Upcoming Releases

Coffin Prick

Loose Enchantment

Temporal Drift

***Loose Enchantment consists of eleven new pieces, a mix of music conceived of in a different frame of mind for humans living in a world nearly-disenchanted with itself. Recorded with great collaborative assistance from a sometimes-silent and shadowy partner, Pancho, along with a host of harmonically sympathetic luminaries, including Steven Brown (Tuxedomoon), Alejandro Salazar-Dyer (Rincs), Kathy Lea (Soft Location), John Herndon (Tortoise), and Aaron Fernandez Olson (LA Takedown), these musical endeavors implement elements of the technologically advanced and the undeniably broken. Odes to self-delusion, the mysteries of creation, cleanliness, and the secrets in other people’s lives.Over and through the hot cement of North East L.A., an almost-dry riverbed winds like a snake through the city. Coyotes lap at its trickling stream by moonlight, as pedestrians rush past it by day without a second glance, their thoughts tangled up in the distractions of life in a sprawling metropolis. Here, amongst the many avenues and gentle hills, we find Coffin Prick (alias: Ryan Weinstein).Loose Enchantment, this latest Coffin Prick record, is music conceived of in a different frame of mind for humans living in a world nearly-disenchanted with itself. The album consists of eleven new pieces of music recorded by Coffin Prick himself at his home in Los Angeles, a great city of quicksand-like commitments and those who love them enough to uphold the ends of their collective bargains. A record as much about the confusion of modern life as it is endeavored to expose the lusts in the very loins of...

Cuneiform Tabs

Age

W.25TH

Quickly on the heels of their debut, Cuneiform Tabs return with Age, an LP that takes a massive leap forward in both melodic sensibilities and inventiveness. Bathed in late night psychedelia and the looping repetition of a drone sample, the group’s experimental penchants remain, yet this time wrapped around tunes too sweet to be denied. In pulling back a little of the crackle and haze that made their first album so inviting, the Tabs have revealed more of their pop instincts. The overall effect is a perfect set of early Animal Collective demos or Syd Barrett attempting a Television Personalities cover at 3am.The duo of Matt Bleyle and Sterling Mackinnon continue their system of trading 4-track tapes between the Bay Area and London, a furtive correspondence until sonic nuggets are fully formed. While these songs are very much the product of the Tascam and rudimentary software that is integral to the band, this album is truly the embrace of their songwriting talents—not unlike the recent breakthrough of labelmate Cindy Lee.With the dream-like strum of “Ivy,” slow shimmer of “Orbital Rings” and enchanting, madcap swirl of “Blended Medal,” this is hypnagogic pop at its finest. Age is the record Bob Pollard hears in his head every time he steps down to the basement to pick up a guitar. This is the sound of riding in an elevator hearing McCartney singing “Blackbird” in the distance, only to have it draw closer and closer with each floor as you finally race down the...

High Water Marks, The

Consult The Oracle

Meritorio

***The High Water Marks is a transatlantic indie rock project founded in 2003 by Hilarie Sidney and Per Ole Bratset. Their collaboration began through an exchange of musical ideas via international mail, leading to their 2004 debut LP, Songs About the Ocean, a vibrant fuzz- pop release on Eenie Meenie Records.Sidney, co-founder of Elephant 6 and longtime Apples in Stereo drummer, met Bratset at an Oslo concert. Drawn to his melodies and dynamic guitar work in Palermo, she recognized a kindred spirit. Distance didn’t deter them, and Bratset eventually relocated to the U.S. Following Songs About the Ocean, they released Polar (2007) on HHBTM Records before pausing to focus on family and academic pursuits. Their passion for music reignited in 2019, spurred by friend Logan Miller. Returning to the U.S., they recorded new songs, later enriched by Trondheim musician Øystein Megård. Logan and Øystein became permanent members in the band, adding a new and exciting dimension to their sound. Despite the global pandemic, The High Water Marks thrived, releasing Ecstasy Rhymes (2020), Proclaimer of Things (2022), and Your Next Wolf (2023), marking a prolific new era. They also launched 6612 Tapes, a boutique cassette label embracing 1990s DIY aesthetics.

Danse Macabre

s/t

General Speech

Forming out of the ashes of the legendary Japanese punk band Zouo, Danse Macabre are their equally cult, and spiritual successor walking a path filled with even more haunting darkness. Somewhat akin to the journey Danzig took as he shifted from the sounds of the Misfits, to the embrace of something more somber and evil with Samhain, Cherry leaves behind his vocal duties in Zouo and sets sail for darker waters. That journey is one which brings the listener to an environment which feels appropriately filled with fog, ill winds, and motorcycle exhaust, just the place for Danse Macabre to remind you of earthly nightmares, and to think about death. All of their earliest material from 1988-1990 is tastefully remastered here for both analog and digital.

Excrement

s/t

General Speech

***A short lived raw hardcore band from Sapporo City, fusing local influences like Deef and LSD with the noisy sounds of bands like Gai and Confuse. At times it feels like a bridge could be drawn to raw crust bands like Gloom or Frigora, but Excrement stays just rooted enough in noisy 80s hardcore to keep from a total overlap with that style. Still, Excrement would certainly appeal to both fans of 80s hardcore, and the more full tilt 90s Japanese raw crust sound as well. Fully remastered, with significant improvement over the original recordings, and includes an unreleased track.

