Hanson, Cory

Western Cum

Drag City

***Cory Hanson’s third solo LP follows upon 2020’s luminescent Pale Horse Rider, upping the heat to molten lev- els, six strings at a time. In search of further adventures, Cory draws with vampiric glee from the madness coursing through the world outside; a spiraling shitshow that’s reawakened a compulsion in him—an old ambition, even!—to crush brutality and elegance together into a fresh set of rocks to hail down upon us. Western Cum is a high-stepping, hard-dancing, first love/heartbreak, tonight’s-the-night, future nostalgia kind of good time—the sound of gui- tars through the speakers of luxury cars. Like the dream you had once, alone, asleep in an amplifier, blasting Guns N’ Roses through every last orifice in your body. And it’s coming through!

SBT (Sarabeth Tucek)

Joan of All

Ocean Omen

Sarabeth Tucek emerges from a decade-long hibernation with a new double-album Joan of All under the new moniker SBT— a longtime nickname given to her by the many musicians she has worked with throughout her career. After retreating from the fevered pace of the record business to concentrate on other creative endeavors, Sarabeth began to piece together the music that would eventually become her most ambitious, personal project yet—the sprawling double-album Joan Of All, released on her own freshly-minted imprint Ocean Omen. Sarabeth Tucek officially broke onto the music scene 2003 performing a series of spellbinding duets with Bill Callahan on the acclaimed Smog album Supper. This was swiftly followed by a memorable appearance in the prize-winning Brian Jonestown Massacre documentary DiG! Sarabeth also contributed material to their 2005 EP release, We Are the Radio. One of Sarabeth's compositions covered by the band on that EP, "Seer," would later be retitled and released in 2006 as Tucek's debut single, "Something for You,” which became Steve Lamacq’s Single Of The Week on BBC Radio 6 Music. Her self-titled debut album produced by Luther Russell and Ethan Johns hit stores the following year and garnered rave reviews in the press, leading her to supporting Bob Dylan and unfaltering support at the BBC. In 2011, Sarabeth followed up her extraordinary debut with a raw, uncompromising album entitled Get Well Soon, praised as an unflinching meditation on the subject of grief. This release made many year-end lists and the title track was featured on...

Ascended Dead

Evenfall Of The Apocalypse

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED SILVER W/ BLACK AND WHITE SPLATTER VINYL!!! Ascended Dead return like abyss winds surging skyward from the ninth circle of Hell. New album Evenfall Of The Apocalypse heralds the dawn of the final march to extermination via barely-controlled death metal chaos and form-destroying necromancy. Ascended Dead play death metal the ancient way with an intrinsically malign pedigree and methodical cruelty scarcely heard nowadays. Flesh-peeling intensity at warp-speed, technically-frenzied leads that cut straight through bone and a relentless annihilating force that rarely ceases long enough to take a breath. Yet amidst this fiery conflagration a wholly deliberate and fanatical attention to detail and craft remain undeniable, allowing the pandemonium a distinct structure and memorability. While the band has more than enough skill and ability to perform a darkly acoustic piece like “Passage To Eternity,” a rare moment of respite, repeated spins through Evenfall Of The Apocalypse only serve to perpetuate Ascended Dead’s inexorable place at the vanguard of violent real death metal, carrying the banner into the future.

Chat Pile

Tenkiller Motion Picture Soundtrack

Flenser

Oklahoma’s Chat Pile have had an exciting 2022; they released their album God’s Country, toured the midwest and east coast in support of the album, announced their appearance at Roadburn Festival 2023, and while the band is working on LP2, they’re revealing details for their score for the indie film Tenkiller. While not a proper full-length album, the Tenkiller score was written and recorded in the winter of 2020, and it waxes and wanes from the signature Chat Pile sound but also ventures into new ones— including arena country music. The band comments, “The music we made for Tenkiller is quite a bit different than what you may come to expect from us. We were given the freedom to really experiment and explore territories that we’ve never done before.” They continue, “It’s not going to be for everyone, but we hope some of you connect with what we set out to do.” “Chat Pile bring a sense of dirt and squalor to the table.” —The FADER “Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile are the perfect people to expose the dark, seedy underbelly of American life.” —Paste Magazine “Cleansingly punishing.” —Stereogum “Harrowing.” —Pitchfork

Impetuous Ritual

Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis

Profound Lore

Australian death metal monstrosity Impetuous Ritual are unleashing their new album Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis. It is the follow-up to 2017’s Blight Upon Martyred Sentience and presents itself as the most unnatural, abnormal, and nightmarish Impetuous Ritual offering yet.

Lunar Chamber

Shambhallic Vibrations

20 Buck Spin

Lunar Chamber, a hitherto unknown being of mysterious consciousness, now present in the physical realm for the first time with debut manifestation Shambhallic Vibrations, a tale of a journey eastward in search of enlightenment and what may lie beyond. Ensconced in mysticism, the five track nearly thirty minute pilgrimage advances unflinchingly through insane crushing riffs, bewildering solos, tranquil acoustics and illuminated ascendent melodies. “Spirit Body And The Seeing Self” details the start of the journey, self analysis, and the attempts at launching oneself into said “beyond,” while “The Bodhi Tree” is a mirroring tale of Gautama Buddha himself, having meditated underneath it in Bodh Gaya approximately 2500 years ago, attaining enlightenment. “III. Crystalline Blessed Light Flows… From Violet Mountains Into Lunar Chambers” is the ultimate pinnacle of the tale. Having reached a spiritual plane, pulses of light and dark; the very fabric of space-time itself churns. Knowledge is abundant here. Eventually, one is brought full circle, right back where everything began in normal life; albeit with a new sense of everything. But there is so much more to learn… a yearning thirst. Offering a deluge of jarringly brutal metal, overwhelming progressive physicality and instinctively accomplished memorability inspired by Buddhism, the East and esotericism, Lunar Chamber have just begun their quest of ascension and enlightened knowledge.

