[ aquarius records

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Showing results 4101 through 4150 of 5570.

Reissue of this 1981 American metal / hard rock all-time classic...you like classic metal? you don't have this? Buy it! Hooky and energetic with amazing vocals and guitarwork. The USA's answer to the best of the NWOBHM. One of those 'I envy you for getting to hear this for the first time just now' albums sez Allan.

Holy grail second album from one of the best American metal bands EVER (who never get their due). While we'd say 1981's Fire Down Under (their third) is THE one to get, if you were to get only one, once you've heard that you're gonna want to hear more. And so mucho kudos to Rock Candy for at long last providing the world with a cd reish of Narita, originally released on LP by Capitol in 1979. New York's Riot were what the NWOBHM would have sounded like if it would have happened in the USA instead of the UK. A supercharged, metallized step up from the American '70s hard rock of the mid-seventies (bands like Starz, KISS, Ted Nugent, ZZ Top), definitely melodic, but much more rippin'. And also way more ass-kicking and streetwise than most of the Sunset Strip style hair metal that the US offered up a few years later, though Riot surely were an influence on the best of that bunch. They still exist today, by the way, releasing records (big in Japan!) but lots different from back when, in part due to the fact that their original lead singer, the amazing Guy Speranza, RIP, is long gone from the lineup. That guy shoulda been a famous rock star, just listen to him here.

MPEG stream: Narita
MPEG stream: Waiting For The Taking
MPEG stream: 49er

**SALE **SALE* *SALE**

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

SORRY.

Mysterious ep of ritualistic black metal from this German duo. Sorath, "visionaire and heralder" and Aer, "moulder of ritual ambience", whip up a strange black metal brew, some tracks are long slow stretches of roiling ambience, which give way to harsh slow motion doomic dirge, howled vocals, and lurching tarpit riffage, before suddenly exploding into blasts of Nordic style buzz, with stumbling double kick drumming, insectoid riffing, and strangled cries, all tangled into a murky black swirl. Others, are raw bursts of pounding midtempo riffage, simple metallic stomps, grim and frosty. A weird blend of classic Norwegian style black metal Mayhem and a more necro primitive black blast that totally slays in its own murky muddied lo-fi way...

NWOBHM rarity reissued. Thumbs up.

True metal fans! Bend an ear... and perhaps prepare to bend a knee? Ritual Steel (not to be confused, though it's not easy, with fellow Germans Sacred Steel) record for Rich Walker of Solstice's cult metal label Miskatonic and are the sort of band whose cd booklet proudly includes a reproduction of a show flyer with their logo beneath those of The Lord Weird Slough Feg and Twisted Tower Dire. Actually, we heard about these guys from Slough Feg -- those San Franciscan metal masters remarked upon playing with Ritual Steel in Germany last summer, giving 'em the thumbs up. And this record is indeed a lot of old school fun, starting with the fantasy cover art of skeletal knights and the punning album title (who said Germans don't have a sense of humor?), right through to the heavy-(and-hoary)-as-hell, head-banging '80s style metal music and frontman Sascha Mauer's leather-lunged screeching. He does a deliberate, indecipherable Udo Dirkschneider impression in one song that will just kill you. His band's brand of DIY Maidenesque gallop is in the same arena as Metalucifer, for instance. Pure metal mania, by fans, for fans.

MPEG stream: Where Shall I Sleep?

We'll keep this one simple: if you're a fan of the 'stoner rock' genre, and especially if you're into those lords of space Monster Magnet, you must buy this disc!! Atomic Church is second album by Sweden's Roachpowder (the name comes from Burrough's Naked Lunch

RealAudio clip: House of The Wicked
RealAudio clip: All Hail And Kneel Before Me

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SORRY. Swedish 'Southern' groovy stoner metal. Who would've thought that something this southern fried and stoned sounding could come out of Scandinavia? Huge crushing riffs, ultra catchy hooks, and an amazing Phil Anselmo (Pantera/Down) sound-alike vocalist (that is, like Phil when he's actually singing, not when he's sounding stupid). Incredible.

The proto-metal lovin' legions who read the AQ list should be quite pleased with this reissue - take a trip down this particular Road and it's heavy riffing all the way, early '70s style! A power trio put together by former Jimi Hendrix Experience bassist Noel Redding in 1972, Road only made this one record for a rock-oriented Motown sub-label (the eco-friendly Natural Resources) before they broke up, and it quickly became lost to the mists of time, though we'd have thought Hendrix fans, if they'd heard it, would have been chuffed... anyone who likes stoned hard psych, with loads of wah wah wailing will dig this, it's total hippie heaviness (well, "I'm Going Down The Country" isn't so heavy, it's an acoustic jam, natch). There's some sixties sike-pop to it as well. But tracks like "Mushroom Man" and "Spaceship Earth" are spaced out and heavy all right, these three long hairs dishing out quite the din, with the 9+ minute album closer, title track "Road" gettin' almost DOOMY riff-wise. Certainly deserving of recognition in the proto-metal realm, Road goes with Toad, Cactus, Moses, Tiger B. Smith, etc., and is probably the best thing that Redding did post-Hendrix, though we haven't heard his whole discography, to be sure. But it beats Fat Mattress, in volume and heft for sure, despite that earlier outfit's name (the drummer here was also in Fat Mattress, by the way, while the guitarist hailed from Rare Earth). This is one of several new reissues from the new Relics label (Churchills, Aguaturbia are some other, more internationally-oriented titles that just came out, we'll be listing soon too). Nice to have, though the booklet's a bit skimpy, the cover reproduction looks kinda washed out and blurry. It does include something in the way of liner notes, though, from which we learn that Redding fell down some stairs at Frank Zappa's place prior to the formation of Road. Hmm, that almost sounds like the description of a band, but not this one! Thankfully he recovered from the accident and added Road to the list of awesome proto-metal obscurities.

MPEG stream: Road
MPEG stream: Spaceship Earth
MPEG stream: Man Dressed In Red

All you need to know is that the record is called Stormbringer, it's one single thirty minute track, and the instrumentation listed is: drone, sub-sonics, drone & invocation, and temporal distortion. Okay, maybe some of you need to know a little bit more, how about... DOOM. Or DRONE. Or SLUDGE. Or maybe... SUNNO))), Khanate, Whitehorse, Marzuraan, Monarch, Moss, Boris, Corrupted... uh huh, you see where we're headed. Portland's Roanoke are the latest outfit to dive headlong into that same black doom tarpit, And their glorious din, while having much in common with their slow motion brethren, definitely has a hellish charm all it's own. The guitars are huge, of course, riffs are so slow and low they sound less like riffs and more like molten flows of distorted rumble, the drums are a simple pummeling thud, the vocals are like death metal growls at 16rpm, an impossibly low gurgle, but Roanoke have a crazy dynamic thing going on too, wherein their endlessly droning downtuned sludge is occasionally punctuated by strange stop start stretches where the guitars tighten up and cling to the drums and lock into a sort of stuttering chug. Pretty cool. And definitely way more dynamic than most of the droning sludge doom outfits around. But never fear, this is first and foremost, slooooooooooow, drooooooooooooning dooooooooom, ultra mega sludgy and haevy as fuck. Listening to it right now and even at super low volume it makes the speakers on this computer sound like they are crumbling to bits! LIMITED TO 100 cd-r copies.

MPEG stream: Stormbringer

Two tapes, two hours, eleven tracks, a sprawling exploration of blackened sonic inner space from this masterful dronescaper, a collection of epic longform droned out drifts, gorgeous abstract fields of hushed grim ambience, the usual rumble and whir and buzz laced with what sound like horns: trumpets, trombone, who knows exactly what, but they lend a mournful, melancholy vibe to the already dark and dismally dreamlike proceedings. As does the tinkle of keyboards, barely there, the melodies ghostlike, field recordings drift in and out as well, the sound of children, or are those birds? Hard to say, as they are deftly woven into the undulating tapestry of mysterious minimal blackness. Those horns the only melody, dragging the rest of the black ambience along, a gorgeously depressive bit of funereal otherworldliness. The sound shifts from aching abstract skeletal slowcore doomdrift, to brooding rumbling black ambience, to hushed barely there shimmer, the sounds swirling and shifting, sometimes muted and muddy, other times pulsing and throbbing, a very Tim Hecker vibe to much of this, everything faded and washed out, like some strange steampunky contraption that lets us view some alternative dystopian future, and this is the sound, the soundtrack to a land barren and bereft of life, of a planet purging and beginning again, the sound of living things withering and dying, of flesh melting from bones, of the sun dimming and the landscape turning gray with shadow and ash, a hazy, gauzy dreamlike drift into the unknowable, into the other, into nothingness. So dark and strange, murky and mysterious, weirdly and impossibly lovely... Fantastic packaging, the two cassettes housed in a double wide tape case, with a silver on black silkscreened card stock insert, the whole thing sealed with a similarly silver and black silkscreened Japanese style obi. LIMITED TO 70 COPIES!!! WE HAVE LESS THAN A DOZEN!!

