it such great doom, 'cause after all, what we're looking for in doom metal is the means to feel good about feeling bad. A pleasant fixin'-to-die dirge. Sharing the depression, rather than bottling it up, getting some kind of release even if it's the aural equivalent of slicing one's wrists and slowly bleeding away, or swallowing a bottle of pills and falling forever into deep deep sleep... doom metal is comfort metal, is one way of looking at it. Doom metal goes there so that you don't have to. Not that we're saying all doom metal fans are suicidally depressed, far from it. But we all have bummer days, and doom metal can take those feelings and turn 'em into something paradoxically positive. And that's what Thou do here, at least for us, with "life extinguishing elegance" as one of their songs puts it. It's not just their sound, it's their songs. There's seven of 'em here, long ones, ranging from six and a half minutes to twice that long, lots of room for lots of interestin' twists and turns, albeit at a slow and steady pace. They fit plenty of post rock prettiness amidst their plodding and droning, along with faster parts and unexpectedly, trippingly melodic guitar lines. This is for fans of Jesu as much as Khanate, is what we're saying. Pelican and Isis too, but also Moss and Trees. And of course for all those who picked up Peasant from us already. Best song title award of this list goes to track three here, "Fucking Chained To The Bottom Of The Ocean", by the way. And the song DOES live up to its title.

MPEG stream: Tyrant
MPEG stream: With A Cold, Life Extinguishing Elegance

Latest from split release loving Baton Rouge heavies Thou, teaming up this time around with a similarly sludge minded outfit from Germany called Human Intruder, and as much as we love Thou, Human Intruder come damn close to stealing the show here. Their track begins as an appropriately massive crushing detuned doom dirge, a lurching and lumbering creep, with tripped out, almost falsetto vox wailing off in the distance, but then things switch gears, a second vocal, a more harsh bellowed howl comes in, along side some unlikely piano, and maybe even strings, the sound transformed into something weirdly haunting and pretty, moody and super dramatic, the bellowed vox the only thing keeping this from turning into some sort of epic post rock. The guitars are super dynamic, the riffs dropping out completely, to reveal the hushed melody beneath, before dropping right back in again. The song eventually finishes off with a heavy, groovy, almost southern stoner sludge sounding outro. We have GOT to hear more from these guys. Thou definitely hold their own, while not as weird as Human Intruder, their sound is still pretty sick, a murky, downtuned slithery doooooom, with harsh shrieked vox, the riffs warped and woozy, and way down in the mix, a seriously drum/vokill heavy mix, which suits the insane inhuman screeches, and crazy double kick drumming, pounding and howling away over a muted washed out downtuned churn, a sound way more Khanate than Eyehategod, finishing off a bang, that bang in this case being some punked out metallic noise rock crush. Fuck yeah. Super swank packaging, a 6 panel fold out jacket, held shut by a Japanese style vellum obi. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.

MPEG stream: Fatal Alliance
MPEG stream: The Butcher's Bill

Holy shit are we glad this thing finally got a much deserved reissue. Originally available as a super limited cassette, the two copies that managed to worm their way into the store were immediately snapped up by Andee and former aQuarian Cameron. Their gain was certainly the rest of the world's misfortune, because some of us couldn't stop listening to Cameron's copy before he jetted off to New York. For the longest time we could only conjure memories of these songs in our heads. Thou's contribution here, the four part epic "Abandoned", is some of the most majestic, beautiful, and psychedelic doom metal to emerge in quite some time. It also manages to be ugly as fuck. But damn, these songs just SOAR, everything is wrapped up in a blanket of ultra dense distortion with glacial drumming and some seriously unbelievable throat shredding goodness, the kind that makes mothers everywhere wonder what would make good boys want to do such things to their vocal chords. Storming out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, Thou follow proudly in the tradition of their sludgey, thick as tar forefathers like Eyehategod, Crowbar, and the rest of the usual suspects, but there's definitely something about these guys that stands on its own, not to mention a pretty heavy black metal influence. While thankfully avoiding falling into an "indie" metal trap, Thou nonetheless successfully incorporates a blissed out melodicism that only a fool would deny. Leech's contribution, an untitled 20+ minute monster of a track, is mighty impressive as well. The band hails from Salem, Oregon, and while we don't know anything about them other than this, it's pretty clear we have some research to do, because you all know how we love our Cascadian black metal. The song winds all over the place with super melodic guitar leads and some great basslines (which you can actually HEAR, unlike many black metal bands). The tortured vocals will definitely hit the spot for anyone digging Weakling, WITTR, you know, that kind of thing. The song is so melancholy, but it just sounds totally unstoppable and out for blood, we really hope to hear more from these guys soon. The classy white record comes housed in a nice looking full color gatefold with a screenprinted poster, a crusty patch, and whaddya know, a free download card. And while it's great having this album available once again, it's still limited to a mere 750 copies with no plans for a cd release, so act fast!

Timed almost perfectly with the release of the third Thrones cd Day Late, Dollar Short (one of our Records of the Week last week, for those with short memories), we also just got a few copies of Thrones' 1996 debut disc Alraune back in stock. Sheer luck, 'cause it's out of print -- but one of our distributors managed to find a box of 'em lurking in the depths of their warehouse, so we grabbed 'em all while the grabbing was good. As you too should do, if you don't have this already and are a fan of all that is heavy! A quick background briefing: Thrones is Joe Preston, who has done time in both seminal dirge-masters Earth and the Melvins (he's also played in The Whip and SUNNO))) and is current the bassist for High On Fire). You probably know all that already, and this too: back when Joe was in the Melvins, each member put out a solo album (inspired by the same stunt KISS pulled way back when). Joe's was perhaps the best. Carrying on from that, he "formed" Thrones and set out to prove to the world that a one-man-band could be as heavy as any "normal" band (not that the Melvins are all that normal, ahem). Not only did he offer that proof with this Thrones debut, but also took it to the stage. A drum machine, double necked guitar bass, vocal effects and samples were (and still are) put to shudderingly heavy use by Joe in kicking out his weirdly prog and sometimes oddly pop Thrones drone anthems. The tracks on Alarune range from aggro Melvinsy metal to underwater drone to drifting New Age synth melody...a sinister combustion of sound that bridges Earth with Goblin! So, we're happy to have these again (for however long they last), allowing us to review it for the very first time (back in '96 we just weren't as on the ball as we are now I guess)! So, if you've still got an empty space on your cd shelf next to Sperm Whale and Day Late, Dollar Short now's the time to fill it.

