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Wreck And Reference

Absolute Still Life

Flenser

Absolute Still Life is the fourth full-length album by the experimental duo Wreck And Reference. The album marks a radical departure from the band’s heavy and noise rock origins and finds them driving toward a more electronic and abstract dimension. Like past albums, warped synthesizers and pillaged samples build up the harmonic elements of the songs, but the absence of acoustic drums gives this release a colder, more alien aesthetic. With fewer screams and stranger textures than before, the band find themselves alone again in uncharted and uncategorizable territory. The album cover depicts a sickly still life in which edible and inedible elements mix in an unnatural and unappetizing collage of bright colors. The title reflects the absurdist version of reality that one find oneself in, unable to escape. To date, Wreck And Reference have released four EPs and three full-length albums. Their first work, an EP titled Black Cassette, showcased distorted fragments and synthesizers in angular, heavy songs, with themes of determinism and Cormac McCarthy-esque isolation. Their debut full-length No Youth (2012) and their sophomore release Want (2014), described by Pitchfork as having “radical vision” and “boundless experimentation,” represented dramatic expansions of their sonic palette. In 2016, the band released their third album, Indifferent Rivers Romance End, perfecting their song craft and pushing their noisy, sample-based instrumentation to its limits.

Drowse

Light Mirror

Flenser

In April of 2018, Drowse’s Kyle Bates left his home in Portland, OR, for an artist residency in barren northern Iceland. Much of Bates’ time there was spent in self-imposed isolation, giving him ample space to ponder the nature of solitude, and what it means to be “closed” or “open” to the world. Upon returning home, Bates worked obsessively. Maya Stoner, his longtime creative partner, sometimes came to sing, but recordings were mostly done alone. The dichotomy of his Icelandic musings materialized in a very real way as he neglected his personal relationships in favor of his art. While he was confronting his life-long fear of intimacy, and reconciling himself to a diagnosis of Bipolar 1, Bates found that the means he employed to conquer these obstacles—self reflection through art—carried with them an equal measure of misery. Light Mirror, Drowse’s second album for The Flenser, is a subtle exploration of these contradictory attitudes and their consequences that can be heard as an artifact of sonic self-sabotage. Light Mirror falls within a lineage of overcast Pacific Northwest albums (think Grouper’s Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill), but finds Drowse pushing past its slowcore roots. The album’s prismatic sound reflects experimental electronic, noise pop, black metal, krautrock, and more through Kyle’s distinct song-worlds. The lyrics are ruminations on the idea of multiple-selves, identity, paranoia, fear of the body, alcohol abuse, social media, the power of memory, the truths that are revealed when one is alone, and the significance of human contact....

Vale

Burden Of Sight

Flenser

On their debut album Oakland, California’s Vale channel visions of a grim future in which the world is barren and destroyed, where agents of opportunity consume everything they can get their hands on. Titled Burden Of Sight, the album can be seen as an expression of outrage felt at the pervasive exploitation and avarice that has taken root in the band’s own backyard. From rampant homelessness to the overindulgences of the upper class, it’s all too easy to imagine the harsh reality of decomposing landscapes fraught with cannibalism and religious zealotry that the band depicts across six tracks of roaring, death-infused black metal.   Vale features Kate Coysh on vocals, James Meyer and Daniel Borman on guitar, Thaddaeus Perkins on bass, and Justin Ennis on drums and electronics. The band was formed in late 2015 and shares members with Ulthar, Void Omnia and Abstracter. After recording a demo in 2017, the quintet hit the road twice as they worked on the material that would make up their first full-length. This debut was recorded by Greg Wilkinson in Jan 2019 at Earhammer Studios in Oakland.

All Your Sisters

Trust Ruins

Flenser

All Your Sisters was conceived in 2011 in Reno, NV by Jordan Morrison as an outlet to process the suffering that Morrison witnessed while working graveyard shifts as a paramedic. The primal state of debased humanity certainly left a blistering mark that can be heard in the project’s third full-length, Trust Ruins. Morrison also mines themes from his fundamentalist Christian upbringing as well as a series of paramount life events—both devastating and blissful—that preceded the album’s inception.  In the final two months of 2016, then residing in San Francisco, Morrison experienced the elation of becoming engaged in tandem with the fatal drug overdose of his brother-in-law, as well as the Ghost Ship warehouse fire in Oakland that claimed the lives of many in the Bay Area music scene. Compounded with the recent presidential election, a sense of inescapable doom and dystopia lingered, forcing Morrison to re-examine the direction of his life. He explains, “This record is about making hard life choices, living with those decisions, and the struggle to live life on life’s terms. If I die tomorrow, I don’t want to have any regrets.”  Engineered by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Oathbreaker, Bosse-de-Nage), Trust Ruins is the score to a series of de-indoctrinating sermons, armed with marching protest beats. Drawing on the energetic industrial and post-punk influences of the previous Uncomfortable Skin (The Flenser, 2016) and Modern Failures (2014) albums, this latest is a dark, dynamic assortment of songs that pushes far past nostalgia to create something new. Punchy...

Elizabeth Colour Wheel

Nocebo

Flenser

Nocebo, the first full-length by the Boston, Massachusetts five piece Elizabeth Colour Wheel, is inspired by anxiety, the fear and the desire of being constantly overwhelmed. The album came to fruition over the summer of 2018, when the band embraced a heavy “kill your idols” mindset, crafting an album that is distinctly schizophrenic yet familiar, touching on ’90s heavy rock, shoe-gaze, and black metal influences.  Mixed and mastered by Seth Manchester of Machines of Magnets (The Body, Street Sects), Nocebo is a five-walled haunted house, constructed from the wild, chantlike vocals of Lane Shi, the heavy, reverberant guitars of Emmett Palaima and Alice Jackson, the sludgy, distorted bass of Billy Cunningham, and the powerful, aggressive drumming of Connor Devito. Inside these walls frequencies of spectral anger echo and resound, gathering into thunderous waves, which crash against the borders of the room before dying out into eerie silence.  Elizabeth Colour Wheel, whose name is pinched from The Lily’s track of the same name, formed in 2014 around the Boston area. The band has shared the stage with numerous bands, mostly notably The Flenser label-mates Have A Nice Life and Planning for Burial.