Latest chuck of spaced out doom drone from these long time aQ faves, Burners finds the group getting seriously melodic, sort of. Where on past records, RD trafficked more in abstract drones and ambient doom, and psychedelic soundscapery, the three extended tracks here are more slowcore than doomdrone, more space rock that soundscape, a new direction for sure, but without losing the various drone and doom elements that made past records so compelling. The record opens with a loooooong stretch of moaning ambience, heaving slabs of muted crumbling distortion, before the drums kick in, a simple, skeletal, almost krautrock beat, and then the rest of the band launch into a droney, fuzzed out space rock dirge, tons of reverb and echo and delay, distant tinkling melodies buried in the mix, the vocals processed to the point that they become just another layer of swirling sound, a plodding, hypnorock workout that builds to a blown out, seriously in-the-red finish. The second track dials it back a bit, all tribal drumming and warm whirring organs, more reverbed vox, washed out and ethereal, murky and muddy, a gorgeously blurred bit of slowcore lumber. The second side is all one track, which begins with keening soft melodies over buzzing layered low end, and epic slowburning dirge, almost like White Hills or the Heads, at 16 rpm, a blown out space rock, slowed waaaaay down and wrapped in layer after layer of haze and grit and buzz. Majestic, melodic, melancholic, the bass thick and billowing and blackened, the guitars howling above it all, total, with a blurred tribal outro, garbled vox, chiming guitars, tons of effects, all drifting beneath a ever shifting layers of sonic murk, total space kraut doom dirge bliss!

So, what if we tell you that there's this band called Rock Jack that does songs with titles like "Belly Bones", "Goblin Talk", "Toilet Master" and "Darth Vader Is Mean"? And sound like some exuberantly drunken bar band fronted by a vocalist with an unusually high, childish voice, unusual enunciation (and pronunciation) and a gift for seeming stream-of-consciousness babble? Sounds like it might be one of those weird AQ faves already? Well then let us add the crucial fact that the singer for Rock Jack, one Erza Lux, is all of three and a half years old. That's right, he's a little boy, and (we know, 'cause we've met him) an exceptionally precocious, adorable, cute little boy indeed. Ezra Lux's dad some of you SF locals know as Aesop, drummer for Ludicra (and formerly, Hickey). Aesop sure has one cool kid. Whenever he brings him into the store, Ezra entertains us with his banter... we know he's really into music, heavy metal especially, 'cause he's told us about the various bands he's supposedly formed, our favorite being "Iron Potato". So when Aesop told us that Ezra had recorded his first cd-r release, we had to hear it. And although it's not the Iron Potato debut we still want to hear, Rock Jack is pretty cool too. With his Fisher-Price karaoke machine, Erza sing-speaks his own weird and funny lyrics (the lone exception being a Van Halen cover) over backing from members of Ludicra (Aesop, John and Ross), who crank out some some punked up, trashy rawk n' roll vamping with metal riffs and blues licks a lot older but no less energetic than Ezra. I think the way it worked is that the Ludicra guys made up a bunch of songs in their rehearsal space, gave the tape to Erza and he picked the ones he wanted to sing on. The results have got a whiff of The Shaggs, Motorhead, Great White, Reynols, Van Halen, Wesley Willis and Hanoi Rocks... We've noticed an "alternative children's music" trend lately, but Rock Jack is one of the few examples of music BY a child. Certainly irresistably cute, and really very strange. 18 and a half minutes, 8 tracks.

MPEG stream: Toilet Master
MPEG stream: Darth Vader Is Mean

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SORRY. Many song titles featuring the word "Steel"! And you gotta love the band name.

Those of you who exhibited the good taste to purchase the cd reissue of Rogue Male's debut album, the 1985 NWOBHM classic First Visit, highlighted here recently, are all probably wondering when the reissue of the band's second and last album, 1986's Animal Man, would arrive, right? And you might also be wondering, just how well does Animal Man stack up against First Visit anyway? Well good news all around. It's finally here, and damn right Animal Man is just as good as First Visit, maybe even better. Which means: tough, hard rockin' '80s British metal, catchy, somewhat speedy, and still semi-futuristic (as far as their Mad Maxish costuming goes anyway... also note the computer voices at the start of side one). Motorhead is still an obvious influence, some Thin Lizzy too. We're hearing both in the vocal dep't., which are sorta gruff and yobbish... kinda punk really. "The Real Me" reminds us of some Di'Anno era Maiden, specifically "Running Free" from Killers. Love the harmonica blowin' coda on that one too! There's definitely a punk, streetwise element to this band's metallic stylings, lots of take-no-shit attitude certainly. In fact, anyone in the market for an uplifting personal anthem might try out track three, "Take No Shit"! At their most pogoish punk, the poppy unemployment protest rocker "Job Center" could be a Rezillos track. And at times, particularly when they work in the quasi-industrial "sci-fi" effects, this sounds a bit Killing Joke, actually. But their influences go further back - "You're On Fire" includes a nod to the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. As with the First Visit reissue, this too is limited (2000 copies) and comes in a digipack. One bonus track this time, the non-album cut "Rough Tough (Pretty Too)" from the "Belfast" 12" ep that preceded Animal Man's release. The cd booklet includes lyrics, and biographical liner notes that yet again misspell Rogue Male as Rouge Male. Whoops. Remember, if Andee and Allan here at AQ had gotten their as-yet-unnamed and still utterly hypothetical '80s metal reissue label off the ground already, THEY might have reissued the two Rogue Male albums themselves, if they could have. Rogue Male was top of their list - get this (and First Visit) to really understand why, maybe.

MPEG stream: The Real Me
MPEG stream: Progress

So, as you probably aren't aware, Aquarius co-owners Andee and Allan have been thinkin' about doing a heavy metal reissue label for a while now. For obscure stuff they love from the '80s that's never ever been legitimately reissued on cd. They even each came up with a short list of things they'd want to try and put out on their (as yet hypothetical) label. Why are we telling you this? Well, on both their lists, you'd find this band, England's Rogue Male. Now it turns out that they can take Rogue Male off the list - 'cause their album First Visit HAS just in fact been reissued! Yay! Metal Mind just saved Andee and Allan a lot of trouble, and thousands of dollars! Rogue Male only made two albums, of which this, from 1985, is the first. It's speedy, fist-pumping metal with a definite, catchy rock n' roll edge to it. In combination with the singer's gruff, Lemmy-like voice, this garnered a lot of comparisons to the mighty Motorhead, especially with regard to this disc's lead-off track "Crazy Motorcycle". But also, they were known for their "futuristic", "sci-fi" image, because of their Mad Max style stage gear and the cover of this album, which depicts what appears to be a Terminator cyborg with a mullet! For a few brief moments there in '85, Rogue Male were the heavy metal equivalent of William "Neuromancer" Gibson or something. Or thought they were. After all, the British heavy metal magazine of record Kerrang! named them "the next big thing", which unfortunately was probably the kiss of death (how many next big things ever are?). After just one more album (1986's Animal Man, also a good 'un and hopefully soon to be in stock here too) they called it quits. Really, Rogue Male weren't as advanced as their whole "cyberpunk" image seems to suggest. They were maybe more punk than cyber, doing songs more streetwise than science-fictional, about such topics as motorcycles, sex, and unemployment. Though we suppose, if Mad Max is the model, then at least motorcycles and unemployment are indeed "futuristic". Despite Rogue Male's lack of success back in the day, anyone into a gritty, melodic mix of heaviness and poppiness '80s style should enjoy this overlooked album, one that from start to finish is a simple headbanging pleasure! Definitely one of the best from the latter days of the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, that reminds us not only of Motorhead but also some of the more "hot rockin'" Judas Priest tracks of the era, and also of Thin Lizzy just a bit as well. There's just such a raw charm to the urgent, chunky, repetitive riffing of a song like "Look Out" that we gotta love. It doesn't matter that Rogue Male weren't actually innovating anything, they still managed to have a distinct identity and make some basic, quality NWOBHM tunes that have stood the test of time and well deserve reissue. This limited edition digipack cd includes two worthy bonus tracks, and a cd booklet with new liner notes (which unfortunately contain a couple of typos, misspelling the band's name as "Rouge Male", whoops) and a couple of pretty funny band photos. Recommended! Remember, we were gonna put this out if we could! Why haven't Andee and Allan gotten their reissue label off the ground yet? Well aside from being way busy with Aquarius (and in Andee's case, tUMULt) they haven't had too much luck contacting the bands they were interested in, so far... and also (and most importantly) they can't seem to agree on a NAME for the label. Andee wants to call it Heavy Rescue Records. Allan's keen on Hair Sprain Records. Anybody have any better ideas? ...Or, know how to get a hold of any former members of a band called Lords Of The Crimson Alliance (from New York, circa '86)??

