***ON LIMITED BLOOD RED / SILVER MERGE VINYL!!! Four years and one pandemic on from Orificial Purge, Vastum, the longest running band on the 20 Buck Spin roster, offers up its fifth bludgeoning document of psychic malaise and lost faith with Inward To Gethsemane. As before, the abject disgust unsparingly captured in Vastum’s unique approach continues to drape the music with an aura of discomfiting unease. The cavernous density Vastum has made a core element of its discography remains as inhuman as ever, continuing to delve into darker atmospheres, yet never devolving into ambient murk; on the contrary it’s always punishing and with a fearsome momentum. The distinctively harrowing dual vocal attack of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf appears throughout Inward; the possessed narrators of Vastum’s hellish underworld. Eight minute album closer “Corpus Fractum” manifests a transformative and even experimental side of the band musically and vocally, while sustaining the characteristic merciless power they are revered for across its five albums. Between the sporadic but legendary live performances and a worshipped discography of modern era true death metal, Vastum has become a torchbearer of the grisly and grotesque underground, both within its native Bay Area and well beyond. Inward To Gethsemane carves another notch in Vastum’s totem of deviance.
CD $12.00
11/10/2023
LP $22.00
11/10/2023
LP COLOR $24.00
11/10/2023
NOW ON LIMITED SILVER / BLACK MERGE VINYL!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. Vastum’s second full-length is the manifestation of much personal tribulation and strife, reflected not only in the morbid hyper-realism of the album’s content, but also in the making of the record itself, which involved devastating real-life tragedy, numerous delays, departed members and a sense of frustration by all involved. It’s work born of pain. Nonetheless, Patricidal Lust is noticeably heavier, more abusive and more mentally calamitous than its predecessor Carnal Law. Recorded with Jeff Davis (R.I.P.) and later Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios, Patricidal Lust has an atmosphere of eerie foreboding shrouding the doomed death metal husk at its center; the cryptic dual vocal dynamic of Daniel Butler (Acephalix) and Leila Abdul-Rauf (Saros, Amber Asylum, Hammers of Misfortune) narrates this journey through the body. The ghosts of Steer and Schuldiner echo in twisted half-remembered inference while the calculated, blunt rhythm section invokes abhorrent basement torture dungeons. Lyrically far beyond that which most death metal bands are capable, Patricidal Lust delves ever deeper into subject matter first seen on Carnal Law—the anguish and confusion associated with sexual abuse, incest and the blurry area where eroticism and madness vaporize into an unrecognizable fog of horror. Certain to leave a lasting impression, Vastum’s Patricial Lust is what lies at the core of obscene abomination.
LP $20.25
12/01/2020
After four years of near silence, Vastum return with Orificial Purge, their much-awaited follow up to the acclaimed Hole Below. Their fourth album, Orificial Purge offers a distinctive blend of sinister atmosphere, punishing brutality, and an unparalleled lyrical and visual imagery that traces connections between perversion, mortification, and an abyssal mysticism of sin. Elements from previous albums are preserved here, but they are both evolved and devolved at once. The mid-paced dirge and cave-dwelling riffs are littered throughout, but are intertwined with slicing melodic dissonance and celestial virtuosity, all against the background of a bulldozing rhythm section. The dual vocal / lyrical exorcisms of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf combine to deliver unsettling, dichotomous meditations on “abjection as life, life as tragedy, and tragedy as an eviscerating, eroticized rapture through which an evil and useless humanity comes into being.” With four standout albums over the course of the last eight years, the effect of Vastum’s influence has by now seeped out onto the wider underground death metal scene, leaving an indelible mark due to their singular amalgam of aural primitivism and aesthetic originality. Their most markedly refined and tortured oblation to date, Orificial Purge represents the dominant return of Vastum, a death metal band founded on the lived experience of mutilated minds and bodies.
LP $20.25
10/25/2019
After four years of near silence, Vastum return with Orificial Purge, their much-awaited follow up to the acclaimed Hole Below. Their fourth album, Orificial Purge offers a distinctive blend of sinister atmosphere, punishing brutality, and an unparalleled lyrical and visual imagery that traces connections between perversion, mortification, and an abyssal mysticism of sin. Elements from previous albums are preserved here, but they are both evolved and devolved at once. The mid-paced dirge and cave-dwelling riffs are littered throughout, but are intertwined with slicing melodic dissonance and celestial virtuosity, all against the background of a bulldozing rhythm section. The dual vocal / lyrical exorcisms of Daniel Butler and Leila Abdul-Rauf combine to deliver unsettling, dichotomous meditations on “abjection as life, life as tragedy, and tragedy as an eviscerating, eroticized rapture through which an evil and useless humanity comes into being.” With four standout albums over the course of the last eight years, the effect of Vastum’s influence has by now seeped out onto the wider underground death metal scene, leaving an indelible mark due to their singular amalgam of aural primitivism and aesthetic originality. Their most markedly refined and tortured oblation to date, Orificial Purge represents the dominant return of Vastum, a death metal band founded on the lived experience of mutilated minds and bodies.
