Midwife & Vyva Melinkolya

Orbweaving

Flenser

Madeline Johnston and Angel Diaz became close friends in 2020, regarding each other as a lifeline when things were difficult in their personal lives. This friendship was born from music but quickly became so much more than that. The two met in person in 2021, when Diaz came for a recording residency at Johnston’s studio in New Mexico. It was during this session that they wrote and recorded Orbweaving, in the heat of summer in the arid Chihuahuan Desert. Orbweaving combines the best parts of Midwife’s “heaven metal” and Vyva Melinkolya’s sentimental, classic shoegaze in a way that distinctively elevates both artists. The record explores themes of hopelessness, calling on a higher power, being alone, and the sublime horror of the natural world. Orbweaving seeks to thematically and sonically create a web like structure—a gauze of sorrow and visceral connective thread. At night, Diaz and Johnston went herping (a term used by herpetologists to describe looking for snakes and amphibians) along the empty roads near Las Cruces. The asphalt retains heat from the day, and the snakes absorb the warmth by writhing across the pavement. They found rattlesnakes, roadkill, and orb-weaver spiders. The track “Plague X” was inspired by the lifecycle of cicadas; whose seventeen year periodical cycle took place in 2021. The group of cicadas that emerged are known as Brood X. In a post-covid world, one is no stranger to living in a plague year. The violent arrival of Brood X cicadas are alluded to...

Fratila, Stefana

I want to leave this Earth behind

Not Not Fun

Between December 2018 and 2019, Canadian composer Stefana Fratila went on a series of research trips throughout North America – including to NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre – to meet with astronomers and scientists to answer a complex question: “If each planet in our solar system were a room, what would each room sound like?” Her findings culminated in Sononaut, a collection of open-source VST plug-ins for digital audio workstations emulating each astral body’s atmospheric conditions. (Artist Jen Kutler collaborated on the project as well, using calculations by NASA astronomer and planetary scientist Dr. Conor Nixon). During a residency at CMMAS (Centro Mexicano para la Música y las Artes Sonoras) in Morelia, Mexico, Fratila began writing the album on an octophonic sound system, then added additional synthesizer, finalized arrangements, and incorporated Sononaut at her home studio in Toronto. The results are surreal, expansive, multi-colored, and mesmerizing. I want to leave this Earth behind is an odyssey of cosmic voyaging and technological innovation, fusing science, sound design, and stargazer reverie into eight cosmic portraits of our vast galactic family.

Akasha System

Ancient Path Complete

100% Silk

Originally self-released as a digital-only EP in the summer of 2021, Ancient Path Complete folds four additional tracks into its sidewinding saga of hidden mesa house and aerodynamic electronics, delivering on its creator’s lofty vision of music “for looking inward, to the center of being.” These are songs of spiraling tides, spirit guides, and shadowy forward motion, drawn towards some shared beacon beaming like a low moon across the desert. Akasha System (aka Hunter P. Thompson) speaks of the album as born during a time of “personal darkness, confusion, and uncertainty,” but its exorcism produced the opposite – assured, expansive, and illuminated. It’s the sound of growth and change being sought and found, new trails taking shape, forking towards fresh horizons. Windswept, wistful, and blazed by an inner light, APC “continues the path onward into your pure, creative core… into healing.”

Wave Temples

Portals

Not Not Fun

Expansion pack of Wave Temples transmissions accompanying the Panama Shift vinyl suite. Its creator contextualizes Portals as the first volume in a tarot-style card game of the same name, to be used for divining prophetic strategies. Each of the 13 pieces here unfolds like a glimpse to an inner realm – or a past life. Hazed vignettes of primitivist anthropological fantasia, warbly and windswept, suffused with déjà vu. Insects and macaws sing from the periphery, while beach fires glow along an abandoned coast, the tide like a language lost in the tunnels of time.

Cport Cistema

Say It

100% Silk

Lithuanian producer Simonas Činga debuts as Cport Cistema with a 7-track slate of low-slung steppers, melancholic jack, and baggy breaks, born of the struggle “to say whatever comes, to speak up – to say it.” Recorded across the past two years largely in Kaunas, the songs swell and swirl with kinetic dreams from city streets in uncertain times. Crisp rhythms cut through cold air, laced in bass, breath, and samples both vocal and cinematic. It’s music of atmosphere and anticipation, attuned to heady heights just beyond the horizon. The spirit of Činga’s heroes (Vynehall, BoC, Djrum) echoes through these mixes but ultimately their motion and emotion maps a world unto itself – elevated, liberated, forever freshly coming into focus.

