[ aquarius records

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

Showing results 4451 through 4500 of 5570.

It's pretty impossible to argue with a dubstep version of Black Sabbath, especially when it sounds this good. Who would have thought that Sabbath would sound so right all dubbed out and slowed down? Venetian Snares, that's who. And on this super limited 10", there's no skitter or drill and bass, nope, just pure, simple bass heavy dubstep, wrapped around two classic Sabbath tracks. It sounds so goddamn good it's another one of those records that just makes us wonder why there aren't any bands who actually sound like this?!? The A side is all slithery echoey beats, dubbed out and laid back, huge low end throbs, buzzing bass lines, Ozzy's reverbed wail draped over the top, a strangely stoned and FX doused version of "Black Sabbath", the guitars looped and stretched out, that tolling church bell all chopped up and sent spinning into the darkness, like a dubby snare, the whole thing just so dark and moody and groovy and amazing sounding. The flip side starts off sounding like some straight up dubstep, blissed out and druggy, fuzzy and distorted, skeletal and bass heavy until the vocals kick in, and suddenly it's some fucked up and dubbed out take on "Electric Funeral". An absolute and total dancefloor destroyer for sure. Even the metal head wallflowers are tapping their feet and subtly banging their heads... Pressed on marbled green vinyl, housed in a plain black sleeve, and pretty ridiculously limited.

We've been hearing about this band for ages, but until recently had never actually -heard- them. Word was they were a more metal Mogwai. Can't really argue with that. They're Scottish too, so they've obviously been slurping from the same slow build explosive climax fountain as their more moody, less heavy countrymen. But where Mogwai get bigger, and louder, and more expansive, Snowblood get HEAVIER, exploding into a doomy grind like Neurosis or Eyehategod or Corrupted. Which is most definitely a good thing. The sound of Snowblood is one we love, that epic post rock, moody and mathy, equal parts Godspeed, Mogwai, Mono, Isis and the like, but with the added bonus of constantly stumbling into massive downtuned slow motion sludge dirge mode, crusty and lumbering, huge tarpit riffs and howled almost black metal vocals. It's like some sort of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, where Mogwai or Mono let's say, get all wound up, more and more, louder and louder, until they turn away, and then lunge at you suddenly, fangs bared, claws out, eyes blood red, where they then proceed to tear you limb from limb, only later coming to, soaked in blood and entrails, in some sort of post blood letting daze, easily slipping back into dreamy indie swoon, as if nothing ever happened, only to do it all over again in the next song. Fuck! It's so awesome. Exactly what we always thought, when a band would get all loud and heavy, we would always think, "why not just go for it, go all the way and just be metal for fuck's sake!" and here Snowblood have done just that. Some tracks stay soft, drifting dreamlike, swathed in jangle and twang, but some songs get heavy right away and don't let up. Varied and dynamic and fucking killer! Stretches of blissy, soft focus post rock, delicate guitar figures, simple barely there rhythms, swirls of cymbal shimmer, the sound of wind and water, groovy almost jazzy shuffle, strange fuzzy almost funky Three Mile Pilot style basslines, crunchy angular riffing, a strange haunting croon (sounding strangely like Unrest's Marc Robinson), these elements shift and swirl, painting a dreamy post rock soundscape, but when the hammer falls, it falls hard, sometimes erupting into full on metalic grind, sometimes a lurching sludge rock behemoth that would give AQ faves like Whitehorse, Bunkur or Moss a run for their sludgerock money. An absolute perfect mix of the soft and moody, Godspeed. Mogwai, Explosions In The Sky, and the hard and heavy, Boris, Monarch, Khanate, Eyehategod. Absolutely essential. We also have Snowblood's previous disc, The Human Tragedy, in stock, and that one is just as good!

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We had heard about this group for ages, 'the metal Mogwai' people would tell us. And obviously we were intrigued. We finally got copies of their latest full length, "Being And Becoming" and listed it a few months back, and it was indeed a lot like a metal Mogwai. We dug it a lot. As did you judging from how difficult it's been to keep it in stock. So we figured we oughta track down their previous record, the equally pretty, and most definitely heavier "The Human Tragedy" and it's a killer. The same dizzying mix of dreamy post rock, super dynamic epic cinematic soundscapes, and grinding pounding sludge. The record begins with a thick whirring drone, mumbled melodies are strewn amidst thick swaths of low end, and simple fingerpicked guitar. That serenity doesn't last, as the second track kicks in, a weirdly grungy bass riff, simple tribal drumming, and a creepy snake charmer like melody that suddenly twists itself into a mathy metallic juggernaut, chugging riffs, venomous vocals, lurching and loping, with bursts of staccato metal fury. A bit like Today Is The Day crossed with Melvins. The next track is similar, a pounding angular crush, howled vocals and low end chug, peppered with stretches of swirling ambience. The rest of the record falls mainly somewhere between the heaviness of Neurosis, Eyehategod and Khanate and the meandering moodiness of Tortoise, Mogwai and the Timeout Drawer, but even with liberal and lengthy doses of moody math rock, drifting epic slowburn slowcore, and soft shimmery dreampop, Snowblood, always seem to return to the crush, every soft shimmer or melancholy melody is only a breath away from being laid flat by a wall of grinding guitars and pummelling drums. So great.

