20 Buck Spin

Dream Unending & Worm

Starpath

20 Buck Spin

In both 2021 and 2022, Dream Unending and Worm releases closed out the year at 20 Buck Spin. For 2023, to complete the year-end trifecta, the two doomed titans now appear together on one towering release of cosmic duality, Starpath. With both bands dropping major works back to back in the previous two years, they became intrinsically linked in the imaginations of the fanbases. And while musically they almost couldn’t be farther apart, the foundational points when exhumed of the Earth, have plenty in common. The latest tracks from Dream Unending, “So Many Chances” and “If Not Now When” further dissolve the goth / post-punk elements that existed within earlier output, continuing to build upon the spacious free-form drift of extended guitar passages, pensively heavy riffs and Justin DeTore’s thunderous roar. Phil Swanson, who appeared as guest clean vocalist on Song Of Salvation, returns again here. These two extended pieces represent the most realized incarnation yet of where Derrick Vella and Justin DeTore are steering the ship. Worm, as they are now known for, continue to be an ever shape-shifting entity of pure virtuosic blackness. “Ravensblood” embraces vampyric black metal with icy keys and eerie cemetery melodies. The chillingly atmospheric “Midwinter Tears” invokes a snow covered gothic mood and side ender “Sea Of Sorrow” encapsulates the necromantic shred of lead guitarist Wroth Septentrion over Phantom Slaughter’s idiosyncratic black doom and immortally haunted crypt invocations. Two bands, two unique approaches, a chasmic spectrum of light from radiant impassioned creation to...

Gravesend

Gowanus Death Stomp

20 Buck Spin

The dark, seedy underworld of New York City once again emerges as the cityscape is tainted by sewage, crack smoke and the trade of flesh. The streets, once bustling with life, permeate with the grotesque and filth-ridden chaos of yesteryear. Among these harsh realities, within the walls of the dimly lit alley ways, a stench reeks of bodily fluids and rat feces. On the subway platforms, desperate souls engage in random acts of violence on one another over a few measly bucks. The East River runs a sickly green and the city’s hue mirrors the shadows cast by these illicit endeavors. Amid this unsettling somber reality a soundscape to capture the horror is now realized in the form of Gravesend’s second album. The new album Gowanus Death Stomp compounds the cruelty displayed on 2021 debut Methods Of Human Disposal into an ever more gritty and primal barrage of violence. At the crossroads of criminal depravity and urban malaise, Gravesend utilize many tools of the trade. Black / death / grind / war metal all meld seamlessly into a tar pit of scathing back-alley sadism and acid-tongued vocals. Like a newly found corpse down by the docks, the smell of decomposition is wafting out of every track on Gowanus Death Stomp. And as with NYC’s underground legends from Cro-Mags to Swans to Type O Negative, Gravesend embodies the pulse of the city, even as that pulse bleeds out on the concrete.

Vastum

Inward To Gethsemane

20 Buck Spin

***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.

Tomb Mold

The Enduring Spirit

20 Buck Spin

***NOW SHIPPING ON LIMITED DOUBLEMINT GREEN / AQUA BLUE GALAXY VINYL!!! Received Best New Music on Pitchfork and a 8.6 Rating! After releasing three albums in three years and then spending the next four in the wilderness, Tomb Mold has been reborn on fourth album The Enduring Spirit, a thoroughly unabashed step into vast new territories. Yet for all its frenetic daring and audacious exploration, it is never anything other than unmistakably Tomb Mold. While the expanding Tomb Mold architecture could be heard on last year’s self-released Aperture Of Body tape, it comes into clear focus throughout The Enduring Spirit. Certainly Derrick Vella’s time creating within and expanding the doom genre in Dream Unending has seeped into the flesh of Tomb Mold, not to mention Payson Power and Max Klebanoff’s explorations in their own Daydream Plus project. With album opener “The Perfect Memory (Phantasm of Aura)” the band’s angular dimension shifting riffing appears right out of the gate as the track travels through varying degrees of progressive death metal and some of the band’s most extreme material yet. “Will Of Whispers” enters with a jazz-like fantasy sequence before careening into a blinding white light barrage, tasteful guitar leads and back to a dreamy serpentine pattern, encompassing whole universes in its nearly seven minute run-time. The back half of the record continues the voyage into what’s possible with the outward expansion of death metal norms, reaching the zenith of eleven plus minute album closer “The Enduring Spirit Of Calamity,”...

Ruin Lust

Dissimulant

20 Buck Spin

ON LIMITED BLACK / WHITE GALAXY VINYL!!! Having dropped their third album Choir Of Babel in early 2020 just before the world shut down, the forces of pandemic did not succeed in silencing NYC’s Ruin Lust for good. Though confined to their fallout bunker, the band, with martial fervor, began work on what has now, three years later, emerged as their fourth album Dissimulant. In the final phase of imperialist rot, Ruin Lust declares war against the festering delusions of a devolving species. The most withering aspects of modern death metal, grinding war metal and black metal’s more bestial tendencies compel this audial exorcism, poisoning the well like a bioweapon spread through open air, suffocating and contemptuous. By the time album closer “Chemical Wind” is done, all that remains are parched bones and desiccated shadows. Barbarically pestilent yet compositionally deliberate, Dissimulant casts a bitter pall and leaves an open wound on the death metal scene for 2023. A militant milestone in the Ruin Lust discography.