Oldham, Will & Lori Damiano

Shorty's Ark

Drag City

***Shorty’s Ark is a book for young readers, a collaborative effort between singer Will Oldham and graphic artist Lori Damiano, based on work by Oldham and musician Matt Sweeney. Drawing inspiration from the story of Noah, Shorty’s Ark names and pictures a wild variety of species to inform and engage an equal variety of young minds with the diversity that can be found around this great planet of ours. The flood stands as metaphor for current impending changes in our planet, and the story works as a springboard for understanding concepts of interdependency, diversity and extinction. Colorfully illustrating as many creatures and their places as possible, Shorty’s Ark is an earth-affirmative vision meant to stimulate the curiosity and passion of those who encounter it.

Hauras

Pervades

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***Head to the western neighborhoods of San Francisco, and the city becomes a very quiet place after midnight. By 3am, one can almost hear the fog spilling past the sodium lights that illuminate a lonesome street corner at Judah and 15th. Whatever soundtracks that emerge from that time and that place inevitably embody that nocturnal atmosphere, a narcoleptic weariness, a waking dream of the insomniac. Such is the psychogeographical realm as channeled through sound for Hauras, the obliquely musical concern for San Franciscan Howard Ryan. In Pervades, Hauras returns to the fragments of guitar warbling through chains of echo and flange, his Basinski-esque loops of crushingly sad ambient melody, his EVP impressionistic vocals, and his curious interruptions from scanner radio. More than before, he expresses a confidence in his oblique craftsmanship that allows him to push the sounds to include a very compelling drum machine plus guitar noise track in "Stellaged." Richard Youngs, Gate, and Graham Lambkin all come to mind, as does the terminally obscure project Dial (Jacqui Ham's post-Ut band of similarly late nite expressionism). Pervades concludes a trilogy of recordings made during the pandemic era, that also includes In These Coming Days (2020) and The Glare of the Nave (2021). Inspired by Rinko Kawauchi and Audrey Szasz. Mastered by Brian Pyle

Vertonen

Einige Schadstoffe

Helen Scarsdale Agency

***In Einige Schadstoffe, we have quite the potent homage to the classic era of industrial noise. Think Throbbing Gristle's Second Annual Report, Come's I'm Jack, MB's Symphony For A Genocide, and even Nord's Ego Trip. The sentiment linking all of these records is a clinical detachment in the production and broadcast of scalding tone, sickly rhythm, and unclean readymades, emerging through the spectacle of the human conditions of alienation, paranoia, and cruelty. Ultimately, such works are intended as critiques by way of gonzo journalism, where the intent is not always what it seems. Vertonen, the longstanding project of veteran Chicago avant-noise technician Blake Edwards, masterfully recapitulates these strategies and affects, both aesthetically and materially. On Einige Schadstoffe, Edwards transmits feverish arppegiations cascading through nervous distortion, followed by plodding rhythms and dead-toned electronics that gird case studies on living monstrosities. There is also a rather clever, if oblique and almost Oulipian framework to the album. Plenty of breadcrumbs have been laid as to the nature of Edwards' puzzle, and we have already said too much about that.

Indopan

Yupana

100% Silk

Named for a banned 60’s psychoactive stimulant, Indopan is the splinter entity of Irish producer Andrew Morrison, aka “tape throb” godfather The Cyclist. Its sound runs distinct but parallel, a fusion of blasted house and ghosted soul, smeared with dub, breaks, and redline grit. Yupana collects nine new tracks for a 50-minute trip through outer limits and altered states, cutting keys at the doors of perception. Smoky horns, snaky bass, smeared organ, and deep torch laments spiral through kinetic, kaleidoscopic strains of dizzy swing, dusty jack, and jittery acid. Alternately weightless and weary, tense and unhinged, Morrison’s mastery of mood, rhythm, and restraint hits a supreme peak here. This is music of liquid nights, chemical bloodstreams, and ancient sorrows, ebbing and flowing from lost roots to fractured futures, unbowed and unknowable.

