Profound Lore   Page 2

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

***BACK IN STOCK ON LIMITED MIXED COLORED VINYL!!! Note price increase. 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.

Portal

Hagbulbia

Profound Lore

Hagbulbia is the seventh Portal full-length album and serves as the paranormal companion piece to AVOW. Hagbulbia sees Portal at their most abnormal and spectral.

Spectral Wound

A Diabolic Thirst

Profound Lore

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Note price increase. Montreal, QC black metal band Spectral Wound play virulent, searing, primal towering melancholic black metal. With their new album A Diabolic Thirst, which follows 2018’s Infernal Decadence, the band take their own methodology of Quebecois black metal through vicious sonic layers that culminate in six triumphant, ferocious hymns, resplendent with blood freezing melodies and harsh-yet-massive overtones that bring a decadent and euphoric flow to this glorious masterwork the band have conjured. Another black metal triumph emanating from Canadian soil, one exposing once again the richness of Quebec’s unparalled black metal scene, A Diabolic Thirst not only captures that pure classic melodic black metal essence that was eminent in the late ’90s / very early ’00s, but also serves its purpose as a present day release of glorious blackened magnitude.

Fuoco Fatuo

Obsidian Katabasis

Profound Lore

***BACK IN PRINT ON LIMITED CLOUDY CLEAR VINYL!!! Note new price. With their latest opus Obsidian Katabasis, Italian doom metal cult Fuoco Fatuo have implemented their most towering, suffocating, darkest and most abstract work yet. Following up their massive 2017 release Backwater, which saw the band morph into a more monstrous entity by heightening their doom metal paradigm into more funeral-like realms where their sound became more amalgamous with the likes of such luminaries as Disembowelment, Tyranny, and Esoteric, Obsidian Katabasis sees the band venture even further into the otherworldly obscure undiscovered dimension. Elements of a dreadful nature which find cohesion for a rich and thick sound manifest into a visionary descent though multi-layered guitars, skullcrushing low-tuned chords and sepulchral tremolos filtered through analog sounds for wider landscapes marred with obsessive drumming and infernal growls.

Suffering Hour

The Cyclic Reckoning

Profound Lore

***NOW ON LIMITED CLEAR VINYL!!! Note new price.  At forty-five minutes in length spanning five songs, the new album from Minnesota-based blackened death metal trio Suffering Hour The Cyclic Reckoning showcases the band firing on all cylinders. The music on this album is more representative of Suffering Hour as a whole than it ever was on past material, with every member making their presence more known than ever. This record also features the band sacrificing some of their technicality and chaos in favour of more atmospheric passages, as the band envisioned this record to be an unhindered display of negative emotion, seething or sombre. Based around themes of awakening, obsessions, and mental anguish, this is a natural continuation of everything that encompasses the band’s ideas on life, death and beyond. This is Suffering Hour at their most honest and fierce. Suffering Hour are a blackened death metal band from Forest Lake, Minnesota. Their unique sound garnered high acclaim with their 2017 debut record In Passing Ascension, a guitar-driven slab of nihilistic savagery. This sound was then further explored on their 2019 EP Dwell, a single eighteen minute track proving their unrelenting songwriting prowess. The band has since played numerous shows and fests across the globe, most notably: Maryland Deathfest, Covenant Montreal / Vancouver and Killtown Deathfest, plus a European tour with Malthusian and a U.S. run with Sinmara.

Of Feather And Bone

Sulfuric Disintegration

Profound Lore

The new album from death metal outfit Of Feather And Bone, Sulfuric Disintegration, sees the Colorado power-trio deliver their most brutal, dynamic, and punishing album to date. This follows up 2018’s Bestial Hymns Of Perversion, an album which signaled a new paradigm shift and saw the band, through their devastating live performances, get the worthwhile recognition they deserved, with acclaim and notable touring cycles following. This brought a new sense of awareness to the band. Sulfuric Disintegration takes that intensity and aura to the next level. While not only delivering a more dynamic and complex musical vision that balances the genres of pure dark death metal, blistering grind, and unrelenting bestial metal, Sulfuric Disintegration sees Of Feather And Bone become the full-on sonic killing machine that one was given a mere glimpse of with their past works. Not only is the sound here more devastating than anything done previously, but the tighter and warmer production, courtesy of a lethal mix and master executed by Arthur Rizk (tracking was done at Juggernaut Audio by Ben Romsdahl), gives the band their deadliest sounding album yet.

