[ 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 4801 through 4850 of 5570.

We were WAY skeptical of the claim that Tiger Throat sounded like "an Instrumental Bone Awl thrown into a blender with Mono and HEALTH", but it kind of really does, and even though such a description would piss off the misanthropic Bone Awl, we're pretty into it. This are only three songs (even though there are 10 actual tracks, the rest are weird noisy interludes), but those 3 songs cram in a crazy amount of wild spastic drumming, frenetic buzzing riffage, and all manner of blown out glitch and skitter. The record opens with a soaring almost Cave-like fuzzy hypno krautrock workout, pounding and epic and melodic but still pretty raw and frenzied, until part way through the track crumbles, the song lurching through a field of downtuned guitar groan, grinding effects, backwards drumming, only to explode in an almost D-beat blast, while somehow remaining poppy as fuck, like a more fractured and melodic Ancestors? Whatever you compare these guys to, it works, the track winds down into something more slowcore and post rock, all loping drums and sprawling downtuned buzz. All kinds of sounds worm into the mix. And even though it thrashes pretty hard, it's also catchy and sort of fun. Plenty of weird electronic parts (the HEALTH influence) mixed with the aforementioned thrashy, punkish energy. Pretty unique in parts, pretty psychedelic and very melodic. The second track is way more dirgey and doomy, but in a sort of spaced out post rock way, the guitar shimmering and ringing out, not really distorted, the drums WAY in the red, very practice space sounding, until the track shifts gears and the guitars explode, and vocals come in, super processed and warped, the whole track music and vocals seems to undulate and twist, like a sonic funhouse mirror, but it's also probably the blackest moment on the record, it goes on for a few minutes, but we were sort of wishing it would KEEP going. So rad. The final track opens with a mathy manic start stop, you can hear a band member breathlessly counting it off in the background, the result is a lurching squelchy skronky no wave-ish electronic noise rock jam, that gets more and more dense and harsh as the track progresses, finally spilling into a rad hypnotic dirge, the guitars are all overblown while the drumming is teetering on the edge of distorting, the track winding up with a cool staccato grinding metallic outro. Probably not metal enough for most metal heads, even with the Bone Awl / Ancestors references, it's obvious from the artwork and band name that the black metal influence, while definitely there, is more sort of abstract and just another part of the noise, that said, adventurous metalheads line up here, and for the rest of you, who dig noisy, hooky, electronic, metallic, psych rock weirdness, this is WAY recommended.

MPEG stream: An Arch Between Two Crossings
MPEG stream: This Brave Waning Light

From the same label that brough us the amazing September Songs tape from Souvenir's Young America comes another blast of furious rock, this time, not epic metallic post rock, instead, Virginia's Tigershark traffic in old school post punk noiserock with a bit of a metal bent. AmRep, Jehu, Dazzling Killmen, you know, grinding angular guitars, big riffs, convoluted rhythms and crushing drumming, howled vocals, tons of lurching breakdowns, stop start arrangements. Not a lot of bands do this sort of stuff any more and it's a real shame, cuz listening to this band totally hit the spot, it had us fighting the urge to head bang and air guitar like it was 1995 all over again. The label mentions bands like The�Melvins, His Hero Is Gone, Akimbo, Baroness, and sure, we hear some of that, but it's much more classic sounding, heavy and catchy, intense and brutal, weird enough to keep it interesting, but not so much 'experimental' as creative and original. A fresh new take on an old sound that we had been missing like crazy.� LIMITED TO 200 COPIES. On blood red cassettes with super pro full color artwork.