Golden Hallway Music

Rules & Chance Vol. 3

Not Not Fun

Manhattan’s resident innerspace organist Zack Tornaben centers the third installment of his ongoing Rules & Chance series on breath, tone, and the ancient Qigong practice, “Eight Pieces of the Silk Brocade.” Working once again with the classic Golden Hallway Music palette of a pair of reel-to-reel tape machines, a 49-key Acetone combo organ, and an 80’s synth clone, he records everything live without overdubs in sprawling séance sessions, then digitally transfers them for distillation into choice excerpts. Swirling, shivering reveries of skylines and stained glass, Tornaben’s process prizes intuition, intimacy, and “feeling around in the dark,” inspired by a pantheon of greats from the grand tradition of harmonic divination – Young to McClellan, Brouk to Battiato. Rules & Chance Vol. 3 gently expands his evolving lexicon of daydream minimalism, levitational and limitless, born of passing thoughts and everyday joys, rippling in the mind like light on water.

Choncy

Community Chest

Feel It

***Choncy’s Community Chest is an itch-scratching debut album shaped by post-punk, garage, and hardcore-adjacent music. The album confronts the trials and tribulations of the modern day workforce culture day-by-day in the Rust Belt. The four piece band out of Cincinnati, Ohio embraces their original punk sound through uniquely biting vocals and fluctuating shrill guitars, all kept together with a potent and driving rhythm section. The album was recorded to tape at Amish Studios with Joe Tellman in Nashville, Tennessee. “Company Man,” the album's lead single, capitalizes on its post-punk rhythm and witty vocals, while “Beehive” parallels modern hardcore music. Choncy passionately shape their Midwestern identity across 'Community Chest' with an original sonic and visual prowess.

Frisk / Last Affront

Split

Iron Lung

***If music that feels like a massage with broken glass, then this is the rub for you! We know, we’ve withstood the pain for you but now it's finally time to share. Short, fast and raging hardcore from both of these UK bruisers. Meant to be a promo tape for Frisk’s "Stalker" LP, which as you know is already out, and meant to coincide with their jaunt around the Empire late last year but, of course, Iron Lung Records got it done just in time for the day after, haha. As chance would have it, Last Affront is coming over to the states to do a tour so now this tape is their tour promo thing. Life is a stab in the dark at best so turn the lights off and start waving your knives in the air.

Heavy Mother

Comical Uncertainty

Feel It

***Bloomington, Indiana's HEAVY MOTHER are back with a new EP to kick off 2023. Three new originals follow up nicely on their debut album, This Time Around, that came out late last year—a stripped down, r'n'r garage punk extravaganza. Heavy Mother also treat us to dynamite renditions of "The Other Side of This Life" (Fred Neil), "Boogaloo!" (Don Gardner), and the Velvet Underground's "Foggy Notion" featuring a special guest appearance from Craig Bell (Rocket From The Tombs, Mirrors, Saucers). Comical Uncertainty is one heck of a twenty-six minute ride from Indiana's finest rock'n'roll band around!

Callaci, Dennis

Lost Reflection

Bamboo Dart Press

***In DENNIS CALLACI's (REFRIGERATOR, Shrimper Records) third book, Lost Reflection, the author has assembled seven short stories that are sewn together with characters whose reflections on the past are not to be trusted. Tug at the seams of the book to find the connective tissue—a clone of a character in one story appearing with an assumed name in the next, a reinterpretation of previous events here and again there. Or pay no mind to the lost echo searching eternally.

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.

Andy Aquarius

La Force Aquarienne

Constellation Tatsu

***Andy Aquarius was in the process of writing another album, the follow up to ‘Chapel’ (Hush Hush, 2021), when multiple voices emerged, each of them holding a distinct energetic signature. Those incantations became ‘La Force Aquarienne,’ a collection of intuitive prayers.The first track, ‘U Lisi’ (Ukrainian for ‘In The Forest’), represents the connective and grounding tissue of our shared dimension. From there the space continues to open up to different layers and degrees, slowly moving into the forest’s polar opposite, the sea (or Nirvana, meaning ‘No Forest’). The Celtic harp, supported by the forces of nature and a subtle orchestration, moves through quiet territories, gently distributing and releasing resonance along the way.