Bleeding Out

Lifelong Death Fantasy

Profound Lore

Featuring ex-members of Endless Blockade / Column Of Heaven / Abyss / Slaughter Strike etc., Bleeding Out have been making quite a name and impact within the Canadian extreme music scene in their short existence since releasing their 2018 demo, their split with Skullshitter last year, and by opening for like-minded bands they’ve associated with such as Full Of Hell, Tomb Mold, Mortiferum, and Primitive Man, to name a few notable friends of theirs. Lifelong Death Fantasy is a brutal, unrelenting, and utterly pulverizing, authority-bashing offering that captures the spirit of true old-school crossover deathgrind. A furious inexorable sonic pummeling, this album becomes the soundtrack to a civilization on the brink of rot and decay during an epoch of desperation, virulence, and uncertainty.

Apparition

Granular Transformation

Profound Lore

Debut 7-inch EP from new California death metal band Apparition introduces a new deadly force in West Coast death metal that will make a strong impression in the untouchable US death metal underground movement. Two tracks produced by Taylor Young (Nails) pressed on limited edition 7-inch vinyl.

Wayfarer

A Romance With Violence

Profound Lore

***NOW ON LIMITED MIXED MARBLED COLORED VINYL!!! Note price increase. Wayfarer is black metal of the American West. A cavalcade of fury, melancholia, and dust-laden storytelling; the band is informed by the fierce and adventurous spectrums of heavy music, along with the stark Americana of the “Denver sound” artists that carved the identity of their home. In A Romance With Violence, their most fully realized effort to date, the band presents a searing silver-screen requiem for the myth of the West. This new work sees them at their most intense and triumphant, as well as at their most pensive. Bold, rhythmic and riff-laden, the band’s pointed expedition across the frontiers of black and extreme metal are tinged with the grit and genuine air of artists like Sixteen Horsepower and Jay Munly, and the majestic heights of the Ennio Morricone / Sergio Leone collaborations. Through seven harrowing anthems of the high plains, the album paints a poignant exploration of heroes and killers, the setting sun on a romantic era, and the shadow it has cast on the world today. The band, from Colorado’s “Queen City of the Plains”, has origins beginning around 2012. Guitarist / vocalist Shane McCarthy formed it with drummer Isaac Faulk (Blood Incantation), bassist / vocalist James Hansen, and original guitarist Tanner Rezabek. They would release 2014’s Children Of The Iron Age and 2016’s Old Souls via Prosthetic Records, after which they would replace the departed Rezabek with longtime collaborator Joe Strong-Truscelli as full-time guitarist. Partnering with Profound Lore Records in 2017, the...

Expander

Neuropunk Boostergang

Profound Lore

LP BACK IN STOCK!!!  Originating from Austin, TX, Expander has subverted traditional band trajectories to receive global recognition of their unique brand of futuristic metalpunk since forming in 2014. With their second full-length album, Neuropunk Boostergang, the group aggressively channels the anxieties foisted on the audience from oppressive systems, using every weapon at their disposal: pummeling rhythms, transcendent melodies and wild vocal deliveries that keep listeners on guard for whatever might come crawling from the wastes next. This record marks the band’s return to God City, again utilizing the state-of-the-art studio to capture every nuance of the raw energy contained within these potent audio capsules. The result is a glimpse into a barbarous future where traditional riffs get flipped on their head, anti-gravity rhythms pull one in different directions, and supernatural voices jack-in to the skull to command attention. Should one retain their humanity in the face of constant neurological assault? Is the physical body altogether obsolete? What otherworldly landscapes plagued by grotesque overlords will one find themselves surviving next? With Neuropunk Boostergang, Expander mercilessly answers these questions with the fist of flesh and mind of machine.

Spirit Possession

Spirit Possession

Profound Lore

Spirit Possession is a new black metal entity emerging from the Pacific Northwest and is a duo comprised of vocalist / guitarist S (Ulthar, Mastery, Pale Chalice) and drummer / keyboardist A (ex-Insect Ark). The band’s approach to their singular style of raw, schizophrenic spiraling black metal is unlike anything emerging from the black metal underground today. This self-titled debut encompasses the avant-garde, non-conformist aura of the black metal outliers of the ’90s and early ’00s, while pushing the thresholds of the forward-thinking underground black metal movement currently in the US. Through seven serpentine-like tracks, Spirit Possession emerge with an aberration of archaic black metal chaos.