Cutler, Paul B.

Les Fleurs

In The Red

Fans of the innovations and originality that sprang from the L.A. underground of the late 1970s and ’80s often ask, “What’s Paul B. Cutler been up to?” A vital participant in the Los Angeles music scene of that period as bandleader, songwriter, musician and producer, Cutler’s work—in particular his guitar playing—with The Consumers, 45 Grave, Vox Pop and The Dream Syndicate is still admired by fans and an influence on anyone interested in that period and the styles that developed from it. In 2014, “Ryan Adams contacted me and wanted to form a band. He loved 45 Grave, he wanted to do some goth / punk, whatever you want to call it. That’s right up my alley. He’s amazingly talented and inspiring to work with. We did that for a while, and I wrote a bunch of songs.” Enthused about his new material, Cutler continued recording songs with just his signature electric guitar style and vocals. As this was developing, another vet of the early L.A. scene—Brad Laner of Medicine and Savage Republic—got in touch with Cutler. Soon Laner was mixing, co-producing, playing keyboards as well as adding the rhythm section. The overall process took some time, with songwriting beginning in 2014. When reflecting on the music that comprises Les Fleurs, “To me, and it does not sound like it, but because of the philosophy I had while producing it, it’s punk. I come from the original punk, before it was a genre. Before it was a ‘sound.’ When I...

Hecker, Tim

No Highs

Kranky

The latest by Canadian composer Tim Hecker serves as a beacon of unease against the deluge of false positive corporate ambient currently in vogue. Whether taken as warning or promise, No Highs delivers—this is music of austerity and ambiguity, purgatorial and seasick. A jagged anti-relaxant for our medicated age, rough-hewn and undefined. Morse code pulse programming flickers like distress signals while a gathering storm of strings, noise, and low-end looms in the distance. Processed electronics shiver and shudder against pitch-shifting assemblages of crackling voltage, mantric horns (including exquisite modal sax by Colin Stetson), and cathedral keys. Throughout, the pieces both accrue and avoid drama, more attuned to undertow than crescendo. Hecker mentions “negation” as a muse of sorts—the sense of tumult without bombast, tethered ecstasies, an escape from escapism. His is an antagonism both brusque and beguiling, devoid of resolution, beckoning the listener ever deeper into its greyscale alchemies of magisterial disquiet.

Tiny Ruins

Ceremony

Ba Da Bing!

Tiny Ruins, the project of New Zealand musician Hollie Fullbrook, are back with their fourth album, Ceremony, out on Ba Da Bing Records. The follow-up to 2019’s celebrated Olympic Girls, Ceremony goes deep into all the old and murky mysteries of what it means to be human—and sometimes it nearly goes under. Yet these songs also show how one can find the strength to swim from the shipwreck, push through the silt, surface into another new morning—another new chance. Ceremony washes in and takes one out like a strong tide, its songs “chapters” of a saga set on the shores of Tāmaki Makaurau’s (aka Auckland’s) Manukau Harbour. Known to locals as “Old Murky,” its western fringe of the Waitākere Ranges are home to Fullbrook. And while the harbour itself is a treacherous and oft-polluted body of water, move to one of its many peaceful inlets and it’s all tidal flats, shellfish and birdlife. “It’s beautiful but also muddy, dirty and neglected. It’s a real meeting of nature and humanity” says Hollie. The album’s songs took shape as she explored the turbulent landscape on foot with her two dogs. The things Fullbrook was struck by there are annotated across Ceremony (cover art by Christiane Shortal) as luminously as a naturalist’s scrapbook. After touring Olympic Girls both solo and with her long- term band line-up of Cass Basil (bass), Alex Freer (drums), and Tom Healy (electric guitar, producer) for eighteen months, Fullbrook returned home to the banks of Little Muddy Creek, exhausted...

Sunburned Hand Of The Man

Hypnotape

Vhf

A genuinely sprawling collection of high-fidelity mutation music that suits the compact disc format perfectly, Hypnotape is the third consecutive Sunburned Hand Of The Man album of studio assemblages following 2019’s Headless and 2021’s Pick A Day To Die. Recorded throughout 2021 and 2022, it’s an album possessed with a peculiar runaway locomotion which jump cuts feverishly between unusual atmospheres yet maintains a beguiling consistency—throbbing, twisting, undulating rhythmic blast-offs suddenly kick the door down into serene realms of nuanced acoustic privacy which are unexpectedly plunged back, face first into a miasma of shirtless, raging thuggery, ad infinitum. The album is notable in the group’s monstrous catalog for a few reasons: first, it showcases founding member Conrad Capistran stepping out from behind the keyboards and electronics to spread his smooth, buttery baritone atop the majority of the tracks. From his velvet cooing above the pulsing whirlwind of opener “People Person” to his vivid and febrile musings as a trip reporter on the frontlines of the meltdown zone on “Roger” his honeyed vocals guide the listener Virgil-like through the inferno all the way to the album’s finale where he duets with Ron Schneiderman on the old Dino Valenti / Quicksilver chestnut “What About Me”. Secondly, it features the recorded debut of Sunburned’s longtime friend and collaborator Mark Perretta after years of touring with the group. Some may remember Perretta from his days stomping across the primordial Boston underground of the late ’80s / early ’90s with the mighty Subskin Cables or his...