Grim Beazley

Big World

Constellation Tatsu

***From the chaos and calm of the Australian bush, Grim Beazley’s Big World combines sounds and stories with deep evolutionary narratives. Meditative dreamscapes create an emotional connection with an environmental theme exploring house, trance, and meditation.

Hoshina Anniversary

HakkyouShisou

Constellation Tatsu

***Hoshina Anniversary is from Hachioji, westside of Tokyo. His new LP of fluid, experimental dance music extends outward from his initial influences of jazz fusion, electronica, and Japanese heritage.

Inkarose

A Love Letter to Water

Constellation Tatsu

***A Love Letter to Water is the instrumental debut EP by Colombian-born, Los Angeles based therapist and musician Alicia Ramírez, aka Inkarose. Four sonic poems are dedicated to the Spirit of Water—its circular, shape-shifting motion spans from River and Ocean to Clouds and Rain, and then returns to River. This record explores the curative properties of Water; a precious inhale and exhale, the mantra and pranayama of the Forest. Woven with love, these tracks feature special field recordings from various natural environments, including the Tayrona Jungle in Santa Marta, the rainforest in Kauai, and surrounding soundscapes of Los Angeles and Bogotá. This voyage of sound is graced by the loving touch and musical contributions of dear friends and loved ones, including Carlos Niño (percussion), Rumi Inoue (Alto and Soprano Flutes), Matt Little (Keys), Yeuda Ben-Atar (Flute Synth), and Ian Roller (Alto Sax). A Love Letter to Water is a love letter to the self.

Strategy

Graffiti In Space

Constellation Tatsu

***Releasing under the moniker Strategy, Portlander Paul Dickow’s latest album explores the space of dub techno, extending beyond the genre and making it his own.

Tartoplane

Aeonium

Constellation Tatsu

***Based on many years of research and correspondence, Tarotplane sought to accurately emulate the style and sound of Manuel Gottsching. "Aeonium" is a psychedelic treasure, capturing moments from Krautrock favorites but moving into new realms and spaces unexplored in the genre.

H.I.C. Systeemi

Perälä-nauhat 1981-1983

Sorry State

***Sorry State presents a US pressing of H.I.C. Systeemi’s Perälä-nauhat 1981-1983 cassette, originally released on the archival label Finnish HC late in 2020. Perälä-nauhat 1981-1983 collects early rehearsal recordings by this underrated hardcore band from Ylivieska, Finland. Don’t let the fact that these are rehearsal recordings scare you… the recordings sound excellent and the band is on fire throughout. Anyone with an appreciation for fast, complex, and memorable 80s-style hardcore punk will have no problem enjoying this, but if you’re familiar with 80s Finnish hardcore or H.I.C. Systeemi’s other recordings, all the better. These recordings predate H.I.C. Systeemi’s lone studio album by several years, and include 6 previously unheard tracks that never got recorded in a proper studio.

Allen, Parker

Parker's First Song Diary

Ever / Never

***Composer and singer Donna (née Parker) Allen is prolific, and fast. Music pours out of her, and vinyl is unequal to capturing the flow. Accordingly, ever/never is honored to present Parker's First Song Diary as a limited-edition cassette. We first encountered Donna’s work through Chronophage, one of the defining guitar bands of the past decade and a rare bulwark of political radicalism and artistic independence in the U.S. underground. As singer and songwriter for that band, Donna favors an accomplished fingerstyle technique on guitar, unpredictable changes, and a winding melodicism with few parallels in contemporary rock music. The ’Phage suggests a great, lost band of the high SST era, restless and open and committed to its personal vision. Since moving to New York in 2021, Donna has linked arms with the city’s anarcho-punk scene, written about avant-garde and dissident art of the late 20th century, and produced reams of solo piano music. Her song diary is a return to the intense, personal songwriting she practices with her main band. True to its title, it reminds us of the intimacy and spontaneity of an earlier home-recording era, when the cassette was an easy and immediate way of sharing ideas with kindred spirits.  One is a blend of spare solo pieces for guitars, keyboards, and vocals and fully arranged band pieces. At times, its instrumental sections recall Neil Young and Richard Thompson, Lou Barlow and the Harrisburg Players. At others, these tracks hint at Donna’s love of ‘80s UK pop, which her...