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It's been almost 3 years since we last heard from Snowblood, who at the time were super hyped to us as being a "metal Mogwai", which makes sense as they are Scottish, they write epic slow burning metallic post rock jams, and they manages to fuse extreme heaviness with super melodic rock, but unlike Mogwai, these guys get very VERY metal, as in ULTRA heavy, sometimes sludgey and crushing, other times frenzied and thrashy, incorporating howling black metal vokills, even blast beats. This long in the works new album, finds the band refining their sound, the prettier melodic parts are a bit crunchier, a little more krautrocky, loping and hypnotic, and the heavy parts, well, the band have really outdone themselves, kicking out the metallic jams big time, exploding into bursts of Coalesce / Converge chaotic fury before stumbling into lurching epic metallic doom sludge, the vocals even more harsh and hellish than before, the band sometime slowing it way down and dipping into full on Eyehategod territory. Four long tracks, none shorter than 10 minutes, the longest a sprawling 18:31, each one a meandering journey from drift and strum and jangle to pummel and crush and crumble. The second track is all washed out and shoegazey with what sounds like accordions or strings, adding a layer of woozy buzz, until the band explodes into another bout of brutality, at which point those accordions or strings get all super distorted and sound almost like a metal kazoo, the effect is not as goofy as it sounds, especially considering the band lock into a seriously intense minor key mournful doom metal dirge. The third trajectory is the mathiest of the bunch, and never quite gets full metallized, although the vocals get pretty harsh, but the music gets more loud / epic Mogwai style, a Godspeed like flourish before settling back into a drifty post rocky fade out. The final track mixes it up and starts out all metal, a huge churning chug, with a soaring main melody, those killer vox, before breaking down into a cool abstract drift, with jagged shards of droneguitar, fractured fragmented riffs, a downtuned crumbling chug way off in the distance, all woven around a woozy minor key melody, before exploding into another stretch of churning riffage and intense drum pound, finally finishing off with a thick wall of guitar hum and hiss. Awesome stuff. Seems like these guys should be massive, touring with Isis and Neurosis and Baroness and all those sorts of heavy hitters, maybe they do on the other side of the ocean, but it seems like over here they're way more under the radar, metalheads and post rockers over here need to get hip to these guys, lots of folks just might find themselves with a new favorite band. Killer packaging, housed in a gorgeous silkscreened cardstock sleeve, with a fancy fold out printed insert.

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Not a new (re)release, but newly in stock here at AQ. Another one for all you fans of '70s proto-metal hard rock, one of Allan's faves (hence, we got some in when we got the chance). Socrates Drank The Conium were a Greek band, and "On The Wings" was their third album, originally issued in 1973. Psychedelic hard blues rock with ragged, rough-edged English vocals, and -- this is key -- UTTERLY RIPPING twin electric guitar. Definitely an early milestone in heavy acid rock guitar shred. Vangelis later joined this band, but you'd never guess there was any New Age connection from this kick ass album. The songs twist and snake around, with rockin' and doomy riffs, dual guitar harmonies, and crazy leads -- both guitarists playing entirely different, complex licks that somehow meld perfectly. Brilliant stuff. Kinda progressive and utterly powerful. None other than Julian Cope has described this as sounding "a lot like SABBATH VOLUME 4 with Family's Roger Chapman singing". So, if past AQ-reviews of bands like Night Sun, Toad, Wishbone Ash, Flower Travellin' Band, I Teoremi, Tractor, etc. have resulted in successful music purchase/listening experiences for you, then you certainly might want to give this Socrates Drank The Conium album a try. Of course, we only have a few in stock, so please be ready to be patient if/when we run out...

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The Soft Pink Truth was originally the solo outlet for Drew Daniels of experimental electronica duo Matmos to get ridiculous with over the top gay house/disco music. How ridiculous? Well, in this case, the subtitle to his long awaited new SPT album says it all: "Electronic Profanations Of Black Metal Classics", meaning, club/techno/IDM/industrial versions of songs by Venom, Beherit, Sarcofago, Sargeist, Darkthrone, Mayhem, Hellhammer and others! What Drew did to his favorite hardcore punk songs ten years ago on SPT's Do You Want New Wave Or Do You Want The Soft Pink Truth? disc, he does here for his fave black metal tracks, which we'd always predicted/hoped he would - since, as we can attest, Drew's no poseur, he's seriously a big fan of black metal, and has been for years. Although, what he's up to here is perhaps less than serious - one of the alternate subtitles provided in the liner notes is as follows: "Putting The Fag Back In Sarcofago". So, there's an element of humor (and, of course, um, gayness) here that your average corpsepainted churchburner might not appreciate. At the same time, though, Drew has put some deep thought into his reasons for manifesting these "profanations", which he explains in the liner notes, the section that begins "Confessions Of A Former Burzum T-Shirt Wearer", check it out and see what you think. Anyway, about the music on here, we can kind of sum it up by saying a lot of it sounds like Snap (y'know, of "The Power" fame) meets Cradle Of Filth. Or Skinny Puppy with a dose of C+C Music Factory, wearing corpse paint. It's rave music that took a wrong turn into an Impaled Northern Moonforest - which happens to be the name of the late Seth "A.C." Putnam's joke black metal band, whose "Grim And Frostbitten Gay Bar" is the last track covered here (that one NOT actually a black metal classic, but still an album highlight, in part thanks to the use of a Rihanna sample, are we right?). Elsewhere, results vary, at the worst it can be pretty goofy, but on the other hand, a few tracks get pretty crazy in a cool Venetian Snares sort of way. For lots of folks, this might be more of an amusing novelty record, and to a degree that's essentially what this is - but still, we wonder what folks unfamiliar with all the black metal Drew is referencing will think? Perhaps for some open minded dance music fan who stumbles upon it somehow, it could become the most demented booty-shaker in their collection.