Torture Rack

Primeval Onslaught

20 Buck Spin

Torture Rack exists for one reason, to pulverize skulls and grind bones through bludgeoning gore-soaked death metal depravity. New album Primeval Onslaught continues that bloodstained legacy, witnessed previously on Barbaric Persecution and Malefic Humiliation, with a barrage of meat-torn-from-bone riffs and greased-flesh savagery. Death metal for degenerates and desecrators might be the proper way to characterize Torture Rack’s uninhibited slaughter. This sort of derangement doesn’t care about some rational spin or greater purpose that might be found to rationalize its existence. Its goal is only to smother out a victim’s life, bury the body in the backyard and venerate the carnage. Torture Rack’s songwriting and intent on Primeval Onslaught has been tightened like a garrote, filling each track with meathooks into the skin and precise, constant battering, rarely eclipsing the four minute mark. And like the most successfully persistent maniac, it’s in and it’s out before there’s been time to comprehend the pile of bodies left in its wake.

Mournful Congregation

The Exuviae Of Gods - Part 2

20 Buck Spin

Returning with the second and final installment in the doom-laden The Exuviae Of Gods EP series, Part II once again contains two never-heard brand new Mournful Congregation tracks and a re-recording of an old classic from the band’s ’90s demo era. The EP opens with “Heads Bowed,” which the most fanatical Mournful Congregation fans will recognize from their An Epic Dream Of Desire demo from 1995, now given new life through the eyes and ears of decades of extreme doom songcraft and studio-work. After that look back, “The Forbidden Abysm” and the side-long “The Paling Crest” remind one how far Mournful Congregation have come, and yet remain as true to their original purpose as ever. Like the previous EP, artwork is once again handled by Karmazid, bringing the monadic into the dyadic. Thus perfecting the natural order of primordial principles… And so concludes the dual-pillar compendium of devouring gloom and exaltation that is The Exuviae Of Gods. A balm to quiet the restless spirit as the world awaits the inevitable birth of the years-in-the-making sixth Mournful Congregation album.

Fugitive

Maniac

20 Buck Spin

***NOW ON LIMITED WHITE 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.

Ascended Dead

Evenfall Of The Apocalypse

20 Buck Spin

***NOW ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR WITH BLACK SMOKE 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Ulthar

Anthronomicon

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.6 rating from Pitchfork. Over the course of their first two albums, Cosmovore and Providence, Ulthar carved out a unique niche on the spectrum of underground metal, forging a grotesquely elegant hybrid of technical death metal alchemy and black metal’s stinging blizzard winds, all with the acerbic color of the absurdist’s brush. Nearly three years on from Providence, a burst of deadly creativity has resulted in two new albums, to be released simultaneously. Anthronomicon embodies the continued progression of Ulthar’s mastery over its art—always evolving, refining and pushing forward. From the opening blasts and twisting mania of “Cephalopohre,” Ulthar baffle with angular warped riffage, dipping in and out of various dimensional spheres. Off-kilter multi-directional turns veer swiftly and violently as though about to come apart at the seams only to reshape again and again into ever more monumental forms. Each of Anthronomicon’s eight tracks represent a fractious piece of a larger puzzle, each a maze unto itself that when taken together allow one to traverse this inverted surrealist conundrum. Having reached albums three and four concurrently, and having many other bands and albums under their collective belts, the three seasoned players that comprise Ulthar have not been content to play things straightforward, to be just another death metal band among thousands. Rather the band continuously seeks and executes with more compulsive complexity, more nuance and in pursuit of a persistent ascension to a transcendent and incongruous world beyond the mundane; a place of euphoric exultation and...

Ulthar

Helionomicon

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received a 7.0 rating from Pitchfork. Over the course of their first two albums, Cosmovore and Providence, Ulthar carved out a unique niche on the spectrum of underground metal, forging a grotesquely elegant hybrid of technical death metal alchemy and black metal’s stinging blizzard winds, all with the acerbic color of the absurdist’s brush. Nearly three years on from Providence, a burst of deadly creativity has resulted in two new albums, to be released simultaneously. Where its sister album Anthronomicon presents an eight-piece puzzle of labyrinthine tumult, Helionomicon takes those elements and creates two towering twenty minute monoliths of radiant avant-garde immensity. Each track, appropriately titled “Helionomicon” and “Anthronomicon,” transports the listener on a vast journey of psycho-cerebral spectacle where hitherto unimagined landscapes take shape and strange intangible structures pierce the disintegrating firmament. Despite the substantial length of these two tracks, it’s never a tedious ride; each visits countless new vistas and perspectives across time. In essence Helionomicon becomes a synthesis of all Ulthar’s recorded output to this point across two climactic, ambitious epics. Having reached albums three and four concurrently, and having many other bands and albums under their collective belts, the three seasoned players that comprise Ulthar have not been content to play things straightforward, to be just another death metal band among thousands. Rather the band continuously seeks and executes with more compulsive complexity, more nuance and in pursuit of a persistent ascension to a transcendent and incongruous world beyond the mundane; a place of...