Pokrass, Meg

Kissing The Monster Hunter

Bamboo Dart Press

***Kissing the Monster Hunter is a book about monster hunters, unseen monsters, perpetual dreamers, and the creatures (human and otherwise) who love them. The unmissable prose poems and micros in this collection thrust us into an alternate reality where hope, love, and intimacy, when gone unrecognized, become a mystical force to be reckoned with.

Waddle, Victoria

The Mortality of Dogs and Humans

Bamboo Dart Press

***Because their lifespan is so much shorter than our own, a life with dogs involves repeated lessons in mortality. But there are lessons in love and tender care as well. With them, we have to learn to live in the moment "because a dog doesn’t spill regret throughout the house, doesn’t lurk in a life of guilt and second-guessing." Victoria reflects on the lives of five dogs and how their need for the outdoors helped to create opportunities to repeatedly seize the day. The Mortality of Dogs and Humans is a book for anyone who has ever loved a dog or needs a gift of uplift while grieving the loss of their companion pup.

Driftloss

Derealization

Zum Audio

***First physical manifestation of the synth duo Driftloss, who've released three Bandcamp-only albums since 2020. None are on the standard streaming services. Derealization is the third album and according to Marc Kate his favorite. Edition of 150 cassettes. "Narcoleptic and hauntological, inflected with frenetic electronic percussion. Vaporwaved Klaus Schultze scores."

Kazerouni, Nima

s/t

Shrimper

Nima Kazerouni is a Los Angeles based multi-instrumental artist who established the dream punk band So Many Wizards. During the pandemic, Nima concentrated much of his time working on a collection of songs and doing what he knew best; recording layers of melodies and counter melodies with his arsenal of synths and analogue instruments he’s collected over the years. The result is a lush debut solo EP that touches on his life as a dad of three little ones amidst the precarious modern world that we all find ourselves navigating through. He’s teamed up with several seasonal artists to bring the EP to life. Numbered edition of 100 copies.

Lee, Bobby

Endless Skyways

Tompkins Square

***"Scanning the horizons of Americana from its old weird beginnings, Opry outliers and cosmic cowboys through to today’s residents of the honky tonk at the end of the universe. Bobby Lee plays high lonesome folk songs, slow moving outlaws, Nashville oddities, cocaine cowboys, choogling rural rock and ambient country zoners."

Class

But Who's Reading Me?

Feel It

***CLASS are back with But Who's Reading Me?, their third outing since teaming up with Feel It Records in June 2022. Recorded at Midtown Island Studios in their hometown of Tucson, Arizona, CLASS kick off their 2023 output with four stellar new cuts rounded off by alternate versions of two from their latest full length, Epoca de Los Vaqueros. Fourteen minutes of punk, glam, garage, and power pop sounds swirled into one glorious EP from a group capable of writing and cranking out the hits on par with the best of 'em. The sky truly is the limit for the desert-dwelling geniuses in CLASS.

Marked Men

Ghosts

Dirtnap

***VINYL BACK IN PRINT!!! Note price increase. The fourth full-length album from THE MARKED MEN. Blurring the rawness and velocity of their self-titled debut with the slightly more developed songwriting "chops" of the last two, the Marked Men have truly delivered the best of both worlds. Since their debut album came out on Rip Off in 2002 (reissued in 2008 on Dirtnap!), the Marked Men have established themselves as one of the best, most distinctive, compelling, and instantly recognizable punk bands of the 2000's.

Brokaw, Chris

Live At The Decomissioned Power Plant In Florli, Norway

12xu

***"In 2022 they invited me to participate in a small festival in Florli, about an hour from Stavangar. It's only accessible by ferry and there's not much there. Year round population is about ten people, and it's most famous for its 4444-step wooden staircase up the side of a mountain, big hiker attraction. The 'festival' turned out to be more like an artists' retreat, combined with the wedding of Iver and Marit. My involvement was kinda last minute but I was very happy to be there. I met some great artists, experienced some cool and unusual performances; and played 2 solo sets, one electric in this giant decommissioned power plant, and one acoustic in the living room of a cabin. Both were thrilling for me; my new friend Jim Dawson recorded the electric one. This tape is that whole performance. As 'post covid rejuvenation get togethers' go this one was pretty great; the tape a good memento to an inspiring weekend."—CB, Cambridge 2023. Edition of 150 copies.