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Now we can perhaps prove that old adage that one YouTube clip is worth a thousand words! Go watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o49KyJQl-Og Ok, you're back? Now just try to tell us you don't want to buy that band's record! After seeing that clip of Soggy kicking out the jams live on French TV in 1980 (thanks to our pal Brian Turner at WFMU for turning us on to it) we knew that if they had an album, we had to have it! A bit of research and we learned that indeed they did, newly reissued as a vinyl-only, limited edition. And now here it is, while they last. It's an expensive import, but it's also a deluxe gatefold package, with the super-thick LP in one pocket of the sleeve and a freakin' HUGE Soggy poster in the other (now when other records claim they come with a 'poster' they'd better step up!). And who cares how much it costs, didn't you just watch that video??! For those for whom YouTube is somehow forbidden, we'll just say that Soggy (what a name!) were a French band circa 1980-82 who sound a lot like a more metallized version of The Stooges, obviously their biggest influence (end of side one here is cover "I Wanna Be Your Dog"). The skinny, shirtless singer is about as Iggy as you can get, with the added shake appeal of sporting a giant Rob Tyner (MC5) style Afro! Though they're about ten years after the Francais Metal de Proto scene we've obsessed over lately, they're more like Francais Metal de not-so-Proto, they'd fit right in, all heavy and punk and psychedelic. And they're even more obscure than those other French Stooge worshipers Angel Face, but just as badass. In fact, before they broke up the were supposedly slated to open a Judas Priest tour. What else do you need to know? Oh yeah, before they were Soggy, in the '70s some of these guys were in a band called the Hardfuckers! All right, why are we still writing this? We don't need to, just watch that YouTube clip!! And yes, that song ("Waiting For The War") is included here. Act fast though 'cause this is limited to 500 copies and while we got a bunch we're sure they'll go quick.

Intense melodic death metal from this Swedish band, this album (their third) having being eagerly anticipated at Aquarius since previous Soilwork records have become favorites of ours. At The Gates and Carcass are the key comparisions here, although this band also professes an influence from Accept and MSG! As with their other releases, great guitarwork and catchy songwriting together with brutal velocities and vocals, and just a little bit of keyboard atmosphere make this new disc another winner for Soilwork. Allan and Andee both give this a very metal recommendation.

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The newest release from these Swedish metallers marks a rather dramatic change in direction. Taking the best parts of In Flames, At The Gates and 'Heartwork' era Carcass, Soilwork have always been a huge favorite around here -- we consider them to be of the

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Sophomore effort from this excellent Swedish death metal outfit, in the vein of classic "Heartwork" era Carcass. Totally raging melodic machinegun metal, so to speak.

Latest from this Danish doomlord, whose last record, Let There Be A Massacre, was a huge hit around here, sure we hauled out the extra o's, it was supremely dooooooooooomy after all, but not sludgey funereal ultradoom, it was more a classic doom, with soaring and majestic melodies, proper songs, not just huge slabs of black rumble (not that we don't love that too). This new one though, actually starts off with some super minimal dronemusic, all layered tones and undulating swells of low end, atmospheric and ambient, it's not until about 5 minutes in, when something other than low end surfaces, but instead of a blast of doomy crush, it's an accordion / harmonium, emitting yet more drones, but these melodic and melancholy, drifting atop that sea of roiling blackness, and then when the church organ comes in, it's epic and intense, the sound so powerful and haunting, the whole first side of the tape, this gorgeous bit of blackened almost folky ambience. But then flip it over, and that's where the doom comes in, a massive, crushing, lumbering slab of howled anguished depressive doom, the vocals a throat shredding yowl, over the downtuned churn of the guitar, and the Teutonic pound of the drums, all underpinned by atmospheric synths, the sound does shift into something more melodic, all spidery melodies and almost post rocky arrangement, before slipping right back into more abject doom. The track continually drifts between the two, before finally bleeding into the final track, which begins all wheezing organ drone and simple drum plod, hypnotic and weirdly krautrocky (reminding us actually of that Tony Conrad and Faust collaboration, so much so we sort of wished it kept doing that for the entirety of the song), until the guitars and vocals kick in, but instead of getting super doomy, the guitar is weirdly twangy, the vibe almost like a doomy Morricone, the shrieked vox the only concession to true doom, otherwise it would sound like some weird sort of Scenic / Barn Owl hybrid. Weird and quite cool. LIMITED TO 50 COPIES! Packaged in a gorgeously printed textured paper J-card, the tape held shut by a printed Japanese style obi.