Tribunal

The Weight Of Remembrance

20 Buck Spin

The Vancouver duo Tribunal may yet be unknown to the wider world, but spellbinding debut album The Weight Of Remembrance is poised to immediately change that. Steeped in the black velvet finery of Gothic doom metal, Tribunal weave dark tales of ultimate judgement, never-ending rain and forsaken despair. Featuring classically trained cellist / bassist / vocalist Soren Mourne and guitarist / vocalist Etienne Flinn, the duo’s brick heavy classic doom riffage borders on death metal heaviness, like My Dying Bride filtered through a colossal stained glass edifice. The sound is instantly familiar with nods to the ’80s and ’90s but never sounds retro or like mere homage. Rather, The Weight Of Remembrance evokes the feeling of a painstakingly composed orchestral movement fit for a crumbling cathedral overgrown with moss. The duo frequently trade off vocals alternating between haunted wailing cleans, scathing black-metal style shrieks and dread-filled death calls. Tribunal’s debut is an essential addition to the modern doom canon, one which can expand in infinite musical directions from a base of crushing tragic heaviness and forlorn purpose. In that sense, The Weight Of Remembrance has the accomplished atmosphere of a band beyond their years in the scope and execution of its vision.

Worm

Gloomlord

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED BROWN / BONE MERGE W/ EVERGREEN & OLIVE GREEN SPLATTER VINYL!!! Worm’s second album, the early 2020 release Gloomlord, was a precursor to the massive impact that would make the world tremble on 2021’s Foreverglade. Itself a large stylistic leap forward from Worm’s debut album, Gloomlord brought the band to wider attention and the Floridian funeral doom contained within has since amassed a cult-like following of its own. Until now Gloomlord has been a somewhat difficult score in the States and often unavailable. As such, with the band now firmly at home on 20 Buck Spin and looking to make its first live appearances in 2023 it was time to sate the increasing demand and make Gloomlord easily available to the masses. As an added bonus the album has been completely re-mastered by Greg Chandler of the funereal legends Esoteric at Priory Recording Studios in the UK. And like the Foreverglade and Bluenothing vinyl releases, the reissued Gloomlord now comes with a huge poster insert. With those added aspects lead progenitor Phantom Slaughter considers this the definitive version of Gloomlord. “Gloomlord is one of those magnificent albums that is likely to hook the right kind of listener immediately on the sheer strength of its holistic sound and vision, but it will continue to reveal careful detail the more and closer one listens.” —Last Rites

Embalm

Prelude To Obscurity

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED EDITION BLOOD RED VINYL!!! An underground brutal death metal demo grail finally unearthed after twenty-five years rotting, 20 Buck Spin presents Prelude To Obscurity! Hailing from Wisconsin in the shadow of the Milwaukee Metal Fest, Embalm formed in 1995 while in high school in the era of Ablated Records, Frozen Dawn CD compilations and IllNoiz Death Fest to name a few. Embalm created truly memorable grooves of mid-paced, catchy, and brutal-as-hell Midwest death metal, also including the customary influence of Swedish death metal and even touches of Dissection-style harmony, setting this demo apart from any forced retro nostalgia. Despite staying local, Embalm was a part of a larger network and held their own supporting bands like Rotted, Internal Bleeding and Incantation. While this collection focuses on the masterwork and tragic final demo aptly titled Prelude To Obscurity, sicko freaks will be treated to the literally impossible to obtain first Demo ’95 as well, showing the most evil and grim basement necro recordings that, while primitive and cruel, still hold minimalistic memory of true underground demo cassette culture. Also included in a rare find are the two final live tracks that sadly never made it to the studio, written after Prelude and showing the band’s insane dual vocal / multi-lingual genius for darkness, slam and tortured leads. Painstakingly remastered from original DAT and cassette tapes by Arthur Rizk, the collection includes a massive time capsule booklet of flyers, ephemera, zine reviews, and live photos from the bygone glory days...

