[ aquarius records

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Showing results 5451 through 5500 of 5570.

It's been a little while since we listed a 'weirdest black metal band ever' but we're about to fix that. Ljuset is the latest from Swedish black metal weirdos Woods Of Infinity, whose modus operandi is a sort of loping melancholy black metal, a little folky, midtempo and buzzy, with insane cackling demonic vocals all over the place, a quick glance at the lyric sheet demonstrates why, SO MANY lyrics, all in Swedish and all delivered in a cracked clownish falsetto shriek. Actually the more we listen to this, the more the vocals sound like Mika of Circle totally losing his mind and capturing it all on tape. We hear Lugubrum, Vondur, and other like minded outsider black metallers. On their last record, WoI did a Barry Manilow cover too if that gives you an idea of the sort of headspace these guys occupy, and while on this latest disc there are no covers, there are plenty of insanely verbose vocals, haunting keyboards, barking dogs, cackling laughter, strange calliope music, record crackle, folky renaissance faire guitar and creepy monk like chants. BUT, this isn't actually as damaged or fucked up as a lot of black metal we love, but what it is, is truly unique, and most definitely WEIRD as all get out. But the more you listen, the more these songs have a strange poetry, a perfectly nonsensical sense. Always the best way to tell if a band is TRYING to sound weird, or if they are just at their very core, really really strange. The music is actually quite melodic and beautiful, a mournful melancholy blackness that sprawls like a dark cloud, each melody a different shade of grey. We have to say it again, but the more we listen to this, the more we can't shake that Circle comparison, the way the vocals interact with the repetitive riffing. Maybe if you had a hankering for some blackened folky hypnorock this might hit the spot. But for metalheads, imagine some loping dirgey doometal, more midtempo than sludge, maybe old Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride, but with a bit more gypsy folk mixed in, rife with sorrowful melodies and depressive atmosphere, but then be prepared for a mad as a hatter vocalist to wildly sermonize over the top, like some alien demon priest. So completely amazing. Beautifully packaged with heavy textured paper, and cover art by an artist who ONLY uses bodily fluids as a medium, and a seriously extensive lyric sheet.

MPEG stream: Genever
MPEG stream: Ett Forlorat Barn
MPEG stream: Tankevackande Sjalvomkan

More black metal madness, in cassette form of course, this time from Brazilian one man band Woodsmarch, a buzzing, stumbling black beast, who owes much to Burzum, but makes this loping buzzing blackness his very own. Simple guitar parts, seemingly played on not entirely distorted guitars, very epic and majestic, but always seeming to struggle, the drums also simple, a midtempo pound, lurching chaotically alongside the strange gnarled guitar lines, the vocals a strangled harsh howl, the tempo very seasick and warbly, to the point that even though the sound is buzzy and black, it still feels ambient. Hypnotic and droning, the guitars smeared and blurry, black clouds of buzzing sound, the drums sprawled out over the black backdrop, with plenty of strange arrangements, acoustic interludes, bizarre moaning keyboard like low end drones, the whole thing sort of mesmerizing and dreamlike. Pretty amazing actually. Fans of off kilter black buzz like Draugurz, Varghkoghargasmal and the like will definitely dig.

Eastern European evil rears its horned head once again, this time in the guise of the evocatively monickered Woodtemple. Occupying a suitably satanic space alongside the black metal elite (Graveland, Nargaroth, Burzum), Woodtemple do dabble in buzzing blazing plague of locusts riffery like their blackened brethren, but spend most of their time loping malevolently at a slow to midpaced clip, dirge-y and fuzzy, hypnotically static, stumblingly midtempo with struggling double kick drums and super simple, heavy handed buzzsaw riffs, pounding and sawing away, with distant keyboards picking out some ancient rhythm, while the drone-metal crush powers relentlessly hellward. Woodtemple are not about virtuosity or musical agility, they are all raw feeling and dark emotion, communicated through brutal and incessant metallic forcefulness, and that means it's not always smooth and slick. In fact sometimes it's just the opposite. Some of the drumming is so bad it's downright laughable, but in the context of the record it just becomes a swaying, stumbling stuttering piece of the already fuzzy, rough and damaged whole. This is one of those records that really straddles the line between brilliant ineptitude and inspired brutality. Which of course makes it one of our favorite black metal records of the year.

MPEG stream: The Day The Church Burnt
MPEG stream: Fell The Anger Of The Wind

Ahhh, the return of the Austrian black metal demons Woodtemple. Their last release was definitely one of our favorites, a blackened hornet's nest of spikey guitars, throbbing hypnotic rhythms, stumbling chaotic drumming, and fuzzy forest atmosphere. Thankfully, very little has changed in Woodtemple's black sonic world, it's still a perfectly damaged and confusional black metal thicket. Three lengthy tracks of plodding, mesmerising midtempo buzz, dirge-y and relentless, with completely arbitrary shifts in tempo and riffing. Almost like completely random parts were just butted up to each other with no regard for whether they fit together at all. The drummer is obviously struggling desperately to catch the changes but that's part of what makes this so good. It's like Black Flag or early Black Sabbath, in that it's always on the edge of collapse, stumbling and lumbering, only seconds away from letting the riff get away from them or watching the rhythm crumble before their very eyes. Obvious reference points would be Nargaroth, Burzum and especially Graveland, but Woodtemple, whether through sheer ineptitutde, or some sort of unholy inspiration, manage to create a totally unique hypnotic black metal space, keyboards way up in the mix, over fuzzy crumbly riffs, barely held together by the drums, which seem to be marching to their own demonic rhythm, all woven together into a pulsing, throbbing, mesmerising blackened metal drone, that finds you entranced, laying on the moist leaves on the forest floor, looking at the moonlit sky through the dense canopy of trees, waiting for the end. So gorgeously bleak and brilliant.

MPEG stream: The Battle Of Eternal Hate
MPEG stream: The Realm Of Eternal Lonliness

We've been dying for this new release forever, the latest from Austrian one man black metal horde Woodtemple for ages, from the moment we first heard whispers of a new full length. Faithful AQ-ers will no doubt be well aware of our infatuation with Woodtemple. A stumbling buzzing midtempo black metal unlike any other. Well, except maybe Graveland, who Woodtemple sound A LOT like. But they manage to be way more damaged sounding and thus somehow just that much more mysterious. They sound a little bit like Graveland's fucked up younger brother, spewing a similar buzzy droney blackness, but with more melody, more jangle, and way more weirdness. As everyone knows by now, we're huge fans of damaged and demented, super fucked up black metal, from Benighted Leams to Dead Reptile Shrine to Furze, the weirder and the more unexplainable the better. But there's something special, and maybe even more fucked up about a band that is not so obviously and blatantly weird. A band that on first listen sound like good, somewhat traditional black metal, but closer listening reveals all sorts of subtle details and freaky fucked up sonic irregularities that lurk right there under the surface. Such is the case with Woodtemple. Whose weirdness originally stemmed mostly from a certain amount of ineptness. His insistence on playing drums, even though you could here him struggling through every track. But that uneven tempo worked to Woodtemple's favor, giving those old records a woozy, stumbling almost seasick feel. Those old records were obviously the work of someone with grand aspirations of maybe -being- a Graveland, but who fell a bit short, but in doing so, created something so much more original and appealing. Well, a strange thing happened in the years since the last Woodtemple, Aramath, the man who IS Woodtemple, has gotten a whole lot better, and a lot more creative, and more importantly has gotten himself a session drummer. Our first thought was "oh crap" thinking that this new tighter, more competent outfit wouldn't be nearly as appealing, but the exact opposite is true. Now the weirdness is part and parcel of Aramath's vision, and this new Woodtemple is fast becoming our favorite new black metal record. The basic blueprint is the same, a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, lurching, seasick, sort of waltzy at times, some blastbeats, but even those stretches are not all that fast, it's mostly about mood and atmosphere and texture, a grim, melancholic world of doom, death and depression, rendered in droned out black metal dirges and buzzing riffage. In addition to the new more competent drumming, the songs have gotten more complex, with plenty of keyboards, strange rhythmic breakdowns and a surprising amount of 'jangle', some of the tracks almost sound like blackened post rock, moping and moody without being ultra harsh and hateful. And there are several super dreamy (for black metal at least) loooooong stretches of repeated riffing, building into a trance like mesmer, all looped sounding and minor key, almost a little like Slint, but all under a whooshy wash of high end keyboards. Beyond that, it's just a function of WT's killer songs, and these songs are killer, catchy riffs, weird obfuscated hooks, and a thick dense ultra heavy sound. The perfect blend of head banging blackness, trippy whatthefuckness, and blissed out dronebuzz. In fact, the new Woodtemple is so fierce and so moody and so epic and so heavy and so fucking good we actually find ourselves not missing the Woodtemple of old one bit! While they last, we have the super limited (500 copies) hand numbered digipak version, once these are gone, you'll get the normal jewelcase version.

MPEG stream: Voices Of Pagan Mountains
MPEG stream: Strains Of Eternal Sorrow

Come the Thaw is the brand new 2nd album from San Francisco's female fronted gothic downer doom trio Worm Ouroboros, which now features Aesop Dekker (Agalloch, Ludicra, Hickey) on drums, as well as bassist/guitarist/cover artist Lorraine Rath (The Gault, Amber Asylum) and guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way (World Eater). We really liked WO's self-titled 2010 debut, also on cult metal label Profound Lore, and are finding that this new one is just as dreamy and depressive, pretty and portentous as before, another slow-moving slab of their "4AD doom" stylings, with ethereal female vocals once again gently hovering over sparse, serene, sorta post-rock soundscapes. The metal factor is actually LESS evident than on their debut; while a few parts do get momentarily heavy with the guitars, it's mostly rather restrained in that regard, or at least seems to be, Worm Ouroboros channelling the likes of Dead Can Dance even more than before. Which is, really, quite nice. And somber, and hushed, and blissful...