Jetsons, The

Suicidal Tendencies

Gulcher

***"In 2001 or so, my friend Amy made me a mix tape that was solely of bands from Indiana and included the LP comp Red Snerts, which compiled bands from the Hoosier state that were affiliated with the Gulcher Records label. One of the bands that really stuck out for me was a little band from Bloomington called THE JETSONS. Their track on the comp has a lite power pop feel to it, but has more damaging lyrics like 'I wanna puke, I wanna vomit on your feet, but you're such a cliched punk, you'd think I was being real neat.' I wanted to hear everything this band ever put out, but had no idea how to find it. I later found out (from the MaximumRockNRoll archives) that The Jetsons had one EP that came out on Gulcher back in 1981, and then they broke up. The first song, 'Suicidal Tendencies,' has a really warm, totally early-80s feel and is just as good (or better) than their comp track. My favorite part is when the singer is chanting 'Kill myself! Kill myself! Kill myself! Kill myself!' at the end. The other two songs, 'Genetically Stupid' and 'Killing,' are also great and make me want to hear more by them, but this is all there is since their demise came soon after this recording. Members of The Jetsons were also in the LATEX NOVELTIES, one of Indianapolis' first punk bands, and one of them went on to form THE UNATTACHED in...

Maggot Brain

Issue # 11

Maggot Brain

***Maggot Brain is a full-color, quarterly magazine edited by noted Detroit scribe MIKE MCGONIGAL: 100+ pages packed with phenomenal content—art, music, literature, unpublished archival material, and more—with a simple promise to only exist on the printed page. Issue # 11 is dedicated to the memory of astral traveling saxophone colossus PHAROAH SANDERS, with a tremendous evaluation of his most important work by the great music writer ANDY BETA as the cover feature, rare images by LENI SINCLAIR, and a brief remembrance by film director JEFF FEURZEIG. Also in this issue are features on MICK COLLINS, LAMBCHOP, LUCY SANTE, ERNEST HOOD, EDEL RODRIGUEZ, WEDNESDAY KNUDSEN, THINKING FELLERS UNION LOCAL 282, and much more.

Lord Kaos

Thorns of Impurity

Nuclear War Now

***"Seeping with an ominous grandiosity, the sole Lord Kaos album Thorns of Impurity is truly a forgotten relic in the pantheon of 90s symphonic black metal. Behind the morose keyboards and rigor mortis burdened drumming lies the key to Lord Kaos’ sound—guitarist Jamie “Astennu” Stinson. Before the release of Thorns of Impurity, Astennu migrated to Norway, through his connection to Slayer Mag’s Metalion, in order to record his solo project Carpe Tenebrum at the legendary Creative Studios. While in Norway he would join Dimmu Borgir and Covenant in the midst of a very successful era in both bands’ respective careers. Though the records he would record for those acts and his solo project have garnered fans worldwide, Thorns of Impurity has remained an underground classic. Astennu’s razor sharp riffing, alongside the superb musicianship of fellow bandmates Incubus and Lord of Night Summoning added a new dimension to the cosmos of Australian black metal. Though Australia isn’t known for its frost bitten mountaintops, the unforgivingly ice cold atmosphere of this album is a testament to the imperishable vision of Lord Kaos. The time has finally come to enter the Hall of Shadows!"—Arcane Archivist Zine

Rabid Delusion

Rabid Delusion

Color And Time Tonight

***Nine songs from this new Cleveland band; hardcore punk w/ intense vocals, a bulldozer rhythm section, and insane riffs/hard rock guitar elements combine on this—raw, noisey, and bruising. Influences are drawn from bands like Totalitar, Doom, Hiatus, Discharge, Varukers, etc. Features members of LACERATE, MUZZLE, BAD NOIDS, FLEA COLLAR, RAT FUCKER, DER KOMMISAR, SHORT ORDER, SCUM GUPPIES, and others.