Dream Unending

Song Of Salvation

20 Buck Spin

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.5 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork. ON LIMITED AQUA BLUE / OXBLOOD MERGE VINYL!!! The 2021 Dream Unending debut album Tide Turns Eternal was a marked shift in musical ambition for Derrick Vella (Tomb Mold) and Justin DeTore (Innumerable Forms, Sumerlands). While structured with a foot firmly in death / doom, a far loftier purpose and progressivism was its hallmark, as such distancing itself from others pursuing the style. Now returning only a year later with the stunning Song Of Salvation, that exploratory zeal is given substantially greater allowance to soar and shine. The fourteen minute title-track opener enters like a morning sunrise over a calm sea before ramping up into ethereal heaviness like the richly textured waves of a sudden ocean storm. The songs momentum never retreats into laborious repetition, always opening new doorways, ebbing and flowing like river water from its source. Like solitarily gazing at the downtown lights of the city at night from the window of a darkened room, “Secret Grief” features the guest talents of vocalist Phil Swanson and Leila Abdul-Rauf on trumpet. The tranquil interlude of “Murmur Of Voices” gives way to the evocative “Unrequited” that begins with a lonely solo guitar before transitioning into a drifting daze of afternoon reverie and subconscious meditation. Finally comes the album’s epic bookend, sixteen minute closer “Ecstatic Reign.” It features perhaps the album’s heaviest straight doom moments along with the return of Tide Turns Eternal featured guest voices McKenna Rae...

Daeva

Through Sheer Will And Black Magic…

20 Buck Spin

COLOR LP ON LIMITED BLOOD RED INSIDE ULTRA CLEAR VINYL!!! Five years on from the wantonly indecent 20 Buck Spin-released debut EP Pulsing Dark Absorptions, Philadelphia’s Daeva rise like blistering flames from the hellish depths with the long-smoldering first album Through Sheer Will And Black Magic… A fiery maelstrom of early demonic black metal and jagged edge thrash convulsions forms the inherent basis of the album, where Daeva have perfected their art like gleaming, forged steel. Within this blueprint for madness guitarist Steve Jansson imposes a deliberate brandishing of death metal’s maggot-strewn corpse and a vigorously lethal dose of pure ’80s metal spirit and zeal. The journey through these scorched wastelands persistently guided by the venomously inventive acid-tongue of vocalist Edward Gonet. Song after song, riff after riff, the Arthur Rizk-produced Through Sheer Will And Black Magic is an insatiable and unstoppable whirlwind of unearthly pleasures and infernal butchery. Storming the gates of heaven with voracious exhilaration, Daeva inflict the ultimate triumph of hell upon the feeble sheep of the light.

Hulder

(Color) Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR W/ BLACK SMOKE VINYL!!! On earlier releases Hulder introduced her musical vision in primal form but with a direct sense of grimly melodic intent. Yet it was on debut album Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry that Hulder’s distinct penchant for crafting harsh anthems of mystical, invigorating grandeur and abyssic depth began to fully congeal. Throughout the album Hulder weaves the threads of various black metal strands together taking elements of pagan folk, ethereal symphonic majesty and the scraping raw melodicism of the most discordant and ghastly kind. Godslastering paints a vivid picture of lurking medieval darkness and long forgotten lineages plagued by disease and poverty, constantly under threat of armored plunderers with ill intent. In 2021 Hulder began the transformation into a live entity with a full backing band. And while plans exist to take the band far and wide throughout the world, musically Hulder remains the singular vision of its sole creator. First released in late 2020, Godslastering now sees domestic release for the first time via 20 Buck Spin, the band’s new label home.

Worm

Bluenothing

20 Buck Spin

COLOR LP ON LIMITED CYAN / BONE GALAXY VINYL!!! After the massive breakthrough of Foreverglade in 2021, the Floridian swamp winds stir again as Worm conjures the nocturnal evocation of Bluenothing. A four track, twenty-six minute mini album, Bluenothing is an ominous nightside lament demonstrating where the always-evolving fog dwellers have been and the distant domains where they may yet venture. The A-side of Bluenothing features two tracks from the mythic Foreverglade sessions that remained encased in the phantom crypts but are no less masterly than the latter’s ultimate six tracks. Indeed, the title track “Bluenothing” was at one time to be the album closer on Foreverglade and all the crushing weight and mysterious allure that made that opus a new classic remains on these two tracks. Yet these tracks also have the added dimension of pure necromantic shred via new guitarist Wroth Septentrion (Atramentus, VoidCeremony, Chthe-ilist, Hulder live). The B-side reveals a different yet complimentary stylistic command, one alluded to in past incarnations and now fully actualized—that of the clandestine dimensions of black metal’s unfathomable darkness and shrouded mysteries. “Invoking The Dragonmoon” is a ritual gate opening into this obscure galaxy, while “Shadowside Kingdom” denotes the arrival to the remote twilight stronghold at the edge of blackness where Phantom Slaughter’s tyrannical celestial necromancy can flourish undisturbed by mortal disquiet and axe-wielder Nihilistic Manifesto crafts a thousand spires of darkly cascading melodies—simply one of the best symphonic black metal tracks since the styles late ’90s apex. And so with Bluenothing...