MPEG stream: Ruined Ground
MPEG stream: Further Out
MPEG stream: When We Are Gold

On Profound Lore, which has developed quite the reputation as an interesting metal label across several genres ('tis always worth listening to what they deem worthy of release, we'd say) comes the debut from Worm Ouroboros, a Bay Area based trio that notably includes singer/bassist Lorraine Rath formerly of blackened gothic doomsters The Gault (also ex-Amber Asylum). The trio is completed by guitarist/vocalist Jessica Way and drummer Justin Green, who both play in a crusty death-doom metal act called World Eater. Although Worm Ouroboros has its doomy aspects, it's pretty far from crusty, or even often metal, really! The music on this disc is really mostly quite gentle, with hushed lovely vocals and somnolent instrumental atmospheres. It's all vaguely medieval (in a folky, not metal way) and meditative, dark and dreamy, though these songs do have post-rock style loud-soft dynamics, allowing for some heavy distorted doom riffage to kick in occasionally, and always majestically. Much of the time, though, Worm Ouroboros is all about the interweaving of delicate drifting guitar, clean female vocals (the two ladies in the band sometimes sing harmonies), poetic lyrics, and restrained drumming. When we first put this on, it started off in that near ambient ethereal mode, and we were thinking, hmm, hope this doesn't turn out to be boring, or too "Lilith Fair", but pretty soon we were thoroughly entranced, it's total ear candy that compels repeat spins. It flows beautifully, whether mellow or more "metal", and even when the waters are churned by heavier guitar/drums passages the mood still remains calm, soothing somehow. Never headbanging, maybe head-cradling though, face in hands, weeping, perhaps from sadness, perhaps from joy... Slow and sinuous, this sometimes reminds us of forgotten Finnish art-metal act Decoryah from the '90s (which is strange, since they were so unique we're rarely reminded of 'em, in fact, haven't even thought of them for ages, heck now we're gonna go put a Decoryah cd on!). To mention some perhaps better known bands that this also evokes, in ways, at times: Katatonia, Isis, Amber Asylum, Sigur Ros, Hammers Of Misfortune, and of course The Gault... So, can we call it gothic downer doom rock folk prog? Yes indeed. There's even a bit of flute (helping to make the heaviness of the epic 11 minute "Riverbed" be even more progged out), and magically tinkling glockenspiel! Most definitely, another unusual winner (as far as we're concerned) from Profound Lore.

MPEG stream: A Birth A Death
MPEG stream: Goldeneye
MPEG stream: Riverbed

We don't see a whole lot of music from Singapore come through here, the most recent was the dark psychedelic folk of the Observatory, and then all the way on the other end of the spectrum are these guys, Wormrot, also from Singapore, but whose sound is a furious blasting downtuned metallic grindcore that SLAYS. Think Insect Warfare, Nasum, that sort of hyperspeed fury. Released last year, on a tiny indie label in Singapore, it didn't take long before heavy music freaks caught on, many declaring Wormrot's Abuse THEE grind record of last year. Which caught the ear of one of the original grind labels Earache, who swooped in and reissued Abuse with a whole bonus disc of demos (34 tracks!). So here it is, and holy shit does this smoke. We try really hard to convert people to the way of the grind. No reason folks who love black metal and death metal and all sorts of heaviness shouldn't also be into grind, it's fast and furious and technical and super intense, brutal as fuck, more political, more sonically raw, and feral, we've raved about Discordance Axis, Brutal Truth, AKBK, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Gridlink, Nasum, Pig Destroyer, Unholy Grave and loads more, and Wormrot fit pretty perfectly amidst such esteemed grind royalty. Their sound fast and frantic, the drums insanely intense and technical, the guitars gnarled and frantic, the dueling vox, guttural grunt and inhuman shriek, wrapped around frenetic super convoluted complex blasts of metallic fury, that blaze at lightning speed one second, churn and chug the next, flipping from tempo to tempo, lots of super dynamic start stops, killer riffs, little chunks of classic metal laced into insectoid buzzing and blasting pummel, 23 songs in less than 22 minutes, but about a million parts and a billion riffs, putting most bands 10 minute epics to shame in less than a minute. And if that wasn't bad ass enough, these guys even do a Yeah Yeah Yeah's cover, and DESTROY IT. Easily one of our favorite grind records of the last few years, and we urge anyone who has been grindshy, to check this shit out, hard to imagine you won't be converted. And while they last, the cd version (not the lp, sorry) of Abuse includes a second disc, Extra Abuse, 34 demo tracks, alternate versions of some of the songs proper, but a mess of otherwise unreleased stuff too.

MPEG stream: Lost Swines
MPEG stream: Exterminate
MPEG stream: Born Stupid
MPEG stream: Dis-Appointing
MPEG stream: Indonesia
MPEG stream: Rich (Yeah Yeah Yeah's Cover)

Record number two from these Singaporean grinders, and it's just as fierce and furious as their first. In fact, in some ways it might be even MORE so. Twenty five songs crammed into eighteen minutes, most of the songs between 30 and 45 seconds (a couple 5 seconds or less!), which is plenty of time for these guys to blast out some tangled super frenzied riffing, and some INSANE lightning fast drumming, the vocals a maniacal shriek, and unlike lots of grind, much of the riffing here sounds VERY metal, not so much punk, but actual metal riffery, just sped WAY up, these micro metal epics that SLAY. No wacky covers like the on their first record where they did a Yeah Yeah Yeahs tune, instead, just a relentless blast of grinding metallic fury, with many of the tracks slowing down for some serious chuggery, before exploding in another head shearing blast of blurred brutality. AND unlike a lot of grind, these songs are surprisingly catchy, with some seriously killer riffs, which makes this way more listenable than lots of similar stuff, but somehow, no less heavy and brutal and badass.

MPEG stream: No One Gives A Shit
MPEG stream: Compulsive Disposition
MPEG stream: All Go No Emo
MPEG stream: Public Display Of Infection
MPEG stream: Overpowered Violence

When we first heard about Worms Of Sabnock, a grim TRUE black metal band from the UK, they were being touted as sounding exactly like Nattens Madrigal-era Ulver, which it ended up was not actually all that accurate, but what they did end up sounding like was even more exciting. There are definitely some of those elements present, super brittle buzzing insect-like riffing, thrashing broken bone blast beats, but the vocals are much more over the top, a growly shriek much closer to Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth. In fact the band has quite a bit of overblown instrumental bombast also quite reminiscent of the Filthies. Big washes of keyboards, weird haunting clean vocal croon, and angelic female choral parts. But the best part would have to be the flute. That's right, the FLUTE. We almost fell out of our chairs when this flute came swooping in, fluttering and flitting over a grinding blasting black buzz, so totally unlikely, but so fucking perfect. Farther into the record it gets even stranger, with several lilting tranquil folk interludes, rife with dreamy flute and softly strummed acoustic guitar, some blown out droney murky sort-of-post-rock with sweetly crooned clean vocals, almost chant like, mixed in with streaks of utter grim blackness. Definitely a confusional mix, but it somehow works. A tripped out, grim and frosty, psychedelic black metal journey through a world of Worms and Dark Harmonies. With flutes!! Super over the top packaging, with the band sporting seriously gruesome corpsepaint, splattered with blood and festering wounds, one band member is even sporting horns that appear to have pushed messily through the front of his head, streams of blood pouring into his eyes. Cool.

MPEG stream: Black Empire
MPEG stream: Demons Walk Among Us

It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers". But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL. The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX. An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down. Packaged in a super strange fold over plastic sleeve, with multiple printed inserts, and most likely crazy limited...

A couple years ago we reviewed an obscure, DIY cd-r release, In The Stars, by this band Wormsblood. As you might guess from their name, they're an underground black metal free noise new weird America psych folk cd-r band... oh wait you might not guess that. But you'd get the idea this is something dark and strange and evil, right? Not some normal indie rock band that's for sure. And you know this, if you remember our review of that previous release. So, band leader Wyrdskull (an alter ego of Clay Ruby from freak folksters Davenport and psych doomsters Jex Thoth, we have reason to believe) and cohorts are back with a new release, an actual cd this time, though the music is still way DIY and lo-fi (like we like it!), consisting of three "demo" sessions recorded between 2004 and 2008. Though without that info you wouldn't know this wasn't conceived as all one album. Ten tracks total, about 38 minutes of very, very fucked up "metal". Like, if Ariel Pink did even -more- drugs and then tried to produce a black metal album. Or, imagine a black metal Faxed Head (as we said about 'em before). It's that weird, that WRONG. And thus damn right in our ears. 'Cause if we know anything, we know our fucked up black metal. Dead Reptile Shrine, Varghkogargasmal, Vorak, Dead Raven Choir's Cask Strength stuff, old Necrofrost, Wold, etc., this fits right in, not that it really fits in anywhere. The disc starts off with the amazing/retarded "Fragments Of The Witch" which will either convince you this is the best thing you've heard since you played the Weakling album backwards through a malfunctioning Kaoss pad while screaming at the top of your lungs, or convince you to turn it off. Obviously, we're part of the former camp. A murky, palpitating admixture of primitive, clanking rhythms, truly over-the-top gargled and anguished kokills, dim distorted guitar riffs and woozy synths dealing out Skeptical doom plod. All of it mired in an echoey, almost dubby "production". The next track, "Hollow Cost Nothing", ups the ante with even more majestic, messed up melodies. It dawns on us that whomever is on guitar can really play. Somehow this makes Wormsblood sound even more insane. It also suggests that maybe one way to look at this isn't as an attempt at making tr00 cvlt black metal primitivism, but rather as simply a very, very, VERY damaged version of traditional '80s heavy metal (and we recall they did do a Manilla Road cover on the In The Stars cd-r)... Then, there's a track that also appeared on that cd-r,"The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken)", which takes a turn into ritualistic ancient folk musick, with a military snare and Muppet-on-meth vocals. It's like Ghost meets Abruptum. Or ESP-Disk's Cromagnon gone metal. That's followed by "Sig Bind", which begins with abstract, Jewelled Antler-y atmospheres before erupting with high-end guitar neck strangle, kind of like a Kemialliset Ystavat meets Krallice mashup. By the end of this track, it's a madhouse of maniacal voices, harshing the mellow with which it began. And on it goes, this disc of demos delving backwards in time, the recordings getting boombox-ier and buzzier, the songs even less songlike and more soundscapey if possible. "Goodnight" opens a can of that Striborg-style aersol spray, a grim sonic mist of vibrating electric strings and hissing exhalations. "Obsessed By The Bloodstone" (is that shout-out to cult pulp fantasist Karl Edward Wagner?) is an ambient piece for keyboard - and barking dog! And then sometimes, they get it together for an extended spasm of, uh, song, full of high pitched singing/shrieking and chaotic drums/guitars. Now, you might be thinking, there's other black metal releases on this week's AQ list. Yet this is the only one we chose as a Record Of The Week. Does that mean it's BETTER than those other black metal albums? Better than Ayat, or Moloch, or Nav, or the new Satyricon, for example? Well, no, not exactly. But we're not judging this purely as a black metal release. We figured this was something that AQ customers into any sort of bizarre, fucked up music (many of whom love black metal, to be sure) would find intriguing. 'Cause as metal as this is (and it IS, really metal, if you listen close) it's equally something else entirely. There's whole passages of "music" here that sound more like that fake field recordings disc Jurassic Soundscapes, but with lonely werewolves wandering around in the prehistoric swamps. And drugged up pterodactyls swooping about overhead. Wormsblood's sound is as much recognizable metallic instrumentation (guitars, drums, vocals) as it is wyrd sound FX and destroyed noise, rustlings and clankings and howlings. As befits this music, this comes packaged in black and white and grey, bearing disturbing, fantastical, hellish yet cartoonish line drawings that look a bit like Mike Diana's notorious art... get the LP if you want to study the drawings in detail.