MPEG stream: Crazy Motorcycle
MPEG stream: All Over You
MPEG stream: Look Out

Latest from these Texas based heavies, and their first record to make it on the aQ list. Which seems weird considering how fucking kick ass and so very aQ this stuff sounds. Plus as much as we try not to judge a book by its cover, how can we not when said cover is a sprawling expanse of forest, with a rainbow soaring overhead, and in the midst of this jungle like foliage, a row of full stacks and a drumkit, right in front of what appears to be a river. Hell had we not already heard this, we would have been sold big time. And then, there's the fact that the first two minutes of record opener "Candle Black" essentially sounds like a Slayer 45 spinning at 33rpm, one of THOSE riffs, and then when the band does kick in, and cranks it up, it sounds like a doom-ed out stonery sludge combo channeling Slayer, into something much less speed metal, and way more lurching, lumbering doom sludge majesty. The band locking into mesmerizing and supremely headbangable grooves, the vocals a gruff growly bellow, the sound slipping from low slung riffery, to soaring epic almost-post-rock, to churning math flecked doom, to death march plod and back again. Four songs, nearly 40 minutes, the longest jam 14+, the shortest nearly 7, this is dense, chugging, crusty, metallic, grim, doom-ed, sludge-y, slow burn, blackened, tripped out, mathy, stonery, Sabbathy heaviness that will no doubt hit the spot for anyone into similarly minded outfits like Bongripper, The Sword, Sourvein, Eyehategod, etc... LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, housed in a super heavy, deluxe gatefold sleeve. Includes digital download too!

MPEG stream: Candle Black
MPEG stream: Of Feather And Bone

Yep, reissued on vinyl!! Makes us happy in a way.

OK, here's an Aquarius-approved 'high concept' album, all right: Estonian medieval music group Rondellus performing covers of Ozzy-era BLACK SABBATH songs translated into Latin!!! Now *this* sounds like a Black Mass! Backed by lute, harmonium, psaltery, One of the best, and most original, 'tribute' records ever. Now they should go on tour with Apocalyptica (the Finnish cello quartet that does Metallica covers)!

RealAudio clip: Oculi filioli
RealAudio clip: Funambulus domesticus
RealAudio clip: Post Aeternitatem

Probably the best metal band to come out of the Czech Republic (and though it may seem unlikely, there are quite a few!) is the ominously monikered Root. Around for almost 15 years now, Root continue to make amazing records, evolving and growing with each release, from their roots (ahem) in raw black metal to avant-garde almost-operas more recently. "Black Seal" is easily their best, blending their old, simpler metal sound, and their new more polished, more melodic direction. Classic eighties sounding metal, with killer riffs, amazing harmony leads, great production, super interesting and complex songs, and wildly creative drumming, but it's the vocals of Root leader Big Boss that really push this over the top. From warbly maniac-lounge-singer wailing to hushed chants to occasional guttural growls (not like death metal cookie monster vocals, more like sinister preacher threatening sinners with the end of the world), to absolutely dreamy, rich and lustrous lower register crooning. And somehow these bizarre vocals complement the music perfectly, with the band deftly veering between almost-thrash-metal, doomy Sabbath style epics, classic sounding hard rock, and awesome Katatonia-esque moody minor key masterpieces with hymn like harmony vocals. The whole record is dark and moody and heavy, personal, introspective and creepy. It all culminates perfectly in the album's final track, an intense and beautiful mid tempo epic, with chugging guitars and wispy minor key synths and gorgeous melodies. Big Boss contributes perhaps his best vocals of the record with a Nick Cave sort of baritone spinning a heartwrenching tale of loss and sorrow, that slowly turns into a bizarre acapella chant, with rich, low harmony vocals that go on and on and on for a full 15 minutes! SO bizarre but SO great!

RealAudio clip: The Incantation Of Thessalonian Women
RealAudio clip: Nativity

We'd be exceedingly remiss (in our duty to Satan) if we were never to list the most recent record from long-running Czech "black metal" (or "dark heavy metal") practitioners Root. Their eighth full-length studio album, 2007's Daemon Viam Invenient begins with an acoustic prologue, after which Root then launch into the storming "Human", an auspicious beginning to this fully epic and idiosyncratic collection of ripping tracks. Band mainstay, vocalist Big Boss (bedecked with face paint that makes his bald head look like a badly cracked egg) is in fine form, mixing up rasping croaks and whispers with almost-operatic bellowing that's melodic, yet deep and gruff. On that aforementioned intro, he even sings quite softly & sensitively, sounding a bit like a shaky Leonard Cohen with a Czech accent! Likewise, Root's music shifts gears continuously, moody moments swept aside by catchy riffs, choppy chunky rhythms, swarms of shred guitar soloing, and prominent basslines. Imagine a modernized version of '80s evil like Bathory and Mercyful Fate competing with the WTF? factor of a band like Sigh. And, as always with Root, there's an unholy dose of Eastern European eccentricity at play here too. Or, maybe the baroque bizarreness is all them. Fans, who have learned to expect the unexpected (and extreme) from these guys, should be satisfied.

MPEG stream: Human
MPEG stream: Awakening

Ultra limited, insanely deluxe quadruple lp box set from the greatest weirdo black metal band to ever come out of the Czech Republic. Fronted by the truly iconic Big Boss, with his evil black face paint and booming low voiced delivery, he howls dramatically over fierce black riffing and weirdly romantic keyboards, a buzzing blackness reminiscent of Venom or Bathory, but WAY weirder. Definitely one of Andee and Allan's all time favorite black metal bands. This box set contains all of Root's demo tapes from the late 1980's plus various bonus live recordings taken from the Death Metal Session Festival vol. 2 (Prague 1988). Also included is a massive 32 page 12" x 12" booklet containing tons of photos from the band's early days, flyers, newspaper clippings, interviews, fanzine articles, and lots more. 4 lps in two deluxe gatefold jackets, an XL Root t-shirt, a big poster, all housed in a custom made box printed in red, black and metallic silver, sealed with a vellum obi with a foil-stamped logo. Holy crap, this is amazing. You have to see it to believe it. Definitely one of the most extravagant packages we've ever seen. And c'mon, it's ROOT!!!

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

SORRY. The Czech Republic's Root are one of the most talented, original, and eccentric black metal outfits around. Slowly we in the West are getting clued in to their stuff. Here's two of their earlier efforts remastered and repackaged as a double cd: 1991's relatively raw "Hell Symphony" and 1995's more advanced and melodic "Kargeras". Also included: some live bonus tracks recorded in 2000.

Damn, the new Root! Weird black metal from Czech just gets weirder. They're set apart from all others by their sense of drama, and by vocalist/mainman Big Boss and his deep voiced delivery. And the unbridled dementia they bring to their very metal, very odd songwriting and arrangments. Originals they most certainly are, combining killer blackened riffage with romantic keyboards and parts that sound a bit Jesus Lizardy though they might not be aware of it. One of the most striking tracks, "The Last Gate (The Story Of Demons)", uses tribal drumming and overlapping vocal chants to approximate the sounds of demonic possession or worship (or something), making Root sound like Sepultura's Roots (until insane chipmunk voices like those on the last Sigh album kick in!). Wow.