LP $19.00
10/25/2019
CD $12.00
10/25/2019
Vastum’s 2015 album, Hole Below, set a horrifying new precedent for punishing but cerebral US death metal that echoed throughout the underground. Carnal Law, the band’s formidable debut from 2011, is a testament to their mental and physical prowess, starting from the very beginning. Issued on vinyl by Deific Mourning / Contagion Releasing (CD on 20 Buck Spin) in a one-time limited version of 500 copies, this album disappeared and has since been unavailable on vinyl for five years, until now, with a fresh punishing re-master courtesy of Brad Boatwright at Audiosiege. Both the progressive and regressive elements that made Hole Below such a heralded monument of death metal were evident already here: tasteful, recognizable leads — not unlike the virtuosity one notes in mid-period Death or Carcass — appear throughout but never overwhelm the fetid odor of vice at the album’s core. Like the paramount albums of the genre, Carnal Law makes its point quickly and resolutely, with viciousness and intent.
LP $17.50
03/10/2017
CD $9.50
05/31/2011
*** Limited GOLD Vinyl version EXCLUSIVE to Revolver USA. Vastum’s 2015 album, Hole Below, set a horrifying new precedent for punishing but cerebral US death metal that echoed throughout the underground. Carnal Law, the band’s formidable debut from 2011, is a testament to their mental and physical prowess, starting from the very beginning. Issued on vinyl by Deific Mourning / Contagion Releasing (CD on 20 Buck Spin) in a one-time limited version of 500 copies, this album disappeared and has since been unavailable on vinyl for five years, until now, with a fresh punishing re-master courtesy of Brad Boatwright at Audiosiege. Both the progressive and regressive elements that made Hole Below such a heralded monument of death metal were evident already here: tasteful, recognizable leads — not unlike the virtuosity one notes in mid-period Death or Carcass — appear throughout but never overwhelm the fetid odor of vice at the album’s core. Like the paramount albums of the genre, Carnal Law makes its point quickly and resolutely, with viciousness and intent.
LP $20.25
03/10/2017
***NOW ON LIMITED BLOOD W/BLACK SPLATTER VINYL!!! The verbose horror of Vastum’s first two LPs Carnal Law and Patricidal Lust sadistically carved a jagged, dripping wound into an increasingly reductive American death metal scene. Arising again for their third full-length album, they plumb the depths of internalized agony and degradation farther than ever on Hole Below. Characterized by a deeply cavernous trudge through gut-churning heaviness, Hole Below both bluntly crushes and rigorously shreds to conceive fully formed grotesqueries of debased brutality. Guitarist Leila Abdul-Rauf wields her axe with the experienced slice of masked executioner quartering savage riffs and twisting leads. The abhorrent vocal (and lyrical) morbidity traded by imposing frontman Daniel Butler and Abdul-Rauf continues to be the most formidable combination in death metal. Along with guitarist Shelby Lermo, the intimidating rhythm section of Luca Indrio and Adam Perry steer the war machine through the pooled blood and skull fragments scattered amidst the debauched iniquity of this peculiar hell. Three albums in, this respected San Francisco band has honed their disturbed masochism into a sound manifestly their own and true to the core of the purest, darkest death metal. 20 Buck Spin presents Hole Below as one of the finest albums this year.
LP $17.50
01/29/2016
CD $12.00
11/06/2015
LP COLOR $22.00
06/23/2023
***BACK IN STOCK!!! Received a 7.9 rating from Pitchfork. Vastum’s second full-length is the manifestation of much personal tribulation and strife, reflected not only in the morbid hyper-realism of the album’s content, but also in the making of the record itself, which involved devastating real-life tragedy, numerous delays, departed members and a sense of frustration by all involved. It’s work born of pain. Nonetheless, Patricidal Lust is noticeably heavier, more abusive and more mentally calamitous than its predecessor Carnal Law. Recorded with Jeff Davis (R.I.P.) and later Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer Studios, Patricidal Lust has an atmosphere of eerie foreboding shrouding the doomed death metal husk at its center; the cryptic dual vocal dynamic of Daniel Butler (Acephalix) and Leila Abdul-Rauf (Saros, Amber Asylum, Hammers of Misfortune) narrates this journey through the body. The ghosts of Steer and Schuldiner echo in twisted half-remembered inference while the calculated, blunt rhythm section invokes abhorrent basement torture dungeons. Lyrically far beyond that which most death metal bands are capable, Patricidal Lust delves ever deeper into subject matter first seen on Carnal Law—the anguish and confusion associated with sexual abuse, incest and the blurry area where eroticism and madness vaporize into an unrecognizable fog of horror. Certain to leave a lasting impression, Vastum’s Patricial Lust is what lies at the core of obscene abomination.
LP $19.00
11/12/2013
CD $12.00
11/12/2013