Miesha And The Spanks

Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi

Mint

Uncompromising, witty, authentic, inspiring–Miesha & The Spanks have established themselves as a rock ‘n’ roll force of nature to be reckoned with. The Calgary-based duo are equal parts searing guitarist / heart-melting vocalist and all-stage / all-star percussionist personality. Vexatious frontwoman Miesha Louie sets the steamrollers of love a-rollin’, ploughing through obstacles and destroying assumptions, like a red-hot indie music machine. Her new record Unconditional Love In Hi-Fi is her Mint Records debut; the album was produced by The Buzzcocks' Danny Farrant. The record's themes touch on personal and political topics such as parenthood and stories related to Miesha's mixed Shuswap heritage. Miesha and the Spanks have extensive tour plans following the release of Unconditional Love in Hi-Fi including the UK, Europe, US and Canada. RIYL: Wet Leg, Alvvays, Fleshwater, Black Mountain, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Joan Jett

Fugitive

Maniac

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR W/ BLACK & RED SPLATTER VINYL!!! Blake Ibanez of Power Trip returns with a new band, Fugitive, and the Maniac EP, four original tracks of the aggressive pit detonation thrash he’s known for in Power Trip, with an even rawer and looser ferocity. A cover of the legendary Bathory’s ‘Raise The Dead’ rounds out the succinctly serrated five track debut. Joined by Seth Gilmore (Skourge), Lincoln Mullins (Creeping Death), Victor Gutierrez and Andy Messer, Ibanez and co. cohere in intensely violent crossover fashion with Fugitive; a product of long earned experience in the studio and on the stage. A savage death metal vocal style, like Power Trip passed through an Obituary meatgrinder, solidifies Maniac with the heaviness of a head hitting concrete. A short sharp shock of an EP, Maniac is a fierce introduction across its seventeen minute runtime to a future that Fugitive is just beginning to write and a reminder that Texas heat remains a steadily potent force in underground metal and hardcore.

Kid Congo & The Near Death Experience

Live In St. Kilda

In The Red

Live In St. Kilda is a twelve song live album from a one-time-only show in which Kid Congo Powers was backed by The Near Death Experience. Kid Congo says, “How did I hook up with The Near Death Experience you may ask? One fine day Kim Salmon, my long time Scientists Surrealist Beast of a friend, wrote from Australia to ask me to play at his book launch for his biography Nine Parts Water, One Part Sand: Kim Salmon And The Formula For Grunge on November 9th, 2019. The launch was to take place at the Memo Music Hall in St. Kilda, a seaside suburb of Melbourne. A royal command performance for the king of Kim? How could I say no to such an honor? What to do about a band? It did not take more than a minute for each of us to suggest Harry Howard and The Near Death Experience as the logical choice. I was a massive fan of the band already and we shared crossed paths as expats claiming out our musical in 1980s London. Harry with Crime And The City Solution and These Immortal Souls, Dave and Clare with The Moodists, Kim with the Scientists and me with Gun Club and Fur Bible. Needless to say it was fantastical to get together and make a playlist for Kim featuring covers by Suicide and Shangri-La, with mine and NDE’s songs as well. The night was magic—I still am floating on a surrealistic pillow remembering the night....

Wolfmanhattan Project

Summer Forever And Ever

In The Red

Summer Forever And Ever succeeds Blue Gene Stew, 2019’s debut by the Wolfmanhattan Project, a collective unit co-starring three musicians familiar to In The Red listeners: singer-guitarist Mick Collins, front man of the seminal Detroit-bred garage units the Dirtbombs and the Gories, singer-guitarist Kid Congo Powers who played in such legendary bands as the Gun Club, the Cramps, and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, and drummer-vocalist Bob Bert, whose skin work has distinguished albums by Sonic Youth, Pussy Galore, Lydia Lunch’s Retrovirus, and Jon Spencer and the HITmakers. The group was founded as a studio project by three musicians who are kept busy by their primary bands. Blue Gene Stew was written and recorded quickly. Powers says, “I think that the new record was much more a group effort. I think there’s more of a group kind of sound, as eclectic as it is. I feel like we all played together, as opposed to playing on each other’s songs.” Bert notes that the band’s music is grounded in spontaneity: “Me and Mick went in and had a couple of rehearsals, and I would come up with a beat, he would come up with a riff. I still have a cassette Walkman, believe it or not, and we’d put it down on that. It wasn’t even a full song. We’d just put down a bunch of ideas. When it came to recording we’d lay down the basic tracks and work out different things, and a lot of it was made...

Carlton Melton

Resemble Ensemble

Agitated

Carlton Melton, from Northern California, are now a practicing four-piece in the arts of melted-minds psychedelia. With the added kraut-oomph and sike-flutter of fellow Californian Anthony Taibi (whom you may know as being a member of White Manna, and also DDT with Andy) Rich Millman, Andy Duvall, and Clint Golden have now embellished the Carlton Melton sound. Pushing forward as a quartet, the band recorded Resemble Ensemble in July 2021 at Anthony’s home studio, 3D Light in Freshwater, CA. Anthony did all the recording and mixing. The Melton Magick Karpet settled, and our favorite contemporary sikedelic warlods plugged in, amped up and let it flow—and flow it does—from the krautrock fuelled pszych-raga of "Prescribed Skies," the fluid dronescape of "Elsewhere" that welcomes you into its arms with a warming tone, almost a missing Spacemen 3 demo at the feast here. "So The Story Grows" has the drone scraping through a murk of dazzling feedback and pummel, with the fuller sounding Melton giving the genre a proper wobble, hold on to your brains people. "High Alert"—whas this? Synth and guitar interplay jambusting, this is the Melton wigging out and almost interweaving 70s high table rock with some odd and downright perverse synthfunkpunk rhythms. Get weird or get wired—or both. Easily done here.. Closing out the album with "Route Thirteen" is the road trip home. They’ve been, they’ve massaged and mangled your synapses, plug in the satnav and take the higher-route home, if you get our drift.