MPEG stream: Madness Of The Graves (Calling)
MPEG stream: The Last Gate (The Story Of Demons)

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

SORRY. Root is Czech black metal band, led by vocalist/visionary Big Boss. They've been around for a long time now, developing from rather primitive and fucked up black metal to the likes of this album: classical-leaning heavy metal opera weirdness. As fucked up as their earlier stuff but so much more advanced. Really amazing and strange, with Big Boss' sub-baritone vocal stylings being only the first of the many eccentricities on display here. Recommended.

For years now we've been singing the praises of these weirdo Czech black metallers, fronted by the enigmatic Big Boss, a big guy with some crazy evil panda face make up and a super unique bellow. Their sound, at least in the beginning, raw and grim like classic Hellhammer and Celtic Frost, but often slowed down, more midtempo, lumbering and lurching, sometimes blasting chaotically, but more often than not, fantastically plodding, the guitars super raw, the sound lo-fi, but perfectly suited to Root occultic and cult-y sounding metal, and the truly strange vocals of Big Boss just sealing the deal, from froglike croak, to demonic croak, to raspy croon, to multitracked, almost Butthole Surfers sounding alien drawl, there's just something so mysterious and magical about these guys. Easily one of our all time favorites. Revelation, originally recorded in 1990, is a re-recording of their Zjevni debut, with all the lyrics redone in English. And while it's been 20+ years, The Revelation still sounds just as good, and haunting, and heavy as ever. Sure it's black metal, but this is more old school classic metal, with black elements. It's more witchy and doomy and creepy and atmospheric and dirgey, which only makes the fast bits sound that much more fast, the chugging guitars and way-up-in-the-mix double kick drumming. And all the heavy parts are balanced by the multiple song intros, acoustic guitars, analog synths, weird bits of percussion, swirling atmospheres, Big Boss's strange almost liturgical sounding spoken word, each intro a little mysterious sonic ritual designed to evoke some ancient atmosphere, perfect to conjure up the next blast of stumbling buzz drenched blackness. Totally cult and totally genius. Includes new liner notes...

MPEG stream: The Revelation
MPEG stream: Aralyon
MPEG stream: Song For Satan

A double cd reissue (w/ bonus tracks) of two albums (from 1990 & 1992, newly remastered) by this cult Czech black metal band. Not as advanced as their latest release "The Book", but definitely unique and full of interesting music. For fans of fellow Czech weirdos Master's Hammer and strange black metal in general.

Of the hundreds or thousands (or millions?) of metallic post rock bands in the world, there are a select few, who never fail to blow us away, whose records we will buy without a second thought, whose music has proven to be more than just heavy and intricate, whose sound is one we can never seem to get enough of, that perfect blend of crushing and intricate, moody and heavy. One of those bands is most definitely Philly's Rosetta. It's hard to know what to say about these guys that we haven't already, this is the fifth record of theirs we've reviewed, and we gushed like crazy about the first 4, and we're primed to gush about this one too, but then we realized we'd just be repeating ourselves, cuz like we said, what more can we say. These guys are masters of the metallic post rock / post metal / post metallic rock sound, equally adept at howling downtuned Neurosis style crush, as they are at mathy, jangly lopes, and the fact that those two elements are constantly bleeding into one another, well maybe that's what makes these guys so special. Even when they're in full on pound and pummel mode, the melodies and complex arrangements remain, it's not like they're switching from smart and intricate to loud and dumb, it's more like they're simple adjusting certain elements, often the band will slip into an intricate rhythmic workout, no guitars, but those howled vocals will continue on, a strange combination for sure, but it sounds brilliant, and it's that constant push and pull between those two definitely metallic post rock elements that are really the measure of this sort of band, and few do it better than these guys. There's also the fact that these songs are not just exercises in loud/soft, quite/heavy, they're proper songs, tension and release, slow building, explosive emotional cathartic climaxes, long brooding moody 'verses', the guitars don't just jangle or roar, they shimmer and chime and ring out, the drums are incredible throughout, tight, powerful, restrained when they need to be, but explosive when they don't. The vocals while more often a rough bellow, can just as easily slip into some serious singing, high and melodic. Needless to say, this is a sound we love, and Rosetta are one of our favorite creators and practitioners of said sound. If you need more, check out the other reviews on the website, but better yet, just trust us, check out the sound samples below, and grab one of these. You won't regret it. Especially if your cd shelves already bow under the weight of records by Isis, Pelican, Tides, Angel Eyes, Neurosis, Conifer, Irepress, Souvenir's Young America, Transmission 0, Mouth Of The Architect, Balboa, The Other Side Of The Sky, Baroness, Snowblood, Anapparatus and the like...

MPEG stream: Ayil
MPEG stream: Je N'en Connais Pas la Fin
MPEG stream: A Determinism of Morality

The debut double disc from long time aQ metallic post rock faves Rosetta, was a massive dose of high concept heaviness. A disc of proper songs, all churning heaviness and doom drenched math rock blow outs, and a second disc, a companion of sorts, more ambient and abstract, it was unclear whether the two were meant to be played simultaneously, of if they merely complimented each other, two sides of Rosetta's sound. Not sure it mattered. Both discs were amazing, both sounded great on their own or played in tandem. We originally assumed that this disc was a companion to the newly released Wake/Lift (reviewed elsewhere on this list), but on closer examination, and after repeated listens, it seems to be something entirely different. The liner notes explain that this disc is made up of EVERY sample the band collected or manipulated over the course of the last 7 years or so, with the final declaration "I Am Starting Over". It's hard to tell if these sounds were indeed actually used on the records proper, or if this disc is merely a clearing house for cool left over and unused sounds, but it hardly matters, as these 4 extended sound collages function just fine on their own, as their own record, and it's the sort of sound that most cd-r noise bands would kill for. Dense and dark, evocative and atmospheric, crumbling and chaotic, dreamy and droney, layered and rife with fuzzy buzzy texture. Rhythms surface from strange looped sounds, melodies buried beneath constantly shifting walls of sound, massive chunks of super distorted heaviness, streaks of glitch and hiss, wild dubbed out drumming, mysterious voices and samples, an expansive organic whole, the four tracks functioning as one epic, seamlessly woven together, slipping one track to the next, the track markers seemingly arbitrary, as it all sort of bleeds into one massive textured slow motion abstract doomdrone. So divine. If this was a limited cd-r released on some super cool underground microlabel, limited to 100 copies, people would lose their living shit. So don't let the fact that it's a real cd released on a real label keep you from checking it out. Fans of stuff like Acre, Tunnels, Expo '70, Birchville, Axolotl, Black Boned Angel and other purveyors of buzz and murk and drone, should absolutely check this out.