MPEG stream: Fragments Of The Witch
MPEG stream: Sig Bind
MPEG stream: On A Burial Of Unsilent Night Soil

It had been ages since we last heard from these North Western crusty doomcore punx, when suddenly out of the blue, a brand new record surfaced a few months back, and completely kicked our asses. A monstrous slab of downtuned tribal sludge falling somewhere between Eyehategod and Neurosis, but with keyboards, and lots of tribal drumming. So here we have a brief double 7" follow up to Starvation, and it's just as great, mixing heaping doses of churning low end guitar, dense tangled drumming, throbbing bass, harsh crusty vocals and of course, tons of keyboards. The result is some impossible mix of Crash Worship, Neurosis, Eyehategod and black metal. Might sound like it wouldn't work but it does. The A side here begins with a blackened drum circle, toms everywhere, swirling rhythms underpinning crumbling slabs of distortion and wild squealing feedback, all wrapped in layers of epic keyboards, a gorgeous super cinematic crusty metallic version of Godspeed maybe. The other three sides continue in a similar fashion, albeit a bit more 'rocking', with strangely mathy rhythms, simple pounding drums, some of the filthiest and sludgiest distorted guitars, and lots of creepy creepy melodies. Packaged in a gorgeous diecut fold out thick maroon sleeve, printed in black and metallic gold ink. So nice.

Pounding, ugly, crusty doomcore from this Seattle metal band, mastered by Steve Austin of Today Is The Day (not that it matters terribly much who masters something, but Mr. Austin's name will give you an idea where these folks are coming from). Other hints:

RealAudio clip: track 3

We only really started getting into Wormwood in the last few years, a shame really as they've been at it since 1997, and have now, after 11 years, decided to hang it up. Commemorated by this 7", which is all the more sad, cuz it's fucking awesome. The A side begins all tribal drumming, and crunchy detuned guitars, creepy buzzing synths and howled almost yelped vocals, crushing and dirgey and hypnotic and like a lot of Wormwood stuff heavily indebted to Neurosis and the other band of that time and scene. But the B side is THE jam. A furiously fierce slab of lurching stop start slow motion power violence. The drums and guitar locked into a stuttery abstract non-groove, the vocals howling along, getting into some serious Harvey Milk territory almost, feedback ringing out in the pauses a la Eyehategod, one of those parts that must make lesser bands weep openly, but it is Wormwood, so of course, they manage to confound, by switching gears partway through, and unfurling something more melodic, with some surprising female vocals, which give the track a strange sort of Viking black metal vibe. And then it's done. We'll miss 'em, but these two tracks are definitely a perfect so long and fuck off. And if you somehow missed their Starvation record, pick it up, you do not know what you've been missing. Incredible packaging! Metallic silver ink on thick black cardstock, lyrics printed on the inside in some cool mysterious font, a full color photo affixed to the front with those antique photo corners, each one hand numbered, inside a thick cardstock insert, also printed in silver, with another full color photo affixed to it, the whole thing is super striking. LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES.

We reviewed the first Wormwood record ages and ages ago. At the time we described them as sounding like " Eyehategod with keyboards, a black metal Neurosis, a nastier, less spaced-out Tarantula Hawk..." Reading that just now only reminded us just how much we dug these guys. So where the heck have they been? Well, if this new record is any indication, they've been holed up in some black cave somewhere (one equipped with a jam pad and a recording studio) getting weirder, more fucked up and even better that they were before. Eyehategod and Neurosis are definitely huge influences, but the band has gotten even slower and dirgier, and it definitely suits them. Take EHG and Neurosis, but toss some Corrupted, some Asunder, even some Isis into the mix, and you'll be getting close. But then there's keyboards, ALL OVER THE PLACE. And they're not subtle or minimal, they're just not used for ambience, they are psychedelic and proggy and give the proceedings a definite psychprog black metal vibe. Weird. But so cool. Take some super heavy, murky crusty epic metal, howled vocals, wild drumming, bombastic and ultra pummeling, then add in the keyboards, break it down every once in a while into some super tripped out psychedelic passages, where the keyboards hit prog overload and the drums get all tribal. Sort of Neurosis meets Cradle Of Filth? Whatever it is it's cool. But the second lp is where stuff gets really good. Side three is almost entirely taken up by "No True Altruism", an epic dirge of haunted house cinematic doom, or something, it sounds like Corrupted channelled through Goblin, slow and lumbering with bursts of sludgy pummel, blasts of double kick drumming, grinding overblown bass, absolute horror movie prog sludge nirvana. Side 4 is all a single track, a mind blowing coda to a record that was already pretty brain melting, "Gluttony" is a massive chaotic dubbed out whirl of what-the-fuck sonics and processed sludge weirdness. It sounds like a remix, sort of, with huge walls of backwards guitars, garbled backwards vocals, weird processed rhythms, bits of Terminal Cheesecake, Butthole Surfers all whipped into a maelstrom of Corrupted meets Teenage Filmstars sonic fuckery, but still murky and muddy and impossibly doomy. Wow. There will be a cd release of this eventually, but it definitely sounds like it was made to be a double lp, with disc one being the more black psych sludge rock, the second disc the sludgey tripped out doom. Either way, awesome! Packaged in a killer, super thick gatefold sleeve, with creepy cool artwork and lyrics and liner notes inside. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, each copy hand numbered!

Debut full length from these East Bay doomlords, who once featured our very own Andee behind the kit! It's three tracks 43 minutes, of slow building, brooding, emotional, classic epic doom, the emotion mostly due to the vocals, way up in the mix, a cool sort of John Garcia (Kyuss) / Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) hybrid, moaning and mewling during the slow post rocky parts and howling and wailing during the churning chug of the more doomy parts. Surprisingly catchy and hooky, Worship Of Silence minus the vocals might slip into something more sludgey and ultra dooooooom, but the vocals transform this into something much more accessible, this sounds like a slight, but it's totally not, it really wouldn't be that weird to hear this stuff on some super progressive alternative / metal radio station. It's the Soundgarden vibe, it's hard to avoid, but fuck it, why bother, we all love Soundgarden, so imagine Cornell and company trading in their Zep worshipping grunge, for sprawling epic downtuned doomscapes, with cool swirling riffage, wild tribal drumming, long expanses of shimmery drift, a definite prog element too, as during lots of the slow brooding tribal parts, the band definitely dip into Tool territory, which makes for an awesomely hooky, catchy, but still crushing and epic post-doom. And it's not just the vocals, the riffs and the arrangements are awesome, well crafted, channeling the sound of old school classic doom, but twisting it into something much more modern and polished, eminently headbangable, but definitely a little progged out and catchy as fuck. We're definitely digging this big time.

MPEG stream: (It's Not Better Than The) Drugs
MPEG stream: The Palest Parts Of You

Ah ha ha ha ha! Triumphant battle-metal will never die!! Hahahaha! Gird your loins and steel your sinews and be ready to wet your sword or axe in bloody red gore, for it is Wotan who approacheth at whatever maximum volume decibel level you can conjure from your stereo, and Wotan are majestic and mighty and take no prisoners. Unlike most European "power metal", and certainly unlike most Italian power metal, Wotan's heavy metal is raw and heavy and underground, and boasts a biting guitar tone that will kill poseurs (and wimpy power metal popsters) dead. Plus, the vocals that aren't bad for an Italian (if you listen to much Italian power metal you know what we mean). They are super dramatic, though, so you have to be partial to such theatrics. Wotan's unashamed worship of Manowar pays off because this isn't jokey, they're really feeling it... and maybe can make you feel it too (it worked on us, as the beginning of this review proves). Though doubtless laughable to many, the few and proud will loft Wotan to the pantheon already occupied by such acts as Doomsword, Solstice, Brocas Helm, Sacred Steel, Thunderstorm, and Slough Feg...