Hulder

(Color) De Oproeping Van Middeleeuwse Duisternis

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR W/ BLACK SMOKE VINYL!!! De Oproeping Van Middeleeuwse Duisternis collects two early releases from one woman black metal band Hulder. The disc’s first five tracks comprise what was the Rehearsal 8/13/18 tape release, collecting an intro- and truncated rehearsal versions of the early demo tracks, indulging in the spontaneous harshness and pacing of a live recording. A Celtic Frost cover shows a primary influence. Tracks six through eight are the original Ascending The Raven Stone demo tracks proper that were Hulder’s first recorded release, immediately embracing the icy traditional black metal style of her forbears in both the Scandinavian and French scenes of the 1990s. An already well-developed sense of songwriting and atmosphere signal toward the dark future to come. These are the earliest raw steps of the project that would before long coalesce into evolved but no less bewitching form on the Hulder debut full length.

Acephalix

Theothanatology

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED ULTRA CLEAR WITH OXBLOOD TINT VINYL!!! Acephalix wakes from five years in morbid repose with a new offering upon the glistening altar of flesh, a devastatingly tormented study on Theothanatology, the idea or belief that God is dead. Within this cerebrum shattering inquiry lies, as always, a primal spewing forth of vicious death metal malignity and bomb-raid hardcore dispersions. Across a decade and a half lifespan, the evolution of Acephalix into the bludgeoning instrument of discord and dead faith displayed on Theothanatology has never felt so urgent. The crumbling siege-like mentality of modern life leaves no doubt God has left the building and Acephalix adeptly soundtrack the contradictions, atrocity and inner turmoil of such massive loss and decay. From the opening title track to closer “Atheonomist,” Acephalix is razor-focused on its greatest strengths, commanding the unambiguous sonic pulverizing of a bulldozer over the decimated skull pile of a once thriving civilization. Simultaneously more musically complex and savagely barbaric, Theothanatology heralds a collapse already in motion.

Bleed

Somebody’s Closer

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED DEEP PURPLE W/ BABY BLUE SPLATTER VINYL!!! The up-and-coming Dallas, Texas based four-piece Bleed digitally self-released their debut EP Somebody’s Closer in 2021. With no label backing and only a handful of shows (thus far) the four track introduction left a huge impression on nearly all that happened upon it, racking up tens of thousands of streams simply by word of mouth. With seemingly effortless self-assurance Bleed’s music harkens back to a period of time when the ‘90s were going from mid- to late and grunge and more mainstream metal were converging in a flurry of credibly hard-hitting, melodic heaviness that played equally well on college and mainstream rock radio. Bleed’s songs hit with a visceral heavy impact and infectious alt-rock hooks, then are given further shape by singer Ryan Hughes, whose airy vocals glide fluidly overhead. As the band continue the work of crafting their full length album, to be eventually released by 20 Buck Spin, the label will first finally issue Somebody’s Closer in physical form. In the meantime the EP is streaming in full via all platforms and demanding repeat spins.

Tzompantli

(color) Tlazcaltiliztli

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED BLOOD RED INSIDE ULTRA CLEAR W/ SILVER / WHITE / BLACK SPLATTER VINYL!!! A Tzompantli, in bygone days, was a rack used to display human skulls, often of enemies or sacrifices, in several Mesoamerican civilizations. In 2022, Tzompantli is a beyond-crushing death doom war march built on a bedrock of Native / Indigenous themes, rituals and history, illuminating the splendor, brutality and despair within.  Nearly three years after the band’s self-released EP, Tzompantli’s debut full length presents the first smoke-conjured specter to manifest materially. Tlazcaltiliztli, a ritual ceremony that translates to “nourishing the fire and sun with blood”, is imbued with the spirit of Native inspiration that dwells deep within the heart and soul of the project and is skillfully weaved into a traditional bludgeoning framework of spine-severing savagery and melancholic anguish. On the ritualistic “Eltequi” (to cut the chest open and extract the heart as an offering) the band’s unification of native / folk instrumentation and heaviness becomes one in the same, opening vast new horizons for where this sound can go. Tlazcaltiliztli is dedicated, and an offering, to the indigenous peoples, nations and tribes of the North, South, East and West of the American continents. It marks a fearsome and spirited new vision for the death metal underground.

Hulder

(Color) The Eternal Fanfare

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED MILKY CLEAR VINYL!!! With the release of her Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry, Hulder made it known that the pure traditional black metal of earlier releases could be classical, rich in detail and creatively novel once again. A triumphant debut that indicated much more to come. On her new mini-album The Eternal Fanfare, Hulder expands the scope laid out on the debut, taking the production value to new places with more low-end depth and forceful resonance. The songwriting capability continues to sharpen into a dense confluence of her disparate influences such as on the cinematically expansive “Burden Of Flesh And Bone” and “Sylvan Awakening,” to the cold stormblast ferocity of the title track. Opener “Curse From Beyond” is a celestial atmospheric piece akin to Dead Can Dance at their most mysteriously plaintive, while the pensive lament of closer “A Perilous Journey” concludes The Eternal Fanfare with an aura of melancholic finality. The Eternal Fanfare presents a stark interlude between the Godslastering album and the forthcoming second full length. Yet on its own, its a powerful statement of haunting new horizons and evolving mastery, ascendent and bottomless at once.