Street Sects

The Kicking Mule

Flenser

As urgent and tense as a hunting knife pressed to a quickening jugular, The Kicking Mule presents ten intimate vignettes about self-sabotage, visiting themes like battling mental illness, addiction, alienation and more across ten new tracks. Though primarily known as masters of cacophonous samples and jittery electronic stutter, post-punk duo Street Sects’ forthcoming sophomore album represents a seismic shift in execution by applying those ideas to that of the romantic yet experimental approach of Roxy Music / Brian Eno as well as Berlin-era Bowie. Take for example how “Something I Can Never Have” fits on Pretty Hate Machine—a section of serenity within a blanket of attack.  Vocalist Leo Ashline and multi-instrumentalist Shaun Ringsmuth use pulsating tension, melodic vocals and deliberate space, keeping their assault on the senses measured and intentional. Featuring album art by renowned illustrator Francesco Francavilla and the title inspired by Elton John’s track “Ticking,” the duo pairs neo-noir aesthetic with aching lyricism, recalling scenes of fear, loss, crime and desperation  Street Sects formed in 2013 after Ashline emerged from the fog of a thirteen year battle with addiction and began to collaborate with friend Ringsmuth. The duo embraced the ethos and aggression of punk rock, and the experimental attitude and disillusionment of early industrial music to create a sound unique to them alone. The band has earned a reputation for their confrontational, sensory deprived fog-drenched live performances.

Bosse-de-nage

Further Still

Flenser

San Francisco-based post-black metal act Bosse-de-Nage have returned to The Flenser for their fifth studio album titled Further Still. This latest album sees the band eschew the sprawling arrangements and hypnotic repetition of their previous efforts in favor of tight, propulsive song structures. It is deliberately succinct in approach while maintaining the band’s unique lyrical style set to unpredictable melodies.  Bosse-de-Nage takes their name from a character in the book The Exploits and Opinions of Dr. Faustroll, Pataphysician by the French symbolist author Alfred Jarry. They recorded their first demo in 2006, which was subsequently released on cassette by Aesop Dekker’s The Funeral Agency label. Their first album was recorded the following year, but the band became inactive for awhile, and their debut sat on the shelves until The Flenser released it in 2010. This sparked new life into the project and they recorded and released two more self-titled albums over the next two years. In 2012 BDN released a split EP with fellow Bay Area “blackgaze” upstarts Deafheaven. They subsequently released their monstrous and surreal masterpiece, All Fours (Profound Lore), in 2015 to critical applause. Further Still sees the band refine their multitude of ideas, distilling them to their most basic forms yet retaining their idiosyncratic footprint.

Mamaleek

Out Of Time

Flenser

San Francisco Bay Area-based black metal weirdos Mamaleek are set to release Out Of Time, their fifth full-length album and second for The Flenser. Musically, Mamaleek stands apart from the Bay Area’s most well-known black metal exports (Weakling, Leviathan, et al), and their connection to the genre grows more abstract with each release. This is especially evident on this album, where the band has intensified their unique approach to heavy music with a variety of unusual samples, such as crooning from Turkish concerts, advertisements for items that long exist, and fragments of old pop songs.  The band consists of two mysterious brothers who, until now, have kept entirely to themselves about the project. Just recently the duo made their first live appearance, and this release can be considered the final chapter of this era of anonymity. Out Of Time was recorded by Jack Shirley at The Atomic Garden (Deafheaven, Bosse-de-Nage, Botanist, etc.). This is Mamaleek’s first double album and it is their most ambitious work to date.

Echo Beds

Buried Language

Flenser

In December of 2016, Denver, CO industrial act Echo Beds suddenly found themselves locked out of their rehearsal space. Their gear was being held hostage as city officials all over the country cracked down on unsanctioned artist collectives and the various DIY structures where many outsider creators lived and worked. This weighed heavily on the duo, who spent the next eight months experimenting and writing the material what would become Buried Language in their living rooms. Deprived of their usual tools, they was forced to improvise using unfamiliar electronics and various cobbled together devices in order to flesh out the embryonic ideas. With the plight of their colleagues fresh in their minds, these new working conditions served to shape the industrial landscape of this release, their second full-length album and first for The Flenser.  Formed in 2010, Echo Beds is comprised of Keith Curts and Tom Nelsen. The project began as a one-off live set played in a local warehouse and quickly grew from there. Sensing immediately that they’d only scratched the surface of their potential, the duo began experimenting with hand-built instruments and manufactured sounds—such as recordings of broken glass and a metal filing cabinet—in order to explore and interpret the sounds of industry as a sonic landscape. Over the years they have made a name for themselves with their visceral and abrasive live shows that often include a modified oil drum as percussion. This album should be viewed as a kind of exorcism steeped in metaphor and...