MPEG stream: Under The Sign Of Odin's Raven
MPEG stream: The Cave

The power of gloom and doom!! And the glory! It's all on full display here, yes indeed, as rolling waves of doomed out, fuzzed filled riffage emanate from this, the latest slab of slow and low heavosity from the UK's epic doom mongers The Wounded Kings. Ahhh, the sound of overdriven vintage tube amps! With occasional atmospheric embellishment from sad acoustic guitar and church organ keyboards when they want to indulge their more proggy and introspective inclinations (as on the moody interlude "Space Conqueror" for instance). To top it off, The Wounded Kings' generals are gathered in their masses like witches at black masses by the commandingly creepy, husky and haunting vocals of Sharie Neyland, who initially stepped up to the mic on The Wounded Kings' previous album, In The Chapel Of The Black Hand. Now fully integrated into the band and their writing process, she's an even more crucial presence this time. Imagine a Jex Thoth who's lived the life of Ozz, doing drugs and drink, biting bats and doves, having visions. Or, Mark "The Shark" Shelton of Manilla Road, with a sex-change. Or, hopefully you've heard that Darkscorch Canticles compilation of '70s proto-metal we made Record Of The Week recently - specifically, you know the track "Warlord" by the band Wrath, with the girl singing who sounds like brainwashed cultist? 'Cause we think Neyland sounds kinda like her, but all growed up, even more certain in her beliefs, her voice aged deeper and dronier. It's a weird, wicked, wailing warble, enhanced by effects, that incredibly suits the hypnotically stretched-out Sabbath/Vitus sludge of The Wounded Kings. 'Tis true, female-fronted occult rock and doom acts are quite thick on the ground these days, it's kind of the in thing, many of them quite good (Blood Ceremony, Purson, the aforementioned Jex Thoth, etc.). If we now count The Wounded Kings as part of that scene, they still stand apart, sounding "old" but not "retro", if that makes sense, and also being so much HEAVIER than most. Their closest competition would probably be the mighty Windhand, but Windhand generally doesn't have "clean" vocals, so that's a big difference. Besides, we figure that The Wounded Kings, who originally had a male vocalist, hired on Neyland not 'cause they just wanted a "female singer" but because they wanted HER unique vocals, sounding like a witness to the abyss, so synergistic with their preexisting epick aesthetic. Once again, a success, from one of the best in the realm of the oh so gloriously doomy and gloomy.

MPEG stream: Gnosis
MPEG stream: Lost Bride
MPEG stream: Consolamentum

Wow, what a surprising piece of downer metal artistry from a band we'd never heard of before! Though, we were curious about 'em 'cause this, their debut, is one of the first two releases from the new Eichenwald Industries imprint, which is closely related to the limited edition Paradigms label, who have put out a lot of cool stuff you probably have. On this, the Dartmoor, UK duo known as The Wounded Kings play classic, epic, dark doom metal (a la Sabbath) with an especially druggy, spaced out, very psychedelic vibe. The very first, and title track, sets the tone, being a three-part suite beginning with some proggy organ drone... soon joined by funeral paced, fuzzed-out guitar... and cleanly sung, eerie echo-effected vocals with a melancholic, Ozzyish croak to 'em. The album continues with much more in the way of morose heaviness, epic-ness, and ambience, full of the sort of sludgy riffs we like, having quite a haunted, occult vibe. This should appeal to fans of both Electric Wizard and Witchcraft. Clearly their record collections include a lot of '70s psych and possibly also Italian prog too... there's hints of Goblin going on here with the organ and all. We might also cite Trouble, very early Cathedral, Fall Of The Idols, Wizar'd, Solstice, Reverend Bizarre, and early Candlemass (Epicus Doomicus era)... the obscure Detroit '80s act Coven too if you've ever heard them... all could be referenced to describe The Wounded Kings' somber sound. Definitely some recommended, traditional (but not too traditional) DOOM here, folks!

MPEG stream: Embrace Of The Narrow House
MPEG stream: Melanthos
MPEG stream: Master Of Witches

Bow down doom hounds, the third full-length opus of spaced out sludge trudge from these British heavies is here! In most respects, exactly as expected, slow and low and psychedelic. But, they've changed up one (big) thing. Get this: in our review of their previous disc, The Shadow Over Atlantis, we suggested that the many fans of their labelmates Jex Thoth might dig the The Wounded Kings too, due to similar sonics and aligned atmospherics. Well, now that's even more the case, as on this album suddenly the Kings have a female singer, a la Jex Thoth! Not sure why they made this move (the popularity of Jex Thoth, The Devil's Blood, Blood Ceremony, et. al. in the "New Wave Of Female Fronted Occult Metal" trend couldn't possibly be the reason, could it?) but it was a good one, really. Not that we didn't like their original singer (former bassist George Birch, now out of the band) but we're really digging new singer Sharie Neyland's haunting, yet commanding, presence on this platter. Also, it makes perfect sense, considering that The Wounded Kings already had the spooky-proggy organ sound of Italian horror movie scores as a big influence upon their sound. Female vox fit in quite well with that vibe, and, as those other aforementioned bands also have demonstrated, sound good in conjunction with dirgey, lumbering, Sabbath-derived riffage. And they're not just "female vox" anyway, there's an eccentric personality here. With her wavery, witchy, fairly low for a female voice, Neyland sounds something like a weird hybrid of Jex Thoth and Manilla Road's Mark "The Shark" Shelton... really! Now that's cult. Take that voice and let it range o'er epic effected hypnotic heaviness along the lines of early Cathedral or Electric Wizard (with a dash of Blizaro), and you've got In The Chapel Of The Black Hand. So. Not just another Wounded Kings album (though that would have been fine too) but one that stands apart, if not above. Phantasmagorically recommended.

MPEG stream: The Cult Of Souls
MPEG stream: Gates Of Oblivion
MPEG stream: In The Chapel Of The Black Hand

We described this British doom duo's debut in 2008 as being Sabbathy doom metal with a particularly druggy, spaced-out vibe... well they've returned and are even more druggy and spaced-out than before! This isn't doom that crushes you (though they can get quite heavy) but rather doom that envelops you, doom you sink into... like the warm embrace of sleep - or like Atlantis sinking into the ocean, the mythic cataclysm about which it appears this is a concept album (that's doom!). Thus, 'tis dark, majestic, mournful. With that mood in mind, the cover art and font used really capture the look of '60s paperback pulp sci-fi / fantasy novels, and we do know The Wounded Kings take much inspiration from both literature and the occult. They also cite several of our '70s proto-metal and prog rock faves: Night Sun, Museo Rosenbach, Hairy Chapter, Gracious, May Blitz, Alphataurus, Earth and Fire, and Van Der Graaf Generator, among others. Though what we hear could possibly best be described by suggesting one imagine UFOmammut, Witch, or Electric Wizard, ultra qualuuded and heavy lidded, at their most '70s proggish and beauteous. Also, this being on I Hate Records, it occurs to us that Jex Thoth fans (and would-be fans, those turned off by the singing in that band) ought to dig the music here. The first track is called "The Swirling Mist" and is aptly named, describing the Wounded Kings' sound altogether. Their doomy gloomy guitar riffs are sluggishy smeared across this whole disc, almost becoming one continuous psychedelic downer drone stretching from song to song; songs which trudge forth in gorgeous glorious misery, driven by plodding drums, embellished with eerie Goblinesque chiming of keys, ofttimes gothically graced with vocal lamentations delivered a spooky shivery deep voice, reverb effected, all contributing to this album's very much haunted and melancholic feel. As does the trance inducing slo-mo psych guitar soloing and comforting organ buzz throughout. Also, some of our favorite moments are the most mellowed out ones: the gentle piano/drone interlude "Into The Ocean's Abyss" is both sad and beautiful, one of two brief instrumentals here (the other, "Deathless Echo"), among the much more epic, heavier tracks. We'd certainly recommend this Wounded Kings album to not only our true doom and doom-drone regulars but also folks into current indie psych and even cold wave acts, you might find something to grab you... and envelop you... and dreamily doom you, here!

MPEG stream: Baptism Of Atlantis
MPEG stream: The Sons Of Belial
MPEG stream: Deathless Echo

There's just something about doom that is so soothing. To us at least. And we're of course not just talking about regular old doom, we're talking doom, with multiple 'o's, the more the doomier!!! Wraith Of The Ropes is a duo from Ohio of all places, who practice a sort of horror funereal doom. The core sound is slow, lumbering, downtuned, depressive, a massive plodding crush, all minor key misery and slow motion propulsion. With little flurries of wild double kick drum and moaning low end rumble. The sound of huge furry beasts trudging through some subterranean swamp in the pits of hell. Majestic and epic as well as depressive and miserable. And then the vocals... surprisingly un-doomlike, almost more like death metal vocals, raspy and guttural and wrapped in all sorts of effects. But where the band really deviate from the traditional funereal doom path, is the unlikely addition of piano, and the sort of cinematic vibe that permeates all of these tracks. The piano parts are pure creepiness, minor key and tinkling in thick fields of fuzzy reverb, it ends up sounding like a doom metal Goblin, which is a very good thing! This stuff would be the perfect soundtrack to the next Dario Argento movie, you can almost see the screaming nightgown clad teenager, running through the woods in the dead of night, being pursued by some mysterious figure, or a young girl running hysterically though some huge old house swarming with insects. The massive swaths of downtuned guitars, the delicate pianos, the raspy roar, the haunting Halloween like keyboard melodies, how fucking scary is this stuff!! These guys should definitely be scoring some serious fright films. But odds are you stopped reading this review way back, cuz if you're anything like us, we had you at "doom metal Goblin"!

