Impetuous Ritual

Iniquitous Barbarik Synthesis

Profound Lore

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

Infinity Ring, The

Nemesis & Nativity

Profound Lore

In the summer of 2020, the seeds for what would become The Infinity Ring were planted by Cameron Moretti, drawing together many musicians long active in the Boston metal, punk, and electronic scenes. The initial endeavors of the band started as an experimental take on dark folk music with added elements of drone and noise. The band eventually grew to be an alchemical fusion of experimental rock with many disparate strains from the post-industrial continuum, all delivered with a spiritual and mystic bent. The band’s output sits at the crossroads of many different styles, such as ominous folk, no wave, industrial, and black metal, with elements of occult and ethereal antiquarian sonics laced throughout. The band spent most of 2020 and 2021 experimenting in various studios around New England, deeply immersed in open-ended musical R&D. These sessions would eventually lead to the collaborative Ohr EP with Jarboe. In early 2022, the band set out in earnest to record its debut album, Nemesis & Nativity, at God City Studios in Salem, Massachusetts with Kurt Ballou. The album built on much of what came before, but with a more pronounced sense of ritual, atmosphere, and heaviness. During the creation of the album, genre conventions fell by the wayside and extreme experimentation was channeled, resulting in a sonic palette that morphs from elegantly haunted atmospherics to mystic ritual drone, brutalist industrial rhythms to passages of hallowed melancholy. In the live setting, the band is dedicated to bringing the same experimental and spiritual energy,...

Spirit Possession

Of The Sign…

Profound Lore

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

Kruelty

Untopia

Profound Lore

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

Tithe

Inverse Rapture

Profound Lore

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

Object Of Affection

Field Of Appearances

Profound Lore

Field Of Appearances is the full-length debut from Los Angeles-based band Object Of Affection, which contains members of renowned acts Fury, Death Bells, and Lock. Meticulously crafted with Grammy-nominated producer Alex Newport and emerging engineer Phillip Odom, Field Of Appearances is an exceedingly memorable, precisely cohesive, and importantly, a refreshing addition to the alternative music landscape. With the inclusion of drum machines, synthesizers, acoustic guitars, and auxiliary percussion, Field Of Appearances highlights the band’s sophisticated evolution and experimentation from previous single “Through And Through” (Suicide Squeeze) and their self-titled tape. The result: ten songs exploding in character, contrast, and excitement. Exploring themes of reflection, insufficiency, and déjà vu as well as additional contributions from Bre Morell (Temple Of Angels, Crushed) and Brittney Beppu, each track on here simultaneously plays a role in making it a more significant sum than its parts while also standing out individually. This debut taps into the primitivism of said members’ other projects while elevating their capacity for atmosphere and melody. Hints of gloomy post-punk, forlorn new wave, and down-and-out Reagan-era alternative rock reverberate in their sound, not as pastiche but in sonic kinship to the austerity and fatalism embedded in the previous generation’s desperate and dejected anthems. Already sharing the stage with accomplished bands including Ceremony, Fiddlehead, Gulch, These Arms Are Snakes, and Special Interest, the band is a welcome addition to the Profound Lore family.

Fearing

Desolate

Profound Lore

Finally available on vinyl format, the California post-punk wonder Fearing’s Desolate EP! Originally self-released by the band digitally last spring, it was only previously available physically as a limited tour-only cassette on their tour with Gatecreeper / Narrowhead / 200 Stab Wounds. Desolate follows the band’s acclaimed Shadow LP from 2020 and since then, they have become the most recognized and promising new prospect within the modern-day post-punk movement. The vinyl edition of Desolate also marks Fearing’s debut release on their new label Profound Lore Records, which will be releasing their new full-length album in the fall of 2023.

Crawl

Damned

Profound Lore

Crawl is the one-man blackened ambient doom entity helmed by mastermind Michael Engle and consists solely of Engle performing drums, bass, vocals, synth and samples simultaneously. This unique performance process is one that is undertaken during recording and in live settings. With Damned, Engle (current Boris live drummer) has created the most enormous and despondent Crawl release yet. Through waves of immense negative energy and hopelessness being emitted through this sonic monolith—not for the faint at heart, Damned is a singular audial expression of pure torment and agony.

Lykotonon

Promethean Pathology

Profound Lore

Lykotonon’s Promethean Pathology is a digitized descent into the darker side of the human psyche. It is the probing question that hangs over all of humanity in the quietest of moments. Avant-garde, industrial / electronic black metal featuring members of Wayfarer, Stormkeep, and Blood Incantation.