Black Magnet

(Color) Body Prophecy

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED NEON GREEN VINYL!!! With the release of Black Magnet’s debut album Hallucination Scene in 2020, a new industrial metal power emerged from the unlikely landscape of Oklahoma City. After anxiously waiting out the pandemic, the band returned to the road in late 2021 and now drop Body Prophecy, the second full length burst of machine-driven mayhem and electronic deviance. On Body Prophecy, mastermind James Hammontree welds the frenetic vitality of post-punk and metal energy with driving synthetic club beats, factory force physicality and alluringly stark melodic pulses. Tracks like “Floating In Nothing” and “Violent Mechanix” feature both intensely catchy hooks and hammering brutal noise. “Sold Me Sad” is a quietly deranged lullaby that takes an atmospheric turn. The throbbing drug-addled lurch of the Manson / Reznor-esque “Incubate” is, at the end of the album, treated to a completely re-imagined and extended club style remix by scene legend Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Zonal, etc). For all its harsher, scraping atmospheres and pummeling aggression, Body Prophecy always remains an eminently tight, memorable album molded for the stage and constructed to keep bodies in motion and listeners transfixed.

Black Magnet

Body Prophecy

20 Buck Spin

With the release of Black Magnet’s debut album Hallucination Scene in 2020, a new industrial metal power emerged from the unlikely landscape of Oklahoma City. After anxiously waiting out the pandemic, the band returned to the road in late 2021 and now drop Body Prophecy, the second full length burst of machine-driven mayhem and electronic deviance. On Body Prophecy, mastermind James Hammontree welds the frenetic vitality of post-punk and metal energy with driving synthetic club beats, factory force physicality and alluringly stark melodic pulses. Tracks like “Floating In Nothing” and “Violent Mechanix” feature both intensely catchy hooks and hammering brutal noise. “Sold Me Sad” is a quietly deranged lullaby that takes an atmospheric turn. The throbbing drug-addled lurch of the Manson / Reznor-esque “Incubate” is, at the end of the album, treated to a completely re-imagined and extended club style remix by scene legend Justin K. Broadrick (Godflesh, Zonal, etc). For all its harsher, scraping atmospheres and pummeling aggression, Body Prophecy always remains an eminently tight, memorable album molded for the stage and constructed to keep bodies in motion and listeners transfixed.

Terminal Nation / Kruelty

(Color) The Ruination Of Imperialism

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED SEA BLUE CLOUDY VINYL!!! The second split release of the year from 20 Buck Spin sees the return of Terminal Nation for the first time since the crushing Holocene Extinction album released in the bleak pandemic summer of 2020. Joining them on the split is Japan’s ultra heavy kingpins Kruelty, fresh off tour dates in both the U.S. and Europe after releasing the furious A Dying Truth and Immortal Nightmare in 2020. Reinforcing the fact of being one of the heaviest bands on the planet, Terminal Nation offer three new tracks on the A side, declaring all out war on the imperial masters pulling the world’s strings. The darkness of death metal and Bolt Thrower’s tank march matched with the ferocious power of the hardcore breakdown, the songs are teeming with a nation’s rage on the brink of boiling over into full blown chaos. Kruelty similarly have found the sweet spot where hardcore meets old school steamrolling death and doom metal. “Suppression” and “Under Your Pressure” reveal some of the bands most punishing, structure-leveling riffs and bloodied beatdowns to date. Additionally each vocalist from Terminal Nation and Kruelty also appear with guest vocals on a track from the other with Tatami of Kruelty appearing on Terminal Nation’s “Sacrificial Capital” and Stan Liszewski of Terminal Nation appearing on Kruelty’s “Under Your Pressure.” Heaviest split of 2022? Easily…

Terminal Nation / Kruelty

The Ruination Of Imperialism

20 Buck Spin

The second split release of the year from 20 Buck Spin sees the return of Terminal Nation for the first time since the crushing Holocene Extinction album released in the bleak pandemic summer of 2020. Joining them on the split is Japan’s ultra heavy kingpins Kruelty, fresh off tour dates in both the U.S. and Europe after releasing the furious A Dying Truth and Immortal Nightmare in 2020. Reinforcing the fact of being one of the heaviest bands on the planet, Terminal Nation offer three new tracks on the A side, declaring all out war on the imperial masters pulling the world’s strings. The darkness of death metal and Bolt Thrower’s tank march matched with the ferocious power of the hardcore breakdown, the songs are teeming with a nation’s rage on the brink of boiling over into full blown chaos. Kruelty similarly have found the sweet spot where hardcore meets old school steamrolling death and doom metal. “Suppression” and “Under Your Pressure” reveal some of the bands most punishing, structure-leveling riffs and bloodied beatdowns to date. Additionally each vocalist from Terminal Nation and Kruelty also appear with guest vocals on a track from the other with Tatami of Kruelty appearing on Terminal Nation’s “Sacrificial Capital” and Stan Liszewski of Terminal Nation appearing on Kruelty’s “Under Your Pressure.” Heaviest split of 2022? Easily…