Technicolor Blood

Evolution Now!

Le Backstore

***Having previously released a pair of 7-inch singles and a rather poorly timed self-titled 12-inch EP smack in the middle of the pandemic, the space rockers are back with Evolution Now!, a brand new nine-song LP that clocks in a hair under thirty-eight minutes. Sometimes aggressive, sometimes soaring, Technicolor Blood deliver fuzz-riddled riffs, tremolo-fueled heavy-psych effects and inspired synth work which recalls a strange hybrid of Hawkwind meets Chrome. Limited to 300 copies.

Durant, Erin

Firetrail

Ruination Record Co.

***Firetrail, Erin Durant's third album is her most lush, bittersweet and cinematic to date—each track feels like its own liquid film, orchestrated with widely varied textures and instrumentation supporting Durant’s ethereal yet confident vocals. With Firetrail, Durant’s songwriting continues to evolve in surprising ways, mixing honesty and vulnerability with somewhat surreal imagery. Lead single “If Love Had A Name” is a gliding piano and synth-driven love song accompanied by Durant’s ethereal, yet confident vocals. Produced by Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, initial recording for Firetrail began in 2021 at Sonic Ranch, a studio outside of Tornillo, Texas right on the U.S./Mexico border. Building on the experimental leanings of her last album Islands (also produced by Kyp Malone), Firetrail pushes even further in this direction, opening the soundscape to synthesizers and full orchestral percussion, giving tracks a broad palette. Otto Hauser returns on percussion, as well as Dave Smoota Smith and Chris DeMeglio on horns. The personnel also expanded, with Jared Samuel on bass and keys and NYC music community heavy hitters Robbie Lee contributing wind and synths to several tracks, and Stuart Bogie clarinet and sax. Additional recording continued throughout 2022 in NYC at Four Foot Studios, engineered by Gabriel Galvin and then mixed by Galvin in 2023.

The Vacant Lot

Creatures Of The Night

Iron Lung

The Vacant Lot are a first wave punk band from Canberra, started in 1978, that released just one EP in 1981. They played a few gigs and broke up shortly after but not without having a full set list of free-thinking, anti-establishment, Wire/Magazine/Buzzcocks inspired tunes to call from. And call they have! 'Creatures of the Night' is a collection of songs mostly written in '78/'79 but never recorded. Now with a fresh line-up (including Alien Nosejob's Jake Robertson!) they finally see the light.We asked singer George Howson about where the impetus comes from and he shot back with: "Writing songs is something I have to do. I wanted bring life some of our earliest songs which were never recorded, and to pair them with lyrics that did justice to their energy and power. A lot of my working life outside the band takes place in that edge territory where bush intersects with farmland, which provides much of the setting for the lyrics, inspiring the images and sensibility. My interest is in exploring internal and outer landscapes, and to try to make sense of the complex interplay between the two. This EP is also a tribute to Bruce Hart (now deceased), with whom I co-wrote most of our early music; finishing off unfinished business, layering new sensibilities on old, and honouring that original creative partnership."The Vacant Lot combine high energy garage music with potent lyrics, telling impressionistic stories as truthfully as they can through the juxtaposition of stark images transcribed directly...

Itchy-O

Söm Sâptâlahn

Alternative Tentacles

Itchy-O is an experiential performance ensemble that has mesmerized audiences across the U.S. and beyond since 2009. The beating heart of this fifty-plus-strong performance troupe is a batterie of percussionists accompanied by an orchestral arsenal of avant-instrumentation. Weaving a synergistic spell, the ensemble dismantles assumptions of traditional performance models to break down the barriers between audience and performer, administering a bombast of ceremonial chaos; baptizing the audience—body, mind, and collective spirit—in an elaborate, pan-sensorial ocean of music, mystery, and transcendental spectacle.Itchy-O has shared the stage with legends such as David Byrne & St. Vincent, while luminaries like JG Thirwell and Dan Deacon have opened for the humbled brigade. Over the years, they have energized crowds as the opening act for a slew of iconic artists including DEVO, Beats Antique, and Wooden Wisdom (Elijah Wood). Their unforgettable private engagements include a legendary performance at Maynard Keenan’s Merkin Vineyards while delighting festival audiences at Riot Fest, Biennial of the Americas, the Underground Music Showcase, and Tasmania’s world-renowned Dark MOFO with enveloping processionals, pop-up performances, and staged spectacles.In 2024, itchy-O debuted Söm Sâptâlahn, a sold-out collaboration with the Fiske Planetarium. Named for an epic set of custom-crafted gongs cast from six hundred pounds of reclaimed brass at the School of Mines and tuned to a bespoke seven-tone scale, this project birthed this latest double album. Accessible, mysterious, and meditative, it is a bold addition to the itchy-O catalog, sure to appeal to connoisseurs of the experimental, the contemplative, and the avant-garde.