Blacklist

Afterworld

Profound Lore

Blacklist is an atmospheric modern rock band whose music has been described as “anthemic” (The Guardian), “darkly erotic, strangely sensual” (The Village Voice) and “a much-needed anomaly in NYC’s music scene” (Other Music NYC). Starting out as the flagship band of artist Pieter Schoolwerth’s Wierd Records imprint, their trademark sound is dense and dark, incorporating elements of shoegaze and heavy metal with coldwave. The members often cite influences like My Bloody Valentine and Motörhead alongside bands like Comsat Angels, Killing Joke, and The Sound, while singer Joshua Strachan’s (Vaura) lyrics split the difference between the anthemic manifestos of Manic Street Preachers and Sisters of Mercy’s Vision Thing. Blacklist’s debut album, Midnight Of The Century—produced by Ed Buller (Suede, Pulp)—was released in 2009. The album’s main focus was a rejection of what Strachan described as a fear of looming new forms of fascism aided by the rise of various political and religious dogmas. After a long hiatus, the band returned in summer of 2020 with the “Disorder” single, inspired by the racial justice protests in the United States, and the b-Side “No Secret Islands,” which takes aim at the dystopian fantasies of tech billionaires. In April of 2022 “The Final Resistance” was announced as the lead single from their upcoming album Afterworld, due to be released in late autumn via Profound Lore Records. Post-punk.com called it a “captivating and dense explosion of coldwave and unfettered emotion,” and Brooklyn Vegan said it “picks up where the band left off with widescreen scope...

Black Math Horseman

s/t

Profound Lore

The return of atmospheric American doom rock band Black Math Horseman will see the reformed group release their self-titled new 12-inch on Profound Lore Records. This will be the group’s first release since 2009’s Wyllt (Tee Pee Records). Helmed by vocalist / guitarist Sera Beth Timms (Black Mare, Ides Of Gemini), the return of Black Math Horseman sees its original lineup rounded up by Ian Barry, Bryan Tulao, and Sash Popovic deliver their most engaging material yet with this self-titled 12-inch. Comprised of four chapters that seam into one, Black Math Horseman sees Timms and company heightening the tension and atmosphere of their sound, creating something more experimental and ultimately heavier with their comeback release. This EP is just the beginning of what to expect with Black Math Horseman’s resurgence, as their follow-up full-length album is currently in the works and will see its imminent release in the impending future.

Gevurah

Gehinnom

Profound Lore

Four years after their latest offering, the Sulphur Soul EP, Montreal, Quebec’s Gevurah strikes back with its most intense and scalding release yet entitled Gehinnom. Somber and vicious black metal, yet authentic and efficient in its delivery, Gehinnom is a journey through the physical and metaphysical desert, the realm of death and transformation. From the pits of Gehinnom, Gevurah tread deeper into the abyss towards the final resurrection, with eyes opened and spirit liberated. Each track represents a step in this process of negating the flesh, linking microcosm with macrocosm and deepening the fall of Man.

Innumerable Forms

Philosophical Collapse

Profound Lore

The new album from cult death / doom metal outfit Innumerable Forms Philosophical Collapse, the follow up to 2018’s Punishment In Flesh, is a pillar of death / doom enormity unparalleled. Helmed by founder Justin DeTore (aka DFJ), Philosophical Collapse (which was produced by Arthur Rizk) emerges as Innumerable Forms’ most triumphant work as alongside DFJ (Dream Unending, Sumerlands), guitarists Chris Ulsh (Mammoth Grinder / Power Trip / Devil Master) and Jensen Ward (Iron Lung), drummer Connor Donnegan (Genocide Pact), and bassist Doug Cho deliver an opus that coalesces the old school Finnish death metal cult of the early ’90s and the early ’90s UK doom glory of Anathema / Paradise Lost.

Locrian

New Catastrophism

Profound Lore

The new Locrian album New Catastrophism is the first release from the band in seven years! They are also releasing Ghost Frontiers, an EP that comes as a bonus disc with the CD edition and a bonus digital download with the vinyl. New Catastrophism sees the iconic experimental music trio return back to their roots through four immersive tracks that signal towards the band’s signature expressions of dark ambient, experimental music, drone and post rock. Massive dystopian sonic soundscapes presented through many layers of sound is the dominant audial canvas here. Locrian is a prophetic voice of decline. From the band’s inception, they have comfortably straddled both the experimental and metal underground, weaving themes of apocalypse, urban decay, environmental destruction and birth / death / rebirth throughout their multifaceted and genre-defying releases. The trio formed in 2005 in Chicago and features Terence Hannum (synthesizers, vocals, tape loops), André Foisy (guitars, electronics), and Steven Hess (drums, electronics).