Voidceremony

Threads Of Unknowing

20 Buck Spin

Upon the release of the first full length album Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel it was instantly revealed that VoidCeremony were treading a path few walk. The album proved that death metal can be performed with the gliding, controlled chaos and smooth fluidity of a jazz quartet, while still leaving the listener holed up in a dungeon, low on HP, out of spells, and surrounded by deadly demons. Threads Of Unknowing is a journey which resurrects concepts on earlier display and summons evermore progressive and technical compositions. Mastermind and guitarist / vocalist Garrett Johnson and guitar virtuoso Phil Tougas (Atramentus, Chthe’ilist, Worm, First Fragment) share both vocals and lead guitar duties here, while bass god Damon Good weaves both fretted and fretless bass mastery and drummer Charlie Koryn encompasses not only speed and brutality, but a fine mix of precision and improvisation from jazz fusion. The end result is VoidCeremony and their signature sound: time-melting death black fusion. With an apt cover painting representing the lyrical and philosophical vision of an ancient and forgotten future, VoidCeremony itself seems to be operating on an alternate death metal timeline that once made itself known, but only briefly, and was soon left behind for more commercial appeal. Yet the portal has been re-opened and the merging of these boundless possibilities and directions are now being brought forth directly once again.

Xylouris White

The Forest In Me

Drag City

***More in tune now with the rhythm of the sun and moon, Xylouris White speak to each other across great distances with the intuition and fellowship that can only be found over years in each other’s company. With fewer distractions, appreciative of the freedom to play with new sounds and spaces, they carve The Forest In Me from unbelievably thin air. Produced by GUY PICCIOTTO.

Mckechnie, Doug

San Francisco Moog: 1968-72

VG+ Records

***CD format contains both volumes!!! In 1968, Bay Area native Doug McKechnie got hold of one the very first modular Moog synthesizers ever made and began finding his own way to play it. Soon, he was hauling the finicky instrument around to perform improvised concerts at colleges and psychedelic ballrooms, as well as an ill-fated appearance on the bill at Altamont. Some of the performances were recorded, and the surviving tapes—never before released—capture a free-flowing, transportive sound that fills in the gap between the austere mid-century academic avant garde and the expansive cosmic suites of Tangerine Dream and the rest of the Berlin School in the ’70s. “These pieces represent amazingly fully formed early approaches to the very idea of musical synthesis...arresting even to modern ears.” —Goldmine “Presages both Tangerine Dream’s soundtracks and, in its most grimy moments, Acid Tracks.” —The Wire

Westing

Future

Riding Easy

“Late in 2021, Slow Season announced they’d become Westing, and that Ben McLeod (also of Nashville’s All Them Witches) was now in the four-piece on lead guitar alongside guitarist, vocalist and keyboardist Daniel Story Rice, bassist Hayden Doyel and drummer / recording engineer Cody Tarbell. Their new LP (fourth overall for Riding Easy), Future, is not coincidentally titled. “Says Rice, ‘We wanted to hit the reset button on some things and so we included a new band name to that list. Fresh start, for the psychological effect of it. We first met Ben in 2014 opening for All Them Witches in San Diego, and we did that again in 2016 and he and Cody corresponded about tape machines, music production, and other similar nerd stuff. We started swapping a few ideas early in 2021 and then flew him out for four days in August 2021. We got Future mostly down in that short span and did some remote stuff for overdubs, but nothing major. Obviously, our creative processes jelled pretty well to allow for such an efficiently productive session.’ “So the story of Westing, and of Future, is about change, but the music makes itself so immediately familiar, it’s so welcoming, that it hardly matters. For about ten years, the Visalia, California, outfit wandered the earth representing a new generational interpretation of classic heavy rock. The tones, warm. The melodies, sweet. The boogie, infectious. They went to ground after supporting their 2016 self-titled third album, and clearly it was time...

Roberts, Alasdair

Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall

Drag City

***Critically-acclaimed, criminally-overachieving Glasgow- based singer and guitarist Alasdair Roberts is known as a superlative original songwriter as well as an interpreter of traditional songs from Scotland and beyond. For the past twenty years, his recordings have alternated between these two complimentary poles, with ‘pop’ records such as The Amber Gatherers and A Wonder Working Stone nestling in his expansive back catalogue alongside “folk” albums such as No Earthly Man and What News (with Amble Skuse and David McGuinness). Additionally, all of these records possess a further dimension, derived from their collation of songs together into one album-length statement. This is part of Alasdair’s great achievement in his career—for him, this thing of music and song hasn’t come the eons it’s travelled to simply entertain. These impulses fully present and well honed, Alasdair returns to his roots with Grief in the Kitchen and Mirth in the Hall, his fifth full-length collection of traditional song. Recorded live in the studio, it is an entirely solo collection of twelve traditional ballads and songs sparsely arranged for acoustic guitar, piano and voice. The majority of the songs originate in Alasdair’s homeland of Scotland, with a couple from Ireland and one from Prince Edward Island on Canada’s eastern seaboard too.

Kommand

Death Age

20 Buck Spin

Death Age maintains the armed to the teeth savage militancy of earlier material from LA’s Kommand, now taken even further into enemy territory with more grisly wartorn brutality than ever. Like the coordinated bombardment of an entire continent, Death Age is an air raid siren for imminent cataclysm. The ominous atmosphere on Death Age heralds the single-minded concentrated objective; to batter, demolish and destroy with no quarter given. Death metal of this kind taps into the most primitive, untamed instincts, advancing like a convoy of tanks through occupied territory, heedless of whatever or whoever stands in its path. From opener “Final Virus” to closer “Collapse Metropolis,” Kommand’s vision of a dystopian hellscape, cities permanently scarred by heavy weaponry, and those unfortunates who survived the onslaught never relents or offers respite. Death Age thus renders a terminal epitaph on the bloody trash heap of near-future history.