Sonic Youth

J’accuse Ted Hughes

Sonic Youth Records

The seventh in the series of Sonic Youth's SYR documents unearths even more fruit from the fields of Sonic improvisational/compositional love. On the heels of a lengthy investigation into their relationship to 20th Century classical music, the band took advantage of their millennial crossroads in 2000 via the adventurous, then-newfound All Tomorrow's Parties festival in the UK, on invitation from Mogwai. Besides it being historical as their last show as a foursome until 2006, it stands as a wholly unique set that not only delved into instrumental previews of the forthcoming NYC Ghosts And Flowers, but also featured an opening 20 minute group interpretation of a solo composition Thurston had performed at NYC's late/beloved venue The Cooler.With Thurston and Lee both sporting electric 12-strings, and Kim on her Eterna, the piece was set-listed as "New Drone", and took a right turn from the initial instrumental plan with Kim's added intonings that reflected on Sylvia Plath's relationship to her husband, hence retitled "J'Accuse Ted Hughes". It's a sublimely spaced out bit of one-chord introspection, though perhaps not what the festival punters were looking for at that moment. Certainly not the irked Melody Maker scribe who headlined his review "Goodbye 20th Century/Goodbye Talent", a screencap of which appears on the sleeve of this 2008 release. Sparks infamously declared "Talent Is An Asset", and one of SY's great ones was to give their deep listener faction something new and unheard to chew on. Initially live streamed in not-so-great quality, the SYR 7 mix...

Record Time

Issue # 3 - 2025

Record Time

Semi-obscure cult rocker Elliott Murphy, a primer on budget glam rock albums, the music of and murder by chanteuse Claudine Longet, where professional wrestling and rock & roll meet on record, the “Electric Black Man” Eric Mercury, jazz-metal honks Blowhole, 70s dinosaur rockers gone “punk,” Maine’s Jumpin Beans & the Moustaches, a magnificent Rosie & the Originals’ side, a look at South African jive records, SST Records’ spending-spree releases, as well as columns on jazzbo Mezz Mezzrow, proggers Crack the Sky, hard rocker Bernie Torme, “Caravan” – the song, 90s punk singles, Country Lady Bonnie Owens, and putt putt golf records!

Artificial Go

Musical Chairs

Feel It

"Building on 2024’s Hopscotch Fever, Cincinnati’s Artificial Go return with ten more tracks of existential post-punk chamber pop. Recorded at Lambda Research and the haunted attic of the band’s house, the core trio of Angie Willcutt, Micah Wu, and Cole Gilfilen have traded the sparse jangle of their debut for a broader, fuller sound this time around. Musical Chairs deftly meshes the angular excitability of Hopscotch Fever with a spectral warmth and expensiveness able to encompass acoustic guitars, Wu’s almost metaphysical funk bass lines, tape loops and blips and bleeps, a guest spot by Eric Dietrich (of The Drin and Sorry Eric) on saxophone, and Gilfilen’s hip moving boom-bap drumming add to the excitement. What’s more, the band’s comfort with each other (they live together for chrissake) and growing confidence in their collaborative creative process is evident throughout. From the live-take 'Red Convertible' (with its layered recursive structure - the musical equivalent of a kid laughing and spinning in circles just for fun) to the lunch-break-composed and after-work-recorded 'Circles.'On Musical Chairs Artificial Go expands their stylistic palate while retaining the New / No / Whatever Wave weirdness that charmed listeners on their debut —a group effort to be sure, but spearheaded by Angie Willcutt’s singular voice and clever, adroit lyrics. In Willcutt’s hands, the struggles, and at times terrors, of our current age are playfully subverted with agile world play and dynamic vocalization that moves from sweet and dreamy to cartoonishly exaggerated as she charts an emotional course through such...

Lunsford, Kilynn

Promiscuous Genes

Feel It

God bless the barbarians and the ignorami for rescuing us from an even more repulsive technological society .. If we hadn't had a “dark age,” if Mao’s fanatic followers hadn’t put the intellectual class out to pasture and dashed their skulls in the dirt, if there hadn't been Magyars, Vikings, Christians, anti-science zealots of every stripe, iconoclasts, country music disc jocks, the Amish, and other regressive forces to set civilization and progress back every once in a while, can you imagine the festering quagmire we’d be in? Something even more digitally dismaying than the present perhaps.That's why the rock ‘n’ roll of Kilynn Lunsford is so vital; it’s a pagan & primitive rhythm music that has served to stymie the development of neoliberal libertarian hegemonic forces & Silicon Valley’s strange cyborg agenda alike (as well as inspiring more than a few indie rockers to attempt something more interesting). Invoking the ghosts of Michael Zilkha’s sleek Ze Records disco-electro-bongo punk stable with some Pop Group, Man Parrish, Pink Section, New Age Steppers, On-U sound, Lene Lovich, & Algebra Suicide— with some Birthday Party/Bat-cave follies thrown in for good measure.Kilynn is a legendary performer whose many records defy categorization or easy assimilation in the mainstream indie market which has cozied up to the digital leviathan so snugly. Her music is dance dissonance; irresistible but difficult for the algorithm to understand. Kilynn Lunsford doesn’t go in for the trite stories publicity teams use to wage their lowbrow PR campaigns. Hers is a hard...