Hulder

The Eternal Fanfare

20 Buck Spin

With the release of her Godslastering: Hymns Of A Forlorn Peasantry, Hulder made it known that the pure traditional black metal of earlier releases could be classical, rich in detail and creatively novel once again. A triumphant debut that indicated much more to come. On her new mini-album The Eternal Fanfare, Hulder expands the scope laid out on the debut, taking the production value to new places with more low-end depth and forceful resonance. The songwriting capability continues to sharpen into a dense confluence of her disparate influences such as on the cinematically expansive “Burden Of Flesh And Bone” and “Sylvan Awakening,” to the cold stormblast ferocity of the title track. Opener “Curse From Beyond” is a celestial atmospheric piece akin to Dead Can Dance at their most mysteriously plaintive, while the pensive lament of closer “A Perilous Journey” concludes The Eternal Fanfare with an aura of melancholic finality. The Eternal Fanfare presents a stark interlude between the Godslastering album and the forthcoming second full length. Yet on its own, its a powerful statement of haunting new horizons and evolving mastery, ascendent and bottomless at once.

Gravesend

(color 2) Methods Of Human Disposal

20 Buck Spin

***NOW ON SWAMP GREEN W/ BLACK, BONE, BROWN SPLATTER VINYL!!! NYC’s Gravesend arise with ill intent, like a foul emanation from the aging, sewage-filled rot slowly winding its way beneath the city’s vast concrete walls and pavement pathways. A New York of discarded needles, noxious fumes, scavenging rats, broken bottles and cracked minds.  An aural manifesto of urban blight and disgust, Methods Of Human Disposal works like a lone killer stalking the streets, internally seething with rage, preparing to cast off the last remnants of restraint. Bear witness to savage black / death metal with a hellish grindcore fixation, searing warped speeds, and the slowly swelling carnage of a derailed subway pile-up. Like the centuries old cemetery that bears its name, the fetid stench of death and decay permeates Gravesend, and the predatory wrath and inhumanity embodied in Methods Of Human Disposal holds up a shattered mirror reflecting back the filth and corruption of a New York that never really went away.

Savage Necromancy

(color) Feathers Fall To Flames

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED BLOOD RED VINYL!!! Black and death metal are uniquely positioned entities as both grounds for vast experimentation and unyielding pillars of tradition. Both directions have merit and appreciation within the underground, both keep the genre weltering in new blood. Savage Necromancy are firmly in the latter camp, preserving and strengthening the heritage of the most unholy and barbaric blasphemies in ways immediately recognizable and deeply worshipped, yet putting their distinctive mark on the style.  The cruel sound and influences displayed on the Savage Necromancy debut album Feathers Fall To Flames are instantly familiar, and when done with such magisterial fervor and conquering fire become not occasion for admonishment but cause for debauched blood-soaked celebration. Tried and true bestial ferocity, profane mockery and spike-fisted black metal victory that leaves no cross unturned.  As Savage Necromancy prepares the already under construction second album for new label 20 Buck Spin, Feathers Fall To Flames now experiences a wider release for the first time after its initial short run in 2021. Savage Necromancy has only begun to storm the gates of Heaven.

Egregore

(Color) The Word Of His Law

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED GOLD / BLACK MERGE VINYL!!! Egregore, a hitherto unknown entity in the narrow boundaries of the material world, now appears for the first time with the obscure musical treatise The Word Of His Law: An address to Abraxas in his time and place, through his Grand Viseer, Thine Panpsycopompos. This enigmatic incantation offers a first glimpse of a developing musical universe in a state of primeval expansion.  Upon the principal element of ancient chaotic underground black death metal, Egregore conjures an uncanny aura of supernatural presence, as though the songs simply pass through them from some other sphere of existence. A self-satisfied work of tradition alone was never in the cards, however, as Egregore brandish synths, arcane chanting and soaring guitar leads among other spells creating a truly underground work of creative vitality and occult sorcery. Album closer “An Address To Abraxas” even morphs into Neo-folk domains.  Through the debut album The Word Of His Law, Egregore offer an evolved appeal to where spiritual underground art can go, never sacrificing the too often lacking mystical components of the clandestine, otherworldly and the truly unorthodox.

Wode

(Color) Wode

20 Buck Spin

***ON KELLY GREEN LIMITED VINYL!!! In 2021 Wode released their third album Burn In Many Mirrors via 20 Buck Spin to wide acclaim throughout the international metal underground. The band had evolved their sound into a searing amalgamation of black metal, death metal and flashes of classic heavy metal anthems and solos, never sacrificing the dark spirit for which they’d become known.  Going back to 2016, Wode made their first full length statement, with their self-titled debut, now being re-released on vinyl by 20 Buck Spin. Here we find the pure black metal roots of Wode, influenced by the epic, vicious and freezing melody of the coldest Scandinavian black metal recalling ’90s-era No Fashion and Napalm Records artists.  Having released their demo in 2011, in the intervening five years Wode sharpened and chiseled the songs on this debut into a venomous, deadly blast of withering intensity. Six years later the songs have lost none of their vitriolic potency.