Spirit Possession

Of The Sign…

Profound Lore

Almost three years spent sharpening orthodox weapons, Spirit Possession reveal their second full length Of The Sign…, six schizo spiraling, deranged hymns of black heavy metal from a lost time. While the s/t full length was a raw blistering torrent draped in first wave blood, Of The Sign… seems to be thoroughly drenched in its epic, strange and primitive ways. A violent cacophony of insanity laden cavern vocals, labyrinthian guitar trilling, scalding drum brutality, and analog harsh-noise eruptions—these are sinister yet adventurous black / heavy / death abominations from a forgotten age. Erratic musical madness with improbable entrances, and impossible exits. Featuring S. Peacock (Ulthar / Pandiscordian Necrogenesis / Mastery ) on strings and vocals, and A. Spungin (Vouna / Ormus / Taurus ) on drums and handmade synthesizers. Recorded in the depths of the S•P Dungeon / and studio mixed at Menegroth The Thousand Caves.

Young, La Monte / Marian Zazeela

31 VII 69 10:26 - 10:49 PM / 23 VIII 64 2:50:45 - 3:11 AM The Volga Delta

Superior Viaduct

La Monte Young was born in Bern, Idaho in 1935. He began his music studies in Los Angeles and later Berkeley, California before relocating to New York City in 1960, where he became a primary influence on Minimalism, the Fluxus movement and performance art through his legendary compositions of extended time durations and the development of just intonation and rational number based tuning systems. With his collaborator since 1962, artist Marian Zazeela, they would formulate the composite sound environments of the Dream House, which continues to this day. Seeing reissue for the first time since its initial 1969 release, Young and Zazeela’s first full-length album is often referred to as “The Black Record” due to Zazeela’s stunning cover design, complete with the composer’s liner notes in elegant hand-lettered script. Side one was recorded in 1969 (on the date and time indicated by the title) at the gallery of Heiner Friedrich in Munich, where Young and Zazeela premiered their Dream House sound and light installation. Featuring Young and Zazeela’s voices against a sine wave drone, the recording is a section of the longer composition Map of 49’s Dream the Two Systems of Eleven Sets of Galactic Intervals Ornamental Lightyears Tracery (begun in 1966 as a sub-section of the even larger work The Tortoise, His Dreams and Journeys, which was begun in 1964 with Young’s group The Theatre of Eternal Music). According to Young, the raga-like melodic phrases of his voice were heavily influenced by his future teacher, the Hindustani singer Pandit Pran Nath....

Keithley, Joe

STAND

Sudden Death

After forty-five years of leading legendary punks D.O.A., the man they call Joey Shithead aka Joe Keithley, has a new solo album out on Sudden Death Records—don’t worry, D.O.A. is still touring! Stand has a rootsy, rebellious tone, as Keithley combines acoustic and electric guitar on this timely and politically charged album. Many have compared Keithley to a modern day Woody Guthrie or Pete Seeger because he has spent a lifetime standing up for what’s right through his music and through his actions—Stand befits that ethic and long-held tradition. The songs cover a wide range of emotions. There’s timely political stuff like “The Warrior Lives Again,” “Fentanyl Blues,” “This Machine Kills Fascists,” and “Ginger Goodwin.” Poignant songs include “Lookin’,” “For A World,” “People Power,” and a cover of D.O.A.’s “2+2.” Keithley even digs into movies and TV with his spaghetti western-inspired “Man With No Name” and an ode to Star Trek called “Men For All Ages.” He really hits the mark, as he covers songs from his idols Johnny Cash, Leadbelly and Stompin’ Tom Conners. On Stand, one gets a wide array of Keithley’s talents: from his vocals that have never covered such a wide range, to his sterling guitar playing, to his powerful songwriting ability. To make sure the album had the right tone, Keithley got the right people to accompany him, which includes one of the best acoustic rhythm sections in Canada, Leon Power and Darren Parris, and also great keyboards from Chris Gestrin, with Jessie Zubot...

Purling Hiss

Drag On Girard

Drag City

***It’s 2023, and even the turn of century seems a long time ago now—but oddly, Purling Hiss’s guitar-band ethos feels ever more timeless, even as time accelerates and passes us in the outside lane. The Hiss aren’t just a simple part of the tradition going back 50-odd years. Their DNA, pulsing in waves of punk and classic radio rock, grunge and slacker, is ineffably, re-singably music—but their signature crushed guitar harmonics, fused with deep soulfulness, meld into something that cuts us with fresh heartbreak, an eternal recurrence that seems to be happening right now today, as it pours off the turntable and runs down the street. Drag On Girard, the first Purling Hiss album in six years, cruises through these states of mind and places in time—dreams from the past and the future, careening lawlessly as they slide around loose on the road, an ever-present youth in their roll. As before, but with new twists, Mike Polizze and his gang let loose with the chaos and noise implied by their name, applying high-end splatter and slow-rolling low end to eight vehicles, running the gamut from gleaming pop gems to head-cleaning epic jams before they’re done.

Kruelty

Untopia

Profound Lore

Formed in Tokyo, Japan in the summer of 2017, Kruelty has emerged as the most notable artist to find that sweet spot where the amalgamation of heavy beatdown hardcore and ’90s American / Scandinavian death / doom metal meet—a blueprint of brutality the band slams and unleashes. Untopia is the ultimate convergence of punishing death metal riffs and mind-blowing breakdowns influenced by Japanese and ’90s East Coast hardcore bands. 2020 saw the release of Kruelty’s debut album A Dying Truth and revealed itself as one of the heaviest albums that year. With their new album, they release an album even bigger in scope and ultimately heavier than their debut. Expect Kruelty to crush stages live in cities throughout 2023 with tours planned in North America, Europe, Australia, Asia etc.