Executioner's Mask

Despair Anthems

Profound Lore

Executioner’s Mask is the dark post-punk child of three unlikely suspects: Jay Gambit of the noise metal unit Crowhurst providing vocals, Ryan Wilson from the legendary Intestinal Disgorge lending both guitar and drum programming, and Lace and Cop Warmth’s Craig Mickle handles even more guitar. Together they offer a modern take on the classic blueprints set by bands like AFI, The Sisters Of Mercy and Red Lorry, Yellow Lorry. The band, hailing from equal parts Texas and Philadelphia, debuted with 2018’s True Blue demo—a gloomy and cavernous release, weaving infectious hooks at every turn. Not too much after, the group completed production on this: Despair Anthems, their Profound Lore debut. It features production from Jeff Zeigler (Kurt Vile, Nothing) and Ryan Schwabe (Big Thief, Algernon Caldweller), allowing it to be both raw and satisfying throughout.

Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin

Stygian Bough Volume I

Profound Lore

The debut collaboration album from doom metal giants Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin (the solo folk project of singer / songwriter Erik Moggridge), under the moniker of Stygian Bough is a culmination of the work of both artists as witnessed previously on Bell Witch’s three full-length albums, where Moggrdige has contributed guest vocals.  With each succeeding Bell Witch release, one has seen Moggridge’s involvement with the band developing, growing and getting more elaborate. This release, produced by Randall Dunn (Sunn O))), Wolves In The Throne Room, Anna Von Hausswolff), follows up Bell Witch’s colossal Mirror Reaper opus with Moggrdige actually being involved in the creative and writing process with the band duo of Dylan Desmond (bass / vocals) and Jesse Shreibman (drums / synthesizers / vocals). Not only does Stygian Bough expand and broaden this alliance between the artists, but with Aerial Ruin contributing to the songwriting of this dedicated collaboration and incorporating his signature and alluring style of emotionally-driven folk, along with taking the lead vocal position, adding to the band’s caliber of unearthly towering doom, this album becomes its own singular,  unparalleled doom metal entity.

Old Man Gloom

Seminar Ix: Darkness Of Being

Profound Lore

The new Old Man Gloom album Darkness Of Meaning (aka Seminar IX) sees the notorious experimental super-group forge on with their legacy after a slight suspension in uncertainty following the passing of bassist / vocalist Caleb Scofield. It was decided that the remaining members Aaron Turner (Sumac / Isis), Nate Newton (Converge), and drummer Santos Montano would continue and would bring in Scofield’s former Cave In bandmate, Stephen Brodsky, to take his place amongst the pulse.  Darkness Of Meaning continues the band’s shenanigans following their Ape Of God albums—the albums where the band trolled everyone by releasing two different albums with the same title, causing bewilderment, amusement, and outrage from people on the internet. Through monolithic sonic tapestries sewn throughout, this release blossoms as a moving tribute to Scofield, with the band even incorporating material that Scofield had laid down previously for new OMG music. Recorded and mixed by three acclaimed heavy music producers, namely Matt Bayles, Kurt Ballou, and Randall Dunn, this is another towering Old Man Gloom masterwork with earth-crumbling riffs, post-hardcore brutality, sprawling noise transmissions, experimental ambient sonic subdivisions and epic, impenetrable melancholy.

Old Man Gloom

Seminar Viii: Light Of Meaning

Profound Lore

The new Old Man Gloom album Light Of Meaning (aka Seminar VIII) sees the notorious experimental super-group forge on with their legacy after a slight suspension in uncertainty following the passing of bassist / vocalist Caleb Scofield. It was decided that the remaining members Aaron Turner (Sumac / Isis), Nate Newton (Converge), and drummer Santos Montano would continue and would bring in Scofield’s former Cave In bandmate, Stephen Brodsky, to take his place amongst the pulse.  Light Of Meaning continues the band’s shenanigans following their Ape Of God albums—the albums where the band trolled everyone by releasing two different albums with the same title, causing bewilderment, amusement, and outrage from people on the internet. Through monolithic sonic tapestries sewn throughout, this release blossoms as a moving tribute to Scofield, with the band even incorporating material that Scofield had laid down previously for new OMG music. Recorded and mixed by three acclaimed heavy music producers, namely Matt Bayles, Kurt Ballou, and Randall Dunn, this is another towering Old Man Gloom masterwork with earth-crumbling riffs, post-hardcore brutality, sprawling noise transmissions, experimental ambient sonic subdivisions and epic, impenetrable melancholy.

Caustic Wound

Death Posture

Profound Lore

***BACK IN STOCK!!! Note new price. Pacific Northwest’s Caustic Wound (featuring members of Mortiferum, Cerebral Rot, Fetid, and Magrudergrind) play unrelenting and punishing brutal death-grind that captures the aesthetic and palpitations of the classic old-school era of the genre (not exceeding 1992 of course). Their debut album, Death Posture, which follows their 2018 Grinding Terror demo, sounds like a foul relic that could have been produced in ’88-91, while upholding a powerful, dark, murky yet unyielding production. This debut eschews and lays waste to the clinical, plastic and ornamental trappings of the modern-day grind scene. In what will most likely despoil and maraud the majority of current death-grind albums, Death Posture renders total annihilation upon the feeble mortal coil.