MPEG stream: Gifthorse
MPEG stream: Ursa Minor

We're big ol' Thrones fans here, and so the arrival of a third Thrones opus the other day was pretty darn exciting! It's been five years since the magnificent Sperm Whale, after all! And we're happy to report that Day Late, Dollar Short, despite its title, does not disappoint in any way (though, it's not exactly an entirely new album, more on that in a sec). Now, you know that the double necked guitart/bass wielding Joe Preston -- for he is Thrones and Thrones is he -- has quite the heaviness pedigree. He's played in the unholy heavy trinity of Earth, the Melvins, and SUNNO))), and he's currently the bassist for stoner metal lords High On Fire. Thus, from his one-man-band project Thrones you'd expect nothing less than H-E-A-V-Y, and you'd be right. But it's more than merely heavy. Thrones ain't just rubbery, head-caving bass, lotsa feedback nastiness, machine beats, and throat-rasped vox. Thrones is also really, really weird. As you'd expect from Joe, who used to be in the Melvins after all. There's certainly plenty of Melvins style fuckery going on here! I mean, after the sheer noxious pummel (we like!) of track one, "The Suckling", you'll wonder what's going on with track two, "Young Savage". Punky and uptempo, with a gang-vocal chorus, it threw us for a bit of a loop until we figured out it was an Ultravox cover. That's then followed by the disarmingly gentle (but disturbingly child-voiced) "Algol". What's going on? Whatever the heck Joe wants, basically. And that's okay 'cause what he wants is to unleash a torrent of creativity that encompasses such things as utter sludge drone dirge, Buttholes Surfers-ish mania, indie rock pop (with some non-effected, clean singing even), drum machines kickin' old school hip hop beats, crazy prog structures, all-out rawk, thrashy riffs, electronic filtering, etc... almost all of which you'll hear in, say, track fifteen, "Obolus", which starts off doing the Melvinsy doom thing but with Bruce Haack/Electric Lucifer robot singing before segueing into a soundscape of bird twitters, bells and chimes, and waves of white noise (this from the "soundtrack" to La Foresta Della Norte). Then there's all the crazy covers that Joe tries his hand at: along with the Ultravox, this includes a Residents cover, a Blue Oyster Cult cover, and yes, unreleased track "A Quick One" is indeed a cover of a portion of the Who's "A Quick One While He's Away". Wow. Not afraid of a challenge, this guy. And we do mean "unleash a torrent" -- there's 19 tracks here, almost 80 minutes of Thrones insanity, much of it compiled from rare, out-of-print singles, cassettes and comps, with some previously unreleased tracks as well, spanning the years 1994-2001. The lovely, bunny-adorned packaging (Mr. Stephen O'Malley, take a bow) also features personal notes on each track by Joe hizzelf. Here's hoping that he'll find time away from his regular gig in High On Fire to do a real *brand new* Thrones album... but in the meantime we're happy to have this "incomplete collection of smaller projects" all on one handy cd.

MPEG stream: The Suckling
MPEG stream: Coal Sack
MPEG stream: Obolus

Managed to get a handful of these split tour 12"s when Thrones, aka Joe Preston, was in town recently. This two song 45rpm12" matches up Preston's Thrones with the new-to-us Sedan, who we had never even heard of before, but whose track here kills, a moody broody rhythmic chunk of kick ass post rock, plenty mathy, with big drums, lush thick guitars, definitely sounds like it could be a new record by some nineties Thrill Jockey band, BUT, the group pepper their math/post rockisms with cool stretches of haunting cinematic chamber music, all layered drones and swoonsome shimmer. Pretty great, and unexpected, and has us definitely wanting to hear more. The Thrones side offers up a different side of the Thrones we're used to, unfurling a dark, droney super minimal low end creep, all slithery and gurgly, a rumbling drone that soon reveals itself as being pitched down processed vox, the sound blur into a sort of post industrial black ambience, until the song blossoms into cool melody, but again, those synthy sounding melodies are in fact Preston's processed voice, it's total avant a cappella prog, or something, whatever it is, it's awesomely dirgey and droney and a little bit sci-fi, a tripped out minimal ambient soundtrack that might have some Thrones obsessives on the haunt for heavy scratching their chins, the rest of us can revel in Preston's mysterious dark soundscapery. Probably crazy limited, so not sure if we can get more. Nice cover art too!

You like that so-called stoner rock? You like them Queens of the Stone Age? Then pay attention: Norway's Thulsa Doom boys are back with a follow-up to their fine "The Seats Are Soft But the Helmet Is Way Too Tight" full-length. The five songs on this not-quite twenty minute cdep are perhaps even better than those on their undeniably rockin' debut (though with less harmonica). We're talking quality stuff here: heavy, catchy, kick-ass songs with fat, fuzzy guitar sounds and odd, gotta-think-about-'em lyrics (try "Cities After Cheese" for a song title/concept). You can't throw a stone anywhere in Scandinavia without hitting a stoner rock band, but please don't throw it at these guys, 'cause they're freakin' good! We're reminded of Thin Lizzy (a bit 'cause of singer Papa Doom's vocal style), the kick-out-the-jams garage rock of the Hellacopters and their ilk, and, we'll stress again, the BIG GUITARS and pop smarts of the aforementioned Queens Of The Stone Age (and Kyuss too of course). Unlike that new Queens album, though (as good as it is) this is all killer, no filler, no messing around with in-jokes and so forth -- indeed, sometimes eps are better than full albums 'cause you can really get into each song, and they're all pretty great on this lil' disc. Destined for big things, if the world was fair (which it ain't, but we'll still keep rootin' for Thulsa Doom).

RealAudio clip: Birthday Pony
RealAudio clip: Cities After Cheese

Yet more Scandinavian stoners getting high and rocking out. Groovy, fuzzy stoner rock, complete with wailing harmonica (!) and a vocalist that sounds quite a bit like Phil Lynott. The guitar sound is all Kyuss, warm and HUGE, with Queen style harmony guitars and Grand Funk vocals. And then there's that harmonica... Fans of Thin Lizzy, Zen Guerilla, Kyuss and the like will eat this up!

RealAudio clip: Centerfold Blues
RealAudio clip: You Go First

Stoner rockin' heaviness from Down Under. Pretty great, especially on jammin' and getting jammier instrumental juggernauts like "Etherel Blue". Definitely in the upper echelon of the new wave of stoner rock (along with Ufomammut, Astrosoniq, and The Want) of

Stoner rawk alert! It wasn't easy, but we finally got a few import copies of the new release from Austrialia's Thumlock, sent over on the slow boat from Down Under. Maybe it's their fantastic/silly/crappy album artwork, or mystic/cryptic/ridiculous titles, but we dig this band. To be sure, their approach to the stoner rock genre is, well, kinda generic -- yet varied & interesting & well done. Urgent rather than laid back, Thumlock are a bit more 'metal' than most, with a flair for majestic riffs and Thin Lizzy licks tossed in among the Queens of the Stone Age style grungy desert rock and Monster Magnetic wah wah psych guitar jams.

RealAudio clip: Neotrantor

Originally recorded in 1991 and never actually released, Thy Grief Eternal is the band that would later become Eternal and then of course later still, the mighty stoner sludge behemoth Electric Wizard. But back in '91, Jus Osborn and his merry band of metalheads soundee completely different, as it was 1991, and in the UK, Thy Grief Eternal sounds like they would have been right at home on Earache, alongside Carcass, Napalm Death, Godflesh and the like. Pounding industrial sludge doom, with grunted gutteral death metal style vocals, pounding relentless drumming and BIG RIFFS, very sludgy and crusty, much more akin to the ultra slow, monochromatic dirge of funeral doom, as they had yet to discover the groove that would play such a crucial part in their later sound. Two lengthy tracks. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES!

This record is impossible to figure out. When we first threw it on we thought 'oh great, another slow sludgy doom sort of band' but then almost as quickly as we thought that, we stopped, because suddenly it sounded nothing like that, it totally blossomed, opening up into this completey abstract chunk of big booming drum, downtuned fuzz guitar free jazz post rock psychedelic groove doom. Or something. One minute they'll be splattering random drum figures and the guitars will be scraping and squirming and freaking out, then suddenly the drums will just click, and a MASSIVE sixties psych groove will unfold as the guitar goes total Hendrix apeshit and spins wild-man-blues/notes-bending-all-over-the-place/druggy and deliriously buzzy and blown out LEADS into dizzying webs of searing white hot fuzz. Which of course results in glorious full on Hawkwind meets Comets On Fire meets LSD-march, postrock krautrock psychrock freerock Ur-jams. Endlessy throbbing and pulsing and completely mesmerizing. Some tracks twist and wriggle and writhe into sweat soaked, blood drenched full on rock blow outs, while others settle into impossibly static exercises in tension and drone, almost like a much free-er version of Dutch hypno-metal gods Gore. Underneath it all the bass wanders and burbles sounding fretless or underwater, as if it was some sentient creature that just happened to be in the same room as the guitar and drums, and every once in a while just happens to fall in along side whatever crazed groove is being flung wildly about. The drums are as much the focus as the guitar, they sound huge, like the band is set up in an airplane hangar, sloppy and all over the place but tight and ferocious too. The whole while cascading sheets of distorted guitars swoon and sway and hug the chaotic drumming before once again exploding into some fuzzed out Hendrixian speaker blowing meltdown. And for those of you who don't know who Tia Carrera is (ummm... Wayne's World?), do yourself a favor and next time you stay home sick from work, discover the oh so guilty pleasure that is the TV show Relic Hunter!