Úlfúð

Of Existential Distortion

Dark Descent

Bred in the land of ice and fire, Úlfúð are the latest addition to Dark Descent’s flawless, ever-diversifying roster. Championing their personal blend of black and death metal (with emphasis on the former), the band’s debut album Of Existential Distortion uniquely captures the desolate vastness of the volcanic wastelands like only Icelanders can. Úlfúð’s first full-length is a masterclass in songcraft, showcasing a stunning balance of entrancing atmosphere, haunting melody, and deathless violence. Artist Bahrull Marta was summoned to conjure the breath-taking artwork, whilst photographs by Alma Líf Þorsteinsdóttir adorn the inlay with visions of each offering. “We are extremely excited to be releasing our first full-length album with Dark Descent! This album heralds our entity and declares our intent; to immerse you in our ritual of catharsis and cacophony! We cannot wait to share our music with you. The time is nigh!” Úlfúð’s (pronounced “ool-wooth”, meaning animosity or hostility) were formed in early 2015 in Reykjavik, Iceland. The band self-released debut EP First Sermon in 2018 and recorded debut Of Existential Distortion in 2020. A release truly worth waiting for!

V/a

Scrap Metal Vol. 2

Riding Easy

Featuring long-lost gems from ultra-rare 45s and private press singles—plus one previously unreleased banger—Scrap Metal Vol. 2 maintains a steady NWOBHM course. Packed with infectious outliers and supremely talented one-and-done metal warriors from the crucial British movement of the late ’70s and early ’80s (and some killer American obscurities inspired by them), this collection delivers all the fist-pumping, riff-mongering and flashy solos of heavy metal’s golden age. As always, every track has been officially licensed and every artist gets paid. Some examples include: As a late entry into the NWOBHM sweepstakes, JJ’s Powerhouse was formed in Merseyside, England, by guitarist Jon “J.J.” Cox with members of his previous band, Quad. Much like the opener to the original Scrap Metal comp, one can hear early Metallica coursing through this legendary ripper. Coincidentally, this ultra-rare 45 was released in ’83, the same year as Kill ’Em All. Taking their name from a 1978 sci-fi novel by Marion Zimmer Bradley, Welsh super troopers Storm Queen reveled in animal-print clothing and flying Vs. The Motörhead-meets-Priest anthem “Raising the Roof” is the flipside to their only single, which the band self-released in 1982. Led by guitarist Dave Morse, Storm Queen’s earliest lineup included bassist Bryn Merrick (RIP), who would go on to join The Damned. Roaring out of Birmingham, England, in 1975, Jameson Raid palled around with fellow Brummies Black Sabbath and named themselves after a failed 19th century attack that helped kick off South Africa’s Second Boer War. Their three-song 1979 debut featured the...

Moskowitz, Dorothy & The United States Of Alchemy

Under An Endless Sky

Tompkins Square

***Under An Endless Sky represents the interchange that took place between electronic composer Francesco Paolo Paladino, composer and writer Luca Chino Ferrari, and the legendary Dorothy Moskowitz, an icon of underground culture who broke all kinds of new ground as a member of The United States of America. Led by the charismatic composer Joseph Byrd, the band released their lone eponymous album on Columbia Records in 1968. It has taken on a mythic status that has grown through the years, sampled by Diplo and Mac Miller and widely acknowledged as a visionary psychedelic classic. Francesco Paolo Paladino, an avant-garde Italian composer contacted Dorothy, inviting her to sing on some of his compositions. When she heard his 2021 CD release of "Barene & Other Works, " she recognized that they shared a similarly experimental point of view and she accepted his invitation. Paladino is known for his collaborations with Martyn Bates, Allison O'Donnell, Simon Fisher Turner, and other world-renowned contemporary composers, as well as his own sought-after 1985 debut LP Doublings and Silences Volume 1. Francesco has long collaborated with Italian writer Luca Chino Ferrari, author of biographies of Nick Drake, Third Ear Band, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley and Syd Barrett, among others. He submitted lyrics to Dorothy and together they began a profound and unique collaboration on the adaptation of lyrics to music, delving into words and meanings, phonetic properties and their singability. “Lyrics that have the audacity to deal with complex themes of human existence, real philosophical cutaways that...

Darts, The

Snake Oil

Alternative Tentacles

At last! The Darts return from their Bat Cave Covid lair, with Snake Oil—by far their best album to date. The Darts formed in 2016 with the goal of getting some solid female musicians together to make garage punk rock and roll noise, see the world, and basically have a super-fun slumber party every night. They are now hands down one of the best garage bands in the world. This is a much fuller sound than any Darts disc before, courtesy of their longtime collaborator Bob Hoag (FB Rec) and some remote control co-production wizardry from Jello Biafra himself. Featuring the return of Nicole Laurnne on vocals / Farfisa and Hammond organ, Christina Nunez on bass / vocals, and Meliza Jackson on guitars / vocals, Snake Oil is the debut of new drummer Mary Rose Gonzales. The result? It comes out smoking as if the band had been in a pressure cooker throughout the pandemic. Expect the wider sound and sparkle of Laurnne and Nunez’s previous band, The Love Me Nots (which was also recorded by the brilliant Bob Hoag), but with way more raunch—and Laurnne’s voice has never sounded better. Snake Oil is for fans of agile, sultry vocals and beefy, vintage rhythm sections paired with razor-tone guitars. This Snake Oil was concocted to remedy the most unaffected and stiff-legged garage rockers out there!

Veils, The

…And Out Of The Void Came Love

Ba Da Bing!