Artificial Go

Hopscotch Fever / Musical Chairs

Feel It

**Both Artificial Go LPs combined on one CD. On Hopscotch Fever Jacob Mouser wrote: "Consisting of eight tight tracks, this debut is just that: an introduction. A little bit mercurial, a little bit iconic. Artificial Go is operating out of their own genre—not quite post-punk, not quite pop. Hopscotch Fever seems to have been recorded just outside of the collective-genre-periphery to form some sort of extraterrestrial kind of music. With angular guitar breaks, bouncing rhythms, and jolting vocals, Artificial Go is truly here on their own terms." And Ben Michaels said about Musical Chairs: "Recorded at Lambda Research and the haunted attic of the band’s house, the core trio of Angie Willcutt, Micah Wu, and Cole Gilfilen have traded the sparse jangle of their debut for a broader, fuller sound this time around. Musical Chairs deftly meshes the angular excitability of Hopscotch Fever with a spectral warmth and expensiveness able to encompass acoustic guitars, Wu’s almost metaphysical funk bass lines, tape loops and blips and bleeps, a guest spot by Eric Dietrich (of The Drin and Sorry Eric) on saxophone, and Gilfilen’s hip moving boom-bap drumming add to the excitement. What’s more, the band’s comfort with each other (they live together for chrissake) and growing confidence in their collaborative creative process is evident throughout."

Bunny & The Lakers

Numbers

Zaius Tapes

"Released into the ether sometime in 1984, Bunny & The Laker's sole release, Numbers has always been an LP that's as difficult to procure as it is to process. Much like John Bender's output on his own Record Sluts imprint, Numbers was one of those self-released records that was seemingly around, but localized. While attending McGill University in the mid 80's, I 1st encountered it being played in a record shop by the staff. At first I thought it could be Tuxedomoon, but as it progressed, it was even too strange to be them. A very personalized aura, dipping into occasional flashes of Industrial magnetism, all the while enveloped by minimal synth interludes, there was no way to accurately channel what was going on. I asked for it at the counter, but the clerk said it was his personal copy, purchased in Toronto & wasn't for sale. My next exposure was a year or so later, in conversation with Sordide Sentimental founder, Jean-Pierre Turmel. He cited Numbers as one his favorite & influential releases. All efforts by then to locate a copy had become futile, it was now a difficult purchase. Which only added heat to the flame of its mystery.But now some 40 years later, the Tanzanian label, Zaius Tapes, has seen fit to reissue Numbers in a one time edition of 300. By now much more has become known of its provenance, but it remains just as enchantingly polarizing in 2025 as it did in those nascent times...

Sandrider

Aviary & Baleen

Alternative Tentacles

The entity known as ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES, would like to express its excitement to be working with the Seattle, WA based BAND [Sandrider], and enjoyed the previous relationship of Damm and Weisnewski in their former entity known as AKIMBO. ALTERNATIVE TENTACLES is very much a fan of previous work from the BAND on Satanik Royalty Records and highly recommend new listeners investigate the discography further.

Friendship

Caveman Wakes Up

Merge

***An album for sleeping and waking, walking and driving, hunting and fishing, for loitering outside a roadhouse on the haunted tundra. Okay in elevators, not great for dinner. On Caveman Wakes Up, Friendship’s new album and second for Merge Records, the band’s historically capacious definition of country music grows wider still. Shambolic guitars are offset by flute pads, bleary poetry is set against a Motown rhythm section, a song about Jerry Garcia and First Lady Betty Ford fades out with a drum solo, like if Talk Talk came from a dingy Philadelphia basement and was fronted by James Tate. Songwriter Dan Wriggins’ ragged baritone cuts through eleven murky, swirling country-rock songs with profound lyrical substance and sincerity. Like an alarm clock incorporated into the edge of a dream, Caveman Wakes Up belongs equally to the conscious and subconscious mind, fraught with background, steeped in reference and experimentation, delivered casually and as a dire warning, dedicated, above all, to music’s creative soul.

M(H)AOL

Something Soft

Merge

***Something Soft, the second full-length album by Irish post-punk firebrands M(h)aol, is anything but. From the first note of its propulsive opening track to the distorted cries of its last, Something Soft feels antagonistic to the very concept of softness, sonically and thematically, taking an unapologetic approach to intersectional feminism, animal welfare, consumerism, and the struggle to find a place in a world lacking in empathy. What M(h)aol offers is catharsis, in two forms: the kind you get from being open with others, and the kind you get from righteously smashing some shit up.

Gold Dust

In the Shade of the Living Light

Centripetal Force

***Gold Dust are more than a band. They’re a family. In a time of greater isolation and existential anxiety, they form a vital community.It wasn’t always this way. Gold Dust started four years ago as a solitary solo endeavor—a way for Western Massachusetts musician Stephen Pierce to branch out from his roots in DIY punk and explore a longtime fascination with traditional folk and psychedelia. After releasing two records, 2021’s self-titled and 2022’s The Late Great Gold Dust, Pierce welcomed new voices into the fold. Their collective effort, In the Shade of the Living Light, is the story of four people at a crossroads in their lives. They may never find the answers, but they have found solace and unconditional support in one another.Joining Pierce are Ally Einbinder (guitar, formerly of Potty Mouth), Adam Reid (drums, of Nanny), and Sean Greene (bass, of The Van Pelt). As a four-piece, Gold Dust springs out of the cloistered interior and transforms into a dynamic force. In the Shade of the Living Light embraces you with captivating guitar squalls and warm vocal harmonies, steady rhythms, and an innovative blend of influences, from traditional folk to West Coast psych, alternative punk, jangle-rock, and ‘90s college rock.Features a guest appearance by J. Mascis (on sitar).Both formats include a 28-page booklet.