Dreadnought

The Endless

Profound Lore

For their fifth full length The Endless, Denver, Coloroado genre-defying progressive metal outfit Dreadnought present their most spellbinding musical feature yet. With riveting vocal performances, ferocious grooves, and soaring synthesis, the quartet offers a familiarity to the melodic awe of previous records Lifewoven (2013) and Bridging Realms (2015) as well as the dark complexities within A Wake In Sacred Waves (2017) and Emergence (2019), but with a beautifully fresh perspective in writing, production, and performance. At its inception in 2012, Dreadnought’s four members, including guitarist / vocalist Kelly Schilling, drummer Jordan Clancy, bassist Kevin Handlon, and keyboardist / vocalist Lauren Vieira, strove for a project laser-focused on creativity and exploration, pulling from all aspects of their musical backgrounds to craft something exciting and unique. Joining in the common ground of extreme metal, the quartet explores a blend of prog, doom, folk, jazz, classical, black metal, and post rock.

Leviathan

Shadow Of No Light

Profound Lore

Leviathan “Shadow Of No Light” Demo Cassette Box is comprised of eight of Leviathan’s early demos recorded between 1998-2002: Leviathan, Time End, Misanthropicnecroblasphemy, Demo V, Shadow Of No Light, Intolerance, Sacrifice Love At The Altar Of War, and Howl Mockery At The Cross. This compendium, comprised of over 400 minutes worth of music, presents the demonstration of Wrest’s early work during the larval stages of the Leviathan saga. While for the most part retaining the overall presentation and aesthetic of the demo tapes when were initially released by Wrest himself , these eight demos were given the slight re-mastering touch directly from the original tape sources by Dan Lowndes at Resonance Sound, giving the audio a slight clean/leveling up while not deviating from the raw harsh psychedelic primal black metal sound of how the demos originally sounded. Alongside the eight demo tapes, the “Shadow Of No Light” collection also comes with a 12-page booklet with exclusive artwork and design by Ulises which features an exclusive interview with Wrest conducted by Niklas Göransson (Bardo Methodology). It also contains a master download card for all the audio herein with the box design and the j-card reproduction done by Dan Fried.

Reeking Aura

Blood And Bonemeal

Profound Lore

Reeking Aura is a NY / NJ-based death / doom metal band in the old school tradition comprised of known scene veterans from Long Island and NYC. Originally conceived as a project for guitarists Ryan Lipynsky (Unearthly Trance, The Howling Wind) and Rick Habeeb (Grey Skies Fallen, Buckshot Facelift) to share lead duties, additional guitarist Terrell Grannum (Thaetas, Buckshot Facelift), was brought into the fold along with fellow Buckshot Facelift alumni Tom Anderer (Grey Skies Fallen) on bass and William “Big Will” Smith (Afterbirth, Ex-Artificial Brain) on vocals in late 2019. Since releasing their debut three song EP Beneath The Canopy Of Compost on Parasitic Records in 2020, the band has parted ways amicably with drummer and friend Keith Harris (Afterbirth) and welcomed Sam Shereck (Blame God, Stabbed) behind the kit. Though unable to perform live during the pandemic, the group used 2020 and 2021 to write and record their debut full length album Blood And Bonemeal. They again chose to work with well-respected producer Colin Marston at his Menegroth The Thousand Caves studio in Queens, NY. Marston handled all stages of production from tracking to mixing and mastering with drums being recorded at Rock & Roll Gas Station studios on Long Island, NY. Blood And Bonemeal is a concept album centered around the caretaker of a desolate agricultural property and that person’s struggles with morbid psychosis. Musically, the band sought to further explore the possibilities of a three-pronged lead guitar team, while the revamped rhythm section held down the...

Hissing

Hypervirulence Architecture

Profound Lore

Hissing is an extreme metal group based out of Seattle, WA. Founded in 2014 out of a mutual interest in mutilating sounds and exploring the outer limits of black and death metal, the group aims to desecrate expectations with each subsequent release. Their new album Hypervirulence Architecture, which is their first album in four years following their debut Permanent Destitution, sees the trio take their sound into more nightmarish, trance inducing, mercurial and mind altering sonic dominions.