MPEG stream: Scenic Oversight
MPEG stream: Doom

Hopefully you already are familiar with this Texas heavy psych band with the not-so-heavy name. We've reviewed a couple of their releases before - most recently, a way-cool 7" of all Lungfish covers, and previously, their massive November Session (we still have a handful of that cd in stock, so go read our review of it and snatch one up!). THIS new disc comes to us via the Small Stone label, who've been getting much props from us lately (for the likes of Obiat, Iota, Sons Of Otis, and Los Natas) though we already knew the Tia Carrera was gonna be good. And it is. Freeform jammin' blown out psychedelic wahwah'd guitar wailin' freakdom here that we wouldn't hesitate to recommend to fans of Boris and Earthless and Pearls & Brass. And ol' Jimi Hendrix for that matter. Of course, if you're already into TC, we need only say that this new disc is another slab of dizzy distorted genius from them. Oh yeah, if you're partial to Earthless in particular, by the time you're in the middle of the 22 minute "Unnamed Wholeness", the second track of The Quintessential, you'll have a new favorite band. Those into Tokyo Flashbacking acts like LSD-march and Up-Tight might think so too. But then, surprise! While most of the album is all electric and instrumental, the fifth and final track is a strummed acoustic number, melodic and gentle, with stoned effected vocals and pretty guitar pickin', like Led Zep in the sunshine on the backporch getting baked. Really nice!

MPEG stream: Unnamed Wholeness
MPEG stream: Gypsies
MPEG stream: Hazy Winter

Our favorite Brooklyn-based stoner space rockers are back, with their first proper studio album (the limited Paradigms cd, and the self-released cd-r we've had before were both live recordings, apparently). If you liked those, you'll like this -- though they get up to some new tricks here as well. In fact, we weren't sure we were even listening to Titan when we first put this on, as the first of the four tracks found here starts off all folky for a minute, with strumming and singing that could be Comus or Devendra... before blasting into loud, distorted, truly TITANIC heavy instrumental psych rock powered in part by some extremely proggy keyboard action. It's like ELP jamming with Comets On Fire, or Tarantula Hawk gone '70s, or a much heavier, blow-out n' drugged-up Crime In Choir! A wild torrent of amp-ed up, cosmic crunch, spiralling energetically. The following tracks have their blissed out interludes, and droning FX, and mantric rhythmic pulses, and other bits of weirdness (field recordings of what might be crickets chirping, and a fan blowing, are mixed in at one point), but that heavy space prog riffola isn't lacking either. Definitely there's plenty here to appeal to fans of the abovementioned bands, as well as, oh, AMT, Circle, Zombi, Ufomammut, Boris, Mammatus, and MoRkObOt among others... in a word, recommended!!

MPEG stream: track 1
MPEG stream: track 3

Remember a couple lists back we reviewed a Paradigms disc by a mysterious, very cool instrumental space rock band called Titan? We told the story of how, some months previous, these guys had sent us some cd-rs to check out, but with no contact information. And then when they finally did follow up with an email, and we tried to order some, we got no response! So we never ever got those cd-rs, but the Paradigms cd was a nice surprise. Well, of course what happened was this: the slightly-flakey-but-nice Titan folks (hey this IS some kinda stonery drug rock, so some flakiness is to be expected, eh?) read our review, and emailed to see if we still wanted the cd-rs.... only they didn't have the one they'd sent us originally any more. But they did now have a new cd-r release, recorded at the same sessions as the Paradigms cd release. Plizmarmelade is a single 40 minute long track, starting off skronkily aggressive, with the noisy bite of a Lightning Bolt, before getting building into a relentlessly energetic, almost... jaunty... crazy crunching howling throbbing bass groove, like Zombi or Circle or Pharaoh Overlord on happy pills, freaking out on the guitar solos and sci-fi effects!! Acid Mothers Temple would be proud of this. Eventually the pills wear off and things fade into a calmer, deeper, droned-out zone, still way out in space. Wow. Basically krautrock from Brooklyn, that's the deal here. If you dug their Paradigms release, this should turn you on too. We do have a bunch of these, but since they're cd-r's in home-made looking (silkscreened) digipacks, chances are they're limited...plus who knows if Titan will email us back if we need more...so get 'em while you can.

MPEG stream: "Pilzmarmelade
MPEG stream: "Pilzmarmelade

Brand new blast of spaced out prog-tastic heaviness from this Brooklyn quartet, and holy shit, everything we loved about their last one, A Raining Sun Of Light & Love For You & You & You, is even MORE this time around, more heavy, more proggy, more keyboards, the songs way more epic, total cosmic super distorted loud as fuck space prog metal bliss out, like ELP crossed with the Fucking Champs, stir in some Comets On Fire, Tarantula Hawk, Crime In Choir, La Otracina (with whom they share members), and of course some Yes and Osanna and New Trolls and loads more of that sort of '70s stuff, cuz this time it's definitely the prog that has been cranked way up, synths all over the place, every song like a non stop synth / guitar / drum battle to the death, totally exhausting and exhilarating and over the top, epic and majestic and complex and intricate and melodic and somehow catchy as hell. Barring the 3 minute synth interlude "Synthasaurs", which sounds more like some sort of Goblin / Tangerine Dream / John Carpenter hybrid, the other 4 tracks are total progged out super jams, almost entirely instrumental, the melodies constantly mutating and intertwining, the keyboards unleashing wild flurries of notes, the bass and drums holding it all together, dense and thick and powerful, the guitars wailing and flailing and howling, constantly parrying with the keyboards, there are organs too, thick and fuzzy and gloriously distorted, like a supercharged Deep Purple, Titan are like the prog version of all those Hawkwind worshipping space rock groups, who take the psychedelic tripped out outros and stretch them into whole songs, Titan seem to do the same thing with prog, taking short bursts of classic prog, adding all sorts of metallic chug and modern psych rock crunch and stretching them out into gloriously endless sprawling epics, this stuff is so fierce and frantic and the pace so relentless and dizzying. This stuff RULES. Heavy and spacey and proggy and mathy and fucking incredible, pretty much everything we could possibly want in a band. Comes in a swank diecut digipak too!