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Finally, time to clear away the dirt, drag that huge concrete slab to the side, reach way down into the ancient gloom and haul that old wooden crate up from the depths, pry open that rusted padlock, unwind the heavy chains, and pull out the nails, one by one, until we can remove the lid, and unleash the many many 'o's stashed there long ago. Confused? Well, it's been a while since we needed a bunch of extra o's for a doom review, but now that we finally have enough copies of Sol's Let There Be A Massacre to review, all of these o's are most definitely going to come in handy. And yes, this is most definitely doooooooooooooom, but not of the slow motion near static sludge variety, no the doom of Sol is much more classic, and epic, melodic and majestic, almost like a Paradise Lost or My Dying Bride record slowed down, fucked up, and turned into something at once, totally familiar, but also strangely twisted and bizarre. The work of one man, a Danish dude called Emil Sol Brahe, and while he definitely has his fundamentals in place. Lumbering tempos, mournful melodies, thick buzzing guitars, howled demonic vox, the sound of Sol is anything but typical doom. It's another one of those instances where if you stripped away the distortion, it would almost be some gorgeously lilting slowcore post rock. The main guitar soars and sings, over a swirling wash of droning buzz, pounding drum plod. And the rumbling guttural vocals. The first track almost sounds like some strange mix of Skepticism and Godspeed, You Black Emperor. Very cinematic, and emotional, not evil or brutal as much as melancholy and haunting. Check out the third track "Boginki", with its strange martial drum intro, the sound of the drums weirdly effected, the cymbals a distorted sizzle, the guitar comes in, a warped downtuned looped churning almost static riff, and then the vocals, super distorted and anguished, all wrapped up by a strange almost jig like synthesizer melody. In some weird way it almost sounds like Laibach. Which is definitely not a bad thing. There are occasional stretches of folky acoustic guitar, murky drones, and roiling buzz, but for the most part, Brahe and his Sol unfurl thick heaving slabs of that gorgeous epic doom majesty they just don't seem to make that much anymore. The final track is a weary woozy lament, all muted rhythmic thump and wheezing minor key accordion, finishing off with creepy minimal backporch banjo, folky and somber, mysterious and quite lovely, but in some strange way just as crushingly sad and funereally heavy as the rest of the disc. Definitely essential for doomlords and doomaidens, and for anyone who has been lamenting the recent lack of multiple o'd reviews, but also, just melodic and pretty enough to possibly appeal to fans of apocalyptic doomfolk like Kiss The Anus, Ignatz, Woven Hand, Svarte Greiner, as long as they can handle their doom folk, HEAVY on the DOOOOOOOM...

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We've heard Sol before, the one-man Danish dooooooooooomster whose debut on Van we compared to both Skepticism and Godspeed You Black Emperor!, and recommended also to fans of such acts as Svarte Greiner and even Woven Hand, due to the "apocalyptic doomfolk" elements of Sol's sound. Now, we've got some new Sol, a collaboration on the always interesting Paradigms label with another Danish artist named Blodtru, and it's even more of a mashup of ultra doom, militaristic neo-folk, ambient, goth, and classical (the first track adapting music by 17th century English baroque composer Henry Purcell). Instrumentation ranges from accordion and glockenspiel to feedback and programming... Musically, it's both menacing and melodic, usually molasses-like and mesmeric. Across the six long tracks of this 77 minute disc, you'll encounter rumbling low-end bass, some sombre singing, shimmering cymbals, martial drum rolls, acoustic string pluck, and long lovely stretches of quietly wavering electronic drone. The occasional vocals sound somewhere between Antony of Antony & The Johnsons and Gregorian monk chant, or get scarier with a guttural black metal like rasp. Stunningly effective, super heavy when it's heavy, totally blissed out when it's blissed out, sometimes both at once, so atmospheric, and recommended! Could equally appeal to fans of Der Blutharsch and OM, Kiss The Anus Of A Black Cat and Aun. Limited to 500 copies.

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

SORRY.

It's been more than 3 years since the last Solace full length, and it's been close to 7 since their last appearance on the aQ list. Not exactly sure why that is, the heavy rockers around here are way into these Jersey stoner metallers, so we were pretty excited to find out there was a brand new record, this one in fact, but were thrown for a loop by the opening track, the grungy noise rock crush of "The Disillusioned Prophet" which sounds more like Soundgarden via AmRep than Kyuss, with angry vocals, but hell, we were digging it big time, some seriously heavy stoner noise rock? What's not to love? Ends up that track is a bit of an anomaly though, from track two on, A D hews much closer to more traditional stoner rock, BUT, and that's a big important but, the sound remaining grungy and is way heavier, and way more metal than rock. Which is definitely a good thing. We're definitely reminded of Kyuss, you can't be stoner rock and not have a little of that in ya, but we also hear some Raging Slab style twang flecked heaviness, not to mention lots of Ozzy era Sabbath, the vocals often falling in a distinctly Ozzyish croon, the riffs big and crunchy plenty of serpentine guitar harmonies, there's definitely a HUGE Monster Magnet vibe happening, which pretty much seals the deal. C'mon, if someone told us there was a record that sounded a bit like Kyuss mixed with Raging Slab mixed with Monster Magnet, fuck, we'd be all over it. And that's sort of what this Solace sounds like, heavy, groovy, stonery, metallic, hooky, poppy too, it's a pretty potent, and goddamn near irresistible combination. But why would you want to try to resist anyway? Folks who have been digging recent records by bands like Freedom Hawk, Leeches Of Lore, Sardonis, Iota, Humo Del Cairo, will most likely dig this too. Of all the heavy stuff we've gotten in lately, this one ends up being one of the ones we listen to the most, make of that what you will!

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We haven't heard from East Coast stoner rockers Solace for ages, but fuck if they don't sound better than ever. This three song 10" is an absolute killer. The first track is a cover of "Hammerhead" by early seventies prog outfit Rare Bird, and it somehow comes out sounding more like some NWOBHM classic, all groovy riffs and killer leads, an incredible hook and great vocals. The second track is an original and is way heavier and meaner, with howled vocals, cool harmonic breakdowns and a more fuzzed out aggressive feel. The funny thing about that song is the riff is dangerously similar to one of our favorite metal songs ever, "Warriors Of Genghis Khan" by Bad News, the Spinal Tap like alter ego of UK comedy troop the Young Ones. Amazed that no metal band has covered it yet. The B side is a super stretched out version of Link Wray's "Rumble" which might be the Ur-song of all heavy metal, even though it's a rockabilly instrumental. But somehow here it also ends up sounding like a New Wave Of British Heavy Metal band, maybe like some rad Iron Maiden outtake, with tons of amazing guitar leads, in fact the whole second half of the track is nothing but dueling leads. So killer! Cool painting on the cover, horses, warriors, swords and bloodied bodies. Also bonus points for one of the best label logos ever, a parody of the Land O Lakes logo, but with the Indian squaw holding a huge skull instead of a box of butter!