It’s been seven strange years since The Veils’ last studio album Total Depravity, and Finn Andrews has a new double album to show for it. …And Out Of The Void Came Love is the result of this tumultuous period of injury, isolation and new life. Following the release of Total Depravity, Andrews released a solo album and began a worldwide tour. One night, while lashing out at a particularly intense moment on piano, he broke his wrist on stage. He played on and finished the rest of the tour, but it wasn’t until he got it examined much later that he realized what a bad move that was. The convalescence that followed meant a lengthy hiatus from touring, so he did what he does best and stayed at home and wrote songs. Just when his hand had healed sufficiently for him to play again, The Veils found themselves in need of a new record label, but Finn set about starting to make a new record regardless. Producer Tom Healy invited Finn to his small studio underneath the old Crystal Palace ballroom in Mount Eden, and they listened through the legions of songs he had amassed throughout the previous year. Following another two years of intermittent recording between lockdowns, Finn’s wife became pregnant, and yet more songs started coming. By the time the songs had been recorded, it was clear that arranging the album into two halves best suited such varied material—but the meaning of the songs as a whole still...

Vacuous

Dreams Of Dysphoria

Dark Descent

London’s Vacuous finally present their debut album to follow the magnificent 2020 EP Katabasis. Greeting the listener along with the equally gloomy cover-art is an array of spectral and atmospheric death metal that is haunting beyond the nightmarish depths of the human mind. Perhaps owing to their fixation on the human psyche, or the equally inescapable reality their music conjures with contorting riffs, rock-solid drumming and bellowed vocals, chasms of atmosphere are opened to pour one’s own psyche into. One of the most unique things about Vacuous is their ability to play such bludgeoning, heavy music while retaining a very anguished emotional side, lending massively to the cataclysmic ambience of Dreams Of Dysphoria. The outcome of this is music is sonically punishing. From eerily dragging moments of graven doom through to the churning malice of sickeningly twisted fury, there is nothing but charnel brilliance on display here in a truly diverse platter of hostilities. While one could wrongfully assume that there is only simplicity to be found in this style of music, Vacuous have an utterly unique, warped way of writing their songs that is like no other. From the gloomier moments to the gut-wrenching hooks, there is always something slightly off-kilter here that is disquieting and unfamiliar. This feverish and unwelcoming side of the music is hard to shake, which gives the album a genuinely disturbing factor while the absolutely ferocious death metal core is never lost, nor anything short of thrust upon oneself. It would be an easy...

Lana Del Rabies

Strega Beata

Gilgongo

***Strega Beata is the third fulll-ength album from SAM AN's dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project under the semi-notorious moniker LANA DEL RABIES. After a brief hiatus, this record is her first full-length release since the gothic, industrial noise of 2018's Shadow World (on Deathbomb Arc). Strega Beata, which loosely translates to "Blessed Witch," is an apocalyptic myth told through dense, textural compositions pulling from the vast corners of dark genre music. The title's meaning is appropriate for the existential, cathartic, and otherworldly themes explored. The record is told through the evolving perspective of a cryptic and obscure "Mother" creator figure, specifically echoing the mother and crone goddess archetypes. This figure is vocalized through LDR's eerie harmonies, spoken words, pleading howls, and frenetic screams aimed towards another archetype, the chosen one. These vocalizations sometimes hover above trip-hop low tempos and unnerving atmospheres ("Mourning," "Hallowed is the Earth"), sink through vintage horror movie darkwave synths ("Master," "Apocalypse Fatigue"), weave through art metal distortions and relentless drone bass tones (Mother), or blast through unconventional industrial rhythms ("Prayers of Consequence," "A Plague").

Beherit

Drawing Down the Moon

Nuclear War Now

***Following the release of the quintessential edition of The Oath of Black Blood, NWN! is honored to announce the 30th anniversary reissue of BEHERIT's legendary debut album Drawing Down the Moon. This deluxe edition will feature a gatefold jacket and booklet with extensive liner notes and unreleased images.

Profane Order

One Nightmare Unto Another

Nuclear War Now

***Thundering forth with frenzied intensity, Montreal’s PROFANE ORDER return with their second full-length, One Nightmare Unto Another. From its first moments, the record summons merciless blackened death metal soaked in the old blood of the '90s trailblazers. The band’s first release with Nuclear War Now!, this latest release features seven tracks of rapid-fire aggression and bestial hostility. Incubating slowly as the plague months passed, One Nightmare Unto Another’ reveals a rearmed and retaliatory variant of the group. Pared down to a maniac core of two members, ILLUSORY (SPECTRAL WOUND) and OLCADÓIR (SKUMSTRIKE) invoke the dark gods of ancient black and death metal. Fans of Blasphemy, Demoncy, Beherit and the wildest excesses of Slayer will find fresh meat to feast on amid the record’s barbaric purity. Packed with demented solos, seething vocals, and a pounding drum assault in the finest tradition of Canadian black/death metal, the album exhibits a violent and pitliless focus. As such, it represents a powerful and distinct follow-up to the band’s acclaimed 2019 debut record, Slave Morality and 2017’s Tightened Noose of Sanctimony EP, emitting pure hatred as the group shifts from one nightmarish era to the next. Befitting the band’s most concentrated and corrosive material yet, One Nightmare Unto Another features artwork by the renowned ALEX SHADRIN of Nether Temple design (artwork for Morbosidad, Esoctrilihum, Tetragrammacide, and more). Acrid and reeking of disdain, this latest full-length from Profane Order offers a pitiless bludgeoning and bloodthirsty portent of further violence to come.

Majesties

Vast Reaches Unclaimed

20 Buck Spin

The creative centers of Obsequiae and Inexorum come together as one in the preeminent new force known as Majesties. To those familiar with the individual pieces that make up Majesties, the sound on debut album Vast Reaches Unclaimed will be another striking addition to their respective oeuvres, recalling the glorious days of Wrong Again and No Fashion Records. Evoking a time when Gothenburg was starting to unseat Stockholm as the unimpeachable city for Swedish death metal in the mind of the international metal scene, Majesties have that intrinsic sense of death metal’s rabid intensity and the effortlessly satisfying melodic ability that made albums like The Jester Race and its immediate forbears instant classics. The mix of major key melodies and twin guitar harmonies snaking through every track ornament the vigorous riff eruptions and anguished vocals in a sheen of gleaming brilliance that proves an exhilarating triumph to behold. Without a hint of the corruption the style experienced in a post-Slaughter Of The Soul world, Vast Reaches Unclaimed exists as a fervent reminder of what was and what again shall be. Majesties are re-animating the corpse of the true melodic death metal style that both divided and invigorated the death metal scene of the mid-1990s and bring it into 2023 like it never left, sounding as novel and thrilling as ever.