MPEG stream: Sweet Dreams
MPEG stream: Synthasaurs
MPEG stream: Maximum Soberdrive

The world needs another SUNNO))) or Earth like it needs� well, it doesn't. Nor does it need another Slint, or a Mogwai, or a Justice, or an Animal Collective. Every time a band blows up, suddenly a million bands are there to get sucked along in their wake. But never was this phenomenon more egregious than with the new wave of doom/drone/dirge outfits. At the risk of repeating ourselves again, it seems like every band, heavy or otherwise, that features at least one member with a "drone side project" or a "minimal doom side project", barely keeping ahead of the various people dabbling in back metal, but we digress. Like most things, it probably seems easy, but isn't. The whole leaning your guitar against the amp and letting it go, sure we joke about that in reviews, but it's way harder than that. Compare the millions of ho-hum guitardrone cd-r's to something like the last amazing record by Vulture Club (we still have some, if you haven't bought one, you should, really). It's like night and day. So we're always pretty cautious when we hear about a new guitar drone group or some doomdirge record we oughtta dig. But once in a while, a group comes along, who only just barely fit into that whole genre, skirting it, creating something totally their own, with just the merest hints of sounds more familiar, like all great bands, borrowing and stealing freely, but not just regurgitating those sounds right back at us, instead, spreading them out in some underground lab, pulling them apart, exploring how they tick, dissecting them, then attempting to put them back together again, with some of their own parts, some sounds and songs that have been fermenting in a dusty corner of said lab, the results then something new, a patchwork of sounds, that in the right hands, can be deftly woven into something beautiful, something dark and mysterious, something like this. A Semblance Of Something Appertaining to Destruction is the latest from the mysteriously monickered To Blacken The Pages, part four of an ongoing series in sound, a sprawling dirgescape that owes much to meandering post rock, downtuned slow motion sludge, drifty abstract doom, and the sort of heavy doomic countrified sludge that Earth has been exploring over the last few records. Three tracks, the shortest 11 minutes, the longest nearly 18, each a dusty, moonlit drift, simple minor key twang, slowed down space rock riffage, streaks of feedback and buzzing distant drones, swirling FX, layers of guitar fuzzy and druggy. The opener, more than Earth or SUNNO))) or any of those, sounds much more in line with Loop or Spacemen 3, a drugged out soporific riff, that lumbers a little too slow to rock, even a little too slow to constitute any sort of groove. Instead, it's a dreamy droney drift, heavy and mutedly chuggy, churning onward through a sky of whirls and swirls and rumbles, underpinned by plenty of buzz and fuzz and blur. It's like a super slowed down way more abstract Loop, which we probably don't need to explain to you is in fact a very good thing. The second track introduces drums, which do little to up the propulsion, this is still weary, dreary and delightfully spaced out. A super spare, abstract doomy lope, the sky above criss crossed with high end guitar skree, the drums supporting another blown out slow motion space rock riff, the whole track trudging across an endless expanse of shimmery buzz and swirling space-y effects. Everything muted and mumbly and lazily mesmerizing. The final, longest track, ditches the drums, returning to the lazy smoky sprawl of the opener, but this time even more abstract, the central guitar part, drifting well below the constantly shifting layers of sound, coruscating high end, over billowing deep rumbles, a glacial, stately, almost funereal anti-groove, perfect late night, drift off, trip out slow motion space rock krautdrone. Fans of Earth and Expo '70 will dig especially, as in some ways, this does sound like a strange hybrid of the two, although all of you into the slow dreamy droney heavy minimalism would do well to check this out.

MPEG stream: Trek In
MPEG stream: A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction

It's been ages since we've heard from Irish one man drone/dirge/doom guitarscaper Paul McAree, not since a 2009 collaboration with fellow axewrangler/soundscaper Korperschwache, and while we were assuming nothing much had changed, and were simply in for another fantastic sprawling landscape of smoldering low end dronemusic on this new TBTP, Bogland is in fact a whole 'nother sort of thing. Not that you'd know it by the opener, which is exactly what we expected: a hushed, feedback drenched slo-mo shimmer, all long layered tones, and haunted twang, laced with strange sci-fi FX, trippy and woozy, landing somewhere right between Earth, and Barn Owl, and SUNNO))), but taking that sound and spacing it out big time, drifty and abstract psychedelic dronemusic. And it sounds as good as ever, a whole hour to whisk us away to some other plane. But then something happens around track two, McAree doing his best Jandek, unfurling a murky bit of raw-blooz balladry, all angular detuned guitar, and warbly mumbly vocals, weirdly trancey and hypnotic, some serious outsider dirge folk for sure. We of course expected the sound to slip right back into dreamy droneland, but whattayaknow, McAree had something else in mind, a sprawl of gnarled mangled minimalism, a strange bit of abstract Derek Bailey like guitar action, scrapes, and weird truncated melodies, atonal chords, buzz and warble, there also seems to be a weird wheezy backdrop way off in the distance, subtly swooping effects, but that gnarled guitar is definitely the centerpiece. And for all its strangulated churn, it actually ends up being pretty mesmerizing as well. The rest of the record offers up variations on those sounds, definitely leaning more toward the tweaked angular guitarscapes and Jandekian croon, occasionally wedding weird scrapey abstract guitars to lush layered shimmer, or unfurling thick rumbling low end, dirgey and dark, still shot through with weird guitar squiggles, but blurry and smeary, but really barring the opener and closer, both of which hew closer to the TBTP sound of old, this record is kind of a warped singer/songwriter affair, filtered through a cracked chunk of experimental guitar, resulting in something weird, and weirdly wonderful.

MPEG stream: Sodium Haze
MPEG stream: Bad Heart
MPEG stream: Wintering Out
MPEG stream: Battered Heart

The return of Irish one man guitar dronedoomdirge noisemaker, Paul McAree aka To Blacken The Pages, with his first vinyl release, and to commemorate, McAree mixes it up a bit, offering up at least one side dramatically different from what we're used to hearing on TBTP records up until now. Originally recorded for a sound exhibition in Dublin, "Crow's Nest" strips away most of the thick rumbling distorted guitars we might have been expecting, leaving a strange haunting bit of effects drenched shadowy sound in their place, the result though is quite pleasing, much more mysterious and otherworldly, lots of delay and reverb, bits of clang and crunch sent spinning into the ether, here and there long notes ring out, the overall sound is super spare and abstract, soft tangled melodies, the guitars smolder instead of roar, plenty of scrabble and scrape but smeared and blurred into solar flares of Sunroof!-ed sound, but unlike the raga-like ur-drone of Sunroof!, the sound and sounds here are way more spaced out, both figuratively AND literally. Warm washes of feedback bathe the whole track in a rich glow, and strange little flutters surface here and there, like some alien birdsong. The track on the B-side is more similar to past TBTP outings, but McAree manages to meld the old sounds, with the new sounds found on the flip, the same strange assemblage of high end crunch and scrape and squiggle, but set in a landscape much more black and buzzy, thickly layered, undulating sea of sound, blown out an streaked with feedback, the weird effected shards of melody, drifting on that thick, rumbling undercurrent. Dense and drone-y looped and hypnotic sounding here and there, but for the most part a massive organic sprawl of minimal psychedelic guitar drone dreaminess. Housed in a simple black 12" style sleeve with the middle holes cut out, a printed obi with all the artwork and liner notes, and comes with a black cd-r, packaged in its own sleeve with a proper insert, containing, both the tracks, but a WAY extended and remixed version of the B-side!