A few weeks ago we got a killer batch of 'metal' tapes from Hospital Productions, two of which we reviewed, the 2nd album from Vegas Martyrs, and the debut from death-obsessed doom flecked black metal weirdos Curved Blade, both of which sold out and went out of print crazy quick. In the same batch we also got two other releases, twisted lo-fi outsider sci-fi death metal weirdness from a band called Time Crypt, and super blown out noise metal damage from Terrorism. The bummer is that we intended to check these out, and then order more to review, but before we knew it, both of these were sold out and out of print as well. But we do still have THREE copies of each, they're both bizarre and baffling and perfect for folks into fucked up confusional metal, so at least a few folks will get to check them out... Time Crypt unleash a stumbling blast of midtempo lo-fi blackened death metal, the guitars jagged and buzzy, the drums buried in the mix, the vocals a snarly grunt one minute, a reverbed bellow the next, there are occasional bursts of frenzied blast, but they quickly collapse into more lurching lumbering chug and churn, some weird little bits of keyboard surface here and there, the production is damaged and off kilter and perfectly fits the music, which is chaotic and trancey and buzzy and bizarre. We're digging this big time. Too bad we only have 3 copies... Also features some killer dead astronaut artwork! ----* ----* In Stock, Not Yet Reviewed : ----* If you want to order one of these, just search for the item, then click on the buy button and it will be added to your cart! A SUNNY DAY IN GLASSGOW "Autumn, Again" (self-released) lp 15.98 AGALLOCH "Marrow Of The Spirit" (Profound Lore) cd 11.98 ANBB (ALVA NOTO & BLIXA BARGELD) "Mimikry" (Raster-Noton) cd/2x12" 17.98/25.00 ANWORTH KIRK "s/t" (Pre-Cert) lp 19.98 ASSS "August 2010" (self-released) cassette 5.00 AVEY TARE "Down There" (Paw Tracks) cd/lp 14.98/17.98 BAD TRIPS "Open" (Rocketship) lp 15.98 BEACH FOSSILS "Face It / Distance" (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98 BIRKIN, JANE "Di Doo Dah" (Light In The Attic) cd/2lp 16.98/22.00 BLACK HEART PROCESSION, THE "Blood Bunny / Black Rabbit" (Temporary Residence) cd/lp 12.98/14.98 BLACK MOUNTAIN "Wilderness Heart" (Jagjaguwar) cd 14.98 BLANK DOGS "Land And Fixed" (Captured Tracks) cd/lp 13.98/16.98 BLUE WATER WHITE DEATH "s/t" (Graveface) cd/lp 13.98 BROKENCYDE "Will Never Die" (Breaksilence Recordings) cd 14.98 CALL BACK THE GIANTS "s/t" (Kye) lp 16.98 CINDYTALK "The Poetry Of Decay" (Editions Mego) lp 32.00 CRAFT SPELLS "Party Talk / Ramona" (Captured Tracks) 7" 6.98 DOLPHY, ERIC "Out To Lunch" (Blue Note) lp 12.98 DRUIDS OF STONEHENGE "Creation" (Axis) cd 17.98 ENO, BRIAN WITH JON HOPKINS & LEO ABRAHAMS "Small Craft On A Milk Sea" (Warp) cd 14.98 EXCEPTER "Late" (Woodsist) 12" 14.98 FAUST "71 Minutes" (ReR) 2lp 38.00 FENN O'BERG "Live In Japan Part One" (Editions Mego) lp 21.00 FENN O'BERG "Live In Japan Part Two" (Editions Mego) lp 21.00 FJELLSTROM, MARCUS "Schattenspieler" (Miasmah) lp 19.98 GAUNTLET HAIR "Out...Don't" (Mexican Summer) 7" 5.98 GIRLS AT DAWN "Call The Doctor" (Norton) cd 14.98 GIRLS NAMES / BRILLIANT COLORS "I Lose / You Win" (Slumberland) 7" 4.98 GREEN, CEE-LO "Lady Killer" (Elektra) cd 16.98 HOLTKAMP, KOEN "Gravity/Bees" (Thrill Jockey) lp 14.98 HOWELL, PETER & JOHN FERDINANDO "Tomorrow Come Someday" (Acme) cd+dvd 17.98 IMAGINARY SOFTWOODS "s/t" (Digitalis) lp 33.00 INTERNATIONAL HELLO "s/t" (Holy Mountain) lp 14.98 INVADERS "There's A Light There's A Way" (Fresh) cd 17.98 IRON BUTTERFLY "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" (Atco) lp 12.98 JEFFERTITTI'S NILE "Hypnotic Rivers Of Sound" (Jnile) lp 9.98 KAREL, ERNST "Heard Laboratories" (And/Oar) cd 14.98 KRIEG "The Isolationist" (Candlelight) cd 14.98 LAZER SWORD "Batman" (Innovative Leisure) 12" 9.98 LAZER SWORD "s/t" (Innovative Leisure) cd 15.98 LEE, DAVID JR. "Evolution" (Universal Sound) cd/lp 19.98/24.00 LESSER / MATMOS / WOBBLY "Simultaneous Quodlibet" (Important Records) lp 17.98 LOWBROW READER OF BASEMENT BROW COMEDY "Issue #8" zine 3.00 MADLIB "Medicine Show No.10 - Black Soul" (Madlib) cd 17.98 MELECHESH "Epigenesis" (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98 MONARCH "Sabbat Noir" (Heathen Skulls) cd 14.98 NADJA "White Nights / Drone Fields" (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2xdvd 22.00 NECROMANDUS "Orexis of Death & Live" (Rise Above Records) cd 24.00 OLYMPUS "Bob Mould" (Soft Abuse) lp 14.98 PHANTOM PAYN DAYS "s/t" (De Stiijl) lp 17.98 RUNNING "s/t" (Permanent) lp 16.98 SETI-X "Scrambles Of Earth" (Seeland) cd SHINDIG! "#19" magazine 8.98 SISTOL (VLADISLAV DELAY) "Remasters & Remakes" (Phthalo / Halo Cyan) 2cd 14.98 STELLAR OM SOURCE "Trilogy Select" (Olde English Spelling Bee) lp 17.98 STEVENS, SUFJAN "The Age of Adz" (Asthmatic Kitty) cd/2lp 14.98/29.00 TOBACCO "La Uti" (Anticon) 12" picture disc 15.98 TORSKE, BJORN "Kokning" (Smalltown Supersound) cd 17.98 UNTOLD "Come Follow Me" (Soul Jazz) 12" 10.98 V/A "Great Googly Moo" (Ace) cd 16.98 V/A "I Love Techno 2010" (Lektro) cd 17.98 V/A "Peruvian Funk" (Secret Stash) lp 20.00 V/A "Riddim Box Vol.1" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00 V/A "Riddim Box Vol.2" (Soul Jazz) 2lp 24.00 V/A "Riddim Box" (Soul Jazz) 2cd 21.00 WILD NOTHING "Golden Haze" (Captured Tracks) cd 10.98 _______________________________________________________________________ Please place your order via our website. [1] We will contact you to verify your order and let you know when it will be shipped. Please note that occasionally it may take a day or two for us to reply. We are not a faceless bunch of computers replying to your order -- we are human beings! [2] If we are out of some of your items and we think we will get them within the same week, we can wait to ship. Or... If it's going to be more than a few days to complete your order, we will ship what we have and then will contact you as the remainders arrive. [ note ] Due to the everchanging nature of the independent record business, we are not responsible for listed price changes (due to supplier price changes) and often cannot update our site fast enough to reflect these changes, but we will always try to let you know of any differences.