V/a

A Smaller Circle of Friends

Artifix

***GERMS tribute as envisioned by Bill Bartell (Pat Fear from White Flag) to be the sequel to his last Germs tribute (A Small Circle of Friends). This was intended to be a full length release, but only these 3 tracks were collected before Bill passed away. Liner notes by punk filmmaker David Markey and Tony Reflex from the Adolescents. Features a beautiful full color drawing of Bill, Darby, and Lorna by punk artist supreme, Brian Walsby! Edition of 500 copies (250 blue / 250 white).TRACKS:1: ADOLESCENTS -"Beyond Hurt, Beyond Help"(Unrecorded GERMS song only played live before Darby passed away. Previously unreleased anywhere!)2: WHITE FLAG -"Manimal"(Recorded in early 1990s)3: THE DEADBEATS -"Shut Down" (Previously unreleased anywhere!)

Kuroi Jukai

Kuroi Jukai

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***Remastered and reissued. Ten years of Kuroi Jukai’s unrivaled noisegrind masterwork, celebrated through its ultimate and most definitive presentation: a second, final, anniversary vinyl pressing with updated art, new vinyl colors, and completely redone 2025 remastering courtesy of Will Killingsworth of Dead Air Studios.Sentient Ruin is honored and proud to bring you a first ever vinyl pressing of the only, monumentally annihilating release to have ever surfaced from short-lived and highly elusive Edmonton AB-based Canadian powerviolence / noisegrind suicide commando Kuroi Jukai, Japanese for "black sea of trees"). By the time the release had posthumously surfaced on cassette in April 2015 through Canadian harsh noise label Aught\Void, Kuroi Jukai had already ceased to exist, becoming somewhat of a mystery in the Canadian punk and extreme/experimental underground. But this lone self-titled effort has since remained untouched as undisputed testament of the band's visionary quest for complete sonic ruin and remains a crowning achievement amongst the most ambitious and sophisticated noisegrind and underground extreme hardcore punk releases of the decade. With songs averaging thirty seconds in length and a sound pushed over the edge by a ruinous syncretism with fringe strains of harsh noise and power electronics, the harrowing mini LP is a conduit for armageddon that elevates the notion of audial terrorism to an extreme rarely before seen, all while the listener is obliterated with a violence and urgency that appears both senseless and baffling.

Monkey 101

Rusts, Smuts and Heart Rot

Sister Raygun

***Monkey 101 is a lo-fi noise rock band from Philadelphia. They achieved instant cult status with their 1990 7” single “French Feelings” and “Now That You Have Left Me” released on Philly indie label Siltbreeze Records. Monkey 101 released one additional 7” EP culled from a full album’s worth of recordings made in the early 1990s, but the full LP Rusts, Smuts and Heart Rot has not been released on vinyl until now. These songs are as vibrant, raw, and energetic as when they were first recorded some 30 years ago. For fans of Guided By Voices, Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments, et al.

Gotobeds, The

Masterclass

12xu

***"I first encountered the Gotobeds in August 2014, at a benefit for the great rock bard Karl Hendricks in their mutual hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Gotobeds went on fashionably (if not voluntarily) late and proceeded to lay waste to anything else anyone tried to do that evening.I took an abnormal number of photos and was made a fan for life.This kind of instant affection happens to me, particularly in my jaded dotage, so very rarely that I feel it is worth noting.Almost inevitably, an attempt to describe an unnameable jolt will devolve into predictable cliches.I’m talking about old chestnuts like: Bouncing off the wallsSpending about half an hour in a washing machine full of bolts and rose petalsHaving sand thrown in your eyes just before being kissed vigorously on the neckAll of which are a) barely better than nothing on the word front but b) do apply, if lazily so, to the Gotobeds’ various, terrific issuances: on 12XU (to which they have happily returned), their erstwhile label Sub Pop, etc. And the latter two apply perhaps most especially to their terrific new record—’Masterclass’.The Gotobeds have an unwavering commitment to bending and breaking things in the process of remaking them into something bolder and better (and, a couple of lineup changes to the contrary, not laying anyone off wantonly from critical government jobs)...The Gotobeds are aggressive, cannily disjointed, occasionally raw propellent, with an ear for melody that leavens the entire enterprise with a reasonable, non-diabetes-inducing amount of sugar...Hmmm…how about…Rowland S...

Water Damage

Instruments

12xu

***"Water Damage is ten people from one town and one sound from twelve people. For Instruments, the plus two are guitarist David Grubbs and saxophonist Patrick Shiroishi, neither of whom blunt the angle or confound the aim. The tempo? Slow and low. Four tracks, averaging twenty minutes each, the pace never above a comfortable walk. The damage creeps, a forest becomes a mountain, and the faithful move forward. The album is named after Fugazi, in a manner, and 'Reel 25' takes after the Shocklee Brothers, in a cry. Stop asking the lord how many drummers this band has and and ask him how much of your mind, babe. Some people say drone and same people say trance and some people say invocation through patterned unity. Some people just say rock and we let them set their clocks back. Lie down and let these holy treads flatten you. Just because Water Damage know what they are doing doesn't mean you have to. Fix your hearts or die!"—Sasha Frere-Jones