MPEG stream: Crows Nest
MPEG stream: Crowsun

Highlighted last list, we had A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction, the most recent disc from Dublin, Ireland's To Blacken The Pages. Now we've got their prior release, None, released just a month or two earlier in 2008, which is essentially the part I to A Semblance's part II. Don't get 'em confused (and we'll try not to, too), 'cause they do look virtually identical, the same almost-black-on-black no-color scheme for the cover photo and logo. The black-on-black music is similar too, of course, but different and equally essential for anyone who loved the minimal doomdrone instrumental ambience of that other disc. And again, there's three tracks. 13:45, 16:10, and 8:06. Each stately, somnolent, fuzzed out and, this time, drumless... heavy in a restrained, spacey, spacious way. Track one, "Alien", tiptoes in, super slow, individually suspended guitar notes one at a time connecting the dots of melancholic melody over a void of silence. Then, suddenly, the needle jumps. DISTORTION. An electric crackle and buzz. The song is still super sloooooow and sparse, but each note is now planetarily weighted with rumbling vibratory effect, surely speaker shredding if it all happened at once, and at volume. An underlying howling hum begins, buried beneath but gradually filling all that empty space with its own not so silent emptiness. The next piece, "None", starts with an eerie electric wind, and some sparse Earth-style guitar strum over it, reverberant and lonely, before sheer fuzzdrone kicks in, fuzzdrone nirvana to our ears, that continues in like manner on final track of the disc, "As If Forever"... Ah, yes, so glacially good. For fans of Earth, SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, Slomo, Boris, Skullflower, Nadja, etc. All at their darkest yet dreamiest. To Blacken The Pages is actually a solo project, the work of one guitar wielding, amp abusing man, Paul McAree. We're told he has a non-solo side project coming up, a band called Slaves Of War Orphan Farm (!) that is supposed to be a worthy offering of Les Rallizes Denudes worship! Can't wait to check it out...

MPEG stream: Alien
MPEG stream: None

The third part in an ongoing series of blackened drone guitar missives from Irish one man slow and low wrecking crew To Blacken The Pages. Fans of the first two TBTP records (None and A Semblance Of Something Appertaining To Destruction) are already well versed in the bleak abstract soundworld this guy can conjure, fusing the low end explorations of groups like SUNNO))), Expo '70, Bohren, Slomo and the like, with something a bit more psychedelic and space-y. Sure, TBTP is capable of unfurling some planet crushing black hole heaviness, but also of tossing handfulls of notes into crystalline expanses of murky reverb, letting the various notes flutter and fall, before tossing out another handful. The first two tracks on North are perfect examples, "Crossing" and "I Am Screes On Her Escarpments", the first begins as a swirling almost static field of slow shifting reverb and delay, peppered with percussive thumps and creaks, sent careening into the ether, while shards of clean guitar, sounding a bit like super mellow Keiji Haino, unfurl like clouds of grey smoke, while underneath, a guitar rumbles and whirs, gradually becoming more and more rifflike, ringing out a bit chaotic and noisy, before slipping into the second which begins with the same sort of reverbed stretch of echoey thumps and creaks, before the guitar thickens into a crumbling corrosive wall of swirling chordal hum and keening feedback, a roiling blackened bit of guitar ambience, infused with melody and moodiness and shot through with strange high end streaks and swoops that are probably effected guitars, but almost sound like children's voices here and there. Quite haunting. The next few tracks take TBTP's sound in a different direction, the root again being shimmering guitars, but this time the focus is on the voice, a lazy drawled croon nestled down in the mix, that drifts along side the increasingly caustic guitar buzz resulting in a sound not unlike some strange Dead C / Roy Montgomery hybrid, a sort of sun baked noise drenched dronedirge slowcore. Dark and woozy and melancholy and way druggy and drowsy sounding. Later, "To Be Dead" introduces actual drums, and gets all propulsive, a lurching noise rock take on spaced out krautrock, but with the guitars in full on overdrive, a constantly swirling squall of feedback and psychrock freakout. And then the last two tracks are massive billowing clouds of coruscating buzz and skree, blurred into gorgeous multi hued smears of blown out guitar and a gorgeous hazy shoegazey drift, in fact the nearly 15 minute "Night Drive" might be one of the prettiest heavy guitar tracks we've heard in ages, anyone into Nadja or Jesu, will love it, it's like the slow motion metalgaze of those two outfits but stripped of drums and allowed to just sort of hover. So nice. Needless to say, the drone and dirge and doom obsessed out there probably already added this to their shopping cart (or if they didn't yet, probably should now), anyone who bought the other two records definitely NEED this too, and folks not necessarily into metal, but who still dig on dark drifty hazy heaviness might be pretty into To Blacken The Pages, North in particular...

MPEG stream: Crossing
MPEG stream: I Am Screes On Her Escarpments
MPEG stream: Give To The Sea

It's been close to a year since we've heard from Irish one man doomdronedirge guitarrorist To Blacken The Pages, we've been pretty obsessed with every record we've heard so far, this being number FIVE, which is also notable for being a collaboration with Korperschwache, an Austin based Skullflower style guitar noise juggernaut, long time faves of some of us here, who somehow has never made it onto the aQ list, even with a ton of strange and limited releases over the last decade, but we'll solve that problem right... Now. Regardless of the collaboration, a new To Blacken The Pages is always cause for celebration around here, TBTP continually manages to conjure up all sorts of low end fury, from blown out shoegazey drift, to crushing SUNNO)))-like dirgery, to harrowing black ambience, to spaced out kraut drone, more often than not some dizzying mix of all of those. Korperschwache is similarly versatile, leaning toward the noisy and heavy, dipping into extreme harsh noise, but also gorgeous guitardrone ambience, UK industrial style skree, and rhythmic hypnorock riffery. So what this collaboration would actually sound like was pretty much a total mystery. What we did know, was that this would be some mysterious, dark and heavy shit, which we're happy to report is indeed the case, but there's much more to the gorgeous blackened soundworld these two sonic soundscapers have conjured up here... Thick swaths or rumbling low end fog underpin delicate fragmented shards of softly reverbed guitar, almost like some sort of SUNNO))) / Scenic mash up, a little Earth twang, a lush, ominous churning driftscape that builds to a full on doomic crush, all hazey and blown out and in the red, before drifting into more slowcore territory, a simple motorik drum machine laced stretch of hypnotic post rock, with swirling melodies and buried in the mix deep vocal croon. Big billowy sheets of black crush splinter into feedback drenched noise rock, the drum machine cranked way up, the guitars corrosive and caustic, like an ultra heavy Loop track gone haywire. The first disc finishes off with two extended tracks of guitar drone, "A New Seat In Hell", and "Shallow", the first muted and murky and minimal, the second exactly the opposite, like recent Skullflower, a speaker shredding onslaught of full on psychedelic guitargrind freakout. The second disc begins all dreamy and washed out, the drum machine set to lope and lumber, the guitars warm and gauzy, infused with tendril like melodies, the Jesu comparison is certainly apt here, hazy shoegazey and druggy, the perfect lead in to the "Inside The Mariana Trench", an even more spaced out bit of reverb drenched psychedelia, guitars spitting out blinding gouts of keening high end tones, laid over skeletal programmed drums, and a bleary eared swirl of delay and echo and smeared effects, so nice. "Absent Friends" is a haunting post industrial bit of minimal dronemusic, again peppered with bits of guitar melody, and streaks of mysterious effects, hushed vocals, simple strums, the root sound a lush layered metallic whir, which leads to the final track, the nearly 40 minute "Stranded In The Hertzsprung Crater", a sprawling spacious, abstract epic, which beings thick and distorted, but soon evolves into something much more spare, effected guitars careening over a bleak landscape of hiss and whir and hum, soft arcs of feedback, a haunting barren world of drift and shimmer, a pretty perfect way to end such an epic sonic journey. Needless to say, totally and utterly recommended, for fans of minimal guitar music, dirges and drones, dark ambience, doom, outsider metal, shoegaze, whatever, this stuff is dark and blissed out, ominous and abstract, dense and heavy and gorgeous. Will do our best to get more Korperschwache to list, and we'll of course wait patiently for the next To Blacken The Pages, but in the meantime, we'll just stay gloriously lost in the epic and sprawling soundworld of A Way Dark.