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It always amazes us, when everyone starts digging a certain kind of music, that there can suddenly be millions of bands that just start coming out of the woodwork, who play -that- sort of music, really well. It's perplexing. It's too far fetched to think that there are a multitude of bands, great players, super creative, just waiting in the wings for someone to decree what the NOW SOUND is, at which point these bands immediately leap into action crafting exactly the sort of music people suddenly want to hear. We may be cranky old jaded music nerds, but even we're not that cynical. We'd like to think the process is much more organic, an outgrowth of the massive interconnnectedness of the underground, the sharing of ideas, the discovering of new sounds via the music of ones peers. How else to explain the seemingly endless torrent of math rock / post rock /sludge metal hybrids we've been seeing lately. We're not complaining, we love it! And so far, for the most part, for a scene based on similar influences and execution, the results have been quite varied and really fucking awesome. A quick off the top of our heads list reads like a who's who of AQ favorites: Tides, Minsk, Isis, The Ocean, Indian, Warhammer 48K, Akimbo, Baroness, Pelican, Cult Of Luna, Conifer, Mouth Of The Architect and we could go on and on. So what's a band got to do now to really stand out in a pretty overcrowded field? The answer lies right here, this mind blowing double disc debut from this Philadelphia crew. The Galilean Satellites is some sort of concept record (no lyrics, only the cryptic line: "These songs are about a space man") and sprawls grandly over two discs, taking all the elements we love about the above mentioned bands, and pushes each of those elements to their very limit. Imagine a collision between Explosions In The Sky and Coalesce, and you'll understand just the framework, a starting point, from there, Rosetta build and build, stretching skyward, fingers brushing the heavens, their sound so massive and expansive it's hard to even begin to describe The Galilean Satellites. If you like any of the above mentioned bands, if you like that sound, then this is the next logical step. Heavy parts are heavier, the ambient parts are more dense and fully fleshed out, lasting minutes instead of seconds, as critical to the mood and the journey as any riff or hook, not just a by rote method of building dynamics. The sound is HUGE, hypnotic and loping, slow melancholic grooves that give way to planet crushing heaviness, each track drenched in swirls of electronic whir and thick swaths of ambient color. Riffs are not just distorted and loud, they grind and churn, tuned low, sludgy and punishing, slithering and squirming, like they're alive and intend to do you harm. The vocals are throaty and howled, dripping with anguish, very reminscent of Coalesce's Sean Ingram. But it's the color and subtleties that really make these discs totally unique. Sheets of clear ringing guitars (almost Edge like) will soar majestically over a prickly framework of ultra skittery jazz drumming (the drummer is incredible) before slipping into glacial sludge. If Isis are the masters of thinking man's metal, then Rosetta are their precocious little brothers, determinedly striving to outdo their more famous siblings, and in many ways succeeding. This is the sort of music, much like drone music, that benefits from being allowed to stretch out, two minutes is fine, but twelve minutes is better, allowing for the song to grow and change and stretch and morph organically. Disc one is definitely the core, a dense raging avant post metal juggernaut, whereas disc two is more contemplative, more abstract and ambient, but no less heavy. The guitars are still present, but here they have crumbled into rough washes of buzz and whir, clear ringing melodies drifting above like black smoke from burning cities, the whole disc a dense melancholic drift, a series of soul stirringly creepy soundscapes, at the same time impossibly lovely and moving. Some sort of post metal abstract ambience that acts as the perfect emotional foil to the first disc's furious pummel. Utterly and absolutely essential. Beautifully packaged with gorgeous metallic cover art by Aaron Turner of Isis/Hydra Head.

MPEG stream: Departe
MPEG stream: Europa

Metal. Post rock. Metallic post rock. Post metal. It matters not what you call it, there are so so so many bands who play it. We haven't seen a movement of similar sounding bands since Slint launched a million imitators. That said, there are plenty of bands who do it well. And it's a sound we love. Isis, Pelican, Tides, Conifer, Mouth Of The Architect, we could go on and on. They all play some sort of hybrid of post/math rock and metal, each giving it their own spin, some spinning it more than others. At some point it's really a matter of degrees, what separates one group from another can be some ineffable something, the way they arrange their songs, the instrumentation, even just the vibe. And as much as we love the above mentioned bands, we can help but feel like one of the bands who have most captured that sound and made it their own, is Rosetta. They simultaneously embody all the things we love about THAT sound, while pushing the envelope, their songs sprawling and expansive, even their releases, often split up over two separately released discs, their songs are loooooong, their sound is heavier more furious, the pretty parts are more complex, again it's something that's hard to pin down. Their records are just so totally overwhelming, the perfect hybrid of epic majestic beauty and utterly crushing heaviness. Brutal and pounding, furious and frenzied, at their heaviest, they almost sound like Converge or Coalesce playing post rock, heaving massive chunks of sound, tangled guitar lines, insane hammer of Thor drumming, and vocals as guttural and animalistic as they get. All wrapped up into songs that manage to be dizzyingly complex, ridiculously epic, but still weirdly catchy and groovy. Wake/Lift is no different, in fact, if anything, it's everything we already loved about Rosetta, but more. Heavier and prettier, more convoluted, more varied, and intense, more epic, more dense, it's definitely the best thing they've done, and maybe about as far as this sound can be pushed. The guitars jangle and ring out as often as they are downtuned and grinding, often whipped up into crazily hooky soaring harmonies, before collapsing back into a churning sonic black hole. Long stretches of loping maathy meander wrap around dense rhythmic tangles and sludgey doomic roars, riffs chug and crunch, sometimes give way to whispered tranquility, other times becoming more and more intense until the band threatens to collapse under the sheer heaviness of their ever expanding sonic sprawl. Absolutely essential. Required listening for fans of all things post, rock, and metal, in whatever combination you prefer.

MPEG stream: Red In Tooth And Claw
MPEG stream: Lift Pt. 1

Si, that's right: DLR's classic Eat 'Em And Smile solo album, Spanish language version!! We were so amazed they reissued this, we had to order it in!

MPEG stream: Rosa Yanqui
MPEG stream: La Calle Del Tabaco

The first we heard from weirdo Italian blackened industrial noiseniks Rotorvator was via a collaboration with one man black metal band Rhuith, the two groups a perfect match up, each with their own peculiar take on black metal, with Rotorvator seemingly the weirder of the two, adding some tortured, twisted WTF-ness to Rhuith's sound, and if there was ever any doubt, this new full length most definitely goes a long way to demonstrating that Rotorvator are indeed masters of seriously damaged outsider avant industrial black metal weirdness. Or something. For a thumbnail descriptor, "damaged outsider avant industrial black metal weirdness" definitely works, the sound here all over the map, and not just the black metal map either, noise, industrial, psychedelia, electronica, it's all tangled up into a wild, warped, ever shifting, sonic sprawl, machine like rhythms, underpin dreamy almost shoegazey guitar buzz, howled demonic vokills, gnarled and dissonant, the sound slipping into a churning buzz drenched blackness, before exploding into a weird galloping blast, that sounds like some demented robotic black metal, the song slipping from blackened lope, to dense noise drenched howl, to furious blasting crush, to tranced out guitardrone. And that's just the first song. After that the sound shifts into a weirdly ominous, sort of cinematic drift, all weird hand clappy rhythms, minor key guitar, skeletal drumming, weird high end guitar skree, more howled vokills, the vibe sort of droney and dirgey and psychedelic, a little bit electronic too, laced with pulses and pulsations, at one point interrupted by a blast of white noise static, and weird moaning voices, before slipping right back into it. The follow up is some spaced out minimal electronic skitter, some carnivalesque looped mesmer, that gives way to some super lo-fi black buzz, again, programmed beats drive the furious riffing, which is muted and muffled, the vocals WAY up in the mix, the song stuttering and lurching, the sounds panned super hard so they swoop from speaker to speaker, druggy and dizzying. The sound shifts dramatically at that point into some seriously pretty heaviness, some blown out shoegazey dirginess, that could have gone one of two ways, and of course, it's Rotorvator, so instead of staying melodic and darkly lovely, it splinters into some noisy, churning, screeching blackness, but that stuff is draped over the pretty melodic guitar buzz, and it's a killer combo. The next track is more of the same, all swoonsome soaring synths and shoegazey black buzz, sounding a bit like a black metal M83, before crumbling into a gnarled lumbering creep, but again, even then, it's weirdly pretty, haunting and harrowing, but still pretty, with some seriously metallic riffing, some robotic drum pound, swirls of dense effects, and some gorgeous melodies, culminating in a weird final stretch of processed vox, ticking clock drum machine rhythm, and gristly swirls if staticky buzz. And finally, the record finishes with a dark, twang flecked dirge, drifting through clouds of melting FX, echo drenched guitar clang, pounding rhythms, swirling strings, haunting and like much of the record weirdly pretty. LIMITED TO 400 COPIES!!! Housed in a DVD style case, with full color artwork/insert, and inside a set of heavy cardstock, two sided, printed cards, bound by a silkscreened black on black obi.

MPEG stream: I. Ad Sanctos
MPEG stream: II. Domenica
MPEG stream: IV. I Morti
MPEG stream: VII. Humming Bones

In 2002, Rotten Sound released what will undoubtedly go down as one of the absolute highlights of the grindcore genre, the unsurpassable Murderworks. Topping the relentless speed and complexity (and yet catchiness as well) of that monumental album seemed a futile effort but these fearsome Finns have come damn close with this equally punishing new record. There is a clinical precision to the playing on this disc that should impress even the most non-metally inclined amongst you, in particular the near inhuman drum skills of Kai Hahto, who turns in yet another tour de force. Each new album finds Hahto somehow increasing the dial of his internal metronome a few notches faster but it's the technicality of the breaks he throws in at will amongst the fury that is truly stunning. OK, yes we are major drum nerds, but seriously you gotta hear this guy play! The rest of the band fills in more than ably, with some seriously vicious vocal attacks plus that classically huge buzzing Scandinavian death/grind guitar sound a la Entombed and Nasum -- the late Mieszko Talarczyk of Nasum even recorded this. Definitely a necessity for fans of Napalm Death, Terrorizer, Discordance Axis, Pig Destroyer, anything on Relapse and anything insanely fast!