MPEG stream: Final Reflection
MPEG stream: Lake Of Decay

Dust In Our Mouths from Scottish black ambient dronelords Wraiths, is the final installment in the group's extended blackdrone trilogy/triptych which started with Oriflamme released on Aurora Borealis, continued with The Grey Emperor, released on At War With False Noise and finally finds its resolution here, in a nearly hour long track the label describes as "a crushing noise ritual from the dark realms of plague and grim death", which perhaps paints to noisy a picture, as anyone whose been following Wraiths over the last two records, have watched the band transform into something much more abstract and ambient, shedding much of the harsh noise that defined their early sound in favor of gorgeous grim atmospherics. Dust In Our Mouths, in fact, opens with some haunting blackened drift, lush chordal swells, all anchored by a hypnotic, looped, almost dubbed out rhythm, just a simple softly stuttery snare, and gently tinkling chimes. In the background, there lurks all manner of sonic misery, heaving slabs of corrosive low end, disembodied spectral howls, sheets of jagged feedback, but those are relegated to background ambience, the first few minutes gorgeously hypnotic, spare and skeletal, almost like some black metal band doing their best minimal abstract dub, a hushed sort of industrial ambience, it's not really until about 20 minutes in, that the song shifts dramatically, not necessarily noisier, but that dubby rhythm is replaced by lush dreamily distorted shimmers, and blurred melodic drift, it's almost Caretaker-ish in fact, woozy and washed out, but here that wistfulness is underpinned by an ominous grimness that manifests itself as a dense spectral hum, roiling with shadows of black noise, but that noise is definitely obscured by the woozy wash of smeared surf-like shimmer. The drums return, more of an ominous sort of death march, still buried in the murk, that murk growing ever more intense, blossoming into a blown out black buzz, and eventually splintering into squalls of muted feedback, only achieving full on noise about 40 minutes in, where things become chaotic and dense and intense, but even here, the sound is infused with all manner of hidden melody and swirling textures, the sharp edges smoothed out, resulting in a heaving crumbling wall of blurred blackness, churning its way through clouds of hiss and hum and howl, until finally disappearing in a cloud of swirling FX heavy white noise, emerging on the other side, to play out its last few seconds as a skeletal sprawl of loping reverbed drift. Awesome.

MPEG stream: Dust In Our Mouths (excerpt 1)
MPEG stream: Dust In Our Mouths (excerpt 2)

The last we heard from Scottish ambient doomlords Wraiths, was their amazing full length Plaguebearer on UK label Paradigms. That disc was a caustic collection of deep ominous black ambience, light on the ambience, heavy on the, well, heavy. If anything, Oriflamme is even moreso, as it predates Plaguebearer, originally released as a super limited cd-r, now available again, however briefly, as a limited lp. These are the roots of Plaguebearer, in fact, it sounds like it was definitely cut from the same mouldering black cloth. There is nothing serene or soothing about this sort of ambience, it's harsh and chaotic, corrosive, roiling, ominous and thick, heavy for sure, but more than anything, it's incredibly dense. Layer upon layer upon layer. Huge chunks of industrial grind, massive pounding, and bursts of corrosive crunch, super processed vocals, synths and streaks of feedback, deep rumbling drones, whirring and hissing, it's the sound of wandering through the pits of hell. Huge demonic machinery, massive gears and pistons, caked with black soot, and unspeakable grime, churning away endlessly, shadowy figures toiling behind the flames, the sounds of hammer on stone, of gnashing teeth, and hopeless wails, all seeming to come together into some hellish symphony. A glorious and gloriously abysmal industrial black noise drone, a sound not unfamiliar to fans of MZ412, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and other proponents of caustic low end explorations and buzzing sonic filth. The second half of Oriflamme is much less dense, and more spacious, as if after barely making it through the industrial wasteland of part one, the listener has emerged in a massive cavern, so high, the rock walls just disappear into blackness, the only things visible are those illuminated by the guttering flame of your lantern, your mind left to decipher the strange and mysterious soundworld lurking just out of sight. Distant moans and shimmering black murmurs, bits of glitch and crunch, smeared into swirling black shadows, heaving swells of blackness, streaks of electrical interference, billows of earth shaking rumbles, hissed voices, deep creaks and monstrous gurgles, wind like whirs, wavering electrostatic buzz, all spread out into a harrowing and bleak doomscape, as disturbingly (and impossibly) beautiful, and it is absolutely grim and brutalizing. Gorgeous super striking covers, like some old lost dust covered tome, and don't be fooled by the frayed and tattered edges, they're printed on the sleeves. And as if we even needed to tell you, EXTREMELY LIMITED!

The buzziest black metal band in the land? That's precisely how Wrath Of The Weak were described to us, and the truth wasn't all that far off. The sticker on that cd compared them to Burzum and Ildjarn as well, which was also pretty right on the money. But the buzz factor, turned WOTW into something much drone drenched and spacey, tripped out and trancey, like Velvet Cacoon before them, the buzz defined them, every note, every melody, was designed to be wreathed in buzz, to blur and smear into streaks of sound. This is record number two from WOTW and it's just as buzzy as its predecessor, but a few things have definitely changed. The tone and timbre is different, a bit more bright and brittle, less murky and washed out, more high end, more a wall of blackened skree. And within the sound, the the songs seem to be more musical, more complex melodically, there's a whole lot more going on beneath the buzz. Blasting at full volume in headphones, this record is an epiphany, your ears grow accustomed to the relentless buzz and begin to dig out sonic subtleties, picking up on all sorts of hooks and riffs, sounds and voices, different parts flow seamlessly into each other, the drums actually seem to crystallize before your ears, instead of just another layer of buzz, they are a distinct rhythm a flurry of beats, the vocals seem to emerge from the surrounding skree, offering up another unique layer sonic fury, but everything is so intertwined with the buzz, that these occurrences shift back and forth, the drums drift in and out, the vocals buried surface briefly, sometimes everything locks together into a total static blur, other times they all swing and swirl seemingly haphazardly, before locking into step again. It's the nature of a sound this dense, of music this furious and this buzzy, so blown out, so distorted, that it require some serious alchemy to make get all the sounds to hold their own, and even then, it requires some serious listening to hear them. And like the record before it, which ended with some weird skittery electronica, this record finishes strangely as well, with a nearly 22 minute ambient drift, all wheezing organs, and deep shimmering tones, woven into dense sonic drifts, some definite soothing aural warmth after the frosty chilly buzz of the preceding 45 minutes. More musical manna for the buzz hungry, definitely some of the fiercest, most distorted and noise drenched black metal you'll hear. Been wallowing in the extreme buzz of Velvet Cacoon, Mausoleums, Brown Jenkins, Procer Veneficus, Animus, you might as well add Wrath Of The Weak to that list...

MPEG stream: Chapter I: A Leap Of Faith Ends When You Crash Into The Ground
MPEG stream: Chapter II: Using Self-Destrution In The Pursuit Of A Better Life

A two song blast of extreme noise drenched buzz to tide us over until the next Wrath Of The Weak full length (which we actually have in stock, we just haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet). When it was first suggested we check out WOTW, we were told they were the BUZZIEST black metal band around, and damn if it wasn't pretty much true. But if that first record was indeed the buzziest, not sure what this tape is all about. If anything it's even more droney and dense, whatever riffs are happening are blurred and smeared and stretched into one massive roiling buzzscape. There might be drums in there, but if they are they are buried deep beneath the churning black mass of buzz above it. Very close listening reveals some distinct riffage, and even some melody, but back away and it's like standing in a super collider, gloriously and ear splittingly, head spinningly, rib cage rattlingly LOUD. The second side is a bit more defined, but only in that the sound is a little murkier, a little more melancholy, a heaving dirge-y dismal minor key drone, that seems to shift druggily back and forth between two thick shimmering buzz drenched chords, creating a creepy, melancholy melody out of massive walls of crumbling fuzz and blasting black blur. Barely even black metal, but fucking awesome nonetheless. Fantastic packaging, an all black tape, not even a little window in the middle. Spare black and white sleeve, white on the outside, black on the inside, minimal text, housed in a black and yellow transparent slipcover. Super striking. CRAZY LIMITED TOO. ONLY 100 COPIES. Out of print already, we got a bunch, but they won't last long...

Another way too limited release from one man blackened ultra-buzz merchant Wrath Of The Weak. As we've mentioned before in the past, before we had heard a single note, WOTW came highly recommended as perhaps THEE buzziest black metal band around, which was, and is still indeed to a certain degree the case, but as other bands are piling on the buzz, and black metal seems to be moving in a more blown out and shoegazey drone drenched direction, it's a bit tougher these days to truly be the lord of buzz. Thankfully, WOTW is about more than just buzz, the tracks are dense and dark and thick and corrosive, often like a Wolf Eyes track transformed into black metal. Plenty of crunch, and abstract industrial whir, sheets of feedback, tracks sometimes collapsing into gorgeously grinding stretches of slow motion sprawl, haunting melodies buried beneath, everything rough and ragged and raw, but blurred into soft shapes and bleary warm sonic swells. Often not remotely black metal at all. This ep is the perfect example. The opening track is just guitars, a roiling and lush soundworld, no drums, at least none that we can hear, just a massive heaving wall of crumbling distorted crunch, wreathed in hazy clouds of buzz and hiss and whir, playing out a woozy minor key melody, but very very sloooowly, a smoldering slab of mind expanding divine and blackened space drone. And as if to further make the case that WOTW is far from just another black metal outfit, the second track is a cover (we think) of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", less black metal, and more tripped out druggy psychedelia, those distinctive drums, long spidery streaks of sitar like buzz, all the sounds softened and smeared and stretched out into totally trippy tendrils, unfurling through swirling clouds of blissed out shimmer. A black metal band would likely be your LAST guess, we're hearing White Hills, the Heads, and other modern space psych combos. And finally, the record closes with what initially sounds like what could be the blackest track of the three, but the opening riff, instead of exploding into a frenzy of blasting and buzzing, stretches out into something much more dreamy and abstract, a sort of looped guitarscape, the initial riff becoming less and less distinct, as all sorts of other sounds and overtones surface around the main melody. WAY too brief at 2 minutes, that track definitely could have been extended to make this a full length and we would have remained happily entranced. LIMITED TO ONLY 66 COPIES!! We got a handful, and we got every copy the label had left. The cd-r's are affixed to a block of wood, and the woods is housed in a screen printed and hand sewn fabric sleeve. So nice.