Executioner's Mask

Winterlong

Profound Lore

Winterlong, the psychedelic new album from Executioner’s Mask is set for release on Profound Lore Records. An epic bouquet of swelling synths, hypnotic melodies, and noisy guitars marry post-punk and shoegaze in ten songs exploring themes of liberation and self-destruction in these end-times. In the studio, the core group of Gambit, Mickle and Wilson added Christian Molenaar into the fold on synths, adding an ethereal edge to the band’s hard-driving melancholy. Additional touches were added by Kennedy Ashlyn (SRSQ) and Jake Superchi (Uada, Ceremonial Castings), their distinct sonic fingerprints sending the compositions further into territories unexplored. Featuring production from Jeff Zeigler (The War On Drugs) and Ryan Schwabe (Oneohtrix Point Never), Winterlong is the type of sublime and immersive album that inspires the same visions often conjured by masters like The National, Alcest and Deerhunter. On stage, Gambit, Mickle, and Molenaar are joined by Anthony Charletta on bass, Melissa Lochambon on drums, and Daniel Gaona on guitar to create an explosive force of sound that come together with the potency of Children Of God-era Swans. Expanding on the kaleidoscope of ambition, expect to see re-mixes of the album released in a series of their own by an ensemble cast that features members of Deafheaven, Full Of Hell, No Joy, Xiu Xiu, and The Armed amongst an army of others. The first of these Winterlong re-mix albums will be released as a bonus disc that will come with the CD release, mastered by Angel Marcloid (aka Fire-Toolz).

Artificial Brain

S/t

Profound Lore

Drawing frequent comparisons to mind-altering progressive death metal acts, Artificial Brain have distinguished themselves from their peers through an emphasis on rich, melancholic melodic figures, contextualizing the harmonic and emotive qualities of black metal within a more aggressive death metal framework. Dissonance is threaded through elegiac, otherworldly chordal structures; saturnine tremolo melodies float along in the high registers of the instruments; guitars and bass traverse distinct paths before locking into harmonic orbit. These elements, anchored by blast beats and bellowing guttural vocals, create a sense of contrast that has come to characterize the band’s sound over the past decade.  Artificial Brain, the group’s final recording with original vocalist Will Smith (Afterbirth), is the terminal instalment in a trilogy that includes 2014’s Labyrinth Constellation and 2017’s Infrared Horizon. Smith’s lyrics on this eponymous album take a retrospective look at the sci-fi mythology developed on the previous records, using these ideas to explore themes of isolation, madness, and the inexorability of nature. Rounding out the recording is an impressive roster of guest performers, including death metal legends Mike Browning (Nocturnus A.D.) and Luc Lemay (Gorguts) as well as long time collaborators Paulo Paguntalan (Miasmatic Necrosis) and Colin Marston (Krallice).

Bog Body

Cryonic Crevasse Cult

Profound Lore

Bog Body’s looming form has thawed from the dregs of sordid earth to reveal their debut full length album Cryonic Crevasse Cult on Profound Lore Records.  Following in the footsteps of their 2018 demo Through The Burial Bog and 2020’s mini-album The Gate Of Grief, Bog Body traverses beyond the seracs and into the crevasses of black death, transcending the cultic guts of black metal’s early forefathers with a subsonic war doom incursion for their debut album that’s as much a dirge as it is pandemonic fervor. Recorded at Strange Weather Studios in New York by Ben Greenberg (Uniform, Algiers), mixed by Evan Mersky (Triumvir Foul, Witch Vomit), mastered by Dan Lowndes (Cruciamentum), and featuring artwork by Chase Slaker (Mortiferum).

Luminous Vault

Animate The Emptiness

Profound Lore

NY-based industrial / electronic black metal duo Luminous Vault, consisting of Mario Diaz De Leon (vocals / guitars / synthesizers / programming) and Samuel Smith (bass / vocals), have completed work on their debut full-length album Animate The Emptiness, which follows the unit’s two previous EPs, Communion (2015) and Charismata (2017) respectively. With this latest release, the duo sees the musical culmination of the two members’ creative repertoire in a new expression. With De Leon’s experience and work within the realm of classical music and his Oneirogen project, along with Smith’s work in Artificial Brain and Aeviterne, Animate The Emptiness presents itself as a vessel for the two musicians to explore new territory further within the realm of dark music by way of black metal and industrial, while treading adjacently within the familiarity of the other projects they dwell within. Through a surgically cold sonic canvas consisting of piercing blood-freezing riffs, hypnotic pulsating beats, and atmospherically charged electronics, Animate The Emptiness is an expression that tethers that of the harsh, desolate, rhythmically lurking, the melancholic, and ultimately that of the epic, celestial and soaring.