MPEG stream: Soil
MPEG stream: Western Cancer
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Ew! Look out, it's a ROTTING CORPSE!!! Well, when these guys named their band Rotting Corpse, a name like that still had some shock value. Heck, it was like 1985, and they were the first and only thrash metal band in their part of Texas (Dallas Fort Worth). Their brand of punk inflected, speedy, shreddy, Slayerized thrash was pretty darn deathly for the era. Metal maniacs of a brutal bent into old school style morbidity ought to check them out, maybe you've heard 'em already on that terrific Texas Metal Archives Vol.1 compilation we highlighted here just a few weeks ago, which included Rotting Corpse's namesake tune "Rotting Corpse". Among the bands on that '80s comp, ol' Rotting Corpse were one of sickest, along with Death Tripper and Necrovore, sounding pretty gnarly next to a lot of the other acts, many of whom stylistically were in more of a traditional, epic, speed metal vein (also cool of course). Now, as if someone knew we were primed to hear MORE Rotting Corpse, this showed up, a two disc cd -and- dvd set, the cd compiling all of the band's surviving demo tape tracks circa 1986-1990, recorded by various lineups, Rotting Corpse membership early on featuring future Solitude Aeturnus guitarist and Brainticket label boss John Perez, and always including founding member and former Pantera roadie Walter Trachsler (great surname for a thrash metaller, eh?) on guitars and sometimes vocals. It's killer stuff if you like your thrash raw and underground, with the buzzsaws, we mean guitars, all about chop-chop-chop riffage and chaotic soloing. The vokills are guttural, throat-retched and/or punkish, expressing Reagan/Bush era hardcore 'tude. And all the while, the frantic drum battery and loose-strung bass threatens to shake your boombox to bits (a boombox, Walkman, or car stereo being the preferred playback equipment for the original demo cassettes we're sure). It's hard not to mosh, listening to this. The cd booklet includes several pages of detailed band history (from which we learn that after they played a show with Nuclear Assault, Dan Lilker was heard to say that Rotting Corpse were "America's noisiest band", high praise from the likes of him, indeed), pictures, fliers, and lyrics. Oh, and the dvd disc, meanwhile, contains live concert footage of Rotting Corpse in action, a bunch of it filmed at reunion gigs in 2005 and 2006 (revealing that at least one guy in the band still has really long hair... and also likes to wear what appears to be a camouflage patterned kilt, for some reason). Better yet, it also includes some much more entertaining vintage video from a show back in '89.

MPEG stream: War On Drugs
MPEG stream: Price Of God
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Second volume of NWOBHM covers from this German tribute band, again, pretty great.

There's some awesome old school metal anthems here, though we'd never heard of this band before... how's that? Well, the brilliant thing about Germany's Roxxcalibur is that it's like these guys realized, hey why should they knock themselves out trying to write brand new heavy metal songs when there's so many forgotten gems from the NWOBHM era, killer cuts that only appeared on 7" singles or compilations (like 1980's seminal Metal For Muthas) that they could simply learn and play instead?? All properly credited of course, to the extent of getting the go-ahead - and liner notes - from the original artists. We jump at any chance we get to use the term "NWOBHM" in a review, or any variant thereof (like NWOFHM). We love the NWOBHM, and heck we love -saying- NWOBHM (pronounced nuh-wobbum). So this is for us. But if we have to explain that NWOBHM stands for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (a late '70s/early '80s phenomenon of major world historical import!) then well maybe this album by Germany's Roxxcalibur isn't for you. Or then again, maybe it is, if you want an unusual introduction to the NWOBHM. At first when we heard about this, we were a little skeptical... we're not that into tribute bands normally, and that's what Roxxcalibur are, a very respectful NWOBHM tribute. Roxxcalibur themselves agree, admitting in the cd booklet that they don't much care for tribute bands either. But then, they're not a typical tribute band doing hits by U2 or AC/DC or The Doors or whatever. Nope, how can you argue with this? Thirteen hand picked NWOBHM gems, most of 'em really REALLY obscure, dug up and dusted off by these NWOBHM mega-fans (dudes from a couple German power metal bands that you, and we, have never heard of). Classic tracks brought back to life, to be heard and headbanged to once again. Obviously, seeing this band play live would be a blast (sadly, that's not gonna happen unless we plan a trip to Germany) but this album of theirs is (for us) pretty hard to resist. You won't find anything by biggies Iron Maiden, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, or Saxon here. Though apparently Roxxcalibur do some songs by better-known bands like those live, they wanted to keep their album pretty much a lesson in obscure classics. The most famous names covered here would be Grim Reaper, Savage, and Witchfinder General. We also were familiar with Chateaux, Jaguar, Dark Star, and Cloven Hoof. But we actually hadn't ever heard of the rest of the bands covered before, we don't think. Jameson Raid, Bleak House, Trident, ARC, Radium, J.J.'s Powerhouse?? Nope. Now we'll have to look out for those on comps and reissues... They also didn't need to put any Iron Maiden on here for the simple reason that most of this sounds like it could be by Iron Maiden anyway, what with all the galloping guitars, soaring vox, fantasy tropes, and rough n' ready rockin'! A lot of this wouldn't matter either way if Roxxcalibur weren't, y'know, good, but we're glad to say they seem more than competent. They've got the right spirit -and- the chops to pull this off. We haven't compared any of these tracks back to back with the originals, but the ones we were already really familiar with, like "See You In Hell" and "Let It Loose", sounded pretty much dead-on. The singer's German accent isn't particularly noticeable, and he certainly can hit the high notes. It's a classy effort all around, from the aforementioned track-by-track commentary from members of the -original- bands included in the thick cd booklet, to the painting on the cover by authentic NWOBHM associated artist Rodney Matthews, to the way the album starts off with the chimes of London's Big Ben! All that going a long way to making this more worthwhile than the "tribute" tag usually suggests. Heck if this was an album of originals by an all-new metal band, we'd be hailing it as a remarkable retro metal masterpiece. As it is, it's still probably the best album ever released by Limb! (Though, we'll always have a soft spot for Luca Turilli's King Of The Nordic Twilight.) Unlike the generic modern day Euro power metal that label mostly traffics in, this actually rocks. And also displays much more in the way of stylistic quirks, imagination, or basically what you could call originality (ironically enough) if you didn't know this was all a tribute. If people get into Roxxcalibur, rest assured, they'll have a long career. After all, this album already only reflects a portion of their set list, and there's plenty more ol' NWOBHM nuggets for them to attempt. Maybe next time they'll do some Rogue Male. Or Quartz. Or Tysondog. Or Tokyo Blade. Or Sledgehammer. Or...

MPEG stream: Running For The Line (J.J.'s Powerhouse)
MPEG stream: The Gates Of Gehenna (Cloven Hoof)
MPEG stream: Lady Of Mars (Dark Star)

Record number two from these witchy Atlanta heavies, part of, whether they like it or not, the new female fronted heavy rock movement, that includes loads of aQ faves like The Devil's Blood, Loon, Jex Thoth, Blood Ceremony, Castle, Christian Mistress, Purple Rhinestone Eagle, Cauchemar, and, well you get the drift. And as much as we love all those bands, and we do, Royal Thunder definitely stand out, for one thing, being not nearly as metal as most of those outfits, instead trafficking in something much more hard rocking, their sound riffy and heavy as fuck, but with a vibe that feels more Southern/classic/stoner rock than metal or doom. And as we mentioned in our review of the last Royal Thunder record, there seems to be a serious eighties metal vibe going on as well. A thumbnail this band plus this band description might be Lynyrd Skynrd plus Neurosis, although we tend to lean toward something more along the lines of Janis Joplin fronting Baroness. Cuz their sound definitely owes much to their Southern countrymen and women (Baroness, Kylesa, etc.), but also because vocalist Miny Parsonz has one of those voices that KILLS, throaty and sultry, witchy and powerful as fuck, the sort of voice that in a different generation might have made her a genuine big time mainstream rockstar. She can croon seductively, of wail like nobody's business, and the music is the perfect match, melodic and dynamic, riffy and groovy, heavy but also plenty psychedelic, and of course catchy like crazy, cuz these songs are less about headbanging or flailing wildly in a pit, and more about drinking beer in the parking lot and driving through town in your beat up old Trans Am, top down, parking behind the Winn Dixie, hanging out, getting stoned and blasting these jams at full volume. They have that sort of classic timeless heavy rock sound that is definitely rare, not just in this new breed of female fronted metal outfits, but in music in general. For some reason our favorite track from the first record, gets a reworking here, the band slowing it down even further, adding some mournful fiddle (or maybe it's cello), the song much more polished and even more perfect than the original, the main groove, just that much more slithery and swaggery, Parsonz vocals fierce, everything louder and more distorted and heavier and just all around more intense. But really, all the songs here kill, and some of us are tempted to proclaim Royal Thunder top of the witchy heavy rock heap at this point, and we're thinking some of you just might agree.