Holy crap is this mind blowing stuff, everything ever recorded by this group of super obscure, early nineties sci-fi death metal weirdos from Missouri, who offer up the sort of bizarre, murky, mathy death metal, we can't ever seem to get enough of. Sprawling, churning, chugging epics, that lurch from doomy death march trudge to stumbling barreling blasts, often devolving into near psychedelic creeps, replete with strange chanted clean vocals, the drums muted and muffled, a furious pulsing pound throughout,comparisons could certainly get made to other sonically similar death metal outfits of the time, but in a way, it seems like death metal doesn't get a fair shake around aQ. It seems to us, that lots of folks who are obsessed with black metal, and doom metal, would fall in love with death metal too, if just introduced to the RIGHT records, or the RIGHT bands, specifically, the weirder, more warped strains of death metal, and it doesn't get much weirder or more warped than Timeghoul, who obviously found inspiration in classic old school death metal, but in crafting their own take, managed to transform the usual guttural grinding heaviness into something almost avant garde. Sure there's the sci-fi aspect, the themes, the lyrics, the imagery, all of which is super cool, but other bands have definitely dabbled in similar imagery, the magic is that somehow these guys conjured up that same sort of arcane experimental sci-fi weirdness with the music too! Sure the usual death metal tropes are present, furious downtuned riffing, grunted cookie monster vocals, furious blast beats, but the songs are super complex, and not just that, but convoluted as well, blasts stumbling to a near halt, only to stutter weirdly and then careen off in a wildly metallic gallop, or to sort of bliss out completely and shift to a slo-mo creep, and just as often locking into pure tranced out blasting death metal mesmer. And it's not just the structure, or the sound, it's the timbre, murky and muffled, weirdly reverby and echoey, the vocals too, not your typical DM grunt, much more monstrous and weirdly melodic, and when the clean vocals come in, definitely something you rarely here in death metal. There's also some weird almost sing songy grooves, some stretches that sounds like Cannibal Corpse sea shanties, all woozy and bouncy, swaddled in wild tangled shred-heavy leads, we're reminded a bit of the super tripped out early Esoteric records, only if they played death metal instead of doom. Similarly warped outsider sonic thinking it seems. This collection combines the group's two demos, with a second disc of rehearsals, live tracks, and their very first ever 4 track recordings. The first disc is non stop weirdo sci-fi death metal freak out radness, the second demo dramatically different than the first, trading much of the murk in for a sound that manages to be even more dizzying and demented, SUPER progged out and seriously next level. And while the actual sound is closer to their death metal compatriots, the song structures, arrangements, clean vocals, weird psychedelic stretches, all remain to make sure this is not your normal run of the mill death metal. So all you death metal phobes, open your mind, you'll likely be rewarded by some seriously twisted and crushing heaviness. We'd recommend Timeghoul along with groups like diSEMBOWELMENT and Gorguts' Obscura as some sort of outsider death metal primer. Fucking RULING! Worth it for the first disc alone. The bonus tracks are even weirder and more fucked up, due in part to the varying levels of sound quality, the 4 track recordings are murky and muddy, blurry and buzzy, with some super cool blown out effects, and some of the songs, SO good, too bad they never got recorded properly, but they're almost perfect in this form. The live tracks are near Merzbowian in their speaker shredding intensity, and weirdly, the rehearsals sound almost as good as the demos proper. And the crazy thing is, as much as we love the first disc, and we do, a LOT, we find ourselves listening to the second disc even more, fucked up and totally bafflingly brilliant! Includes extensive liner notes, lyrics, the original demo covers, and killer new cover art by metal artist Mark Riddick.

MPEG stream: Rain Wound
MPEG stream: The Seige
MPEG stream: Boiling In The Hourglass
MPEG stream: Fever Of Grief (First 4track Recording - 1989)

add to cart [/images/addtocart.gif]/af4105.html Imagine if you could have a band that was just the best parts of, say, DestrucTION, KreaTOR, GorgorOTH, and EnslavED. Or maybe even SuffocaTION, AnnihilaTOR, MorgOTH, and DeceasED. Well, imagine no more. TIONTOROTHED arrive to usher in THE END of all good metal. The first band that is simultaneously genre defying AND genre defining. Like the END of every classic metal song, the END of every classic album, all seamlessly joined together into the ultimate metal band, the sort of band that in name and in deed represent THE END of all good metal!