Von Till, Steve

Alone In A World Of Wounds

Neurot Recordings

Physically enveloping, forebodingly beautiful, and drawing on the animistic spirit of the natural world, Steve Von Till announces his seventh solo LP arriving on May 16th via Neurot Recordings. Ploughing a different furrow, Alone in a World of Wounds is an album of sweeping gothic tinged Americana, tripped out drones, beautiful world weary vocal melodies and slowly unfurling cello arrangements. Initially inspired by the harmonic resonance of piano and synths and his long standing love of ambient music, Alone in a World of Wounds follows 2021’s No Wilderness Deep Enough in reflective ambiance. Opening up his voice in ways he has never done before, the album's genesis came via intuitive improvisations. "The complex overtones of upright piano and synthesizers really inspired me to sing out more, to seek out the implied harmonies, and to find unique approaches within the limitations of my voice." says Von Till ‘It is the transcendent nature of music, the cathartic healing process where I can leave everything behind and become one with sound. When you allow yourself to go beyond the ordinary you might be fortunate enough to find a moment where you are creating in alignment with the flow of the river of the universe.' The search for deeper connection, living with the sorrow of our separation from the natural world, and relying on gut level intuition to get closer to the primal creative state are all key to Von Till’s creative process. Recorded mostly at his barn studio at home in Idaho and...

Blood Monolith

The Calling of Fire

Profound Lore

Blood Monolith is an emerging death metal juggernaut featuring members of Nails, Undeath, Ulthar, and Genocide Pact. Formed by guitarist / vocalist Shelby Lermo (Nails, Ulthar) in 2023 after his exit from Vastum, the goal was to create something even uglier, weirder, and more aggressive operating out of his new home base in the Washington DC / Northern Virginia area. Guitarist Tommy Wall (Undeath) joined Lermo, and the music for Blood Monolith’s debut album was soon written. Bassist Nolan (Genocide Pact, Shitstorm) and drummer Aidan Tydings-Lynch (Deliriant Nerve, Brain Tourniquet) rounded out the lineup. The band’s location ties deeply into their sound, as this epicenter of mass murder and corruption provides constant fuel for boiled-down anger (as well as a rich history of rebellion through music). The album’s title, The Calling Of Fire, invokes the internal and external summoning of rage to spit in the face of that seemingly unstoppable, towering evil, and the sonic excess within lands like a broad-daylight assassination. Blood Monolith’s unique and unconventional concept and aesthetic sets them apart from the plethora of interchangeable death metal bands currently inhabiting the scene, and their music is miles beyond them as well. There is a DIY mindset and ethic present, but despite the punk and grindcore pedigree of its members, Blood Monolith plays crazed death metal of the highest order, influenced as much by classics like Morbid Angel and Cannibal Corpse as modern innovators like Defeated Sanity and Dead Congregation. Adorned with cover art by legendary Rudimentary Peni...

Son Of Buzzi

Ein Hase, Ein Phönix, Ein Schwan

Shrimper

Zurich’s Sebastian Bischoff is Son Of Buzzi, a self-taught finger style guitar player whose unique manner of playing is compounded on his new record by the world of producer Michael Potter. Previous outings on Cardinal Fuzz, Stoned To Death and Dadaist are comprised of his instrumental guitar pieces sometimes coupled with synthesizers or his no-input mixer to create other worldy ambience and noise. Bischoff’s compositions capture the resonance of the instruments used and importantly, that of the environment he records in, be it a kitchen, an abandoned balcony or in the case of this record, a hut. Son Of Buzzi’s latest album, Ein Hase, Ein Phönix, Ein Schwan was recorded on guitar in December of 2024 inside a hut in the Ticino Mountains in Switzerland alone over a long weekend. The electronic accompaniments were recorded in Zurich and arranged together with Michael Potter (The Electric Nature). The title cut evolved over a series of Bischoff’s tour of USA, and defines the marriage of the impressionistic with the concrete on this gorgeous album of alchemy and transformation that engulfs the senses as the slow reveal of these unique pieces unfold. Son Of Buzzi will be playing festival and solo dates across Europe in support of the record throughout the summer and into fall. “Bischoff bends the rules of American Primitive guitar playing, bringing them into the future without destroying their rootwork.” —Byron Coley, Wire Magazine “Partly improvisation and partly written pieces, Buzzi’s sound lives on an honesty all its...

V/a

DOA - No Escape From What You Are

Sudden Death

Sudden Death Records is proud to present No Escape From What You Are. Last winter the DOA guys came up with an album concept: “Hey why don’t we get a bunch of our punk rock pals to record DOA songs.” So Canada’s Godfather of Punk, Joey Shithead Keithley contacted a bunch of his old friends and his favorite bands. As one can see form this sterling lineup, their reaction to covering DOA material was great! DOA, known as the Godfathers of Hardcore and more specifically Shithead himself inventing that term, have influenced bands and fans alike since 1978, having played over 4,500 shows in fifty different countries on five different continents, For a lot of the musicians involved here, DOA was one of their first two or three punk bands they ever saw in their lives. So what one has here are incredible versions of fifteen great sons that Shithead and friends wrote and DOA recorded and performed during the past forty-seven years. Features tracks from Rancid, Circle Jerks, Adolescents, Voivod, Slime, Fear, Toxic Reasons, Duff McKagan, Descendents, Propagandhi, War On Women, Dead Kennedys (featuring Joey Shithead), The Defects and M.D.C.