MPEG stream: Sleeping Witch
MPEG stream: Parsonz Curse
MPEG stream: Whispering World
MPEG stream: Shake And Shift

Yet another band to add to the current crop of boys club crashing, ass kicking female fronted, hard rock / heavy metal bands (alongside The Devils Blood, Jex Thoth, Loon, Cauchemar, Christian Mistress, Wooden Stake, Blood Ceremony), this one hailing from Atlanta, not so much a metal band as a hard rock power trio, with a lead vocalist with a serious set of pipes on her, no screeching, or buried in the mix warbling, Miny Parsonz dominates, her vocals sexy and sultry and witchy and powerful and dramatic, super distinctive, a little rough and raspy, but perfectly suited to the groups, swaggery, groovy, hard rock, almost Southern rock sounding at times, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Led Zeppelin, probably more than Sabbath honestly, the songs slow building and smoldering, the guitar smokey and spidery, the drums, subtle and laid back, the band creating lush dark mysterious twang flecked drifts, Parsonz' vocals slithering over the top, deep and throaty, the riffs getting more and more distorted, the drums crashing in, and suddenly it, the heaviest seventies hard rock jam you never heard, the hooks perfect, the vocals, so BAD ASS. There's a serious slowcore thing going on here too, like Loon, reminding us of aQ faces True Widow, that slithery moody minimal crawl, plus there's a definite eighties metal vibe happening too, mostly in the vocal melodies, that had us thinking of Lita Ford and Doro Pesch, which is not a bad thing at all, in fact, it adds a whole other dimension that other current female vocalists lack, and the fact that these guys (and gal) are obviously more about writing songs, that just SOUNDING heavy, means the more you listen to these jams, the more they stick. When we first heard this, we thought it was pretty cool, but now we can't stop listening, and damn if "Sleeping Witch" isn't the hard rock jam of the year. A new favorite for sure. And if you dig any of the above mentioned bands, this might be one of the best of the bunch. We've got cds, and colored vinyl, take your pick!

MPEG stream: Sleeping Witch
MPEG stream: Mouth Of Fire

Brand new record from this Singaporean (!) black metal horde, who make a music they refer to as "vedic metal", and whose whole career has been spent honoring Hindu philosophies and teachings. Brahmavidya: Immortal I is the third and final part of a trilogy, but fear not, we missed out on the first two parts, and it in no way hinders the listener's enjoyment of part three. Rudra's sound is equal parts classic melodic metal and buzzing blasting blackness, but they also infuse classic Eastern melodies into their sound, which gives the music a seriously spiritual vibe. Not to mention the occasional chanted clean vocals as well as traditional instruments, bells and horns, etc. They also have plenty of wild shredding leads, a rarity in black metal, but here, they're as memorable and melodic as any other element. The sound is lush and heavy and epic, tight and technical, mathy and a little progressive, it seems like these guys should be way more popular, apparently they play festivals in other parts of the world, but most metalheads in the US have never heard of em, which is strange, it's a sound that seems like it would go over really well here, super technical, ultra heavy, high concept, fans of groups like Nile, Absu, and other ancient religion obsessed metal outfits should flip for these guys, and anyone into a blackened metal that's not so grim and raw, and is instead epic and expansive and a little experimental and super melodic might get a little obsessed. As it is, we're thinking we better track down the first two parts of the trilogy, cuz this one has been getting played to death. So yeah, if you're after some catchy blackened heaviness, you probably couldn't do much better than this.

MPEG stream: Now, Therefore...
MPEG stream: Illusory Enlightenment
MPEG stream: Ravenous Theories Of Deception

Chet Scott's dark ambient project Ruhr Hunter takes its name from the case studies of a German serial killer from the 1950s named Joachim Kroll who had been dubbed the "Ruhr Hunter" by the local authorities due to a concentration of his crimes taking place along the Ruhr River. Such fascinations with transgressive themes and Scott's calls for human cleansing (even if it may be metaphoric) lend themselves for placing Ruhr Hunter in the true-crime pulp elements of industrial culture as well as a giving him the obvious crossover appeal with black metal mythology. Yet, this does little to embody the rich instrumentation that Scott puts into Ruhr Hunter, as those gaping Lustmordian drones so common within the dark ambient oeuvre are matched with smatterings of extended song fragments with acoustic guitars, ghostly harmonicas, tubular bells, delicate piano melodies, and a number of handcrafted stringed instruments. As good if not better than the atavistic, pseudo-pagan ambient works of Tribes of Neurot.

RealAudio clip: Wounded By My Own Blade
RealAudio clip: The Sower and The Sown

Not to be confused with Japanese prog duo Ruins, these guys are from Germany, and traffic in classic old school thrashing blackness, channeling the greats like Bathory and Sodom and even Darkthrone. On first listen, we just took Ruins for another bunch of retro thrashers, which technically they are, but we left the record playing, and the more it played, the deeper we got into it, the more obsessed we became. We're not always that into old school thrash, our tastes run more to the black and droney, or the fucked up and frenzied, but there's something about these guys that has all the metalheads around here in a bit of a froth. The riffs of course destroy, buzzy and crushing, the production massive and in-the-red, the vocals are insane, a glass gargling bile spewing demonic rasp that pretty much seals the deal. Tons of distortion and reverb, the songs simple and stripped down, raw and relentless, it takes all our self control to reign in fits of spontaneous head banging when this disc is playing. The crazy thing is Ruins is a one man band. We're used to one man bedroom black metal, but listening to this we envision three long haired guys all holding up chains and upside down crosses, scowling at the camera, bullet belts massive spikes, leather jackets, in a graveyard or some forest or something, pretty insane that something this furious and blown out and thrashy is just one guy, but hell, kudos to him. Not sure what else to say, this rules, total punked up greasy, filthy thrashy blackened metal genius, give the sound samples a few listens, once you're hooked, you'll be hard pressed to pry this thing out of your cd player. Includes Ruins' first two demos, from 2006 and 2007, as well as a bunch of previously unreleased bonus tracks. METAL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MPEG stream: Bloodstorms Of Hell
MPEG stream: Blasphemy Reigns
MPEG stream: Castle Of Nocturnal Evil
MPEG stream: Total Perversion