MPEG stream: Altars Of Pleasure
MPEG stream: Infernal Damnation Overkill

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

MPEG stream: track 1
MPEG stream: track 3

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

MPEG stream: "Pilzmarmelade
MPEG stream: "Pilzmarmelade

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

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

"Reissue of the Five Tjolgtjarian Keys + The Gate To Vruguun (2003) and Nuun Raaguun Skuulkuun (2002) Demos comes with a Bonus Track "Devil,Take Me" and marks the first time these recordings have been pressed to CD"

MPEG stream: The Second Key - Mysterion
MPEG stream: The Third Key - Therinium

We've never really listed any releases by Midwestern lo-fi black metal combo Tjolgtjar, at least not knowingly. Let your mind wander back a list or two, to a band called Xexyz, a bizarre stumblingly blackened horde who employed a Nintendo game system in lieu of a keyboard, even going so far as to cover (or re-imagine) their favorite 8-bit video game theme songs, transforming them into a truly freaked out bleeping buzzing black metal. Well, we later discovered that this Xexyz band, was in fact essentially a permutation of mighty Midwestern black metal warriors Tjolgtjar. Which makes a lot of sense when you hear their latest, Halloween, a tribute of sorts to the classic eighties slasher flick of the same name. And it's another far out, what-the-fuck blast of damaged and demented black metal. Made even moreso by the fact that about half of the tracks are in fact blackened versions of music from the movie. The opener will be immediately recognizable to anyone who was a horror movie obsessed nerd in the eighties, that ubiquitous theme song, here rendered in buzzing guitar and pounding drums, complete with relentless double kicks WAY down in the mix. Fucking genius. Track two is more incidental music from the movie, that creepy, stalking song that kept surfacing throughout the movie, here incorporated into the bands buzzing black verses, an ultra lo-fi riff beneath harsh gargled vocals, but always returning to that theme. Still sends shivers up our spines, and somehow it sounds even scarier all blackened up. It's hard to always tell which bits are actually from the movie, some parts are obvious, but it all sounds ultra creepy and like perfect horror movie music. We still wonder why someone hasn't had some grim black metal band score their film. Someday... The rest of the record blasts through various motifs from the movie, usually set amidst stumbling black blasts of grim buzz, a couple tracks are just creeped out keyboard ambience, haunting and droney, with bits of dialogue from the movie popping up here and there, truly spooky. And so fucking brilliant. And demented. Dementedly brilliant! Anyone who bought that Xexyz disc NEEDS this, and should probably pick up any Tjolgtjar they can find. We'll definitely be listing more in the near future. And be sure to stick around for the bonus track, an unbelievably annoying metallized version of that song the kids sing in the movie "Eight more days to Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...", gradually counting down the days until it's "No more days til Halloween...". Ssssssscary...

MPEG stream: Night Of The Living Dead
MPEG stream: Judith Myers
MPEG stream: Mask Of Michael Myers
MPEG stream: The Myers House

MPEG stream: The Ceremony Of Tjolgtar
MPEG stream: Exorcism Spell

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

SORRY.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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"Blue Blood" is the second live album from the twisted math-metal band Today Is The Day. Recorded while on tour in support of their Relapse debut "Temple Of The Morning Star" at Okay's Corral in Madison, Wisconsin in 1998, this set featured Today Is The Day mastermind Steve Austin on guitar, voice, samples, and bass, backed by Chris Reeser on keyboards and Brad Elrod on drums. Always an amazing live band, Today Is The Day cranks out an impressive set, colliding methamphetamine laced metalcore riffs with complex rhythmic onslaughts. Most of the tracks come from the aforementioned "Temple" album with a couple older tracks from their AmRep days, but nevertheless finds Today Is The Day in their more recent demonic / Satanic persona. While the sound quality is pretty good, "Blue Blood" appears to be a board mix as the vocals are pretty loud, while the guitars a bit soft. A minor criticism, though.

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Ready for another sound beating from this misanthropic and rather artsy metalcore outfit, who're always an AQ fave? Their last album, Sadness Will Prevail, was a sprawling, sometimes flawed masterpiece of moody, metallic experimentation. With Kiss The Pig, the Steve Austin Trio offer up a more concentrated dose of blasting, misanthropic ugliness and art, with song titles like "This Machine Kills Fascists" and "Bees Wax And Star Wars". Emotionally and musically extreme, it's a dissonant, mathy drubbing for the ears, fast and fierce, influenced by hardcore and black metal. The vocal effect used on Austin's vocals makes him sound like a troop of evil, witchy munchkins storming the gates of some tiny castle...like the music, distorted, insane!

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A live album from an amazing live band. Guitarist / vocalist / producer / mastermind Steve Austin's fucked up super heavy and twisted "metal" band is at its most intense on stage, and this is the (paradoxically?) recorded proof. Math-metal, hardcore, sampling, keyboards, anti-social anger and frustration: all these elements and more collide in Today Is The Day's energetic, ugly, complex, like-none-other sound. Some humor too, as there's unlikely cover versions of "Wicked Game", "Why Don't We Do It In The Road", and "Feel Like Makin' Love" on here alongside a slew of their own psycho-negative metallic toons (mostly drawn from Today Is The Day's more recent, more Satanic albums rather than from their earlier, pre-Relapse AmRep days).