Ails

The Unraveling

Flenser

After Bay Area avant-garde cornerstones Ludicra called it quits in 2011, most of the band continued with their other musical endeavors, but former vocalist Laurie Shanaman and guitar player / vocalist Christy Cather haven’t resurfaced in a big way until now—Ails marks the return of both to center stage.  In 2015 the duo’s desire to play the music they love brought them together with like-minded friends Sam Abend (Abrupt, Desolation), Colby Bryn (2084, One In The Chamber), and Jason Miller (Phantom Limbs). The Unraveling, Ails’ epic debut album, is more than just the ghost of Ludicra. It stands firmly on its own, offering an intense synthesis of raucous black metal and melodic death metal driven by the formidable dueling vocals of Shanaman and Cather. These are songs of despair, heartache, inner torment, and physical and mental suffering that make an immediate and lasting impression.  “Ails beautifully synthesizes melancholy melodic death metal, stately doom, and atmospheric black metal, teasing every iota of intensity from each individual note and capitalizing on Shanaman’s vocal might.” —Noisey

RLYR

Actual Existence

Flenser

Chicago-based experimental rock trio RLYR (pronounced “Relayer”) present their sophomore album Actual Existence on The Flenser, a new four song full-length that distills and expands on the explosive energy and anthemic catharses of the band’s 2015 debut Delayer.   This album represents a step forward in complexity for the instrumental band. Comprised of Steven Hess (Locrian, Cleared, etc.), Colin DeKuiper (Bloodiest, ex-Russian Circles), and Trevor Shelley de Brauw (Pelican, Chord, etc.), RLYR have fine-tuned their MC Escher-esque song structures while preserving the indelible earworm melodies that are their hallmark.  “This is uncommonly optimistic post-rock, then, deliberately using the strength of the style’s sound to summon something more than temporary fury.”  —Pitchfork “What makes RLYR truly impressive is the patience in which they apply pressure. They never allow for a frenzy they didn’t build toward, and give their aggression space to ebb and flow in a way that settles the tension into a continuous stream.”  —Stereogum

Bell Witch

Demo 2011

Flenser

***AVAILABLE AGAIN!!!  Bell Witch’s Mirror Reaper is one of the best metal albums of 2017. A single monolithic track, it pays tribute to the band’s former drummer Adrian Guerra, who tragically passed away in 2016. The band initially made their presence known in the US doom scene with a well-received demo in 2011. At thirty-seven minutes, this recording is a massive statement of purpose which far-eclipsed the “demo” status implied by its name. It was recorded by Brandon Fitzsimons (Wormwood), the same engineer behind the band’s first effort, Longing. Demo 2011 showcases Bell Witch’s heavy-yet-minimalist sound now lauded as timeless, relevant and undeniably sorrowful. The Flenser is proud to unleash this new pressing of a classic moment in contemporary US doom with artwork by the band’s own Adrian Guerra (RIP).  “Bell Witch turns funeral doom and its moribund focus into a beautiful hymn.” —Pitchfork   “Bell Witch have an uncanny ability to make their metal feel ancient, spiritual, even liturgical.” —Tiny Mix Tapes

Drowse

Cold Air

Flenser

***Back in print on vinyl!!!  After a severe mental breakdown, Kyle Bates of Portland, Oregon’s Drowse was prescribed a plethora of antipsychotic drugs. Several unmedicated years later, anxiety resurfaced and he turned to Klonopin and alcohol—it was during this time that he wrote and recorded this second full-length album, Cold Air, marked by fanatical self-exploration and expansive detuned instrumentation.  This album is a peek inside the mind of Bates, the band’s only full time member, painstakingly recorded over nine months in his home. The house itself appears several times on the album in the form of field recordings and background occurrences. Although Bates is a secular person, his lyrics are influenced by the religious writings of Anne Carson and Karl Ove Knausgaard and their ruminations on death. This is an album that frames big picture ideas within intimate, often shame-ridden experiences: a nose broken while blackout drunk, a seizure followed by feverish hallucinations, a father’s stroke, the death of a close friend. It is the sound of the uncertainty beneath our lives surfacing.  “...will make you feel like someone is holding your head under water in the Pacific Ocean.” – Noisey

Sannhet

Known Flood

Flenser

The Flenser is happy to annouce a vinyl reissue of Sannhet’s long-out-of-print debut album, Known Flood. Originally released on Sacrament in 2013, this album set the tone for the band’s signature blend of instrumental transcendent black metal and post-metal. Sannhet is the brainchild of instrumentalists John Refano, AJ Annunziata, and Christopher Todd. Formed in 2010 in Brooklyn, New York, the band built a strong local following with this release. They expanded their sound with 2015’s Revisionist (Flenser) and 2017’s well received full-length So Numb (Profound Lore).  “Brooklyn trio Sannhet is an instrumental powerhouse.” —Pitchfork  “Sannhet sounds like transmissions from the last comm outpost at the end of the world.” —Noisey

Low Estate

Covert Cult Of Death

Flenser

Low Estate is serious music played by men inclined to laugh themselves to death. The title of their debut album, Covert Cult Of Death, is taken from the book The Insanity Of Normality by Swiss-German psychologist Arno Gruen, whose argument that evil is the result of self-hatred and self-betrayal forms the backbone of the group’s thematic approach.  With backgrounds in classic metal, hardcore, and noise rock, the band has forged an imposing and caustic sound with a wry sense of humor, not reliant on blastbeats or atmospherics. Their off-kilter approach allows for sonic digressions that never overshadow the weight and gravity of the songs. Their heaviness exists near the low-end of black metal, with a healthy dose of ’90s hardcore, and a dash of Jesus Lizard stirred in for good measure.  Splitting time between Austin, TX and Brooklyn, NY, Low Estate consists of Brendan Tobin (Red Sparrowes) on bass, Geoff Garlock (Orchid) on guitar, Jimmy Hubbard (The Year is One) on vocals, and Christopher Todd (Sannhet) on drums. The album also features appearances by Integrity’s Dwid Hellion, David Castillo of Primitive Weapons, and Zachary Lipez of Publicist UK. Recorded by Tobin, it was mixed by Sanford Parker and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. The Covert Cult Of Death is a winding and propulsive meditation on the world as it is, as it has always been.