MPEG stream: Lovecraft
MPEG stream: Sonic Kingdom
MPEG stream: Black Dawn

We haven't ever heard any of the other records by this strangely monickered duo, and in some ways it's probably that name that kept us from exploring their music in the past. We know, book, cover, band name, check. But with so much stuff to listen to, it's inevitable that something like album cover or band name or label, will influence what you listen to first, or maybe even at all. But heck, it's Kranky, and the album cover is pretty cool, so two out of three ain't bad. And we have to say we're glad we did finally decide to take the plunge, cuz the world of TKAPB is a gorgeously gloomy one, a haunting and otherworldly late night drift through a world dark and ominous, and occasionally downright frightening. Think Grouper, Mazzy Star, Kuupuu, Valet, that sort of gauzy dreaminess, murky and muddy, spacey and druggy, with ethereal female vocals, barely there drum skitter, warm languid bass, the instruments less recognizable as instruments, and more as sound generating devices, each emitting long tones, or soft rhythms, the result is a slow burning jazzy drone-y drift, but TKAPB seems a bit more sinister than the rest of those bands, imbuing their hazy midnight drift, with some deep drones, some jagged shards of distorted crunch. A creepy dreamy slowcore, with hints of something darker, heavier, and noisier. Just check out "The Needle", a loping slow groove, minor key and tense, the vocals sultry and smoky, creeping and crawling, until suddenly something hellish surfaces, a squall of demonic buzz and noise, only a second or two, but it adds such menace to the track, as does a swirling sea of cymbal sizzle and what sounds like a moaning string section. Almost like some sort of doom torch song. The rest of the record is maybe not nearly so intense, but it is a very dark record, think Portishead, Grouper, Skepticism, and Bohren all wound up in a sprawling songsuite of drummachined black ballads, harrowing love songs, grim ambience and blackened downtempo electronica, with a sound so gauzy and washed out and murky and psychedelic, and yeah, occasionally menacing, that it's impossible for us not to give this our highest recommendation.

MPEG stream: You've Gone Too Far
MPEG stream: The Needle
MPEG stream: Villain
MPEG stream: I Hear You Coming, But Your Steps Are Too Loud

Why does anyone bother with the current crop of "stoner rock" when there's so much better stuff made back in the original stoner age (the '70s) now being reissued?? If you're into the Man's Ruin roster, and prone to buying albums by the latest Swedish Kyuss

RealAudio clip: Cotton Wood Hill
RealAudio clip: Life Goes On

Nasty ugly feedback filled sludge metal in the tradition of Eyehategod and Grief (or more obscurely, Negative Reaction and Soul Preacher). Apparently this disc reissues vinyl-only tracks from back in 1994 and other rarities by this rather obscure doomcore band. We don't even know where they're from, but we're glad they're not our neighbors. The vocals might just be toooo anguished for some (I personally liked 'em -- until I realized the sound I was digging was supposed to be singing, not some sort of distorted horn). Anyway if you're into the ugly n' heavy then this Southern Lord release has yer number. Dark psychedelic thud from a black hole space, with weird touches like keyboards (I think, though maybe it's the vocals again??) and let's not forget their cover of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" sure to please everyone who loved Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. MPEG Download: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [/audio/toadliquoralsosprach.mp3] MPEG Stream: "Also Sprach Zarathustra" [/audio/toadliquoralsosprach.m3u]

MPEG stream: Also Sprach Zarathustra
MPEG stream: Tatterdemalion: the Gladiators' Debasement...

Steve Austin and his revolving door cast of psychologically damaged noise-mongers returns for album number 10 (!) and it's another twisted slab of warped dirges, tortured wails, off kilter guitar stabs and nauseating whispered menace. Animal Mother once again features an all new line up (save for founder and head torture artist Steve Austin of course), this time enlisting members of Enabler, Trap Them and Sidra into his straight jacket entourage, and they're more than able to manifest Austin's slanted noise-rock meets doom meets hardcore vision into this quivering unprepared shambling mass we refer to as "reality". From its most somber acoustic passages through to its most frenzied blastbeats, it's an unnerving and heavy affair (and also the perfect compliment to new Wizard Rifle record we've reviewed elsewhere on this list!).

MPEG stream: Animal Mother
MPEG stream: Discipline
MPEG stream: Sick Of Your Mouth

In the realm of doom metal, what could be more weird and cult and underground than Voci Dal Passato, the brilliantly bizarre DIY Goblin-meets-Vitus album by one-man-band Tony Tears that we made a Record Of The Week a few years ago?? Well the answer is obvious: Tony Tears' demos!! We we're pretty excited when we heard about this new release (dampened only by the fact that this turned out to be a cd-r, not a cd, though it's nicely done, pro-printed and everything) and we think everyone who became obsessed, like us, with Voci Dal Passato - which was quite popular - will want to check this out. Likewise with those who missed out on Tony Tears before 'cause that cd so sadly went out of print. So, this is first official release of TT's debut demo from 2000, Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror, consisting of six tracks (the last an extended, 4 part suite lasting 15 minutes). Just like the Tony Tears album we made ROTW, it's a lo-fi morass of mesmeric doomed-out psychedelia, inspired by Paul Chain, Goblin, Black Hole, and other esoteric Italians, with wobbly keyboards, crude drum programming, chant-like and sometimes extremely distorted Italian-language vox, and of course heavy fuzzed out doom guitar riffage, the whole thing giving off uniquely eerie, eccentric vibes galore as each track slowly plods forth through a haze of hiss and murk. We mentioned Umberto with Striborg-level production and performance in our review of Voci Dal Passato, and guess what, these earlier recordings are even MORE like that. It's a beautiful thing. Tracks like "The Return To The Underground Temple", mostly echo effected keyboards and weeping guitars over simple steady rhythms, have so much weird psychedelic atmosphere that Tony Tears should not be limited to a 'cult doom metal only' audience. Devoted dronologists should hear the quietly ominous "Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore", the aforementioned four-part suite - it's pulsating electronic cosmic mystery that could be from some lost '70s krautrock lp or sinister soundtrack, at least until the super slowed down sludge part kicks in, with vocals and guitar sounding like they're recorded at quarter-speed or something, as if you're listening to it on a device with dying batteries. Again, too bad this is just a limited cd-r, these are probably the only copies we'll be getting, and we have just under a dozen.

MPEG stream: Coniurationes Mundi
MPEG stream: The Return Of The Underground Temple
MPEG stream: Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore

Tony Tears, you've come a long way, baby. When we first discovered psychedelic doom outsider Tony Tears a few years ago, he was an eerie, despondent Italian fellow with very few friends/fans, judging by his MySpace page (see below). Nowadays, he still is eerie and despondent (and Italian) but he's got some fans now, maybe even a cult. Cult enough to now have a handsome lil' box set release, containing three cds, collecting all of his significant public recordings to date, including Voci Dal Passato, the weird Goblinesque DIY doom masterpiece that we made an aQuarius Record Of The Week when we first got it on cd back in 2009. That cd quickly sold out, but fortunately there then was a cassette version released, which also soon went out of print, but then after that, it was released on vinyl. So it wasn't just us that had become obsessed with Tony Tears, it seems. We know some of you are too, and this box of music from Tony's Astral Worlds is for you! We'd managed to track down only one other Tony Tears release, a cd-r we listed two years ago, and which is also long gone too of course. But, having begun his career as Tony Tears back in 1988, the man has got a bunch of other releases, all of them incredibly hard to find, most of 'em limited run cd-rs and even more obscure demo tapes. Fans should be very thankful, then, for this box set put together by, naturally Minotauro Records (what with that label being home to another cult Italian psychedelic doom genius, Paul Chain). Besides Voci Dal Passato, the box includes Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror from the year 2000 (the cd-r we did get before), along with The Reality Before All (a cd-r from 2004), Tony's half of a split 7" with Abysmal Grief from 2004, the All My Black ep from 2007, and perhaps best of all, the more of less brand new 2014 Tony Tears full-length album, Vortice, previously issued on cd-r and very difficult to obtain. Vortice is pretty great, something we'd have considered making a Record Of The Week by itself, though definitely different from Voci Dal Passato, being rather more spacey and spooky than heavy, though parts are quite heavy too. On it, Tony is no longer alone, he has recruited a new member into what's now we guess the Tony Tears band, a vocalist, named David Krieg, who also must be Italian though. At first we we apprehensive, 'cause we like Tony's semi-spoken vocals. But this new singer has a haunting, almost operatic style that gives Vortice's heavily synthesizer laden, abstract ambient drone doom sound a touch of Early Music or 20th century classical avantgarde. 'Nuff said, perhaps, 'cause we're about to tack on our original reviews of Voci Dal Passato and Fears And Sensations, so this is gonna get loooong. We figure if you read about those and don't have 'em already, you can figure out if you want this box; if you DO have 'em, you probably already know you want this box for everything else, anyway. The final two sound samples below are from Vortice, though, fyi. And a word about the box itself - in addition to the three cds in cardboard sleeves with credits and tracklistings, there's also a separate set of cards with the original cover art for each release on 'em, and a fold-out insert with photos and liner notes from Tony himself, in both Italian and English. In a nice touch, the inside surfaces of the box feature full-color occult artwork by Tony, too. So, here are the two Tony Tears reviews we've previously published, for those who need to find out more... Voci Dal Passato: We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it. We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned... Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears... Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around. So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today. Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe. Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily! Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be. The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort. Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty. Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help. Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror: This is first official release of TT's debut demo from 2000, Fears And Sensations In The Claustrophobic Mirror, consisting of six tracks (the last an extended, 4 part suite lasting 15 minutes). Just like the Tony Tears album we made ROTW, it's a lo-fi morass of mesmeric doomed-out psychedelia, inspired by Paul Chain, Goblin, Black Hole, and other esoteric Italians, with wobbly keyboards, crude drum programming, chant-like and sometimes extremely distorted Italian-language vox, and of course heavy fuzzed out doom guitar riffage, the whole thing giving off uniquely eerie, eccentric vibes galore as each track slowly plods forth through a haze of hiss and murk. We mentioned Umberto with Striborg-level production and performance in our review of Voci Dal Passato, and guess what, these earlier recordings are even MORE like that. It's a beautiful thing. Tracks like "The Return To The Underground Temple", mostly echo effected keyboards and weeping guitars over simple steady rhythms, have so much weird psychedelic atmosphere that Tony Tears should not be limited to a 'cult doom metal only' audience. Devoted dronologists should hear the quietly ominous "Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore", the aforementioned four-part suite - it's pulsating electronic cosmic mystery that could be from some lost '70s krautrock lp or sinister soundtrack, at least until the super slowed down sludge part kicks in, with vocals and guitar sounding like they're recorded at quarter-speed or something, as if you're listening to it on a device with dying batteries.

MPEG stream: Le Ossa E Il Fuoco
MPEG stream: Voci Dal Profondo
MPEG stream: Antichi Messagi
MPEG stream: Mondo Parallelo
MPEG stream: Coniurationes Mundi
MPEG stream: The Return Of The Underground Temple
MPEG stream: Forze Invisibli Bussano Al Cuore
MPEG stream: Gli Anni Del Tempo Veloce
MPEG stream: Il Sole Nella Casa Dell'acquario

We first got a couple of these in a few weeks back ('cause we were curious) and it didn't take long before we realized we had a Record Of The Week on our hands. It was obvious, really, since some of us here ending up getting so obsessed with this that it was just about ALL they'd listen to, for days, getting home after work and throwing it on, listening to it going to sleep at night, and when they'd get up in the morning, playing it at the store too... At first, though, we thought well heck maybe that's just us, maybe we're weird to like Tony Tears that much. But of course, we ARE weird, and so are a lot of AQ customers, and that's why this is definitely a good choice for Record Of The Week. Anything this hypnotic and dirgey and doomy and last but not least weird, has got AQ (and possibly you) written all over it. We had to go to some trouble to acquire enough of these to list, contacting Tony Tears via MySpace, importing copies from Italy, getting all the cds we could lay our hands on. Which means we may or may not be able to get more when we run out, and if we can, it will certainly take a while, so be forewarned... Tony Tears? So what IS that, you ask? Actually when we first saw the name, we thought it said Ebony Tears, which is the name of another band. But no, it's Tony Tears, as in a guy named Tony, last name Tears. And the "band" is indeed just the work of one man, whose (we presume) stage name gives this its monicker. How perfect is that, a mournful Italian doom metaller named Tony Tears? Already you feel sorry for him. Awww, Tony Tears... Tony Tears' MySpace page is also perfect for this sort of depressed, lonely sounding music. It's really stark and plain, with a sort of electric purple/pink background color. He's got, like, only 66 friends (one of 'em us), and in his "top friends" listing he still has Tom. You know, Tom the founder of MySpace, who is automatically your first and only friend when you first sign up, but then of course you remove Tom 'cause he's not actually someone you know or care about... But lonely Tony, grateful for Tom's friendship, keeps him around. So, anyway, to answer your question, this is some sort of underground doom metal, but also Italian in that spooky proggy soundtracky way, so it's kind of like Goblin crossed with St. Vitus, or Umberto teamed up with Trollman Av Ildtoppberg. Or, our early '70s proto-doom prog faves Jacula, channelled through someone's (Striborg's?) basement 4-track today. Tony wrote the lyrics and the music, sings, and plays all the instruments... there's layers of fuzzy, foggy bass, gorgeously melancholic psychedelic electric guitar leads, eerie Goblin-y synths tinkling and droning, and a rhythmic foundation of slightly stumbling drum machine programming. Along with enough echo effects to give parts of this a bit of a dubby, or druggy, vibe. Perhaps most crucial to our enjoyment of this are the vocals, which are spoken rather more than sung, and are all in Italian. Which works great, it's a language which even when simply spoken still sounds rather musical, we LOVE hearing Italian in this manner (we're reminded of old fave "Ordine Pubblico" by Starfuckers, especially by the track "Antichi Messagi" here), and we feel Tony's echoing, emotional chant-like recitations further enhance the hypnotic aspect of this lugubrious music. We can imagine Om fans zoning out to this quite easily! Speaking of hypnotic, one of the times recently we had this playing in the store, a customer asked if it was some sort of new Circle side project... we can see why he thought it might be. The overall atmosphere of this record is sooooooooo sad, yet somehow comforting. Even though we don't understand the Italian, this comes across as being very intimate & personal, and not just because of a certain sparseness to the mix that speaks to this being a one-man effort. Tony Tears' repetitive lumbering heavy riffs and dark keyboard coloration, punctuated with mechanical, but not entirely predictable drum beats, awash with flangey, spacey effects and further embellished with his poetically mannered, incantatory Italian, has had quite an effect on the psyches of those here who can't help but keep this in heavy rotation. While rather raw and ragged in a charming DIY home-recorded way, the results are sheer beauty, weird weeping dreamlike beauty. Definitely in the tradition of such strange Italian dark underground metal/prog/psych as Death S.S., Paul Chain, and Black Hole. But quite something else besides, with no prior interest in that tradition being necessary for appreciation of this. Even moreso maybe than The Puritan album we ROTW'd last time, being into doom metal isn't a prerequisite, as long as you like unusual music. Being into Goblin though might help. If we can persuade a ton of folks to buy this, hopefully that won't make Tony Tears any -less- unhappy, because we're looking forward to more from this miserable, mesmerizing, and altogether unique act... stay doomed Mr. Tears!