Praise be! Steve Austin and co. are back, delivering another dose of their unique brand of Satanic math-metallic noise. Sprawling over two discs (labelled X and Y), these tracks are less like songs proper than sonic symptoms of Today Is The Day's aesthetic and philosophical ideas -- and, especially, their darkest emotions. With wretched rasping vokills, crushing doom riffs, maniac outbursts, and scary, atmospheric sample-littered soundscapes (normally we frown on samples we can recognize, but it *was* neat to hear the bit from Coven, y'know, from American Movie), Today Is The Day convey some dark feelings indeed. The metal parts are quite devastating, but it's perhaps the moodier elements that make this album so striking and creepy. Bass rumble and glitchy electronic synth noise are paired with sad piano tinklings, acoustic guitars are strummed in a backwoods night-time ritual, and there's even some honest-to-god melodic singing (as on the deathly-piano-ballad "Death Requiem" or the great Alice Cooper/Devil Doll styled track "Invincible", reprised from TITD's split cd with 16). Several of us here at AQ have been TITD fans for a long time, all the way back to their sadly out-of-print "Supernova" debut on the Amphetamine Reptile label. Their rebirth on Relapse (three albums ago) moved them in a decidedly heavier, brutal direction, but, as made plain on "Sadness Will Prevail", their experimental, artistic impulses remain strong. In some ways, the closest thing we can compare this to is the mighty Oxbow, colliding with the likes of Coalesce and Old Man Gloom perhaps. Easily a contender for "metal" (but not at all entirely metal) record of the year. There's certainly a lot here to like. Some of the production is more lo-fi than we'd expect from Mr. Austin (a well-known producer outside of this TITD career) but still manages to dangle us dangerously at the gaping mouth of hell! And wait for the hidden track at the end of disc two, wherein Austin fucks with some brutal black metal, which just happens to be from the upcoming Leviathan album on Andee's tUMULt label!

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Been meaning to get to this one for a while, it's something we absolutely *had* to highlight eventually, the long-overdue reissue of the crucial first album by this now veteran, always visionary noise rock/metal outfit. Mainman Steve Austin (vocals/guitars) has led a vast variety of TITD lineups over the years, having made eight studio albums to date, and Supernova is where it all started. When this first came out back in 1993 on the now-defunct Amphetamine Reptile label, we were immediately entranced and in fact almost frightened by this band's (at the time) fairly unique blend of atmospheric/ambient weirdness (via surreal sampling), melody, and heavy/hard rock action. Surely the most Satanic thing AmRep ever released, next to the God Bullies. Also, at the time, we'd have compared it to the likes of Steel Pole Bathtub, Oxbow, Engine Kid, Neurosis, Pain Teens... more recently, Old Man Gloom maybe. Supernova's dozen tracks are full of both sheer beauty and terror; cruel, cryptic, compelling. It's a genius avant-metal mutation, ultimately more metallic than we knew back then (perhaps pioneering the "noisecore" genre), the band's violent hardcore/postrock riffage and distorted, angry vokills being moodily morphed with all manner of psychedelic sound FX fuckery and chaotic layers of vocal mumble and chatter, buried in the mix like crossed wires or intercepted transmissions... there's also stretches of proggily Frippish guitar, synth bleep, unidentifiable field recordings, including even some barnyard animal noises heard on one track. Today Is The Day keeps all this under control though, these are truly *songs*, mysterious and mayhemic but never too messy. The line between dreaminess, and nightmarishness, is often erased... they were definitely on to something here, as later output proved, Today Is The Day getting more overtly metal in later incarnations, maybe even more experimentally extreme, but never any more uniquely "Today Is The Day" than on Supernova. This digitally remastered reissue now comes in a digipack, and the artwork is slightly altered from the original, and there's two bonus tracks too (from the '93 AmRep 7" single, "I Bent Scared"), but otherwise it's the same Supernova we know and love. In a word: Recommended! Ok, now that that's finally out of the way (hey, it's always hardest to review the albums that you like the most, anxiously wanting to do 'em justice) we'll hopefully get to the *new* TITD album, Axis of Eden, soon. And also the same label's reissue of another TDID AmRep classic, Willpower, the ultra-intense follow-up to Supernova...

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In spite of sporting a designwork very much like the recent output from Kozik, this split between stalwart prognosticators of the apocalypse Today Is The Day and Kentucky's bass heavy grind core group Metatron is not on Man's Ruin (who did in fact go out of