Street Sects

Rat Jacket

Flenser

“We all have a price tag, we all sell each other out.” In 2016 Street Sects arrived with the intensity and volume of a gunshot. Their debut album End Position was a merciless, post-industrial declaration of suicidal intent. Now, the Austin, TX duo returns with a 12-inch titled Rat Jacket. It is not exactly a follow-up; rather, it represents a brief step to the side, an intentional detour. Still maintaining their sample-based foundation, the songs here experiment with melody and organic instrumentation. The record deals with loyalty, trust, betrayal, paranoia, and the sadness and regret that comes with the acceptance of our own selfish nature. If End Position was a bullet to the head, then Rat Jacket is a knife in the back.  Street Sects formed in 2013 after vocalist Leo Ashline emerged from the fog of a thirteen-year battle with addiction and began collaborating with friend and multi-instrumentalist Shaun Ringsmuth. Disgusted with life but eager for catharsis, the duo embraced the experimental attitude and disillusionment of early industrial music pioneers, eschewing traditional rock music instrumentation and arrangement in favor of modern sampling technology and harsh electronics. Together they released a series of singles and honed their fierce and confrontational live performance before releasing their debut on The Flenser.

Sutekh Hexen / Hissing

Sutekh Hexen / Hissing

Flenser

Hissing and Sutekh Hexen are two of the murkiest, most cacophonous groups operating in the margins of the contemporary metal underground. Now, these hellish projects come together to release a split album on The Flenser. Since 2008, Sutekh Hexen have turned the paradigm of black metal completely on its ear. The group creates what can be described as a dense tapestry of black noise, or a wall of intricate tones deconstructing itself brick by brick. Their rich, unparalleled compositions cultivate further interest with each listen.  Founded in 2014 out of a mutual interest in deranged and punishing sounds, Seattle’s Hissing is often described as “blackened sludge.” This does little justice describing the harsh, dissonant soundscapes created by this trio. To date they have released two EPs through Disorder Recordings and Southern Lord, and have a full-length forthcoming.

Heinali & Matt Finney

How We Lived

Flenser

Heinali And Matt Finney are a transcontinental avant-garde electronic music project consisting of Ukranian composer Oleg Shpudeiko (Heinali) and Alabama-based spoken word poet Matt Finney. Their new album (their first for The Flenser) sees the duo return with their first release since 2011. Like their prior collaborations, Heinali provides a lush, foreboding soundtrack to Matt Finney’s bleak narrations, but How We Lived demonstrates a more considered approach. The result is four long tracks which are denser and more cogent than anything they’ve released in the past. Finney provides his most intimate and harrowing words to date, evoking the type of anguish and enmity that only someone who has probed the depths of despair can. The duo first met in 2010 and immediately began collaborating, establishing a prolific working relationship and releasing a series of albums and EPs over the next two years. After the release of 2011’s Ain’t No Night, Finney, after a series of personal tragedies, gave up writing and human contact entirely, withdrawing for two years as far away from society as he could get. Eventually, his head cleared and he realized how much his work with Heinali had helped him deal with life’s seemingly endless disappointments, and he emerged from his self-imposed exile eager to feel that catharsis again. The duo reconnected and began collaborating on new material. This album is the result of those missing years. “Heinali & Matt Finney are a band best listened to alone, in a darkened room, with perhaps a glass of...

Planning For Burial

Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014

Flenser

“When I hear these songs, I can still feel the rooms they were recorded in.” — Thom Wasluck  For Planning for Burial’s Thom Wasluck, Matawan, New Jersey, represents a location and an era. It is the first place that truly felt like home to him, where he affectionately named his home and studio the “Red House.” In this house he recorded his first two albums, and a wealth of lesser known material in between. Matawan - Collected Works 2010-2014 showcases the songs from this period that were released outside of his full-length albums. During the four-year interval between Planning for Burial’s first full-length Leaving (2010, Music Ruins Lives) and his second album Desideratum (2014, The Flenser), Wasluck was hard at work writing and recording music for over a dozen EPs and splits with likeminded artists. This is a compilation of the now out-of-print and sought-after material from this period, including several previously unreleased tracks. All twenty tracks have been mastered specifically for this release, which has a running time of nearly two hours. Since the beginning, Planning for Burial has been a solo endeavor. Wasluck has been producing music by himself in a home studio and touring extensively as a one-man band, playing hundreds of shows in both DIY spaces and nightclubs, where he has shared the stage with acts like Deafheaven, King Woman and Chelsea Wolfe. Both incredibly loud and intimate, his music plays with an unrivaled passion and funereal grace that is equally at home in basements...

White Suns

Psychic Drift

Flenser

New York City’s purveyors of noise White Suns have returned with a new full-length recording titled Psychic Drift. Following the deconstructed rock instrumentation of 2014’s Totem, Dana Matthiessen and Kevin Barry continue their inexorable plunge into sonic abstraction. This latest album consists of four long-form compositions where synthesizers, field recordings, cut-up samples and lurching rhythms form a tapestry of shifting layers. The focus here is on texture and atmosphere, utilizing repurposed aspects of drone, industrial and harsh noise to create claustrophobic soundscapes that ripple and groan. White Suns has existed since 2006 and have released three full-length albums: Waking In The Reservoir (UgExplode, 2011), Sinews (Load, 2012) and Totem (The Flenser, 2014), along with a handful of small-run releases. Their material has received accolades from the New Yorker, SPIN, Pitchfork, and Tiny Mix Tapes among others. They’ve toured the U.S. extensively and garnered a reputation as a threatening and intense live act. “White Suns make a habit of crushing your soul .” —Tiny Mix Tapes

Succumb

Succumb

Flenser

San Francisco’s Succumb plumbs the depths of modern death metal with primitive elegance, but what sets them apart from their peers is vocalist Cheri Musrasrik. The juxtaposition of death metal riffing and propulsive drums with Musrasrik’s cavernous howl and sophisticated lyrics make a unique listening experience in today’s crowded landscape. The band was formed in 2014 by a group of friends with diverse musical backgrounds who share a common love for Canadian death metal, war metal, and 1990s Napalm Death. That same year they released a demo under the name Cloak and played a handful of local shows, attracting the attention of The Flenser. The following year they were joined by Harry Cantwell (Bosse-de-Nage, ex-Slough Feg) on drums and got to work writing their self-titled debut album, recorded by Bay Area luminary Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Bosse-de-Nage, Botanist, Oathbreaker, etc.). Musrasrik cites authors and poets like Yeats, Genet and Zola as her primary lyrical influences. Throughout the album she tackles themes such as human experimentation, autoerotic asphyxiation, BDSM, prostitution, opium dens and dystopias with a literary flair. “An awesome mix of death metal, black metal, punk and post-hardcore.” —The Needle Drop