Haunter

Discarnate Ails

Profound Lore

Discarnate Ails, the new album from Texas-based progressive death / black metal band Haunter is the follow-up to 2019’s acclaimed Sacramental Death Qualia (named as Stereogum’s 2019 Metal Album of the Year) and will unveil them as one of the most enlightening and dynamic bands and one of the pioneering prospects within the current movement. With this latest, Haunter have tapped into the next level, unparalleled, with their most complex, advanced, and most furious and heaviest release to date. The three epic chapters that comprise Discarnate Ails weave through intricate, dissonant and vitriolic passages that find a notable balance between challenging melodious movements and parts while maintaining the band’s sense of creating epochal songs of triumph and mastery.

Cosmic Putrefaction

Crepuscular Dirge For The Blessed Ones

Profound Lore

On Crepuscular Dirge For The Blessed Ones, sole mastermind Gabriele Garmaglia continues the Cosmic Putrefaction narrative begun on previous album The Horizons Towards Which Splendour Withers, wherein the only survivor from an apocalyptic annihilation of a dying planet walks towards its withered horizons. In this next chapter, this character ultimately finds an even more sorrowful truth at the end of his journey, one that shows the empyrean fall of man throughout the metaphysical world and the gods which inhabit it. On Crepuscular Dirge For The Blessed Ones, Gramaglia establishes even more his own vision of death metal, this time enriching his multifaceted sound with widened atmospheres and a patina of omnipresent melancholy suggested by distant arpeggios, e-bow guitars and sometimes even synths organically blended with the relentless, ferocious riffs always present in this new effort. To cap off this layered effort, Gramaglia this time relied on drummer Giulio Galati (Nero di Marte, Hideous Divinity) to deliver an extremely powerful and dynamic performance behind the kit. Cosmic Putrefaction was formed in 2018 as the death metal sonic incarnation of multi-instrumentalist Gramaglia (also behind The Clearing Path and part of Turris Eburnea and Vertebra Atlantis), who summoned the aforementioned musical entity to re-arrange and complete the unreleased album of his first band Oaken/Throne, which was begun in 2012 but left uncompleted due to the combo disbanding. This became 2019’s At The Threshold Of The Greatest Chasm, which absorbed six-and-a-half tracks taken from the aforementioned unreleased Oaken/Throne album. He later refined his formula...

Vanum

Legend

Profound Lore

After a period of smoldering dormancy Vanum reappears, blazing and alive, with their third full length album, Legend. Continuing the triumphant march of previous works, but raising the stakes even higher, Legend finds Vanum both expanding and refining their approach, and in turn delivering their most fully realized recording to date. The core of the band’s sound remains unchanged: unyielding and grandiose black metal that traces a hellish through line from the power of mid-era Bathory, through the riff-craft of the Hellenic masters, to the bitter fury of the Slavic greats. But amidst the pantheon of familiar influences, new touchstones become ever more apparent. With Legend, the continuum is charted further back and to new lands. Within the throes of the black metal maelstrom, echoes of classic heavy metal are increasingly recognizable, further bolstering Vanum‘s towering melodic sensibility and epic songwriting. Coupled with a deeper and expanded exploration and use of ambience and synthesizers, the album is imbued with a richness and sense of majesty that underpins each of its five towering compositions. Due to the global chaos of 2020-21, initial recording plans had to be scrapped in favor of extremely detailed demo and pre-production work, followed by a remote tracking process. As the album was recorded in various locations throughout the country, producer Andrew Oswald was enlisted to oversee technical and performance nuance from afar before handling the mixing duties in which he meticulously sculpted the thunderous, full sound of the album. Adorned with an original painting by Petri...