MPEG stream: Le Ossa E Il Fuoco
MPEG stream: Voci Dal Profondo
MPEG stream: Antichi Messagi
MPEG stream: Mondo Parallelo

Longtime readers of the aQ list should need no introduction to Torche, our favorite sludge pop geniuses, who by our reckoning should be HUGE. They may be heavy and loud and distorted, and feature members of Cavity and Floor and Dove, but the music they make as Torche is something else entirely. The guitars massive chugging and crunchy, the drums pounding and brutal, the bass thick and buzzy, the vocals a totally unique wail / croon, they sound a bit like the Foo Fighters, if the Foo Fighters were heavier and catchier and more punk rock. To really get into Torche, check elsewhere on the aQ website and read the reviews of Meanderthal, s/t and In Return, we go into way more detail and gush like crazy, cuz these guys absolutely rule. But this one might be for fans only, although we can guarantee, all it would take is these three songs and you will freak out, become obsessed, and need to buy everything these guys have ever done, so maybe give it a try. Two tracks from Meanderthal, the two 'hits' on a record that was pretty much all hits, both epic and hooky and heavy and genius. But the reason we're here are the two bonus tracks, both unreleased, and both as good as anything on the record proper. Big guitars, a killer hook of a chorus, amazing harmonies, kick ass drumming, even some shredding leads, this band just keeps getting better and better, but also tighter and more polished, without ever sounding wussier or like sellouts. C'mon, if a bands b-side toss offs are this good, then holy shit they are MONSTERS. The second unreleased song here is total commercial radio alt rock heaven. If more FM radio programmers had balls, Torche would get played as much as the Offspring! But it's not just two more killer Torche songs, you also get a dvd, with videos for the two Meanderthal tracks, one is a straight up performance clip, totally rocking and awesome, but it's the video for "Across The Shields" that's the mind blower, the whole band in furry costumes, but not just bears and rabbits, no one is a fanged teddy bear monster, one is a big headed baby with another fanged jaw at waist level, one is a creepy demon faced rabbit eared furry, and the other looks like a furry piece of French toast, with long fingers and claw like toes, and 4 heads on the front of the toast, all the band members heads, but one is the actual head stuck through a hole. Wow. The video is of them cavorting in the forest. And of course stills from that video are used for the cover of the lp and the dvd. And as always insanely deluxe packaging, outrageously thick colored vinyl, equally thick and deluxe sleeve, and a black and gold metallic sticker on the plastic. Not sure how limited these are, but we only got a handful.

This is totally kick ass stoner sludge pop! So right up our alley! Not surprising, as Torche is fronted by the main guy from equally heavy / poppy AQ faves Floor and also features one of the guys from AQ faves Cavity as well. Try to imagine the Melvins mixed with the the Foo Fighters and you'll get a rough idea. Massive downtuned metal riffs, stoner rock slowed waaaay dooown, and then wrapped in pop hooks and perfect harmonies. Ultra catchy sing songy melodies draped over pummelling dirges, like Christmas lights strung over a tarpit. AQ pal Josh was touting this as record of the year. And who are we to argue?! We dream about the day that this is the top forty we see on MTV and hear on the radio. It's as catchy if not catchier than most of the crap that gets shoved down kids' throats. And we're all for that 'your chocolate in my peanut butter' sort of unlikely combo, and you don't get much more unlikely than this. Sludge pop? Dirge pop? Stoner pop? Hardly matters. This is the record of the summer, the one you'll be blasting with the top down as you cruise along the beach. Assuming of course that it's the dead of night, and your car is black with bones hanging from the rearview mirror, and the stickshift has a human skull on it, and there's a corpse in your trunk, and your car is engulfed in a cloud of vampire bats, and all the windows are tinted blood red and you run down every one in your path. Exactly. Now there's no excuse for the metalhead in you life to safely indulge his or her musical sweet tooth!

MPEG stream: Charge Of The Brown Recluse
MPEG stream: Safe
MPEG stream: Mentor

One of three new releases from Jerusalem based Total Rust label, who specialize in the slow and heavy, the sludgey and dirgey, so it makes sense that these Spaniards would find a home there, even more so when you consider that Tort features members of another Total Rust band, the late great Lords Of Bukkake. Like LoB before them, Tort kick out some seriously crusty, filthy jams, a sort of dirgey sludgey stoner doom? The Sleep vibe is huge, the massive riffing, the sort of slowed down Sabbathy groove, but there's also a serious old school crusty metal vibe a la Hellhammer, and guess what, the label agrees, but goes even further describing these guys as "Hellhammer meets Sleep meets Godflesh meets Black Sabbath meets Voivod meets Saint Vitus meets Bolt Thrower meets Eyehategod", which as far as descriptions goes is pretty high praise, and definitely a tall order, and while no band could possibly live up to that, these guys definitely come close. Ther perfect mix of stoner swing and downtuned dirge, the guitars insanely thick and caustic, the bass a blown out rumble, the drums crushing, the vocals might be the best part, super harsh and intense, a fierce and inhuman demonic rasp that transforms the sound into something way more sick and sinister. These guys also traffic in some serious tranced out heaviness, locking into grooves that could go on endlessly and we would be totally in their thrall, churning, roiling epic heaviness, that slips easily from lumbering crush to thrashing blast and back again. This is one of those records that we find ourselves listening to WAY more often than we thought we would, and with every listen, we dig it more and more, and find ourselves with some of these riffs, seriously lodged in our head which is most definitely a rare occurrence. Definitely recommended for metalheads who like their metal slow and low, sludgey and sick, primitive and atmospheric, dirgey and HEAVY.

MPEG stream: Vallaha
MPEG stream: Cannibals Of Ma'Arrat

Another grim, blackened, abject slab of crushing ultramega doom from these Northwest doomlords, and like their last one, Lights Bane, Freed Of The Flesh is another gloriously miserable exercise in slow motion pummel and grinding glacial creep. Moss, Monarch, Bunkur, Khanate, Habsyll, The Body, Salome, Fleshpress, Atavist, Marzuraan, if any or all of those names sound familiar to you, then you'll no doubt understand what's in store for the listener here. Two extended doomscapes, a black cacophony of downtuned pound, the drums a barely there skeletal support to a heaving crumbling beastly buzz, riffs ring out and slowly decay, the vocals an inhuman shriek, shards of feedback shoot through the smoldering rumble of slowly decaying chords, note pulled apart, riffs blurred into near drones, a sprawling tarpit crawl, hypnotic and mesmerizing, and so so so heavy. The second track begins all stately and melodic and majestic, a glorious doom epic, surprisingly melodic, like a more metal Harvey Milk almost, you can practically imagine those strange bellowed HM vocals coming in at any minute, but instead, the track creeps along, and finally the actual vocals do come in, more hellish screeches, the perfect foil for the minor key funereal dirge beneath them, the guitars again layered and stretched into black blurs, the track growing subtly more chaotic, near the end, but never moving beyond a creep or crawl, slowly, very slowly, unwinding into pitch black emptiness. Fucking awesome. Essential ultra doom, grim listening for the slow and low legions...

MPEG stream: Hollow
MPEG stream: Ashes