Giles Corey

S/t

Flenser

“‘Some time in the Spring of 2009, I tried to kill myself. Six months before that, I used a Voor’s Head Device for the first time.’ This line opens the 150-page book that accompanies Giles Corey, an intensely personal, intimate portrait of depression that took me almost four years to make.” —Dan Barrett  Giles Corey’s haunting self-titled debut is back in print! The Flenser is pleased to offer a new version of this cult favorite as a double LP housed in a gatefold jacket, with the same 150-page book that accompanied the previous versions. Giles Corey is the gloomy folk-driven solo project from Have A Nice Life mastermind Dan Barrett. Here, Barrett forgoes the post-industrial trappings of Have A Nice Life in favor of an intimate singer-songwriter approach. While thematically related to his other work—dealing with subjects like suicide, death and the paranormal—Giles Corey feels more personal, with impressive shifts from quiet desperation to cathartic outburst. Over the years the album has gained a fervent following, and has sometimes been compared to a religious experience. It is dark yet purgative enterprise not for the frail of heart.  Vinyl only: The accompanying book is an integral part of the album. Its examinations of the life and times of cult leader Robert Voor parallel the themes within the lyrics and offer further immersion for the reflective listener. In Barrett’s own words: “The album follows a story arc of emotions that are detailed in the accompanying book, as much a part of this record as the...

Cunningham, David

Grey Scale

Superior Viaduct

David Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1954. His work ranges from pop music to gallery installations including several collaborations with visual artists. His first significant commercial success came with The Flying Lizards’ single “Money,” an international hit in 1979. Originally released in 1976, Cunningham’s first solo album Grey Scale has become a landmark statement of DIY minimalist composition—continuing in the vein of the wild explosion of arthouse experimentation from the early ’70s. Cunningham, then a student at the Maidstone College of Art in Kent, drafted fellow student non-musicians and (using whatever instruments available) crafted an endlessly shifting sonic palette with an improvisor’s keen sensitivity to space, texture and tone. As Cunningham states in the liner notes, his approach was to “pursue something (which may appear trivial or meaningless) so rigorously or relentlessly to the point that it reveals something new.” Cunningham was influenced by live performances he was attending at the time by English composers Cornelius Cardew, Gavin Bryars and Michael Nyman as well as free improvisors Evan Parker, Derek Bailey, David Toop and Paul Burwell. The inaugural release on Cunningham’s own Piano label, Grey Scale was indeed “something new” in 1976. The artist quickly integrated his experimental sensibilities to produce art-rock pioneers This Heat, whose debut appeared on Piano in 1979. His popular success performing as The Flying Lizards (with two electro-punk albums on Virgin during the New Wave era) was presaged by this seminal work of fascinating sound collage and tonal freedom. First-time reissue.

Negative Vortex

Tomb Absolute

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***Brazilian US-based doomed death metal duo Negative Vortex rise from the depths of torment with their long awaited debut album "Tomb Absolute", a fifty four-minute, nine-song double LP of absolute, towering atmospheric death metal oblivion. Years in the making, meticulously produced, and assembled from sheer pain and perfectionism, "Tomb Absolute" is a colossal slab of grim and hopeless death metal evoking bleak and pessimistic visions of a doomed future to come, and stirring with bitter reflections about mental illnesses, society's role in human failure, dysfunctions of the mind and spiritual hopelessness. Musically the album takes its life force and inspiration from the glory and timelessness of 80's and 90's death and doom metal (Cathedral, Nihilist, Autopsy, Celtic Frost), wielding a death-bearing payload of intense, monolithic, gut wrenching death metal riffs alternated by ultra-depressing slow-paced doom sections to conjure an ultimate monolith erected to complete death, pain and suffering. The album's imposing and pessimistic aura is further enhanced by a dense and a multi-layered production, lengthly and trance-like compositions that drag the listener into a labyrinthine realm of utter darkness and despair, and synth-laden ambient dirges and spoken word passages that exalt the album's lightless depths and monstrous atmospheres. Completing and further adorning the massive hellscape are also illustrious guest appearances from veterans of the scene like Nick Holmes (Paradise lost / Bloodbath), Kam Lee (Massacre), Moyses Koslene (Krisiun), Leon del Muerte (Impaled / Terrorizer L.A.), Vik (Whipstriker), and Caleb Bingham (Athanasia), providing additional guitars leads and vocal contributions.

Tithe

Inverse Rapture

Profound Lore

Tithe is a Portland, Oregon-based band that constructs an unorthodox amalgamation of death metal, black metal, and grind without straying too far from the fundamentals of aggressiveness and depravity. Conceived in 2017 by vocalist / guitarist Matt Eiseman and drummer Kevin Swartz, the band spent its first years writing and releasing a self-titled EP before finding bassist Alex Huddleston at the end of 2018. This lineup went on to release their debut album Penance in May 2020, which despite the challenge of releasing in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, was well-received. The album explores the themes of psychedelics, mental illness and the human condition. Tithe’s sophomore album Inverse Rapture evolves upon the themes of Penance and morphs into a more angry, raw and dissonant form. The trio’s most incendiary material to date, this latest maintains the blazing tempos the band is known for with dreary, lowering passages strewn throughout. Produced / mixed by Fester, mastered by Adam Gonsalves and featuring the macabre art of Abomination Hammer, Inverse Rapture is a complete exhibition of viciousness and despair beginning to end.