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You would most definitely be forgiven for not expecting big things from a band called Todd. And you sure as shit would probably wouldn't expect something this fierce and heavy and fucked up. But once you realize these guys are on Riot Season, and that they count as members (or did at one time) guys from long time aQ faves Shit And Shine, then it all begins to make a bit more sense. Right down to the taking-the-piss monicker. And Todd most definitely have plenty in common with their way more tweaked and druggy countrymen S+S, but where S+S do their multiple drummered post Buttholes freak out thing, Todd are a bit more riffy and raw, still rhythmic and heavy and blown out and in the red, but more pounding and relentless, maybe more akin to Brainbombs and Rusted Shut and Twin Stumps and White Mice and the Mayyors, you get the drift, howled marble mouthed vox, riffs crumbling with distortion, so much so that half the time they just sound like a wall of fuzz, the bass a wash of bowel rattling rumble, the drums pounding and frantic, the band swing from unhinged Scratch Acid / Jesus Lizard noise rock, to seasick post rock groove, to lurching sludge-y doom, to full on filthy space rock trip outs, to repetitive, looped sounding dirge-y drug rock, there's even some warped twang flecked almost slowcore sounding drift, but even then, the vocals are unhinged, and the amps sound like they're gradually turning to some sort of black goo, and the band eventually stumble back into a filthy field of sonic broken glass and ear shredding pound and howl. Needless to say, if you dig Shit And Shine, Brainbombs, No Balls, Twin Stumps, Butthole Surfers, Rusted Shut, Oxbow, Hey Colossus, the Anals, Billy Bao, any of that sort of crusty, metallic, noise drenched filth, then these guys will definitely hit the spot.

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Another new I, Voidhanger treat. Although this is the first thing we've reviewed by 'em, some of us here have long been seriously obsessive fans of weirdo, avant/experimental black metal outfit Todesstoss (which means Deathblow), and pretty much everything about this band screams "what the fuck?", and thus essentially also screams AQUARIUS! There's the name, which is of course spelled with the German Eszett (way more kvlt than a dumb old umlaut). There's the cover, which features an anthropomorphic penguin, in a cosmic robe, standing above a human brain on a plinth, all within some sort of ruins. Oh and that's just the slipcover, the actual cover art is some sort of double polar bear, with one of it's head a crazy, human toothed iron skull, and a weird tenatacled brain emerging from a bloody hole in the middle of its back, oh and there are doggy dishes for both heads, and this is all taking place in some sort of stalactite-d cave. The artwork and band photos inside the booklet get even weirder. And hell we haven't even gotten to the music yet, which appropriately enough begins with some weird spate of tappy percussion, and creepy dripping sounds, then harmonica (!!), before exploding into a furious blast of blizzard blur, but within seconds, any semblance of traditional black buzz disappears in a cloud of dramatic over the top vocals, strange industrial thrum, the production blurry and abstract, the harmonica returns, and hell, we can't really do it justice, considering the first song alone is nearly 30 minutes long, and thus goes through about a million sonic permutations, all of them ridiculous and amazing, and while there are stretches of proper black metal, they are definitely in the minority, with the rest of the track careening wildly from Devil Doll like drama, to gnarled rhythmic psychedelia, to woozy, metallic shred, to jazzy, proggy freak out. Needless to say, it's totally fucked, and completely next level bonkers. We'd love to dig into the second song too, but that one's THIRTY FOUR minutes long, and goes through about the same number of sonic shifts, albeit, leaning a bit toward the dirtier side of the equation, but again, it's a bafflingly wild ride, and one that we imagine would have most traditional metalheads diving for the eject button. But we're guessing since you're reading the aQ list, and have made it this far in this over-long review, you might be just the sort of weirdo that this stuff is made for. The final track, super short in comparison (12 minutes) gets all sultry and slithery, a little bit electronic, and about as far removed from black metal as you could imagine, a sort of creepy cabaret, replete with woozy fretless bass, anguished Scott Walker with a lobotomy crooning, and ends up sounding like some demented Lynchian doom jazz. Needless to say, totally and unequivocally recommended.

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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.

We've been digging this band for a while, but weirdly enough this is the first record of theirs we've reviewed. When we first heard about Toil, they were described to us as a band that sounded "exactly like the Cure, only with harsh black metal vocals," which sounded pretty good to us, gloomy gothic, new wave indie rock with black metal vocals? Awesome. And it was! Things have changed a bit on Lullabies For Insects, the Cure vibe is still there (they do a Cure cover after all, more on that in a second), but the sound is more metal, more rocking, and if anything, Toil sound quite a bit like Lifelover, the same sort of strange juxtaposition of howling harsh vox and melodic almost indie sounding black metal. In fact, opener "Moth With Fractured Wings" is a dead ringer for Lifelover, which is not at all a bad thing, c'mon, there are a million bands who sound like Darkthrone, and more keep popping up every day, we're pretty psyched on all these bands exploring their poppier side. After a cool 5 minute noisdrone piece, the band launch into a depressive dirge, that musically reminds us of Urfaust, or Hypothermia, lilting, loping, the vocals still frayed and maniacal, but the music, so warm and melodic, with some cool breaks with clean guitar and drums. And then finally, the Cure cover, a pretty straight version of "Love Song", except for the vocals, which are insanely over the top, a shrieky demonic falsetto, totally at odds with the music, which is what makes it so ridiculous and so awesome! Cool packaging, one of those 3" cd's embedded in a normal cd sized plastic disc, with the artwork printed over the whole thing!