Wode

Wode

20 Buck Spin

In 2021 Wode released their third album Burn In Many Mirrors via 20 Buck Spin to wide acclaim throughout the international metal underground. The band had evolved their sound into a searing amalgamation of black metal, death metal and flashes of classic heavy metal anthems and solos, never sacrificing the dark spirit for which they’d become known.  Going back to 2016, Wode made their first full length statement, with their self-titled debut, now being re-released on vinyl by 20 Buck Spin. Here we find the pure black metal roots of Wode, influenced by the epic, vicious and freezing melody of the coldest Scandinavian black metal recalling ’90s-era No Fashion and Napalm Records artists.  Having released their demo in 2011, in the intervening five years Wode sharpened and chiseled the songs on this debut into a venomous, deadly blast of withering intensity. Six years later the songs have lost none of their vitriolic potency.

Mournful Congregation

The Exuviae Of Gods - Part 1

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED OXBLOOD VINYL!!! Australia’s ageless kings of extreme doom Mournful Congregation return for the first time since 2018’s monumental The Incubus Of Karma album. Now in 2022 comes The Exuviae Of Gods - Part I, the first in a two part EP series to bridge the gap between full length albums. Perhaps known equally for the colossal length of their songs as much as their evocative and somber magnificence, an EP for Mournful Congregation amounts to a sprawling three tracks over thirty-seven minutes in length. Two new tracks, the lachrymose funereal dirge “Mountainous Shadows, Cast Through Time” and the largely acoustic reflective dream of “The Exuviae Of Gods” present the ongoing expansion of the Mournful Congregation universe. And lastly the band has revisited and re-recorded one of their oldest tracks dating all the way back to their 1995 demo days with “An Epic Dream Of Desire”. Over a discography spanning three decades, the towering legacy of Mournful Congregation in the metal underground is unassailable and The Exuviae Of Gods - Part I is another brick in their timeless ongoing bequest bestowed upon this mortal coil.

Predatory Light

(Color) Death And The Twilight Hours

20 Buck Spin

***ON LIMITED GOLD / WHITE / SILVER TRI-COLOR GALAXY VINYL!!! Hail horrors! After six years in deathlike repose, Predatory Light returns. From beneath churchyard stones, the bare, ruined choir sets forth to drape the world in its nocturnal lightings. Once again established in the spiritual desert of the southwest, the devil’s quartet has been reanimated by the same infernal regents that compose the deadly Superstition. As a result, the four musicians that conceived The Anatomy Of Unholy Transformation, in Predatory Light, delve into far bleaker corners of their dark twisting subconscious. Death And The Twilight Hours, the second album from Predatory Light, is comprised of four towering mazes of infernal technicality, ancient evil, and eerie church nightmare black metal of the South European and South American style. These four hymns conceptually meditate on the triumph of death during times of plague, focusing on the psychological terror and rapture of humanity’s impending doom. Borrowing imagery from Boccaccio’s account of the plague in his native Florence and inspired by Lucretius’ record of the Athenian Plague, Predatory Light explores the historical mindset of human sin and torment—evoking the archetypal personification of death as it tethers human consciousness to the realm of earthly suffering. The sinister, spectral guitars that drift like cemetery mist over everything and beckon for release tell the story on Death And The Twilight Hours as much as the scathing diseased vocals guiding the path. Now resolutely ascendent, Predatory Light’s return heralds the second coming of one of...

Predatory Light

Death And The Twilight Hours

20 Buck Spin

Hail horrors! After six years in deathlike repose, Predatory Light returns. From beneath churchyard stones, the bare, ruined choir sets forth to drape the world in its nocturnal lightings. Once again established in the spiritual desert of the southwest, the devil’s quartet has been reanimated by the same infernal regents that compose the deadly Superstition. As a result, the four musicians that conceived The Anatomy Of Unholy Transformation, in Predatory Light, delve into far bleaker corners of their dark twisting subconscious. Death And The Twilight Hours, the second album from Predatory Light, is comprised of four towering mazes of infernal technicality, ancient evil, and eerie church nightmare black metal of the South European and South American style. These four hymns conceptually meditate on the triumph of death during times of plague, focusing on the psychological terror and rapture of humanity’s impending doom. Borrowing imagery from Boccaccio’s account of the plague in his native Florence and inspired by Lucretius’ record of the Athenian Plague, Predatory Light explores the historical mindset of human sin and torment—evoking the archetypal personification of death as it tethers human consciousness to the realm of earthly suffering. The sinister, spectral guitars that drift like cemetery mist over everything and beckon for release tell the story on Death And The Twilight Hours as much as the scathing diseased vocals guiding the path. Now resolutely ascendent, Predatory Light’s return heralds the second coming of one of US black metal’s immense outliers.