New Chance

A Rock Unsteady

We Are Time

***A Rock Unsteady is the sophomore album from Toronto musician and vocalist Victoria Cheong aka New Chance. As an active collaborator in the city’s avant music and contemporary dance scenes, as well as a practicing astrologer, Cheong brings a wide array of influences to her mesmeric solo work. This new album combines spiritual strains of downtempo, dub, house and electronic pop, all underpinning a greater symbolic framework. Through subtle integration of dramatic idioms, the album hangs together as a narrative about power and understanding–and just how slippery those two things can be. As its title suggests,A Rock Unsteady is an album made for this very stark moment of collective uncertainty, balancing equal parts precarity and potential.Lead single ‘Oh Mercury’ plunges the listener into the album’s vivid universe. Opening with a dulcet verse of lyre and vocals, the tide soon shifts and the song drops into a lysergic reimagining of 90s dancehall. One of the central features of the song, and a crucial force throughout the album, is a vocal chorus featuring Isla Craig, Robin Dann and Felicity Williams (Bernice, Bahamas). In tandem with Cheong, they help sing out a keystone tension of the album: “Because the heart / can’t read the head / And because the soul / can’t read the circumstances.”Features appearances from Johnny Spence (The Weather Station, Jeremy Dutcher), Evan Cartwright (Cola, U.S. Girls), Brodie West (Eucalyptus) and Jennifer Castle.

Moontype

I Let The Wind Push Down On Me

Orindal

***In 2021, Moontype released their debut LP Bodies of Water. A brand new Chicago band on a small independent label (Born Yesterday), the record made an outsized impact, capturing the attention of outlets like The New York Times, NPR, Stereogum and Pitchfork on the strength of the clear-eyed songwriting of the band's singer/bassist Margaret McCarthy, and the band's gauzy, math-y and full-hearted indie rock. In the years since the band have toured extensively and remained active in their hometown, sharing stages with artists like Frankie Cosmos, Pile, NNAMDÏ, Remember Sports and Finom.Following the 2021 release of Bodies of Water, the band underwent a recharging period of major and minor transformations. During that time, the band’s lineup grew with the additions of Patter’s Joe Suihkonen, whose other band the Deals has featured collaborations from McCarthy and Moontype drummer Emerson Hunton, and Andrew Clinkman of Spirits Having Fun.Moontype's mighty sophomore LP, I Let The Wind Push Down On Me was produced by Katie Von Schleicher and Nate Mendelsohn, and serves as a reinvention for the band—not just for their new and expanded lineup—but for how McCarthy navigates the changes in her own life and the messy feelings she sings about. It's a patient document of feeling things out, being easy on yourself, and finding the beauty in small moments.

G.i. Jinx

Mind Freak

Celluloid Lunch

***After years stewing in the solvent-scented janitor closet of Montreal’s noise rock pantheon, G.I. Jinx have manifested an unsettling and unrelenting debut album for those who crave their headbanging as much as their total zonal dropout. All hope abandon ye who enter here, for Mind Freak melds distorted, churning fuzzed-out guitar riffs with sprawling, feedback-drenched psychedelic leads, hypnotic rhythms, and eerie impassioned vocals in a unique Inferno of existential chaos, surreal theatre, and universal dread. It is an album that pulsates with doomsday imagery, eldritch mysticism, dark dreams, and darker desires amidst its frenzied noise and seductive grooves.With members drawn from such titans of Montreal’s eclectic and diverse underground as No Negative, Security, No Joy, Panopticon Eyelids, Fly Pan Am, and Dernier Sex, G.I. Jinx have carved out a disquieting identity that is uniquely theirs, balancing the propulsive riffing of Flipper and High Rise, the aggressive sludge of Upsidedown Cross and Brainbombs, the bodily groove of Black Sabbath, and the dissonant, off-kilter guitar work of Sonic Youth.Mind Freak is co-released by Celluloid Lunch Records and the resurrected Psychic Handshake Recordings. G.I. Jinx’s music is loud and uncompromising, guaranteed to captivate witches, cave dwellers, acidheads, and all shades of freaks in between.

Novoa, Eva

Novoa / Kamaguchi / Cleaver Trio Vol. 2

577 Records

***Novoa/Kamaguchi/Cleaver Trio Delivers Electrifying Second Volume, A Bold, Experimental Fusion of Density and Dialogue The wait is over. If you’ve been holding your breath since hearing Novoa/Kamaguchi/Cleaver Trio, Vol. 1, it is time to let it out. To complete the trio, she chose her longtime comrade and collaborator of some fifteen years, bassist Masa Kamaguchi, and Detroit drum wizard Gerald Cleaver. The group has performed live in NYC since 2017. On Volume 2, Novoa steers the trio through elegant experimentation of its full potential, confidently grasping golden threads from great masters of music to shape her own melodic universe. The multi-instrumentalist says it’s where melodic density meets contrapuntal dialogue, a free interplay of rich textures and riveting, masterly improvisation. This smooth complexity is what gives rise to the group’s uniqueness.