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MPEG stream: Porcelain Maggots

Of all the weird black metal tapes we've gotten recently, this just may be our absolute favorite. So much so, that Andee was thinking about getting in touch with the band to see if they wanted to do a record for tUMULt. The best way we can think of to describe Tomb Of... is maybe something like a black metal George Winston. Or Nortt making a record for Windham Hill. That's right. This is ambient funeral doom music, death, depression, misery, sorrow, but the instrumentation is mostly just piano and vocals! Seriously. And it still manages to sound bleak and miserable. Ominous and a little bit scary. Mournful minor key piano melodies beneath harsh hellish black metal vocals and rumbling guttural growls. Way in the distance soft swirls of faux strings or thick swells of sound, occasional guitar leads. It almost sounds like a mash up, the sound is at first so incongruous. But the more you listen, the more it sounds perfect. It makes all other singer songwriters, perched at their piano, seem totally pointless and inconsequential. This is so bleak and black and emotional. A super personal miserable missive from some dark lonely place. Fucking awesome. SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!!!

We went absolutely nuts for the last record by this UK via Greece ambient doom one man band, a baffling mix of Windham Hill like piano, and harsh hateful demonic growls. As if George Winston were possessed by the spirit of Satan. Simultaneously soothing and dreamy, ominous and so very black. The combination of piano and vocals was so simple, yet so intense and emotional, a bastardized take on the singer songwriter, a lonely soul expressing sadness and misery through music, but placing it in a black ambient context. We sold tons and it even compelled Andee to get in touch with the band to see about releasing a record on tUMULt. So here is the follow up to ...The Rotting Break, and while in some ways it is sonically similar, it is different enough to be exciting and new. This time instead of piano, it's huge expanses of sweeping synths, delicate crystalline chimes, huge swells of rumbling low end, very epic and dramatic, with an almost loped hypnotic quality, it's like the super dramatic denouement of some horror movie, but looped into some slowly evolving mantra, the whole thing wreathed in dense swirls of reverb and echo, the vocals, sometimes a deathly growl, other times a strange alien grumble, way down in the mix, guitars wail and scream, but they too are buried beneath the thick tendrils of warm whirring chords and buzzy blown out ambience. It's almost like entering some crumbling old church in a dream, everything foggy and indistinct, the sky is visible through the roof, the windows are all broken, you can see hills and trees outside, lost and wandering in a dreamlike daze, slowly taking in all of the destruction, the mystery and the misery. It doesn't even have to be a church, just some old ruined building, as long as it has history, and is imbued with the life force of lost spirits and lonely souls. ...Those Dismal Moments is actually quite true to its title, if anything it just may be more sad, and miserable, more mournful and dismal than ...The Rotting Break. And we're not sure whether it's intentional or not, but there is so much distortion and tape hiss, so much fuzz and buzz, it almost sounds like a Tomb Of... record recorded by Philip Jeck or Tim Hecker, all blown out and blurry, indistinct and shot through with warm streaks of dusty sunlight... So completely amazing!!

Writhing forth once more from the most shadowy cracked wastelands of forsaken Brooklyn, Tombs returns with their third full length of glistening, gleaming extreme metal. And indeed extreme metal is the only genre tag that really works for this band, since they've made it their crusade to cherry pick the absolute best traits from a myriad of metal subgenres to mathematically create some of the most monolithic, ferocious and enormous metal being recorded today. A brief vaguely funereal dirge ushers in a flurry of pummeling helicopter double bass, wild eyed doom-laden heaving guitars, and a hurricane of rolling snare drum and hammering blast beats. There are hints of Souls At Zero-era Neurosis or even Deathspell Omega in the dissonant hypno-riffing. The circling, maddening guitar work and sickening Lovecraftian grooves sometimes recall early Morbid Angel. While elsewhere you might hear hints of the wasted urban scrawl of vintage Godflesh or the slithering futuro-insectoid crawl of latter day Celtic Frost / Triptykon. But there is not one moment of Savage Gold that sounds like homage. Instead, these influences are blended together seamlessly, creating a sound all encompassing, familiar and unique all at once. The vocals are a cold emotionless howl, which lends otherwise innocent lyrics like "life is a dream" a twisted rotten air. It's an extremely dense record. Guitars seem to avalanche upon one another, building a higher and higher wall of black glistening sludge, ready to collapse in on itself again at any moment. There are melodic moments as well. The regal grind of "Portraits" especially brings to mind Ludicra or Wolves In The Throne Room, but with a more obsidian metallic sheen. Compared to their insanely critically-acclaimed last album Path Of Totality, Savage Gold feels much more streamlined, smooth and clean (mostly thanks to a production job from Hate Eternal's Erik Rutan), but it's not at all a detriment to this record. Instead it gives the band the sound of some well oiled calculated killing machine. The spaciousness of the production really lends an extra sprawling quality to the band's more epic moments, while somehow magnifying the menace of the darker passages. And while there's still plenty of doom, sludge, groove and twisted death metal, Savage Gold has really upped the black metal influence. Labyrinthine tremolo whirlwind guitars seem to spiral upward like some Escher staircase, leading to realms shadowy, alien and obscured! A shining black monolith that shows metal can be forward-thinking, modern and unique without sacrificing any of the heaviness, ferocity or... well... metalness! Absolutely recommended, and sure to make more than a few metal best of the year lists come January 1st.