It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times. Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...Ô mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY. Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd. Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins. Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound. The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song. Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II. By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur. Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia. A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew. And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar! One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER! Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"! 2006 truly is the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!! ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!

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

SORRY. A perfectly titled album in which 4 longhaired stoners jam on low-IQ thud rock loaded with huge riffs and solos. Pretty soon, you're liking it. Members of Monster Magnet, dude.

Been meaning to review this for a while now. But we realized we would be hard pressed to come up with a review better than this one from AQ pal Roberto's Maelstrom Descent online magazine (www/maelstrom.nu) written by mysterious Maelstrom staffer The Condor: Not sure what it is that turned Solefald from their grim blackness into a goofy electronic/metal hybrid, then into a super technical genre hopping 'modern' black metal band and finally into a melancholic dark metal prog band. But whatever it is, I love it. Very few bands have been so interesting to watch and remained so totally unpredictable. While this unpredictability has not always served them well (the musical mis-step that was the sort of appalling Neonism) it has managed to keep them sonically original and served to alienate their core fan base with every new release. And c'mon, you gotta love a band with that sort of single mindedness. This time around their overt weirdness is blunted a bit and it serves them well. The songs are still weird, but subtlely, in structure and melody, rather than the brick-in-the-face, over the top weirdness of their past efforts. The sound here is melancholy and mournful, with lots of acoustic guitars and piano, chantlike clean vocals and really catchy hooks. The first band I thought of when I threw this on was definitely Katatonia. Midtempo minor key epics with gorgeously sorrowful melodies and amazing production. The occasional circusy/ prog rock keyboards or Gerry Rafferty (remember "Baker Street"?) saxophones won't let you forget that you're still listening to Solefald, and the once-in-a-while bursts of furious blast beats and growled guttural vocals help remind us that the band we're listening to was actually once a real black metal band. Not their best record by a long shot (that would be the amazing and fucked up Pills Against the Ancient Ills) nor the heaviest (that would be their debut, The Linear Scaffold) just a gorgeous chunk of sad heaviness, and the next perfectly illogical step in Solefald's musical evolution.

MPEG stream: Epictetus Irreversibility
MPEG stream: Mont Blanc Providence Crow

The first Solefald record 'The Linear Scaffold', knocked our fucking socks off. Furiously heavy and relentlessly crushing (with amazing cover art courtesy of Norwegian artist Odd Nerdrum). So we were so excited for the arrival of their second album 'Neonism' "We all know how difficult it is to cultivate good taste in music. If you do have good taste in music, of course you know about SOLEFALD! We are the only band in Metal music with good taste. But what about the music? Do we laugh at our music? Of course not. We are Metal's sensitive guys. You know us. We can safely affirm that NOTHING is more serious than our music. Yes, correct! We can even affirm that nothing is more IMPORTANT than our music! Our music is perfect. What does it mean that it is perfect? It means that you will die when you listen to it. Death will sweep you under Solefald's wings like seven winds sweep seven oak leaves swiftly away into the winter sky! But we can assure you: You will not die if you listen to our advice. Solefald believe it helps talking about the things that hurt. How can we help you? It is nothing Solefald want more than to be able to help you. Sit down and relax. Have something to drink, and try to forget about death. If you still feel bad, let us talk about it. We are good boys. Our music, though, is so perfect it is lethal. It is not our fault that we are just TOO good. Solefald dream about a happy life for everybody. That is why we make an effort to warn you. We warn you because we care about you. Because we want to live with you and everybody else in the best of all possible worlds! Be reasonable, burn our album before it burns you. We called it Red Music with Black Edges. We called it Radical Designer Rock'n'Roll. IT DID NOT HELP. THEY DIED ANYWAY." If only all records were this unpredictable and exciting and kick ass. Andee's metal record of the year for sure!!

RealAudio clip: Hyperman
RealAudio clip: Pornographer Chin
RealAudio clip: Charge Of Total Affect

Kick ass '70s proto-metal awesomeness alert! This Swedish band, who only managed one self-released LP back in 1976, combined hard rock panache with rough-edged rawness. This cd reissue is one we've been waiting for! Seriously, every time we do an order with the Mellotronen label over in Sweden (they're the folks responsible for that Charlie & Esdor reissue we love so much, among other things), we've been asking 'em, when are you gonna repress the Solid Ground? A cd reissue of Solid Ground's extremely rare Made In Rock album was actually the first thing their label ever did, but it had been out of print for years. Well, finally they got some bonus tracks rounded up and now present us with a new, deluxe version, in a digipack with liner notes from the band and all! It's a powerful mix of all things cool about rock in the '70s, from the swinging stoner boogie of Sabbath and Budgie and UFO to the glammy uber-catchiness of KISS and The Sweet to the melodic guitar heroics of Thin Lizzy... all done with almost punkish, sassy attitude and energy. And they've got some excellent, evocative of the era lyrics too, like these: "In the evening they go to discoteques / and drink champagne and listen to T-Rex / boys and girls look at each other / nothing happens no action no reactions" from the song "This Bloody Town". Meanwhile the production is in-your-face, plenty of distortion and reverb. HEAVY. Only 200 copies of the vinyl album were ever made, and the band eventually broke up in the wake of disco fever, a shame. The 8 added bonus tracks include the two songs from Solid Ground's sole single, two more from the 1974 single by pre-Solid Ground band 4-EVER, plus four -new- tracks recorded in 2006 that aren't half-bad... harking back to their old sound with one foot in more modern grunginess (due to having new, younger singer perhaps). It's neat that they're playing again anyway -- we sure wish we could have made it over to Mellotronen's big 20th anniversary bash last January which featured not just these guys but also the reunited likes of Mecki Mark Men, November, Life, Flasket Brinner and others!! Wow. NB. this Solid Ground are not to be confused with krautrockers My Solid Ground, another band from the '70s we love.