Driver, Toby

Madonnawhore

Flenser

On the heels of Kayo Dot’s 2016 album Plastic House On Base Of Sky, New York City based avant-garde musician Toby Driver sustains his inexhaustible output with a solo album titled Madonnawhore. After exploring a retro-futurist noir sound on Kayo Dot’s 2014 album Coffins On Io then delving even further into electronic music with his aforementioned last album, Driver was eager to write a different kind of song. Madonnawhore represents a foray into traditional songwriting, stripped of the progressive flourishes and unpredictability of Driver’s band. These six austere tracks are sparse and atmospheric, evoking empty spaces and the beauty sometimes inherent in death. They occupy a heretofore unexplored place in Driver’s oeuvre, and were recorded primarily as a solo effort but share some lyrical contributions from Jason Byron, who also writes for Kayo Dot. Although not a concept album, Madonnawhore is united by its exploration of the “madonna-whore complex,” a psychological neurosis first identified by Sigmund Freud whereby a man feels he can only love a woman who maintains a saint-like purity, but desires to be intimate with someone he considers to be debased. This sacred/profane dichotomy has far reaching effects that are seemingly inescapable in modern society and ripe for examination.

Kayo Dot

Hubardo

Flenser

Finally back in print, the seventh studio album by the veteran avant-garde band Kayo Dot. Meaning “lantern” or “lamp” in the Enochian language of 16th century magicians John Dee and Edward Kelley, Hubardo follows the epic and heartbreaking narrative of a meteor falling to earth and the alchemical transformation of a lonely poet observer. This album displays aspects of the band’s many forms, even moments that hark back to the act’s former identity, Maudlin of the Well (including an appearance by MOTW vocalist Jason Byron). It is a dizzying trip through genres and moods that blossoms in wild directions, an out-of-control chemical reaction. From beautiful post-rock passages and demented ballads to tripped-out 70s prog fusion, jazz and black metal, Hubardo masterfully incorporates just about every style imaginable during its nearly 100 minute run time. “After a decade of trying to live up to the precedent set by their debut, Kayo Dot has finally reached – and surpassed – the level of not only themselves, but of everyone else within their realm of music.” —Bearded Gentlemen Music

Braveyoung

Misery And Pride

Flenser

Portland OR’s Braveyoung return with a new album of somber instrumentals entitled Misery And Pride.While arranging the details for this release, founding member Isaac Jones was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident. He has since recovered, and Braveyoung are eager for their long-awaited second album to see the light of day. The album unfolds like an ominous premonition of the turbulent years since its completion. Brooding drones and chamber string arrangements shape these stripped-down eulogies, but the menace of their punk roots remains. The album takes its name from text in Czech author Milan Kundera’s novel, Ignorance.

Planning For Burial

Below The House

Flenser

***BACK IN PRINT ON NEW JAUNDICE YELLOW VINYL!!!  In late 2014, Planning For Burial’s Thom Wasluck left the red house in New Jersey he’d called home for the last decade to return to his childhood bedroom in the mountains of Pennsylvania. Back in the house where he grew up, Wasluck found himself cut off from the familiarities of the previous decade as he put himself to work in the family trade. The monotony of routine quickly set in; work, home, and alcohol day after day became the norm. The childhood room that had given birth to his primordial four-track recordings was now a place of emptiness. These conditions set the stage for Planning For Burial’s third full-length, Below the House. In terms of genre, Planning For Burial is often simply characterized as “gloom,” which can be seen as a blend of slowcore, shoegaze, doom, 90s alt rock and drone, and this album offers nine sullen and frequently heavy songs that brim with nostalgia and suburban ennui. It is a return to form of sorts to his beloved first album, 2010’s Leaving — an introverted work characterized by its heavy dynamics and personal obsessions. Since the beginning, Planning For Burial has been a solo endeavor. Wasluck has been recording music himself and touring extensively as a one-man band, playing hundreds of shows in DIY spaces and nightclubs, where he has shared the stage with acts like Deafheaven, King Woman and Chelsea Wolfe. Both incredibly loud and intimate, Planning...

De Brauw, Trevor

Uptown

Flenser

Chicago-based guitarist Trevor Shelley de Brauw (Pelican, RLYR) has announced the release of his first solo album — a collection of power-ambient compositions entitled Uptown. The album is a stream of consciousness sustained for too long, an aural pendulum swinging between poles of murky distress and cathartic resolve that take shape somewhere in the hazy valleys between rock, ambient and experimental music. Trevor de Brauw’s twenty-year musical career has manifested as an exploration of the vast possibilities of the guitar. This release departs from the riff-oriented songwriting of Pelican, taking a plaintive approach that unravels the meditative depth of washed-out riffs, deconstructed drones, and carefully controlled feedback. The album delves into complex dimensions of deeply layered textures: an evocation of haunting melodicism that shares more common ground with Brian Eno’s ambient work and drone wizards Barn Owl than it does a metal record. “Powerful drones are balanced with delicate guitar riffs. Savor every detail or zone out completely, you’ll find it’s equally rewarding in entirely different ways.” —FACT

Street Sects

End Position

Flenser

***Available again!!!  Utilizing frantic, uncompromising rhythms and a variety of nightmarish samples, Austin, Texas, duo Street Sects create a feverish marriage of industrial music and punk rock. Their debut album, End Position, is a meditation on suicide fantasy—both the means and the cause. In 2013, after emerging from the fog of a thirteen year battle with addiction and homelessness, Street Sects vocalist Leo Ashline began collaborating with friend and multi-instrumentalist Shaun Ringsmuth. Disgusted with life but eager for catharsis, the duo embraced the experimental attitude and disillusionment of early industrial music, eschewing traditional rock instrumentation and arrangement in favor of modern sampling technology and harsh electronics. Together they released a series of singles (Gentrification I and II) and honed their fierce and confrontational live performance, eventually writing and recording what would become End Position. Ashline’s pessimistic lyrics explore an array of intense, personal obsessions and the violence inherent in modern life. End Position is a provocative existential statement on the bleeding-edge of extreme music.