MPEG stream: Tomorrow Never Knows
MPEG stream: Untitled #73

Final release from one of our favorite one man black metal bands, who if you regularly read the aQ list, you may remember us describing as possibly THEE buzziest black metal band we had heard, so buzzy in fact, that the sound actually became LESS black metal and more sorta shoegazey and tranced out and trippy, which is obviously not a bad thing at all. So here is the final missive from WOTW, and it's exactly what we wanted, a huge swirling mass of blurry buzz and buried melody. After a bit of haunting organ drift, the sound explodes into a squall of swirling white noise, beneath which, lilting melodies drift and shimmer, there are some vokills too, but it's almost like a black metal Caretaker, dreamy and drifty, all of the caustic crunch and black buzz balanced by the haunting dreaminess beneath. And so it goes, each track here is dreamy and darkly melodic, it just happens to be swathed in crumbing distortion and swirls of black buzz. We're guessing that folk into Lovesliescrushing or Leyland Kirby or Tim Hecker, who aren't averse to some buzz, might be seriously smitten. This just might be the prettiest black metal record EVER. Sad it's the last. RIP WOTW...

MPEG stream: The Sad Turth, The Dirty Lowdown
MPEG stream: Three Forty One

This band was originally touted to us as being THE buzziest black metal band. So obviously we were intrigued, and you know, that wasn't all that far from the truth. This one man band from Buffalo, is indeed a master of the buzz, and the cool thing is, while this is indeed buzzing blown out black metal, it seems like he's coming at it from a non black metal background, which might be why this sounds so unique. Barring a few breakdowns, and various stretches of propulsive riffing, most of the record is indeed an intense wall of buzz, so thick and fuzzed out, it's almost impossible to discern anything else going on. Drums, vocals, they sort of blur into the overall buzz, turning this record into the ultimate blackbuzzdronedisc. Incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing, so much so that when the band locks into a riff, and locks into a buzz drenched cyclical loop, it's easy to get totally lost, the various notes shift and blend into each other, almost like some Niblock piece composed with buzzing black metal riffs. Heavy on the drone, and the repetition, a few times writing this review I even found myself totally entranced and almost drifting off. Can't think of a much better recommendation than that. The record has song titles like "The Snowstorm" and "The Thunderstorm", and that's pretty much what this sounds like, like some intense black clouded metal storm, relentless and furious. But be sure and stick around for the final 24 minute track "Cuniculean Rampage", which begins as another blurry buzzy blast, but near the end, the riff is locked and looped and suddenly it's less a black metal record and more some strange experimental droned out noisescape, all loops and skipping stuttering digital glitches, but still weirdly heavy. A brief blast of Autechre-ized blackness. Awesome.

MPEG stream: The Snowstorm
MPEG stream: Journey Of Many Days
MPEG stream: The Thunderstorm

One of Andee's favorite records EVER. Over the top UK glam metal, big hair, big spikes, big hooks!!

Latest release from the crazy prolific E.E.E. Recordings label, home to all things unblack, as in Christian black metal. We've gone into the whole unblack thing at great length in the past. While it may seem antithetical to most, a music that was founded and is defined by its very anti-Christian bent, being subverted and appropriated to glorify the Lord, but we'll leave all that stuff to the chatrooms and message boards, all we know is this unblack stuff sounds amazing! In the past we've raved about Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Elgibbor, Flaskavsae, Offerblod and Njiqahdda, check any of those reviews for more on the whole unblack phenomenon, in the meantime, we'll investigate the grim buzzing soundworld of Wrathful Plague. With a name like Wrathful Plague, and the fact that these guys are on E.E.E., you might assume that this is more unblack metal, but in fact, according to the label, the band is non-religious, not the first E.E.E. band to keep their convictions on the DL (Drommer is another), thankfully, they SOUND unblack, which by now has a definite sonic connotation. Unblack artists are definitely on the fucked and freaked out end of the BM spectrum, the sounds as much a part of their music as the songs, sure there's plenty of grim buzz, and furious blast beats and harsh hellish vocals, but all performed and recorded in such a way, that they end up smeared and blurred, murky and damaged, tape hiss offering up as much buzz as the guitars, the tone changing from muddy and muffled, to tinny and brittle, but it a way that only adds to the mood and atmosphere of the music. Wrathful Plague, for all its claims of eschewing religion, at least in the context of their music, DOES in fact feature folks from all of the above mentioned bands, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, etc. so we imagine there is some pro-God action going on somewhere in there, but the more important thing is, that it -sounds- as awesomely fucked up as records by those other bands. WP are not as mathy or complex and convoluted as a lot of E.E.E. bands, instead, they traffic in raw blasting fury, and in this case, the lo-fi recording enhances the bands washed out buzz in a big way. The guitars grind and swirl, but sound looped, often blurring into near static streaks of minor key sound, the drums, programmed it sounds like, are a chaotic framework, buried miles down in the mix, offering up another crackling layer of hiss, the vocals a distorted croak, the distortion alien sounding, and blown out, so at it's most furious, various overtones begin to surface and beat wildly against each other, creating strange subtle rhythmic variations and subtle distortions and causing the sound to become even more hazy and indistinct. A blurry blast that manages to be fierce and black and grim but also warm and dizzyingly droning and intensely hypnotic. Minus the few acoustic interludes, it's a mesmerizing chunk of relentless black drone hypno-metal. And if you can read the words "black drone hypno-metal" and not buy this record, that you are made of stronger stuff than us...

MPEG stream: Steersman Of The Gate
MPEG stream: Castrate The Sodomites

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

SORRY.

MPEG stream: Vdodelig Krigforing
MPEG stream: The Frostbitten Path

Another killer chunk of dark brooding gloom prog post metal creep from this Los Angeles duo, with the A side, "Absurdities & Echo" sounding a bit like Godflesh via Pinkish Black, with a little This Heat going on too, which actually sorta describes their sound in general, killer mathy drumming, thick swaths of rumbling buzzing synths, the vibe super sinister and atmospheric, the vocals an ultra dramatic anguished howl, this is the sort of sound we imagine would have gone over gangbusters back in the hey day of the LA goth scene, not hard to imagine these guys playing at the Scream, a dense crowd of black clad kids swooning and tranced out, headbanging really slowly. Heavy as fuck, but with lots of space, the drumming driving things for sure, murky and moody, a tortured slab of gothic metallic downer-rock that reminds us once again why we dig these guys so much. And while we often wonder why these guys ever got classified as black metal, it's tracks like the B side "Abhorrence", that reminds us that these guys can actually kick up a pretty serious black buzz, but of course even then, it's their twisted version, with flurries of drum splatter, swooning soaring synths (or are they guitars? Hard to tell...), the vokills a hellish rasp, the arrangement, like the A side weirdly mathy and proggy, with some cool stop / start breakdowns that ooze into thick tarpit trudges, before returning to the shrieking swirling howling blackness.

MPEG stream: Absurdities & Echo

Hark! Courtesy of the ever reliable Flenser Records comes the gravely unsettling return of this boldly unclassifiable unit, hazily haunting the very outermost fringes of metal, goth, noise rock and industrial, and most certainly on our shortlist of bands that everyone should be listening to that not nearly enough people are (although a current stint opening for Deafheaven will hopefully change that!). For those uninitiated, W&R are a two piece loosely based in Los Angeles comprised solely of a live drummer and a man with a sample pad (live it looks like he's playing a giant light up calculator!), both gifted with a talent for terrifying screams, howls and yelps, who manage to sound as dense and textural as any full band. Want assaults you immediately with a burst of disorienting percussive soundscapes, the vocals an exhausted world-weary yell, the music (if it can be called that) a collage of white noise, Hawkwind style cosmic swirling dust, and a synthesized monolithic chanting that is either coming from a human or a machine, it is almost impossible to say. And that's just the first couple minutes of a wildly dense, emotionally ravaged technological avalanche of a record. There are moments of relative restraint, but these are perhaps even more emotionally intense. Funereal piano lilts under stream-of-consciousness spoken word, clattering cymbals and agonized screams. Sparse robotic percussion hammers cold and steadfast under unnerving atonal singing and a shrieking digital cacophony, like musical notes malfunctioning, rotten with cancerous programming. Lonely nocturnal melodies drift above spidery rhythms eerily offset by freeform howling. The songs can be lush, almost beautiful in their own oily alien way, but never without a sense of foreboding, a constant dissonant creep leaking into the foliage. They can be contemplative and desolate, like some sort of future wasteland, all barren metals and burned out circuitry. At other times the record is almost operatic and martial, sounding like some warped Soviet anthem infested with insectoid parasites, pulsating like an anxious transparent heart - an orchestra sucked of all its triumph and hope, sometimes even recalling something from Burzum's Filosofem, but completely rewired - sparking and glistening in a damp windowless room. Want is like a collage - some tracks feeling like snippets or fragments of ideas and memories, the kind we do our best to keep buried. It is a lonesome technological assault, the black oil of crackling urban despair seeping into the pores of every moment. The ominous hungry march of progress that will consume us all! Very highly recommended for fans of Pinkish Black and other recent Flenser faves like Have A Nice Life and Planning For Burial...