MPEG stream: Saturday Rae (Handrock)
MPEG stream: Tombstone Kiss

Pay attention, this may be confusing. First, look at the garish/ridiculous cover of this. A photoshopped (?) picture of a big, half-naked, long haired screaming man being tortured with a circular saw by a woman (?) in a spiky black wig. Spandex, leather, bullet belts, a toilet (with a foot sticking out?) are also part of the scene. Then take into account that this was released by Jussi of Circle's Ektro label, home of the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal, which isn't really heavy metal, not exactly - bands like Steel Mammoth, Krypt Axeripper and sometimes Pharaoh Overlord). So, is this yet another slice of NWOFHM weirdness? You might think so. Nope, it's an ACTUAL Finnish heavy metal band. Nobody from Circle is in this group. And it's not even their first album (Jussi told us about these guys a while ago, and Andee and Allan even tracked down copies of one their previous albums, Invasion Metropolis, for themselves on his recommendation). They're the real deal, they've been around since 1995! But they're still somehow in the same tongue in cheek, awesomely absurd vein as the NWOFMH, just more "pro" sounding, nothing but metal, and maybe not a joke. And it's on Ektro, so of course we've got it. And we'd want it anyway, 'cause Solitaire play utter '80s sounding speed metal, sounding like Swedish retro metallions Wolf gone way over the top, with less taste but more of a sense of humor. Or even thrashier (and trashier) version of Judas Priest's OTT classic Painkiller. It's all a bit chaotic and exhausting, a dense overdose of adrenaline and pure metal madness. Their frantic songs are packed with peals of guitar shred, hyperactive headbangin' riffs, Iron Maidenesque gallop, and screamin', screechin' vocals. Our favorite song titles here: "Rat Studded Maniac", "Leather Scream", and "I'm A Schizo (And So Am I)". It's obvious why Jussi likes 'em. Us too.

MPEG stream: Murder In The Broad Daylight
MPEG stream: Leather Scream
MPEG stream: I'm A Schizo (And So Am I)

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

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MPEG stream: Sick Man Lurking
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EPIC DOOM METAL. Nothing else better describes this band, the semi-legendary Solitude Aeturnus from Texas. In 1991 they debuted with this instant classic release. Back then, and even now, not too many bands were doing this style of metal. Heavy, slow, and emotive, with soaring guitar lines and equally soaring vocals, wailing in melodic, melancholic metal majesty, backed by the sheer weight of riff after massive riff. Candlemass (and by way of them, Dio-era Black Sabbath) were the obvious role models, along with Trouble, Witchfinder General, and a handful of others. Solitude Aeturnus are still with us today, but their first album was perhaps their best. Anyone who digs Candlemass -- not to mention the cultish likes of Solstice, Doomsword, Memory Garden, Thunderstorm, While Heaven Wept and other practicioners of EPIC DOOM METAL -- probably needs to have this album in their collection, and now it has been at last reissued by Solitude Aeturnus guitarist John Perez's own Brainticket label. He deliberately chose not to "remaster" it, preferring to retain the album's original feel, but this disc does add three bonus tracks that will make fans drool.

MPEG stream: Where Angels Dare To Tread
MPEG stream: Mirror Of Sorrow (demo version)

Another slab of crushing doomy filthiness from the Choking Hazard label, who we first heard about via that kick ass Ghast / Yoga split, and who also just released the Moloch cd reviewed elsewhere on this list. Choking Hazard definitely have their niche, barring the anomaly of the Ghast / Yoga, it seems to be sludgey stonery crusty downtuned distorted drenched doom, whether it's groovy Eyehategod churn and crush, or pounding relentless ultrasludge, they got it covered. Hard to tell where Midwestern quartet Sollubi fall, they veer chaotically from super slow sludge, to pounding almost AmRep style noiserock, even a bit of drugged out space rock, often careening back and forth between the three in a single song. There's only there songs, but two of them clock in at over twenty minutes, the songs lock into pounding head banging grooves, seemingly looped, so hypnotic and heavy, "The White Witch" even adds some squiggly space-y effects, making it like the HEAVIEST space rock outro ever, and the outro lasts nearly 10 minutes. The title track is nearly a half hour of slow burning lope, the first half almost pretty, like a sludgey Low, until the song slips into some filthy slithery Killdozery chug, totally channeling old school Midwest thudrock, before spacing out and getting more and more abstract, slower and doomier, until the track finally, and begrudgingly, lurches to a halt. Awesome.

MPEG stream: In Violation
MPEG stream: The White Witch

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

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

First album (from '94) by Albion's masters of epic Celtic/cosmic doom metal. It's nothing compared to their more recent masterpiece "New Dark Age" but if you're a fan already, check out their plenty heavy beginnings. Reissued with the artwork altered to look more like that of "New Dark Age" -- a pretty cheesy move on the part of their old record label!