Planning For Burial

Quietly

Flenser

After the release of his debut album, Leaving (2010), Planning for Burial’s Thom Wasluck wrote and recorded a series of EPs that have become collectively known as Quietly. It was a tumultuous time in Wasluck’s life, and the songs he composed reflect the intense feelings of longing and jealousy that he was experiencing. As the title suggests, these tracks are more restrained in approach than the work which preceded them. They are also set apart from much of Wasluck’s other output by their recording process, which was largely done live with few or no overdubs in order to properly capture every emotion in its rawest state. For almost a decade, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania-based musician Thom Wasluck has been releasing his signature gloomy dirges under the name Planning for Burial at a nearly relentless pace. He now has three full-length albums (most notably 2017’s monumental Below the House) under his belt as well as countless EPs and splits. The Quietly sessions took place between 2011 and 2012 and will be available for the first time on vinyl from The Flenser. This new version includes a song that was previously only issued on a floppy disc as well as an unreleased track from the same era. This collection was remastered specifically for this vinyl release by Nicholas Wilbur (Mount Eerie) at The Unknown.

All Your Sisters

Uncomfortable Skin

Flenser

A band with a name such as All Your Sisters, whose two sole members are men, is not surprisingly a little hard to nail down. Ambiguity extends to the bands genre as well. “I think All Your Sisters is a lot of things: post punk, industrial, noise, ambient,” says frontman Jordan Morrison. The duo, who hail from the deceivingly sunny city of San Francisco, have one foot planted firmly in darkwave and post-punk, leaving the other free to wade through a variety of unconventional influences. Their forthcoming album, Uncomfortable Skin is steeped in nostalgia, but entirely contemporary and album’s first single “Open Wide,” seamlessly shifts between genres, yielding a sound that is both brooding and catchy.  After the dissolution of his previous band, Morrison (guitar, synth, vocals) formed All Your Sisters as a solo project, then moved from Reno to San Francisco where he eventually brought like-minded musician Mario Armando Ruiz (bass, synth) into the fold. The duo connected immediately, bonding over their tumultuous upbringings and dark personal tragedies. Their first album, Modern Failures was released by Belaten in 2014 and then on vinyl by Weyrd Son Records. It was followed by a successful European tour in 2015. All Your Sisters performs with a palpable sense of urgency. “I get physically and mentally ill if I’m unable to play music for stretches. It’s perhaps the only way I know how to express myself,” says Morrison.  Morrison draws on his personal experiences for lyrical inspiration, especially his time spent...

Kayo Dot

Plastic House On Base Of Sky

Flenser

…dead satellites, trashed space stations, wasted old lady heroin addicts hanging…  The core of Kayo Dot might be that mood– one that lies at the crossroads of darkness and mystery. In film, music that accompanies mystery is often nocturnal, playing on a primal relation in our brains between the unknown and the night. It’s this intersection that is the essence of Kayo Dot. Kayo Dot has never made the same record twice. From chamber music to progressive black metal, from goth to jazz and avant-garde classical, Kayo Dot is experimental and often unclassifiable. Plastic House on Base of Sky is Kayo Dot’s 7th full-length since the bands inception in 2003  On Kayo Dot’s newest full length, Plastic House on Base of Sky, the band continues to embrace the electronic allusions found on their previous effort Coffins on Io. Plastic House on Base of Sky incorporates a variety of synthesizers (many of them vintage analog) to create another work of ambition and magnitude that fuses the explosive musical imagination of a band like Magma with the forward-thinking experimentalism of Conrad Schnitzler or Morton Subotnick. This latest effort, a 40 minute-long, 5-song LP replaces the future-noir theme of Coffins on Io with an innovative, complex, and biomechanical work of art. Think seemingly impossible architecture, dead satellites, trashed space stations, wasted old lady heroin addicts hanging out by cheap motel pools, broken people, and a hopeless dead and polluted world transitioning into artifice and mechanism and reacting by being self-destructive, either...

Muscle And Marrow

Love

Flenser

While writing their second album, Love, Muscle and Marrow’s Kira Clark lost a close family member. This set the thematic tone that pervades Love. Death and the gradual decline of the family, but also the nature of love in general—how to love better, how to love more or at all, what happens when someone else loves you, and the trap that love ultimately becomes, but also the freedom it affords.  Formed in 2013 by Kira Clark (voice, guitar) and Keith McGraw (drums, sounds), Muscle and Marrow quickly crafted a style that is their own. A sound that is delicate, operatic and extremely heavy, yet difficult to categorize. They have frequently played with heavier acts such as The Body, Author and Punisher, and True Widow, but Muscle and Marrow is not a traditional metal band, if a metal band at all. They are something unique and dark, yet undeniably heavy and familiar.  Muscle and Marrow’s debut album The Human Cry was released in June, 2014 by Belief Mower Records. Its songs were arresting and hysterical, but also distinctly feminine. Pitchfork called it “gorgeous,” with Clark’s voice alternating between plaintive wails and guttural moans that soared over waves of pulsing drums and stifling guitars. Muscle and Marrow toured across the United States and in October, 2015, the duo posted up at Machines with Magnets (The Body, Lightning Bolt, Marissa Nadler, Deer Tick) in Providence, RI to record what was to become their sophomore album, Love. The band took their time in the...