Warp Chamber

Implements Of Excruciation

Profound Lore

Pacific Northwest abnormal death metal oddity Warp Chamber create a raw, nightmarish and twisted sonicscape of otherworldly cosmic horror that attends to the likes of the old school Finnish, Swedish, and American death metal scenes, while creating a putrid and celestial atmosphere through its own abominable vision. Their 2018 demo tape Abdication Of The Mind made a big impression, channeling the band through the consciousness of the American death metal underground. Their debut album Implements Of Excruciation will bring awareness to the unit as another singular entity to behold.

Fotocrime

South Of Heaven

Profound Lore

The new Fotocrime (the dark wave project of R. Patterson from acclaimed hardcore punk band Coliseum) full-length album South Of Heaven, the second full-length chapter in the project’s narrative, finds comfort on the fringe. This is the backlit highway slithering from 2018’s Principle Of Pain, which bowed at the altar of post-street punks Blitz while nodding at the megawatt gleam of Depeche Mode and churn of Red Lorry Yellow Lorry. The stories comprising this latest are winding and boundless, unfolding with unexpected paths and hairpin turns. Touching the myths of Saturn and Phaethon and mining the lives of Bruno Ganz and Francis Bacon, the album carves a landscape that spans both earthly and astral planes. It is a record for late night drives, a soundtrack for headlights illuminating the horizon. Produced by J. Robbins (Jawbox), with sessions recorded by legendary engineer Steve Albini (Shellac, Big Black, Nirvana etc) at Electrical Audio in Chicago, South Of Heaven features guest appearances by Hayden Menzies (Metz), Nick Thieneman (Young Widows), Janet Morgan (Channels), Erik Denno (Kerosene 454), and Rob Moran (Unbroken), and continues with a swim in the open wounds and spilt blood of heartbreak, a harp-tinged appeal for care and company, and a postmortem of derailed destinies. Crackling guitars and stutter-stepping synth make songs on here bona-fide grunge-wave burners.

Insect Ark

The Vanishing

Profound Lore

Evoking visions of dripping and lurching horror films, outer space travel, and gritty noir textures, NYC-based instrumental band Insect Ark is led by founder Dana Schechter. Using delay-drenched lap steel, distorted bass and synths, and acoustic and electronic drums, the band’s music creates a sonic mural both uncomfortably intimate and icy cold. The follow-up to 2018’s Marrow Hymns, The Vanishing sees Schechter team up with drummer Andy Patterson (Subrosa), resulting in their most expansive, immersive, and intricately crafted album to date. Recorded and mixed by Colin Marston (Krallice, Dysrhythmia), the album flourishes through a sound canvas so immense and enveloping, cinematic and grandiose yet hypnotic, trance-inducing, and alluring, all at the same time. Bridging the gap between experimentation and song form, a heavy focus is on composition, but Insect Ark is not content to stay in the studio. It is very much a live experience, with emphasis on the live instrumentation of bass, lap steel, drums, and synths using intricate live analog looping techniques to achieve a monster “wall of sound” with only one or two people on stage, accompanied by mind-bending animated visuals—also made by Schechter, who works as a video artist in the film business—completes the live experience to envelop and crush the senses. Schechter has worked as a collaborator for studio / stage with Swans, Angels Of Light, Zeal & Ardor, Arabrot, Wrekmeister Harmonies, Gnaw, Bee and Flower, and Gifthorse. Starting in the spring of 2020, she will be joining Swans as a primary touring member of...

Godthrymm

Reflections

Profound Lore

Godthrymm was formed in 2017 by vocalist / guitarist Hamish Glencross (ex-My Dying Bride / Vallenfyre / Solstice) and sees the respected UK metal luminary returning to his doom metal roots, creating the music he helped forge with Solstice (on the legendary New Dark Age album) and especially with the heralded My Dying Bride during the 2000 – 2014 time period. Further adding to this band’s pedigree of doom is ex-My Dying Bride / Anathema drummer Shaun Taylor-Steels who, after some slight lineup refining (following the band’s A Grand Reclamation debut EP), became part of the band’s core with Glencross, and the two would subsequently end up recording this colossal debut album Reflections (the duo would add bassist Bob Crolla following this recording, making them a true power trio of doom). With this debut, Godthrymm have unleashed a colossal slab of heavy, mournful, yet pounding traditional doom that harkens back to the classic era of ’90s UK doom / Peaceville Records. A massive step up from the debut EP, its the result of Glencross taking the band further into darker, melancholic, and more towering realms than before. Through his soaring passionate vocals complimenting his powerful riffs, along with Steels’s thunderous percussion, the rhythm section attains a massive glorious tone. Reflections is a testament to the glory days of UK doom, yet makes a statement as a new force to behold.