Corpsessed

Succumb To Rot

Dark Descent

Finland’s death metal pacesetters Corpsessed celebrate their fifteenth anniversary with the release of brand-new album Succumb To Rot on Dark Descent Records. The unholy union of Corpsessed and Dark Descent Records, that began with 2011’s highly acclaimed The Dagger & The Chalice EP, endures to this day. Both entities have since gone to transform the shape of the death underground as one know its, carving out a unique niche reserved only for true old school zealots. With a steady line-up of seven years in place, and a strong foothold on the top of the death metal hierarchy, Corpsessed deliver an arrogantly superior milestone of atmospheric old school death metal enveloped in existential dread. “One circle closes only for another to begin anew. This is the logical conclusion to Impetus Of Death where the limits of human existence gives us a push to even do things in life (art being the pinnacle)—Succumb To Rot is the inevitable end where all things must eventually die and give into the relentless forces of entropy, and disintegrate into nothingness,” reflects guitarist M.M.. The mentally distressing artwork by Vladimir “Smerdulak” Chebakov also continues a tradition of exceptional Corpsessed album covers.

Desolate Shrine

Fires Of The Dying World

Dark Descent

At long last the successor to 2017’s Deliverance From The Godless Void has been unconfined from the clandestine vaults of Dark Descent Records. Aptly titled Fires Of The Dying World, Finland’s Desolate Shrine delivers forty-six minutes of their unique death metal possession. The masterful craftsmanship on this fifth album is unmistakable—a true portrait of a band at their absolute peak.  Yet be forewarned before indulging from the poison chalice of Fires Of The Dying World, for it ensnares its victims in an inescapable maelstrom of death and futility. Absolute surrender is the recommended response, as one descends into a claustrophobic trance that erases the world around and reaches into one’s very soul. Upon awakening… nothing will be quite the same again… Let the fires burn.

Oog Bogo

Beat Sessions Vol. 12

Shout Recordings

***"Oog Bogo is a Los Angeles based outfit oozing from the deviant mind of songwriter Kevin Boog. Boog, along with a cohort of co-conspirators, dissolve a myriad of influences from rock and punk’s outer fringe into a sodium bicarbonate solution. Heat is applied to the mixture until it congeals into a highly potent and smokable material whose idiosyncratic vocal harmonies and manic, unhinged guitar work push and pull against an unrelentingly in-the-pocket rhythm section. This tape, the 12th edition of Shout Recordings’ nefarious Beat Sessions, closely replicates the band’s live dynamic. Tracked at Golden Beat Studios in Los Angeles by Mike Kriebel and Ty Segall, the release features a collection of songs reimagined and reverse engineered from the perverse home recordings of Boog featured on the band’s previous three releases. Recorded immediately after a tour of America’s West Coast and featuring Shelby Jacobson (gtr), Kriebel (gtr), and Marley Jones (dr), the arrangements are refined in a way that only the road can and these 11 songs erupt from the speaker. The performances here are focused, sharp, and completely disturbing."

Faceless Burial

At The Foothills Of Deliration

Dark Descent

Since 2014, Australian death metal trio Faceless Burial have provided Dark Descent with two scorching albums, an EP and a demo. Well it is now time to see if this winning streak of brutality continues! Never a band to falter, At The Foothills Of Deliration begins on blast-beats and firestorms of malevolent riffing, with more deliciously warped bass lines that provide an intricate tapestry of sound, along with squealing leads and gargantuan vocals. The punchiness and utterly monolithic production instantly captivates the mind while the musicianship bends into inhuman shapes from the onset, taking one into cosmic realms and sepulchral crypts in sweeps of dynamic brilliance. The technical edge is still very much present, thus fans of insane musicianship can rest easy, faces will melt. That said, this is no obnoxious show of skill without substance as the previous material can attest to. No, Faceless Burial are masterful songwriters as well, who can string together beautiful atmospherics and odious grooves into an unimaginably bold and vibrant yet still filthily heavy cut of death metal. Clocking in at just under forty minutes with six diverse tracks woven into a singularity, this new record lives up to the name Faceless Burial with exquisitely interesting and gripping music that shall hold even the dullest attention span—thanks to the malignant heaviness and contorting progressions that are offered in abundance, without feeling too haphazard (though definitely chaotic). As soon as anything can become comfortable, an angular change shifts into play with barbaric aggression conveying extremely...