MPEG stream: Corpse Museum
MPEG stream: Apollo Beneath The Whip
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This record has been floating around in various forms, all insanely limited, and as the title suggests, it was initially a cassette, then a cd-r, then a download, and is only now finally available as a slightly less limited lp, still titled Black Cassette of course, and regardless of format, it's a serious slab of mathy doomy electronics laced sludge, a bit of an odd one for The Flenser, who traffic mostly in metal of the blacker variety, but Wreck And Reference have a sound that is most definitely blackened, and in some ways just as grim and kult and bleak as most black metal. The sound is a wild almost industrial sounding chaotic lurching heavy sludge, with clean vox, thick blown out bass, tons of effects and loads of swirling electronics, a heaping dose of pop liberally applied too, with much of the record playing out like a sort of slowcore indie rock. The first track was all it took to convince us, a jagged lumbering chunk of dirge pop, with crumbling super distorted guitars, pounding drums, crooned clean vocals, a killer main hook, everything wreathed in buzz and glitch, rife with long stretches of droned out shimmer, and rumbling detuned buzz, and wild squalls of psychedelic feedback, the drums growing more and more chaotic, eventually the guitars following suit, stuttering, all clipped stops and starts before grinding to a halt. So ruling. The following track is more of a moody brooder, a bass driven chunk of slowcore, with clean vocals delivered way back from the microphone, giving the proceedings a definite nineties math rock vibe, think Shellac or Slint, and when the band does finally kick in, the guitars crunch, the drums pound, this time everything is beneath thick sheets of heavily effected synths, making everything deliriously spacey and dreamy. The rest of the tracks offer more of the same, a variation on doom we've never heard before, a Torche like approach to metal, definitely heavily influenced by indie rock, pop and post punk, sung/spoken vox over tribal drumming and grinding muddied riffage, big drumming over muted buzz and what sounds like haunting piano, not to mention deep dramatic crooning, a strangely blurred blast transformed into something much poppier and prettier, long stretches of shimmery spaciness and still more surprisingly poppy vox, and finally, a killer chunk of slow building post rock epicness that sounds a bit like a doomier, more post punky take on Godspeed. A pretty weird, and pretty awesome band, and definitely one of the coolest things The Flenser has put out, which is definitely saying a lot.

MPEG stream: All the Ships Have Been Abandoned
MPEG stream: Surrendering
MPEG stream: In Chains, Awakening

Wrench are full on stoner/sludge rock, complete with space sound effects and downtuned key-of-C riff jams. They are akin to Monster Magnet & Kyuss with a healthy dose of psychedelia.

RealAudio clip: Gravitron
RealAudio clip: Twenty Times
RealAudio clip: Free Ride

The Midwest is beginning to feel like the new Norway. So is the South. Tons of fucked up grim blackness seems to be constantly seeping outward from the blackened heartland. We're gonna have to come up with some new sobriquets for these apparent movements, MWBM is now a new, more region specific USBM, or maybe ECBM, for those in the South, but the sudden onslaught from middle and Eastern America is threatening to overtake the much lauded West Coast scene, which while still represented by the few elite metal warriors (Leviathan, Xasthur, etc.), hasn't really produced the same number of outrageously creative black metal outfits lately. Much of could well have much to do with the places these guys call home. Black metal is all about isolation, looking inward, darkness and depression, and while those emotions and ideals are indeed universal, it sometimes seems more difficult to be miserable and suicidal and full of grim energy when you're wandering through green trees beneath a sunshiney Spring California day. But whatever. All you need to know for now, is that the strangely monickered Wrnlrd (thanks to aQ pal Will for the recommendation) is from Virginia, (hail VABM!) And offers up a dense twisted blown out frenzy of utter blackness. And it's hard to think of a better word to describe it than frenzied. The sound is so thick and gnarled, the riffs so distorted they seem to exist in a churning sonic morass, the guitars and vocals constantly on the verge of crumbling to pieces, the sound so blown out, the drums are barely audible, a flurry of beats buried way in the mix, but that drumless feel only adds to the organic sound of Wrnlrd, this epic heaving cloud of black swirling sonic mayhem, slowly and systematically engulfing everything in its path. But that's not so say the riffs here aren't amazing, they are, and the tracks are surprisingly catchy, and the overall sound is very textural, almost like someone like Christian Fennesz or Tim Hecker recorded it, and occasionally things slow down and the band lurches onto some staggering buzzy dirge, here and there the tracks spread out into near ambient drifts, the guitars ghostly and haunting, but it's all about the gorgeous wall of sound this guy can produce, managing to sound utterly frosty and grim, but also epic and majestic, woozy, drone-y, druggy and utterly and terrifyingly black.

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MPEG stream: Mnemonomagia
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It's been a while since we've heard from avant black metal weirdo Wrnlrd, and it seems a few things have changed since the last record. The band, formerly a mostly one man project, has expanded to include a handful of other players, contributing a strange selection of instruments (strange for black metal, but not necessarily for Wrnlrd, whose bluegrass roots managed to shine through no matter how buzzy and black proceeding got in the past), including accordion, piano, pedal steel, female vocals, and Dwid from legendary hardcore heavies Integrity even makes a guest appearance. And as we mentioned in the past, the Wrnlrd website offers very little in the way of proper info, but does feature a strange series of numerological sigils and strange diagrams, which would seem to indicate, that this just may be the second to last Wrnlrd record EVER. Which would be a shame, cuz this is definitely the most gloriously fucked up Wrnlrd yet. Sonically, it's not all that far removed from the last few records, but it's somehow, just MORE. The guitars are filthier and crunchier and more distorted, the arrangements are more bizarre, stumbling and abstract and confusional, the instrumentation, as mentioned above, elevates this WAY beyond black metal, into some sort of tripped out blackened avant noise rock, or something. Beginning with some gnarled detuned riffage, lumbering bass blur, and some monstrous gurgling vox, the record doesn't explode from the speakers so much as ooze, sounding like a death metal 45 at 16rpm, a furiously ominous creep, before slipping into more 'typical' Wrnlrd territory, which means gloomy low slung bass, big pounding drums, swirling electronics, super distorted buzz and chug, and of course super dramatic almost operatic female vocals, balancing more of those gurgling death metal grunts, the result is impossibly both beautiful and haunting, fucked up and grim, underpinned by super cinematic synths. "Midnight Ride" is about as traditional as it gets, with some killer distorto riffing, pounding drums, keening guitar melodies, and those immediately recognizable Integrity style bellowed vox, it's doomy and dirgey knuckle dragging heaviness, that seems to mutate and morph growing more and more tripped out and psychedelic as it goes, finishing off in a cloud of lap steel shimmer. After a stretched out bit of twisted piano ambience, the final track unfurls, a wheezing accordion sounding sinister and grim, soon swallowed up by a squall of atonal buzz and twisted guitar squiggle, finally coalescing into a woozy seasick bit of blackened lurch and stumble, the buzz caked on, the sound filthy and in the red, laced over super haunting blown out melodies, again managing to (im)perfectly merge melody and murk, until the track finally collapses into a chaos of colliding chugs over some darkly delicate fingerpicked guitar. Incredible, and incredibly twisted stuff. Probably WAY too far out for the grim black hordes, but for everyone else, this is some beautiful and brilliantly baffling heaviness. Housed in a cool diecut sleeve, comes with a poster and a patch and a digital download of the record.

MPEG stream: Precursor
MPEG stream: Grave Dowser
MPEG stream: Midnight Ride (w/ Dwid Hellion)

aQ pal Will turned us on to the amazing Wrnlrd (not really sure how you pronounce that), a Virginia based one man black metal band whose most recent disc, reviewed here a few lists back, totally hit the spot, with its furious fuzzed out and frenzied twisted blissy blackness. There is definitely a tendency these days for black metal bands to get all shoegaze-y and we're not complaining, we totally love that stuff, but a handful of bands are doingmore than that, taking that sort of spaced out blissiness and twisting it all around into something more unique, and darker and noisier. Which is precisely what Wrnlrd's Cperadt was all about. A nearly drumless wall of buzzing blackness that reminded us as much of Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz as much as Xasthur or Paysage D'Hiver. So we were super psyched to explore the rest of Wrnlrd's catalog, starting with this one, In From The Night Herd, also from last year. The disc begins with some seriously creepy and harrowing black ambience, all haunting windswept whirs and distant moaning rumbles, ghostlike melodies drifting throughout, wraithlike and shimmery, the opening track, obviously the intro, so as track two begins, a twelve minute epic, the record shifts gears, and offers up still more thick cavernous drone. Weird, we were thinking, to have an intro after another intro, but then Wrnlrd is nothing if not weird. Then some gauzy skeletal guitars surface, offering up fragmented bits of melancholy melody, soon swallowed up by the roiling low end whirl below, haunting and creaking, almost industrial sounding. As the second track ends and the third begins, it suddenly dawns on us that this in fact an ambient disc, perhaps, since it was released around the same time, a companion to Cperadt. Which makes a whole lot more sense, and allows us to stop waiting for the inevitable black buzzing onslaught, and to enjoy the murky mysterious atmospheres on offer. The third track, another long one, begins with chiming guitars, looped and minor key, eventually being joined by some deep glimmering reverberations in the background, the guitars gradually growing more and more distorted. Suddenly we're thinking maybe we were wrong, that in fact there is some black metal buzz here, but instead, the guitars continue to ring out, cycling through their melancholy mantra, very soothing and hypnotic, mesmerizing and trancelike, the background whirring and rumbling and eventually overtaking the forlorn guitar melody, leaving just deep smears of blurred blackness. That blurred blackness bleeds into the brief final track, offering up a muted coda, the slow drifting sonic clouds barely obscuring tolling bells, and shards of mournful melody, soft smeared layers of disembodied guitars woven into a strangely beautiful black lullaby. Maybe too abstract and dreamlike for the true grim throng, but perfect for anyone else into droning dark mystery and haunting otherworldy black ambience.