MPEG stream: Thanatos
MPEG stream: Portraits
MPEG stream: Seance

MPEG stream: Gossamer
MPEG stream: Golden Eyes
MPEG stream: Beneath The Toxic Jungle

Not to be confused with the Canadian Tomhet, this Tomhet hails from Italy and features members of two of our favorite depressive black metal hordes, Leaden and Anwech. Leaden's awesomely titled Monotonous Foghorns of Molesting Department is still one of our all time favorite chunks of blackened stumbling doom-ed weirdo depressive blackness. And Leaden, well, their sound was even weirder, some sort of droney doomy black metal gloom pop insanity. Needless to say, ever since, we have been on the lookout for ANYTHING from those guys. So we discovered this cd-r, not at all new, in fact, it's from way back in 2001, it's their only demo, they're apparently still a band, but these three songs are all they've released. But fuck it, we'll take what we can get. Not as weird or as gloomy or dementedly depressive as Leaden Or Anwech, this is feral and raw, more black and buzzy, furious and fast, totally relentless, the sound super saturated and in the red. The guitars are thick and distorted, crumbling and massive, the vocals harsh and drenched in reverb, the drums chaotic and furious, some seriously killer riffing, the songs occasionally slipping into something slightly slower and groovier, but even then the sound is corrosive and blistering, and eventually those grooves splinter as the song explodes back into more blown out buzzing black fury. Frenzied and intense, brutal and black, heavy as fuck and most definitely grim and raw. Well worth your six bucks...

MPEG stream: Perdition Forest
MPEG stream: Humid Winter Scenery

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

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

Finally got enough of these to list, the latest metamorphosis of an aQ beloved doomlord, the Italian eccentric Tony Tears. From lonely, outsider one-man DIY doomdrone to this: a full band effort, Tony gone "pro", playing weepy, gothic cathedral sized doom metal compositions overloaded with thundering church organ, heavy riff-chug, soaring vocal choruses, dreary guitar solos, and sinister synthscape segues. Quite 'busy' in comparison with the spooky, mesmeric minimalism of Tony's classic Voci Dal Passato (an aQ Record Of The Week), but OF COURSE still extremely weird and moody, for all its metallic rock band bluster. For fans of Paul Chain and Black Hole (and maybe even King Diamond) for sure.

MPEG stream: Mark Of Evil
MPEG stream: The Road To Research
MPEG stream: Demoniac Puppets

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

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

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

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

Tool is easily the best of all the so called "nu-metal" bands and like the Deftones seem to have been unfairly lumped in with the Korns and the Limp Bizkits. Tool have always had a pretty well developed aesthetic, in their music, their (lack of) image, and especially their videos. This DVD (or vhs tape if you're so inclined) collects all of their videos, and they are amazing. Futuristic surreal vignettes played out by tiny depressed sexless figures, traversing a dangerous and lonely world of living flesh and rotting appendages. Owing much to Svankmeyer and the Quay brothers, these videos are absolutely mesmerising, and Tool's weird syncopated depressia-rock underpins the dour goings on perfectly. There's also a whole disc of rarities, which is really great as well, but it's all about the videos.

Cold frosty, grim and furious black metal from Germany. Total Transylvanian Hunger worship, and we LOVE it. Taking the feral blackness and primitive old school buzz of Darkthrone and somehow making it even more blown out and black, more drenched in hiss, this is total vacuum cleaner whir, hailstorm on a tin roof ambience, the band blasting away behind thick sheets of dense gritty distortion, at low volume, it almost sounds like a TV between stations, but listen closer, and the abstract buzz coalesces into killer riffs, howling hellish vocals surface, the drums are buried WAY down and stay buried, a distant clatter beneath the suffocating maelstrom of blackened riffery, this one is not weird or fucked or damaged (although the extreme buzz might just set the record for the most buzz drenched disc we've heard), but it is as we said above, buzzing, cold, grim, cvlt, frosty, hateful, brutal, old school, TRUE black metal.

MPEG stream: What Is Sleeping In Bloodlines
MPEG stream: Wolf Among Sleep

By now, probably everyone knows who Torche is, and has an inkling of what they sound like, but if not, you're in for a pretty kick ass surprise. Cuz these guys are like the pop band you always wished existed, in that they fuse big hooks and crazy melodies to massive downtuned guitar crush and pounding drum damage, and with every record, they seem to move further and further away from their sludgey beginnings and toward a sound that manages to be more and more accessible, without getting any less heavy. Seems impossible but it's true. Torche are like what we wished Queens Of The Stoneage sounded like, catchy as shit, and crazy heavy, just check out a track like "Kicking", with it's almost bubblegum chorus, and it's furious churning metallic main riff, the combination is pretty much a dream come true for folks like us who like our pop crazy catchy, and our heavy HEAVY. There were hints on past records of what these guys were capable of, but holy shit, Harmonicraft pretty much realizes all of that potential, it's so catchy and fun, and hooky and heavy, that it's almost like sonic candy, total heavy pop bliss, we've listened to this record probably 50 times in the last two weeks, and we're not even close to getting tired of it. For more in depth raving about Torche and their particular peculiar brand of sludge pop songcraft, you can check out the other Torche reviews on the aQ site, but for now, just know that this is probably THEE best heavy pop / sludge pop record this year, and heck, really any year, and based on how many plays this gets, it might just be a contender for RECORD of the year, pop, sludge or otherwise!!

MPEG stream: Letting Go
MPEG stream: Kicking
MPEG stream: Walk It Off
MPEG stream: Reverse Inverted

[ aquarius records — Metal ]