Incandescence

Le Coeur De L'homme

Profound Lore

Incandescence, an epic black metal duo from Quebec, Canada comprised of multi-instrumentalist Philippe Boucher (Beyond Creation, Chthe’ilist) and vocalist Louis-Paul Gauvreau, have completed their fourth full-length album Le Coeur de L’Homme.  Ever since this project’s inception in 2011, Incandescence has been a vessel for Boucher—known mostly as a formidable top-tier drummer within the death metal scene due to his involvement in Beyond Creation and Chthe’ilist—to explore and expand his musical horizons in the realm of black metal (which he has also done with his other black metal project Décombres). Here he handles all the instruments and songwriting with his counterpart Gauvreau handling all the vocals, lyrics and concepts.  Le Coeur de L’Homme follows 2019’s Ascension and a string of previous notable releases, and reveals itself as a glorious towering black metal release that will stand as a watershed moment for the Quebec black metal scene and finally make aware of Incandescence as one of Canada’s more significant present day black metal outfits. This release is an expression highlighting the creativity that continues to dwell within the heart of Quebec black metal, a grandiose work of furious epochal ascending black metal, where virulent and hostile gesticulations stabilize themselves with that of the classic black metal traits of the melancholic, despondent, and sorrowful.

Black Death Cult

Diaspora

Profound Lore

Enigmatic Canadian prog-death metal unit Black Death Cult have completed work on their new album. Entitled Diaspora, the band traverse even further into the hidden crevices of the “Archaeaeon” through six bizarre audial abnormalities of death metal strangeness and perplexity. The strangest death metal album of 2022 has arrived.

Aeviterne

The Ailing Facade

Profound Lore

On their debut album The Ailing Facade, Aeviterne look beyond the destruction of flesh or the punishment of the spirit, instead turning inward to focus on the abyss of consciousness itself: the curse of sentience; the futility of productivity; the breakdown of consensus reality; humanity’s twin drives to propagate and destroy itself, locked in permanent perverse competition. Aeviterne formed in 2015 as a vehicle for guitarist and vocalist Garett Bussanick to continue exploring some of the musical ideas his previous band Flourishing pursued, particularly the fusion of death metal with rhythms and textures inspired by harsh post-punk and industrial music. Bussanick, Flourishing bassist Eric Rizk, and drummer Ian Jacyszyn (Miasmatic Necrosis) unveiled the Sireless EP in 2018. The years since that brief but powerful introductory statement were spent not in dormancy, but in painstaking composition and relentless experimentation in pursuit of the densely textured, multifaceted sound of The Ailing Facade, and also saw Aeviterne’s lineup expand to include guitarist Samuel Smith (Artificial Brain, Luminous Vault).  The result is an album that plunges listeners into hellish headspaces of dread, anxiety, and unease through dynamic songwriting and deliberate, nearly narrative sequencing rather than effects pedal abuse, made even queasier and more disorienting through subtle electronics and additional layers of percussion, culminating in the instrumental title track and epic closer “Dream In Lies.” Immolation’s harsh technicality and the psychedelic menace of Godflesh can serve as reference points, but don’t fully capture the all-devouring alchemy of The Ailing Facade. The Ailing Facade was...

Spectral Wound

Infernal Decadence

Profound Lore

Reissue of Spectral Wound’s 2018 out of print album Infernal Decadence, initially released by Vendetta Records, now available via the band’s current label, Profound Lore Records, and available once again in physical format.  “The beauty of this album is that it manages to be memorable without relying on a specific gimmick: there’s no needless clean chorus, nor pointedly overwrought leads. Each song is built on the best foundation available for a metal band: the almighty riff. With solid riffs dropping out only to make room for other equally enticing sections, it allows the competence of the rest of the band to shine without any showboating or cheese. If only there were more of this in metal.” —Vice

Bunuel

Killers Like Us

Profound Lore

Bunuel is the sound of a difficult situation made worse by an unwillingness and an inability to play nice. If slotting it in a genre makes it easier for one to understand, just so one has something to file it under, mark it down as Heavy. With a capital H.  But not heavy that’s in any way predictable—Bunuel’s amalgam of angular rhythms, drum salvos, blitzkrieging guitars and vocals that sound more like threats than promises is post-punk, proto heavy and arty up the ass. Arty as in avant-garde noise. Bunuel’s newest, Killers Like Us —the third part of a trilogy that started with A Resting Place For Strangers, and then The Easy Way Out—is a killer addition to the canon of good music for bad people. Produced by a near-super group of global significance, Bunuel boasts the sound work of the Italian trio of guitarist Xabier Iriondo (Afterhours), the bass of Andrea Lombardini, and the drums of Francesco Valente (Il Teatro Degli Orrori, Snare Drum Exorcism, and Lume ), along with the vocals of Eugene S. Robinson (Oxbow). Xabier is the deus-ex-machina of some of Italy’s most adventurous musical projects and sound manipulator for dozens of bands on more than fifty records with major and independent labels whose work has seen him playing live on three continents. Lombardini is a composer, producer and electric bass beast who has been playing in Italian and international jazz, pop, rock and just about everything with everyone including most significantly David Binney, Mark...