MPEG stream: Pain Planet
MPEG stream: Specimen / Satellite

MPEG stream: Precursor
MPEG stream: Grave Dowser
MPEG stream: Midnight Ride (w/ Dwid Hellion)

When we first discovered the mysterious and impossible to pronounce Wrnlrd, on the tip from an aQ customer, this one man band was way underground, with nothing but a clutch of cd-r releases, but since then, word has spread, and besides getting written up in all sorts of magazines and blogs, he's also released a critically lauded lp on Flingco Sound System, a label run by on of the guys who used to run Kranky. And that record is fantastic, distinctly black metal, but with Wrnlrd's country and bluegrass roots showing through, and banjo on a black metal record is not something you hear every day! But in the beginning, the sound of Wrnlrd was a furious raw black blast of programmed drums and superdistorted riffage, garbled hellish vokills and snarling, swirling blackened psychedelic metal blowouts. Mldthr is "record number 2 (Flower of 1, Cause of 4 and 7)" in the confusingly numbered discography, see the Wrnlrd website for more on that, a strange bit of numerology that is as confounding as Wrnlrd's music, and Mldthr sounds quite a bit like In From The Night Herd and Cperadt, which makes sense as those are the two numbers that follow Mldthr. That chart actually extends into the future including albums named, but yet to be recorded. Anyway, like Wrnlrd discs 3 and 4, Mldthr is a swirling black vortex of shimmery black ambience, mechanical blasts, grinding black crunch, creepy stretches of murky black ambience, processed gurgles and almost industrial rhythms, everything raw and gritty and lo fi, blown out and super distorted and in the red, moody and muddy, with bits of found sounds, strange samples, all sorts of weird shit lurking below the surface, but to get below the surface, you have to plow through a torrent of frenzied black industrial buzz, the sound mechanical and machinelike, but imbued with asort of dizzying swirl that mkes it all feel warped and off kilter, twisted and a bit damaged. Which, if you're anything like us, is exactly how you like your black metal.

MPEG stream: Order Of The Cloven
MPEG stream: Waerleogan
MPEG stream: Rite Of Cares Cremation

There's weird black metal, and then there's WEIRD black metal. Generally the weird stuff tends toward either the stumbling and inept, or the super avant and ridiculously proficient, but the strangeness of Wrnlrd seems so much more organic, as if the sound of Wrnlrd was not in fact strange, but more that all the other sounds around it were way too normal. Nothing sounds forced, or ridiculous, but it all sounds twisted and freaky, and most definitely unlike any other black metal you've ever heard. Could be because the man behind Wrnlrd grew up playing bluegrass, could be these are just the sounds he hears in his head, whatever it is, we're grateful, cuz every Wrnlrd record seems to blow our mind more than the last. Just check out the opener here, the guitars -almost- out of tune, the melody strangely atonal, the drums buried in the mix, the bass warbly and warped, and what sounds like some sort of bleating tuba supplying the low end, chugging riffage over strange snippets of found sound, tangled saxophones (?), bellowed vocals, all the sounds relentless and all tangled up in a swirling blackened mass, harmonized guitars, weird jagged shards of metallic crunch, and then the song suddenly shifts, the key changes to something slightly more melodic and major, and female vocals, soulful and almost operatic wail over the top. What? Really? How does it work? And why does it sound so goddamn amazing? You'll probably be asking yourself that over and over as you dig into Myrmidon, that is if you can stop yourself from headbanging or pry the headphones off your ears. That first track is a sort-of-template for the whole record, the soaring female vocals, the gnarled crunchy riffage, the lurching start stop arrangements, everything murky and downtuned, a bit noisy, blurred and buzzy, dense and so chaotic, but somehow it all works, and the result is some seriously transcendent black art. Super thick vinyl, 180 gram, comes with a digital download too!!

MPEG stream: Girl
MPEG stream: Queen / Bridal
MPEG stream: Moaner / Revelator

Record number six from this far out fractured one man black metal horde hailing from Virginia. There's some serious significance to the numbers in the world of Wrnlrd. Check out his website for some truly mind bending numerology, and maybe you will understand the non musical significance of the unveiling of Oneiromancer, the first vinyl release, and sixth overall in a proposed nine part cycle. We've raved about the music of Wrnlrd on past lists, and judging by how difficult it is to keep in stock, you all feel the same. We'd been hearing about Oneiromancer for a while now, rumored to be the best and most fully realized Wrnlrd disc yet, and we're inclined to agree. Much of Wrnlrd's sound is improvised, in the spirit of automatic writing, and most of the vocals are spontaneous wordless vocalizations, with the lyrics incorporated later, which definitely adds to the mystery and goes some way to helping explain how unlike most black metal Wrnlrd's black metal really is. The record opens with what we can only describe as high end doom, upper register chords allowed to ring out, left hanging, abstract with tons of space, a slow churning soundscape of chiming chordal shimmer. Which quickly gives way to some old school metallic chug, peppered with ultra lo-fi buzz, the skree of feedback and simple pounding drumming. The next track explodes in a frenzied blast, machine like rhythms beneath riffs so distorted and blurred they sound like static drones, occasionally interrupted by stretches of black ambient shimmer and whirring minimal drones. There are some dark haunting doomy bluegrass hybrids too, steel string twang drifting over deep resonant rumbles and throbbing black murk. All of side two is taken up by the epic "War", with distinct multiple movements, woven into one organic shapeshifting whole. Beginning with acoustic guitar, melancholy and slightly atonal, stumbling tribal drumming and soft static guitar buzz, interwoven with subtle backwards loops, which gives way to a dirgey blast of primitive and raw blackness, which is quickly pulled under a tripped out FX laden drift. After that it's a loooong stretch of muted buzz, all murky and muddy, buried drums, like suddenly the speakers blew, until the track shifts once again into a super distorted in-the-red blowout, finally fading out, leaving a minute or so of swirling warped backwards warble to lead us out. Schizophrenic and deliriously damaged, some of the most far out "black metal" we've heard. We can only imagine what record 7,8, and 9 hold in store! LIMITED ONE TIME PRESSING OF 500 COPIES. Pressed on 180 gram vinyl. Housed in a super swank gatefold sleeve, printed in metallic ink, and includes a download code to get you the whole record digitally for your iPod.

When we first discovered Wrnlrd, a mysterious one man black metal band from Virginia, we were happy enough to discover a new weird band to dig. The usual buzz and howl augmented by lots of strange ambience, plenty of noise and murk, all wrapped up in some truly unique packaging. We had no idea how weird it would, or could get. This latest disc, at least visually is the best of the bunch, a silvery splattery logo painted right on the jewelcase, the booklet filled with strange text, images of maps and graveyards, hidden behind a gauzy vellum sheet, featuring a barely detectable image. More weirdness on the disc, and peaking out beneath the tray. But all of that barely prepares you for the music. The fist disc we reviewed, the 4th in Wrnlrd's in-the-works 9 part series, was a dense tangle of blackened buzz and furious riffing, the next, #3 in the series, was all washed out ambience, this latest, being number 5, is in fact nothing like either. Sure it incorporates bits of buzzy blackness, and lots of strange atmospherics, but it's way more abstract, woozy, tripped out, blurry and mysterious. 21 short tracks (there's some serious number obsession going on here, check the Wrnlrd website for more) the first handful very spare, each made up of just a handful of chords, big warbly downtuned chords that strike, and then fade out sloooooooowly, leaving tons of space for stray voices, bits of country music (Wrnlrd, pre-black metal, was a serious bluegrass player), intercepted transmissions, there seem to be some drums, and even some vocals, but they're definitely indistinct, the drums a plod here, a skitter there, the vocals a buried croak, it's not really until the 6th track, that the band locks into something even remotely resembling black metal, and even then, the guitars are brittle, and seem to bend and twist like viewed through a funhouse mirror, the drums a machinelike blur buried in the mix, all beneath the same moaning doomy guitar that oozed across the first handful of tracks. The rest of the disc staggers dizzily through all these disparate sounds, the black buzz, is peppered with Jandekian detuned guitar warble, acoustic guitars and banjos offer up little steel string tangles, beneath detuned guitar riffage, all very angular and chaotic, huge sheets of distant thunder like rumble, skittery percussion, more voices and mysterious sounds, samples, super atonal guitar weirdness, lurching deconstructed doom, thick walls of guitar buzz wreathed in tripped out FX, the whole record seemingly sounding like some black metal record left in the sun to warp and melt just a bit, and then played back on a dusty old Victrola. Like nothing we've ever heard (even on other Wrnlrd discs) but whatever it is we are digging it big time.

MPEG stream: Susurration Of Cairn
MPEG stream: Agalma Manteia
MPEG stream: Veil & Rope
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Some serious raw, primitive black metal buzz from this Dutch horde, released by the same label who brought us the Lord Time on last week's list. The group's two demos from 2014 are compiled on this sprawling 23 track collection, with most of the tracks clocking in at just about 90 seconds, each essentially a single riff, a single pounding drum beat, and some evil croaked vokills. In some ways, Wroth almost sound like a black metal Brainbombs - that sort of knuckle dragging noise rock vibe is huge, but cloaked in a skein of black buzz, and furious thrashing grimnity. There's also the fact that none of the songs really end, exactly, not properly - they just sort of stop, often mid-riff, as if someone just pushed stop on the recorder (which they most likely did), and almost as if the tracks here aren't songs so much as chunks of riffic sound, the band locked into a lumbering punk metal pound or exploding into a furious, blasting frenzy. The production is gloriously murky, blown out and in the red, which also give it the feel of some damaged outsider noise rock band, which besides being black metal, they essentially are. The earlier tracks are more like a black metal pigfuck blowout, while the later tracks, get more brittle and tinny, the guitars insectoid, the production as cult as it gets, but both sonic sides share a similarly primitive approach to the black arts. Total fucking lo-fi, outsider black-noise, punk metal genius.

MPEG stream: Force
MPEG stream: Trapped In Wild Growths
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[ aquarius records — Metal ]