It's been nearly 3 years since we've heard from German black metal horde Ruins Of Beverast, who are responsible for two of our favorite black metal records ever, Unlock The Shrine and Rain Upon The Impure, a group that was born out of the demise of another one of our all time BM faves, Nagelfar, whose Virus West record helped define black metal for us, and to this day is still one of those records that all others are compared to, and most, in the face of a record like Virus West, are left wanting. So with a build up like that, it's fairly obvious that a new Ruins of Beverast is kind of a big deal. Especially after three years. Thankfully, the brilliantly titled Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite, was more than worth the wait, another twisted amalgamation of lurching black doom, blasting frenzied black metal, and all sorts of other weirdness that is not so easily described. The tracks are long and packed with parts, the opening track pretty much sets the stage, beginning with some super dramatic midtempo doom beneath almost chanted clean vocals, before a cool fuzzy, processed guitar comes in, a weird pop element that sounds totally wrong, but at the same time right at home, before the track lurches to a halt, and the band lumber forth, a trudging black doom behemoth, laced with Filosofem like keyboards, sick guttural vox, weirdly meditative, and trancelike, shifting gears constantly like some sort of post black metal math rock outfit, finally finishing off how it started, more lurching woozy doom pop, more of those super melodic clean vocals, and another burst of that warped fuzz guitar melody. And that's just one track. The other tracks are separated by short interludes that range from blackened fragments of rumble and crunch, to haunting choral shimmer, to abstract free form drift, but those are seemingly woven into the whole, as if all of Foulest Semen was one continuous musical movement, "God's Ensanguined Bestiaries" is furious blackened thrash, those impossibly inhuman vocals riding atop frenzied riffage and lightning speed blasts, before the sound shifts dramatically, and that weird melodic fuzz guitar returns (sounding more like something you'd hear on a White Stripes record of all things), but the fact that it's tangled up in a chaotic jumble of crumbling filthy blackness, and haunting gothic doom, lots of moments here remind us of Norwegians Code as well, that same sort of blackened Interpol, or Metal Joy Division vibe infused into their grim black fury. "Mount Sinai Moloch" is even weirder, brittle doom guitars, pounding muffled industrial percussion, garbled alien vocals, spidery clean guitars, all very spacious and stretched out, but eventually, things do get more grim and blackly propulsive. The rest of the record is rife with stuff you'd never expect to find on a black metal record, be it bits of gorgeous gloomy dour pop, huge heaving slabs of almost orchestral sounding heaviness, soaring strings (or what sounds like strings), spaced out clouds of reverbed vocals, fractured electronics, moody buzz drenched slowcore, but all of those elements are seamlessly incorporated into the bands twisted black heaviness, a dizzying hybrid for sure, one that is hard to imagine would be appealing to your standard black metal / black doom fan, but for the rest of us, Foulest Semen Of A Sheltered Elite is gloriously idiosyncratic, furious and fucked up, freaky and avant garde, blackened and doomic, but at the same time an incredible, and incredibly catchy (black / doom) metal record, and even though this technically came out last year, we still might have to offer this up as a contender for metal record of THIS year, black, doom, or otherwise...

MPEG stream: I Raised This Stone As A Ghastly Memorial
MPEG stream: God's Ensanguined Bestiaries
MPEG stream: Mount Sinai Moloch

We were heartbroken after the dissolution of German black metal outfit Nagelfar (not to be confused with the Swedish e-less Naglfar). Their all time black metal masterpiece Virus West, has been a huge favorite of all the metal heads around these parts (and has just been reissued, and will be reviewed on the list soon!) but a few years after the death of Nagelfar, a new band was born out off the ashes, a strangely monickered beast called the Ruins Of Beverast. Purveyors of, in their own words, "oppressive black metal", and indeed, the sound of RoB was totally unlike the blazing Scandinavian style of buzzing black metal, instead, they offered up a sprawl of midtempo misery, as doom as much as black. And this, their second album continues on a similar sonic path. There is of course plenty of buzz, this is grim black metal after all, but RoB have a much more expansive vision. Out of the seven tracks, five clock in at around 15 minutes (the other two are brief ambient interludes of cavernous whir and crumbling subterranean drones) and find a grim black buzz stretched waaaaaaay out into long stretches of Burzumic doom. The guitars are thick and spacious, not just buzzy and compressed, the production is massive, each song is like a journey through some massive underworld, drifting through firelit caverns, along some viscous black river. The rhythms are loping, seasick waltzes, sometimes slowing down to glacial dirges, with arpeggiated chords spread out over thick backdrops of warm blurry buzz, howled vocals, simple pounding drums, all wrapped in huge swaths of reverb, making all the edges bleed together, turning buzzy black metal into fuzzed out doomdrone metal. The oppressive blackened crush lets up once in a while, allowing brief bits of shimmer to shine through, a weird post rocky slowcore crawl, some minor key jangly clean guitar, slow building Godspeed like ambience, bits of epic synth, always returning to the relentless buzzing dirge, allowing off course for brief flurries of furious blasting black metal, but those always seem to give way to still more slow and sorrowful blackdoom beauty.

MPEG stream: 50 Forts Along The Rhine
MPEG stream: Soliloquy Of The Stigmatized Shepherd

What are the odds of two different bands picking the same name? Pretty good we'd imagine, but what if that name was Nagelfar? A bit more unlikely we think. So you've got two metal bands, both calling themselves Nagelfar (each spelled slightly differently, one with an E, one without), we obviously just assumed that Nagelfar must be from Lord of The Rings, but as far as we can tell, it's not. In fact, a brief Google search tells us that Nagelfar is either german for enamel, or finger nail polish, or slang for having sex ("to fix with a nail", huh?) Anyway, we're getting off track. Of the two Nagelfar's, we were always partial to the one with the E (the 'good' Nagelfar, not to be confused with the Swedish E-less Naglfar), a German black metal horde responsible for one of the best BM records ever, Virus West. With the dissolution of Nagelfar came the formation of the even more mysterious Ruins Of Beverast and their self described "opressive black metal". Oppressive indeed, but most certainly depressive as well. And while this may indeed be black metal, it's as doomy as it is black, and as ambient as it is doomy. There's only a few tracks that are full on blazing buzzing black metal, and those most definitely sound quite a bit like Virus West, but the majority of Unlock The Shrine is slow and dirgey, droney and dark, midtempo Burzumic buzz, fuzzed out riffs over plodding sea sick rhythms, everything wrapped in swirling swaths of thick keyboard, all twisted into some strangely off kilter, relentlessly propulsive black metal dronerock. But that's just the basic framework, every song is rife with weird little elements, unlikely and very un- black metal sonic weirdness. A ridiculously catchy guitar melody dropped into a fierce black metal dirge, drifting abstract soundscapes punctuated by ominous almost cartoonish piano, industrial percussion and howling winds, even what sounds like gunshots and car alarms. All struggling in a churning sea of howling pounding guitar fuzz and suffocating blackened ambience. So gloriously bleak and beautifully miserable.

MPEG stream: Between Bronze Walls
MPEG stream: Euphoria When The Bombs Fell
MPEG stream: Summer Decapitation Ritual

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

SORRY. This out of print AQ fave (soon to be reissued on cd) is resurrected in the analog form of a super limited deluxe gatefold double lp! What are the odds of two different bands picking the same name? Pretty good we'd imagine, but what if that name was Nagelfar? A bit more unlikely we think. So you've got two metal bands, both calling themselves Nagelfar (each spelled slightly differently, one with an E, one without), we obviously just assumed that Nagelfar must be from Lord of The Rings, but as far as we can tell, it's not. In fact, a brief Google search tells us that Nagelfar is either german for enamel, or finger nail polish, or slang for having sex ("to fix with a nail", huh?) Anyway, we're getting off track. Of the two Nagelfar's, we were always partial to the one with the E (the 'good' Nagelfar, not to be confused with the Swedish E-less Naglfar), a German black metal horde responsible for one of the best BM records ever, Virus West. With the dissolution of Nagelfar came the formation of the even more mysterious Ruins Of Beverast and their self described "oppressive black metal". Oppressive indeed, but most certainly depressive as well. And while this may indeed be black metal, it's as doomy as it is black, and as ambient as it is doomy. There's only a few tracks that are full on blazing buzzing black metal, and those most definitely sound quite a bit like Virus West, but the majority of Unlock The Shrine is slow and dirgey, droney and dark, midtempo Burzumic buzz, fuzzed out riffs over plodding sea sick rhythms, everything wrapped in swirling swaths of thick keyboard, all twisted into some strangely off kilter, relentlessly propulsive black metal dronerock. But that's just the basic framework, every song is rife with weird little elements, unlikely and very un- black metal sonic weirdness. A ridiculously catchy guitar melody dropped into a fierce black metal dirge, drifting abstract soundscapes punctuated by ominous almost cartoonish piano, industrial percussion and howling winds, even what sounds like gunshots and car alarms. All struggling in a churning sea of howling pounding guitar fuzz and suffocating blackened ambience. So gloriously bleak and beautifully miserable.

MPEG stream: Between Bronze Walls
MPEG stream: Euphoria When The Bombs Fell
MPEG stream: Summer Decapitation Ritual

[ aquarius records — Metal ]