Leviathan

Scar Sighted

Profound Lore

Long awaited vinyl re-press of the LEVIATHAN “Scar Sighted” milestone release after being out of print for years. Comes in a 2xLP non-gatefold jacket with eleven 11x11 two-sided art print inserts.

Apparition

Feel

Profound Lore

California death metal band Apparition follow their Granular Transformation 7-inch with their tectonic shifting debut album Feel. This is towering, progressive doomy-death metal with hammering colossal, crawling, groove-refined escalating riffs and lurching, thick, and bludgeoning calculated rhythms. But Feel goes even more beyond in exploring Apparition’s death metal blueprint, where this deep expression possesses idiosyncratic, uncanny musical affectations with calculated, complex ambience. One that tethers into the realms of strangeness and the anomalous: an album a little more influenced by drummer / vocalist Andrew and guitarist Miles’ past jazz studies and unique influences outside the old school death metal paradigm.

Temple, The

The Temple

Profound Lore

New Zealand’s The Temple, an aural entity comprised of P.K. (guitars, bass, vocals) and J.W. (drums, lyrics), play viscerally morphing and shape-shifting death / black metal of an esoteric nature. Their self-titled debut album is an impenetrable sonic monolith that encompasses six immense tracks of tectonic shifting, inharmonious, honed and focused metal of crushing weight, searing ambience and immense magnitude.  With the sprawling audial tapestry The Temple have laid out with their debut, the conveyance of this vision is one reflected through death worship and an invocation of plague, war, misery, and the cosmic apocalypse channeled through the spirit of misanthropic Gnosticism.

Mortiferum

Preserved In Torment

Profound Lore

On their sophomore album Preserved In Torment, Olympia WA’s doomed death metal unit Mortiferum push their penchant for dark, depraved, and disgusting dirges even further out into the periphery. Picking up where they left off with their Profound Lore debut Disgorged From Psychotic Depths, the band continues to mine the poisonous quagmire of classic American death metal, the warped visions of Finnish death metal, and the suffocating lurch of funeral doom for inspiration, but the resulting six tracks here operate on a larger scale, both in musical scope and in sheer crushing weight.  Recorded over the span of twelve days at Soundhouse in Seattle WA with Andrew Oswald at the engineering / mixing helm, Preserved In Torment finds Mortiferum expanding on the ominous atmospherics of their past work while simultaneously pushing and refining their work into even more vile and oppressive sonic territories—the listener is laid to waste with the band’s monolithic siege and impossibly heavy riffs with relentless mid-tempo drum barrages creating the aural equivalent of being trampled beneath the hooves of some unstoppable army. Mortiferum doesn’t shy away from long-form songwriting on Preserved In Torment, yet the band doesn’t waste a note in crafting these epic assaults.

Feral Season

Rotting Body In The Range Of Light

Profound Lore

Feral Season is Karl Cordtz (Chrch, Occlith) and Patrick Hills (Occlith, ex-King Woman). All songs and lyrics were written by Cordtz in isolation during the summer and fall of 2020. Drums and synth were added by Hills. Rotting Body In The Range Of Light, their debut full-length, was recorded the following winter at Earthtone Recording Company in Sacramento, California. The influence of early to mid-Scandinavian black metal forms the bands sonic backbone, though their songs often wander into more hallucinatory soundscapes. The project initially began as a way for Cordtz to explore a personal connection between black metal and the landscapes of Northern California. Rotting Body In The Range Of Light is a portrayal of the loss of one’s mind and a subsequent flight into the depths of the inner self.

Antichrist Siege Machine

Purifying Blade

Profound Lore

Antichrist Siege Machine was formed in 2016 as an alliance between RZ and SB. Through extensive touring along the east coast and multiple releases, the band has solidified their place as a violent force to be reckoned with. Each effort has further developed the duo’s sound, enhancing the barbarity of previous releases. The storm now approaches. Antichrist Siege Machine are prepared to release their new full length album Purifying Blade. Sustaining the unhinged violence on display on 2020’s Filth Of The World EP, they rise victorious in the temple assaulted. Each track on here is a weapon wielded by wickedness and hatred directed at the heart of Christendom. Faces of black evil, shields hardened with the cracked ribs of the dead.