Originally released back in 1998 on the fabled Misanthropy label, this terminal masterpiece from England's truest champions of epic DOOM, Solstice (R.I.P.?), has now at long last been reissued, with two bonus tracks to boot. Old fans can take pleasure in purchasing this again (because it's an album so good, you'll WANT to buy it twice, so maybe you can fool yourself into that feeling of hearing it for the first time) and those that missed it the first go-round now have a chance to prove themselves as discerning metalheads. When we first reviewed this, we said it was a grower. A record we came to consider one of the best of that year, of any year. In the near-decade since, this has only gained greater stature. In the realm of true metal, of epic metal, of doom metal, of pagan metal, of just plain pure heavy metal -- we proclaim New Dark Age to be an all-time classic. And believe us, few other albums from the late nineties qualify in that regard. Such riffs. Such sheer heaviness -- heaviness that actually seems to be signifying something. Such FEELING. This is possibly the apex of epic doom. The guitar leads and harmonies are to die for, the sad Celtic-folk motifs and Lovecraftian lyrics of weird fantasy argue for an ancient intellect at work. The clean, somewhat delicate vocals of Morris Ingram and his abstruse vocabulary ("vermivorous", "tervous", "perpetuum", "axiom abhorrent, protean triumvirate"?) are at first a bit odd, but ultimately utterly fitting with the sombre and arcane, monolithic and melodically grand mood of this album. Certainly his performance on the acoustic "Blackthorne" would make any fan of '70s Brit-folk weep, while the other, fully amped tracks will make headbangers ready to both shed tears and storm the proverbial castle. FYI, the bonus cuts consist of two NWOBMH covers ("The Prophecy" by Iron Maiden and "Stormchild" by Trespass). Cylcone Empire has also reissued Solstice's two prior discs, Lamentations and Halcyon, just like this one remastered, with bonuses, new liner notes and layout. We've got those as well and will get 'em listed when we can -- they're good too but THIS is definitely Solstice's finest. Have we really heard the last of Solstice? Rumor has it that guitarist Rich Walker is assembling a new line-up, possibly featuring the singer from Primordial, to do a new album. If it actually happens we'll be eager to hear it, though it's hard to imagine they could ever top this!

MPEG stream: Hammer Of Damnation
MPEG stream: Cimmerian Codex
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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY.

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

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

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

MPEG stream: The Forest
MPEG stream: La Nuit

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SORRY. A super fuzzed out, drug addled psychedelic 25 minute blast of flower power stoner rock from Japan. Huge riffs that groove and slither like the best sun baked stoner rock you've heard (Kyuss, Nebula, Fu Manchu). Not super original, but who cares when it's this groovy and this heavy and this rocking. All instrumental, so there's no vocals to muck up the works. Features members of serial killer obsessed Japanese stoner-sludge lords Church of Misery. One of those rare metal records that everybody here at AQ seems to dig.

MPEG stream: Cosmic Highway
MPEG stream: Black Sunshine

Stoner rock, anyone? But not just any ol' stoner rock. What this trio from up in Portland, Sons Of Huns has going for 'em, besides being darn heavy, is that they RIP. As is amply (and amp-ly!) demonstrated on this, their debut full-length for the newly dominating Easyrider label. We've heard lots of stoner rock bands content with making your head nod, these guys will have it not just 'banging but spinning 'round. They play slow, sure, but also they play FAST, so there'll be the usual lumbering stoner riffage that will suddenly shift into overdrive, no longer lumbering but shredding, the instrumental interplay tight and tenacious. With fuzzed out '70s sounding riffs (great riffs), air guitar worthy solos, and swinging rhythms, like most bands in the genre, they're beholden to Black Sabbath, but these guys remember when Sabbath was basically a (heavy) prog band, jamming hard. So imagine if, like, Sleep had started to sound more like Stinking Lizaveta... Sons Of Huns are kinda like that, it's ADD stoner rock, lots of parts and changes and sheer MUSIC on here, these guys always keeping it interesting, with chops galore, nothing lazy 'bout 'em despite the (presumed) pot smoking. In fact, that's a good tag for 'em, pot smoking music that's SMOKIN''!! The eleven tracks here offer a fair amount of variety: heck, the gonzo punked out rippage of "I'm Your Dad" is followed by the mellow-jazz instrumental interlude of "Waking Sleep"� there's stuff that's aligned with the stoner skate rock of bands like The Shrine and Hot Lunch, other moments more Melvinsy (somehow mixed with a little Dick Dale, on the epic "Super Kanpai Rainbow"), and oh yeah the rollicking retro proto-metal prog of fellow Portlanders Danava is obviously a good reference point too. And then we're back to the Sabbath again. Sons Of Huns in a word: Badass.

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MPEG stream: Heliolith
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Reliable sorts these Canadians are, aren't they? The Sons Of Otis are back, and fans (like us!) of their monolithic stoner rock / blues / doom will not be disappointed. It's all here on their fifth full-length album. Lumbering fuzzed out riffs, check. Spacey electronic atmospheres, check. Glacial pace, check. Psychedelic soloing, check. Heavier than thou jamming, check. Feedback, check. Gravelly, effects-laden, echoey vocals, check. Drugs, check (we're pretty sure!). They even continue their tradition of including super stoned sounding cover versions of classic tracks by their old school influences, this time 'round giving the Sons Of Otis treatment to two faves: Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Cry For The Bad Man" (here titled "Bad Man") and Motorhead's "Iron Horse"! In both cases it's like the original has been dipped in tar, dosed with drugs, and slowed down to 16rpm, especially "Iron Horse" which segues into a billowing dense ambient drone definitely not derived from the original Motorhead composition, the whole track lasting over 18 minutes! The Otis originals here will (slowly) kick yr ass too. "Haters" starts things off with a scowl, and they don't lighten up much... later on "Tales Of Otis" enters into almost Khanate-like ultra-doom territory, and it's hard to tell if Sons Of Otis are trying to take off into outer space or burrow deep into the earth. Definitely (as always) for fans of UFOmammut, Electric Wizard, Boris... and for folks who'd like to know what it would sound like if Monster Magnet mated with the Melvins. It's hard to know what else to say, either you're a fan of this and every other Sons Of Otis album, or you need to take more drugs.