Wreck And Reference

Indifferent Rivers Romance End

Flenser

Titled Indifferent Rivers Romance End, the cover of Wreck and Reference’s newest album depicts a statue of pre-socratic Greek philosopher Heraclitus tied to a brick and drowned in a river of liquor and dirt. Heraclitus, “the weeping philosopher,” found comfort in the uniformity of the world's chaos. Wreck and Reference is not at home in genre conventions; relying on computers, acoustic drums, and voice the band has found an audience with the heavier crowd and fans of the experimental.   Indifferent Rivers Romance End is a winding composition of ballads that interrogate the endurance of purpose, love, and change set against a backdrop of disillusionment draining into nihilism. The album sees Wreck and Reference employ the clarity of IDM and the rhythmic flood of trap as an experiment in pop, metal, and noise. Like all Wreck and Reference albums, Indifferent Rivers Romance End was self-recorded, but this time with increased use of digital synthesizers in lieu of samples, creating a greater sense of fluidity and movement. In contrast to past work, Indifferent Rivers Romance End is an album that allows the possibility of change, even the necessity of it, when the self comes to face the inevitability of continued life amidst the construction and destruction of relationships.   Originally formed in 2011 by multi-instrumentalists Ignat Frege and Felix Skinner, Wreck and Reference use computers, drums, and vocals to create a sound that is eccentric, captivating, and often unnerving. That same year, the band recorded their first EP, Black...

Black Wing

...is Doomed

Flenser

Dan Barrett, the man behind Connecticut-based Have a Nice Life, Giles Corey, Enemies List and countless other endeavors, has announced the first proper full-length from his digital-only solo project, Black Wing. Titled Is Doomed, this seven-song album is available courtesy of The Flenser label.  The majority of the tracks on Is Doomed are brand new, although the release boasts a mastered version of the widely circulated song “My Body Betrayed Me,” which has been available on Bandcamp and made waves immediately upon upload. The Chicago Reader described the track as combining “a stark, mechanized post-punk beat, gentle shoegaze guitar hum, feathery ascending synths and Barrett’s cool, multi-tracked vocals into an uplifting, celestial tune that belies its heart-wrenching and bleak lyrics; even as he sings about dying Barrett manages to sound just a little bit blissful.” Like all of Barrett’s projects, Black Wing was self-recorded at home, but this process was a bit different for him. At the time, Barrett was having some health problems—the first serious health issues he’d ever had—and was “surrounded by all sorts of machines, lots of beeps and boops and what have you. I had a heart monitor strapped to my chest for a month. I was dripping a lot of blood all over the place. It was all very undramatic and fleshly and strange. I didn’t know what to make of any of it. Meanwhile, it was a beautiful, hot summer, sun everywhere. So I decided to just go ahead and make a depressive...

Heat Dust

S/t

Flenser

***CHECK STOCK!!! On tour with Thou and The Body. Heat Dust presents their debut full-length album via dark imprint The Flenser. With this LP, the band dives headfirst into the nihilistic depths of a very special kind of post-punk. Heat Dust started back in 2011 comprised of Jasper den Hartigh, Shawn Tabor and Clayton Hunt. The trio later added Christopher Stein to the fold, as he’d played alongside den Hartigh in hardcore bands Subservient Fuck and Bloody Mummers. With a lineup shift and a few releases in between, the band really got to know each other as musicians. Guitarist / vocalist den Hartigh commented, “Our earlier releases were all written in a super short period of time. When it became time to start working on this new record, we were a lot more deliberate about our songs. We had learned how to play with each other much better, and realized where our music tastes intersected. We took a long time to write, going through endless changes in structures and riffs. We wanted to be careful and truly make the best record we could.” With this self-titled record, Heat Dust have perfected their sound: energetic and distorted post-punk with expressionist lyrical content that’s influenced by Joy Division, the Chameleons, Wire, Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four and Killing Joke. Following the LP’s release, the band will embark on a US tour with Thou and The Body.

Bosse-de-nage

All Fours

Flenser

All Fours by Bosse-de-Nage is the mysterious Bay Area act’s fourth and finest full-length. Monstrous and surreal, the album is a strange mix of black metal, noise and dark, post-modern lyrical themes. Comparisons range from ’90s post-rock like Slint to fellow post-black metal brethren Deafheaven (the two bands released a split 12-inch in 2012), but the work stands on its own as a unique creation. Recorded with Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Botanist, Wreck and Reference), All Fours is the most immediate and accessible album in the band’s discography, as well as the first to feature analog synths. The Flenser is proud to present Bosse-de-Nage’s latest full-length on deluxe, double-disc vinyl packaged with a large twelve-page booklet.

Planning For Burial

Leaving

Flenser

The Flenser presents the first-ever vinyl issue of Planning For Burial’s debut full-length Leaving. The 2010 album is a depressing journey though isolation and sadness now recognized as a cult classic. Originally released by the legendary micro-imprint Enemies List Home Recordings, CD copies of Leaving have since become sought-after collector’s items. The Flenser is proud to offer a limited edition of Leaving in its intended analog format with updated artwork designed by longtime collaborator Niels Geybels.   Planning For Burial is the solo work of gloom prince Thom Wasluck, who has toured the DIY circuit with his one-man show extensively and become an unlikely sad-boy figurehead in the new-school gloom-gaze movement alongside labelmates Have a Nice Life. With heavy, dark shoegaze, ’80s goth, and ’90’s rock influences, Planning For Burial is hard to categorize and hard not to like. The project has released a slew of EPs and splits on various labels in the last five years, and shared the stage with a wide breadth of musical compatriots from Chelsea Wolfe to Deafheaven. The Flenser released the band’s second full-length Desideratum in 2014.  “Wasluck’s longing and misery plays such a role in Planning for Burial’s music that it often receives equal credit alongside the instrumentation.” —Pitchfork  “Thom Wasluck feels pain, and you certainly will also.” —Sputnik Music