Pop. 1280

Museum On The Horizon

Profound Lore

New York’s Pop. 1280 was formed in 2008 by Chris Bug and Ivan Drip, with the vision of rebelling against the music of the day and making their own soundtrack for the end times. Initially a noise rock outfit, the band has released five albums and numerous singles integrating diverse influences of industrial, EBM, techno, and post-punk into their signature sound. In 2018, Matthew Hord joined Bug and Drip, and this new trio embarked on a collaborative journey that saw the band shed their rock roots and turn their focus toward sequencers, drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers. This exciting outpouring of creativity produced 2019’s Way Station.  Now, Pop. 1280 present their 2021 album, Museum On The Horizon, an industrial opus that epitomizes Pop. 1280’s drive to push themselves into new artistic territories, and to inspire each other to be bold and hold nothing back. Recorded, mixed and co-produced with Jonathan Schenke in Brooklyn, NY, Museum On The Horizon finds Pop. 1280 at the height of their powers on a thrill ride of industrial bangers.

Fotocrime

Heart Of Crime

Profound Lore

Ryan Patterson has spent over two-and-a-half decades adding to Louisville’s legacy with his impassioned and activist-minded approach to punk, his rigorous work ethic in the local music scene, his distinctive graphic design work, and his contributions to nearly every aspect of DIY culture. After twelve years fronting the forward-thinking art-inflected punk outfit Coliseum, Patterson looked to the urban centers of London, New York, and Berlin for new sonic inspiration, drawing from the passion of his hardcore roots while tapping into the sounds of classic EBM and post-punk artists for Fotocrime. On his third full-length Heart Of Crime, Patterson continues to explore what he refers to as “electric Southern romanticism.” It’s an album that throbs with pulsing synths, hammering drum machines, and economic guitar hooks. Where so many artists have leveraged these tools towards stern stoicism, Patterson had a different objective for their emotional resonance. This vision has been consistent across the entire Fotocrime catalog, but where 2020’s South Of Heaven found Patterson’s songs supplemented by Steve Albini-recorded live drums, a different approach was required for its follow-up. Consequently, Heart Of Crime is the austere response to quarantine life; the most direct and personal thing Patterson has done and the first time Patterson has recorded and mixed an album all by himself. On this release, one hears the earnestness of the heartland fused with Patterson’s ties to the asceticism of the urban underground, like a post-punk Leonard Cohen. One also hears an aspect of Fotocrime that’s a response and reaction to...

Vouna

Atropos

Profound Lore

Vouna is the project of multi-instrumentalist and composer Yianna Bekris. With her second full-length album Atropos, she unveils a towering and singular doom metal wonder in a unique visioning, reminiscent of My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost, and Evoken. Upon this thick foundation of doom, multiple musical textures intertwine: atmospheric black metal, dungeon synth, darkwave, film scores, and rebetiko. It is through these woven sonic tapestries that Bekris creates vivid atmospheres expressing the myriad emotions surrounding death, mourning, and suicidal ideation. Atropos, named for the Greek fate who cut the thread of life thus determining the final fate for mortals, not only conveys the inevitability of death, but also explores its contrasting and dynamic nature through immersive compositions representing despair, loneliness, anxiety, peace, and dignity.  Vouna’s debut was recorded at the Owl Lodge in Olympia, WA in 2017 and subsequently released by Artemisia Records in 2018. Though her debut was synth-focused, this release gives the guitars more weight and space while retaining an abundance of vintage ’90s synthesizers, and additionally utilizes analog synths and folk and orchestral instrumentation for dramatic effect. Atropos sees her further expand her sound through the collaboration with several guest musicians, including Nathan Weaver (Wolves In The Throne Room) on vocals, Asia Kindred Moore (Sangre de Muerdago, Solace) on the harp, Entrail on violin, and members of the Vouna live lineup playing synth and electric lap steel.

Portal

AVOW

Profound Lore

AVOW is the sixth full-length album from the mysterious influential avant-garde Australian death metal surrealists Portal. AVOW is the follow-up to 2018’s acclaimed album ION.