MPEG stream: Lost Soul
MPEG stream: Bad Man

That's an aptly chosen title, as you should probably make sure your place has been seismically retrofitted before turning this up loud! Canada's space lords of lumbering, fuzzed out stoner rock / doom metal have returned with a new album, their sixth, which continues in the mesmerically massive, heavier-than-thou mold of past classics of theirs like Temple Ball and Songs For Worship. Once more, huge waves of repetitive, echo-effected, amplified sound surge forth, with the gruff vocals (a hacking gargle, doubtless sweet leaf damaged) and slow sludgey guitar riffs melding and melting in the spaciest, heaviest, most drugged out and distorted display of sheer stoner doom this side of Italy's UFOmammut, with whom Sons Of Otis share many similarities. Or imagine early Monster Magnet jamming (to the death) with Electric Wizard, all effects fully cranked. But we probably don't need to tell you any of that, 'cause any aQ-shopping connoisseur of 'the heavy' probably already has the Sons Of Otis spaceship/deathstar on their radar already, pinging away ominously... They've been doing this for 20 years now, after all! The trio's honest allegiance to classic rawk / blues / psych is still quite evident, their warped, wailing cover of a song by '70s rockers Mountain on here ("Never In My Life" - they already did "Mississippi Queen" on Temple Ball) joining past interpretations of tracks by the likes of Hendrix, Motorhead, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Saint Vitus and Steppenwolf in the Sons Of Otis catalog. "More cowbell!" is all we can say. Into the future, out of the past, Sons Of Otis do their granddaddies proud while rocketing off into space, the album culminating in a lengthy "Cosmic Jam" that naturally makes us think of another aQ fave, Earthless.

MPEG stream: Far From Fine
MPEG stream: Alone
MPEG stream: Never In My Life

Massive, spacey, druggy stoner rock -- for a visual analogy, imagine the big black alien monolith from 2001 if it was actually a giant space-bong. This Canadian band follows up their Man's Ruin releases ("Templeball" being one of the heavier highlights of the

RealAudio clip: Losin' It
RealAudio clip: In From The Storm

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SORRY. From the barren tundra to the north (Toronto), comes the Sons Of Otis (formerly just Otis); lumbering heaviosity shackled to stoned and droned spaciness. Think the Melvins, Black Sabbath, Hawkwind. Take just the spaced out jams from Monster Magnet songs, stretch them out even further, add even more fuzz and echo, and voila. And, they cover both Mountain and Saint Vitus!!

Worshippers of all that is heavy, get ready for the return of Canada's stoner ambassadors, the Sons Of Otis! Their new, fourth album, simply titled X (which I guess could be the Roman numeral ten, but would that make any sense?), is another dose of their, uh, stoned spacey blues-based psychedelic heavy drug-rawk... good stuff for fans of Monster Magnet, Hawkwind, Ufomammut, and the doomier likes of Electric Wizard and St. Vitus! With heavily effected vocals (is the singer even in there somewhere we start to wonder?), Orange amps vibrating in the void, riffage reverberating raw and run-down, this is stoner rock at its darkest and most dazedly wandering, slow and plodding. Is there life in outer space? It's hard to tell from this record. Recorded by (of course) Billy Anderson, this album ends with a fourteen-minute opus that seems even longer, not that you'll want it to end, entitled "Liquid Jam". It is indeed. Not that there's any *short* songs on here at all. X also includes includes their superbly slo-mo, Funhouse-ish cover of "The Pusher" by Steppenwolf (previously on a picture disc 10" they did a few years ago, but this may be a new version though), further underlining, however needlessly, the band's heavy '60s psych/drug direction. Yup, dunno who Otis is, but if these are his kids, he obviously failed to have that parental say no to drugs talk with 'em...

MPEG stream: Way I Feel
MPEG stream: Help Me

This is the debut full length from Atlanta sludge pop crust punks Sons Of Tonatiuh, who unfurl the sort of hook filled heaviness we can't ever seem to get enough of. The label compare these guys to Sourvein, Iron Monkey, Eyehategod and Weedeater, and yeah, that definitely fits these guys, the lurching downtuned sludge, the chugging churning riffage, the throat shredding vox, but what these guys also have is a serious knack for infusing their rib cage rattling stoner sludge with some serious pop, it's not always obvious, in fact it rarely is, but the band will flit from lumbering doom-ic creep, to relentless crust metal pound without blinking an eye, and then suddenly unfurl THEE catchiest riff you've ever heard, before pulverizing it a second later with an avalanche of crumbling, distorted crush. And that's really what makes this stuff so good, the 'poppy bits' are black hole heavy, to the point of disguising said poppiness from the casual listener, and the heavy parts are subtly poppy, but not so much as to distract from, the pounding and riffing, cuz, c'mon, this is first and foremost some seriously and supremely heavy doom/dirge/sludge, it's just that there's more going on than bash and crash, the thick tarpit riffage and caveman pound hiding plenty of melody and twisted songcraft, which is pretty rare in a band like this. Recommended for fans of the above mentioned sludge outfits of course, but if you dig stuff like Torche, Floor, Capsule, and Tweak Bird, and are down for something a wee bit sludgier, this just might hit the spot...

MPEG stream: To The Throne
MPEG stream: Den Of Thieves
MPEG stream: Consumed

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

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

[ aquarius records — Metal ]