Mamaleek

Via Dolorosa

Flenser

The fifth album from Bay Area weirdos Mamaleek, Via Dolorosa is the duo’s darkest and most experimental release, incorporating black metal, psychedelia and electronic music. It is also the first Mamaleek record featuring live drums. At once harsh, frightening and beautiful, Via Dolorosa is like an evening at the darkest jazz club as it might appear in the depths of a child’s fever dream. Though the group’s two anonymous brothers hail from the San Francisco Bay Area and their work is rife with themes of death and nihilism, musically they stand apart from the city’s most well-known black metal exports (Weakling, Leviathan, et al.). Via Dolorosa features track titles inspired by traditional slave songs and incorporates melodic, Middle Eastern aesthetics. Bask in sorrow and reflect on your pitiful existence.  “The duo—a pair of brothers who prefer to keep their identities a secret—mix Middle Eastern song structures and samples, atonal experimental and avant-garde accents, guttural black metal howls, accessible electronic breakbeats, sludgy doom metal guitar-work, nimble piano interludes, and plenty of pop panache to create an unrelenting, moving sound.” —Forbes  “Mamaleek present a strong argument for being the next California black metal export worth following in the future.” —Sputnikmusic  “This record is the best black metal I have heard in a long, long time. It’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in a long time, period. An absolute must-listen.” —Dan Barrett (Have a Nice Life)

Mastery

Valis

Flenser

SECOND PRESSING WITH NEW COVER ART!!! Received an 8.0 rating from Pitchfork. Valis is the first proper Mastery full-length and the most extreme record The Flenser has ever released. As its name and sigil demands, Mastery is a vessel to ascend the partial mind; one impulsive and chaotic, the other of collected illumination. A meditation unto the will subconscious. The solo black metal entity is the product of mastermind Ephemeral Domignostika (Pale Chalice, Pandiscordian Necrogenesis, Horn of Dagoth). Once a follower in the tradition of fellow Bay Area acts Leviathan, Crebain and Weakling, Mastery has evolved into something more. Valis is like a form of free jazz black metal—twisted and complex, with upwards of 100 riffs per song. Eschewing traditional songwriting and conceptual forms, Domignostika creates through spontaneous composition, cut ups and free performance. His extremely unique guitar style, polyrhythmic drum patterns and urgent vocal delivery bely the fact that Valis is the work of one person playing everything with the utmost intentionality.  Mastery has previously released five extremely limited (and long sold out) demos since 2004, a collection on the tUMULt label in 2011 titled Barbaric Usurpation of the Hypereonic Black Metal Throne, and split albums with with Skullflower and Palace of Worms.  “One can only assume that Mastery mastermind Ephemeral Domignostika is an extremely dangerous career sociopath after being subjected to this spastic sonic evisceration; either that or a deeply disturbed black metal savant.” —That’s How Kids Die “Mastery is total berzerker black metal, rooted in...

Father Murphy

Croce

Flenser

Father Murphy, one of the most mysterious and enigmatic musical entities to emerge from Italy in recent years, presents their fifth full-length via The Flenser. This dark psychedelic / industrial cabaret is a religion-themed concept album titled Croce (“Cross” in Italian), one side representing suffering and sacrifice and the flip reflecting what comes after—the end of suffering, resurrection, or perhaps oblivion. The work was recorded by John Dieterich in Albuquerque, NM, and mixed by Greg Saunier.  From the shadowy atmospheres of Croce spring forth unexpected blurts of impossibly catchy noise pop, at times operatic like some twisted musical detailing the trials and tribulation of the crucifixion. Male and female vocals by Freddie Murphy and Chiara Lee intertwine over distorted blasts of guitar crunch, anchored by stuttering, homebuilt percussion. This sound is textural and nuanced yet noisy and chaotic, carefully sculpted into jagged shards of fragmented pop.  A-side closer “In Solitude” is an appropriately dour slab of murky miserablism that sounds like a slow sonic death, a haunting dirge that dissolves into that ineffable space between the record’s two sides; the netherworld, the afterlife, Purgatory. But Father Murphy erupts from this stygian blackness with the second half of Croce—the light to the A-side’s dark. “Long May We Continue” retains a doom-like approach at first, stringing a field of metallic shimmer and junkyard percussion together into a spare framework over which dramatic male vocals soar. The female counterpart responds like some demonic Greek chorus, delivering a sense...

Sannhet

Revisionist

Flenser

***CHECK STOCK!!! Received an 8.1 rating from Pitchfork. Revisionist is the second full-length from Brooklyn avant-post-metal outfit Sannhet (the word means “truth” in Norwegian) and their first for The Flenser. Founded in late 2010, the instrumental trio has amassed a diehard audience within the borough’s broad underground music circuit through their numerous live performances, always choreographed with electrifying visuals. Sannhet released their sprawling debut full-length Known Flood in February of 2013 on Sacrament, the record label run by the co-owner of legendary Brooklyn bar / venue St. Vitus.  Continuing where Known Flood leaves off, Revisionist delivers an epic, trance-inducing concoction of math-metal intricacy, prismatic pop shimmer, and dense metallic crush. Dynamic indie rock-isms and the metal-gaze sound of like-minded combos Deafheaven or Alcest are distilled into concise song structures. At the same time, Sannhet offers the powerful emotiveness of instrumental post-rock acts like Explosions in the Sky or Godspeed You! Black Emperor, packing just as many musical ideas and majestic heights into a compact blast.  Revisionist was mixed by Andrew Schneider (Unsane, Converge, Red Sparrows) and mastered by Carl Saff (Forest Swords, Guided by Voices, Pygmy Lush).  “Sannhet makes music that largely defies categorization—it’s epic, cinematic stuff; its complex instrumentation is employed in the service of soaring, breathtaking music.” —Stereogum “… welds the power of black metal, sludge metal, and grindcore to the structures and orders of post-rock and post-punk.” —Pitchfork “…Sannhet’s tools are dynamics and texture, deployed over simple melodic arcs… Instru-metal succeeds when it remember that it’s...