Leviathan

Verrater

Profound Lore

Presenting the release of Leviathan’s cult Verrater demo compilation on vinyl format for the first time. Originally released as a double CD on the Tumult label in 2002, Verrater was the first Leviathan release to introduce the black metal entity to a wider audience beyond the select local few who were previously aware of this beast only through the obtainment of the slew of limitedly pressed demos Wrest (sole member of the band) had released within the shadows between 1998 to 2002. Verrater was a collection of carefully curated tracks compiled from the collection of these demos and various independent CDR releases Wrest recorded from said same time period. It was through Verrater that the stage would be set for what would become one of the most important and influential black metal artists of this time. Released as a four-record set, Verrater was re-mastered for vinyl by Dan Lowndes from the original CDR mixes of the tracks. Presented in an eight-panel vinyl jacket with a slipcase, this new presentation will feature expansive new artwork by Abomination Hammer and liner notes by Neill Jameson.

Lord Mantis

Universal Death Church

Profound Lore

The inevitable regeneration of Lord Mantis occurred when vocalist / bassist Charlie Fell and guitarist / vocalist Andrew Markuszewski decided to mend ties and once again join forces in a new, renewed union to properly carry on the Lord Mantis legacy—mired in chaos and virulence—by honouring the memory of late drummer / founder Bill Bumgardner, with their new album Universal Death Church.  With guitarist Ken Sorceron of Abigail Williams fame (who also joined Lord Mantis on Death Mask) and new drummer Bryce Butler, along with honorary vocalist / member Dylan O’Toole of Indian, Universal Death Church is the result of a band who has overcome dark and chaotic chapters and bitter internal feuds to set out once again to raise the bar of extreme music after the suicide of a key founding member.  This album sees the group with a new sense of purpose and focus. More developed and immeasurable, vast and towering, it continues the doomed and blackened depraved metal paradigm that has become the signature resonating palpitation surrounding the Lord Mantis sound. The threading between punishing, torturous yet direct, and, at times, tangible industrial-influenced riffing with the more abstract, dark, blackened surreal-like crawling and swift passages paint a new disturbing sonic portrait for the band. This renewed union became akin to that of repairing tissue of an unnamable and vile organism. Leveling up the beast.  Having that infamous reputation of being one of the more vexed acts within the extreme metal scene, as amassed on...

The Deathtrip

Demon Solar Totem

Profound Lore

Cult black metal band The Deathtrip have announced their new album Demon Solar Totem, their follow-up to 2014’s debut Deep Drone Master. Featuring the long-due return of Kvohst (Hexvessel, Grave Pleasures, ex-Dødheimsgard) on lyrics / vocals joining the cold, hypnotic riffs of Host (Thine), the primal drumming of Storm (ex-My Dying Bride, Blasphemer) and introducing the bass playing of Thomas Eriksen (Mork), The Deathtrip offer tickets to primeval possession and open portals to other dimensions. This album captures the spirit of ancient Darkthrone, Thorns and Beherit, imbued with old-English occultism and the chanting of sacred sound formulas—otherworld black metal eeriness for a deep dive into spectral realms.

Vacivus

Annihilism

Profound Lore

With their new album Annihilism, UK death metal unit Vacivus will be poised to become one of the isle’s most prominent death metal bands. Impressions were made with their Rite Of Ascension demo EP, their Nuclear Chaos 7-inch and ultimately their Temple Of The Abyss debut LP from 2017, which saw the band make their stain within the scene. This latest, however, will see Vacivus make an even more punishing and unrelenting impact by offering a serpentine treasure that threads the fibers of dark, unyielding brutality, technical proficiency and refined musicality of the highest plateau. An ideal and seamless myriad of what a modern-day death metal offering should embroider, this album takes the band’s sonic paradigm to a level beyond anything they’ve previously done. With the masterful production courtesy of Greg Chandler (Esoteric) in his Priory Recording studios, with final mastering via Dan Lowndes, Annihilism benefits from an exemplary sound, holding a dense and complex archetypal aesthetic, yet escalating and suffocating beyond that into a work of true death metal artistry.