Science Man

Monarch Joy

Swimming Faith

***After brooding in the shadows of the Rust Belt and extensively touring for the last 5 years, SCIENCE MAN has mutated from John Toohill’s brain child into a relentless, 10-armed, genre-bending monster. They set loose a blend of enigmatic hardcore punk that melts away the restraints, throwing you into their ever expanding distorted reality. Their latest, MONARCH JOY, is a chaotic, strange, and deceptively joyous blend of hardcore made for those who only wish to risk moving forward. Edition of 500 copies with a 18x22 fold-out poster and lyric insert.

She Spread Sorrow & Luca Sigurta

The Grimorian Tapes

Helen Scarsdale Agency

"Don't be scared by death," Alice Kundalini calmly instructs at the beginning of her collaborative Grimorian Tapes with partner Luca Sigurta. Her words slithers from her lips with a subtle, sinister unease, compounded by the unsettling quality of her whisper. The fear of death, this most profound condition, has long been a subject of philosophical, spiritual, and existential inquiry. To fear death is undeniably human; to transcend that fear is often seen as reaching a higher plane of existence. At least, that's the intention behind the rituals, the spells woven into the fabric of The Grimorian Tapes.Industrial culture has historically turned to personal ritual, obscure texts, gnostic scriptures, and heretical thought as a means of detaching itself from the corruption of hegemonic Western culture. The Italian death industrial duo of Alice Kundalini (aka She Spread Sorrow) and Luca Sigurta present The Grimorian Tapes as part of this tradition, drawing from a lineage of artists such as Coil, Psychic TV, Current 93, Cranioclast, and Metgumbnerbone. The arrangements manifest out of crumbled tape loops, disconcerting tone-bent half-melodies, and creaking utterances that might not be out of place at a Fox Sisters séance. Throughout, Kundalini’s vocals shift from eerie whispers to guttural incantations to extended technique chanting, all intensifying the otherworldly atmosphere.Drawing inspiration from The Black Pullet, an 18th-century French grimoire filled with instructions for making talismans and magical artifacts, Kundalini weaves her own take on the book's esoteric themes into the shadowy tape loops that comprise The Grimorian Tapes. The Black Pullet...

Hectorine

Arrow of Love

Take A Turn

***Hectorine’s Sarah Gagnon calls up the spirit of the ancient Sumerian warrior goddess Inanna to explain the tumult that surrounded the making of Arrow of Love, her third full-length album. In Mesopotamian myth, the goddess descends into the underworld to learn the secrets of the chthonic realm. As she passes through each of the seven gates of hell, she is forced to relinquish a piece of her queenly armor, jewels, and robes. She arrives naked at the throne of her sister Ereshkigal, who kills her and hangs her corpse on a hook on the wall. After three days Inanna is rescued, revived, and returned to her kingdom, but she is pursued by demons who demand that someone take her place in the underworld. When she discovers that her beloved shepherd Dumuzi has not mourned her death, she sacrifices him.Hectorine’s latest album tells a lower key tale of death and rebirth, encompassing a period in which Gagnon lost a job and ended a relationship under the shadow of a modern plague and raging wildfires, retreating into enforced solitude until it was possible to emerge again.“You certainly don't just become who you are overnight,” she says. “You go through trials and tribulations to get there.” The story, which she encountered through an online literature class with poet Ariana Reines, took on a special resonance for her as she fought through pandemic-induced loneliness. “During the pandemic, especially that first year, a lot of us went through a kind of hell — there were...

Nilsson, Molly

Zenith (10th Anniversary - Red-Gold Vinyl Edition)

Night School

To celebrate Molly Nilsson’s most enduring, fan-favourite album to date, Night School and Dark Skies Association are releasing a 10th Anniversary edition on Red-Gold Vinyl, limited to 500 copies.Since its release in the late summer of 2015, Zenith has come to be considered Molly Nilsson’s greatest album do date. Now on its 6th pressing in 2025, the album represents the mid-point in Nilsson’s career to date and contains firm fan-favourites in Mountain Time, Happyness and her most popular song, 1995. Zenith hits square between Nilsson’s original flurry of DIY activity and her later, more outward looking and epic-in-scope material.

North, Ian / John Howard

All The Young Droids: Junk Shop Sampler

Night School / School Daze

To celebrate the release of All The Young Droids: Junkshop Synthpop 1979 - 1985, Night School is releasing a double A 7" through its archive label School Daze. All The Young Droids is an overview of the post-punk synth explosion curated by Phil King, when alongside chart superstars like Depeche Mode, Soft Cell et. al a whole generation of musicians embraced new technologies that democracized pop music. This includes established artists who hoped to jumpstart their careers with drum machines and upstarts inspired to release DIY 7" records by the first waves of synth stars. Ian North of power pop pre-punkers Milk N Cookies bought his first synth after supporting Magazine on tour while still in his group Neo. When guitarist Robin Simon was poached for the end days of Magazine and John Foxx-period Ultravox, North then returned to New York after his visa expired and recorded his synth pop album ‘My Girlfriend’s Dead’ album in his apartment in Brooklyn – which was released in 1980 – and from which ‘We’re Not Lonely’ is taken. Credited to John Howard and Cal Mylar on the single 'I-Tune-Into-You (I-2NE-IN-2-U)' on CBS in 1980 - which is featured on All The Young Droids, 'We Can See' is a previously unreleased song from the same recording session. Cal Mylar was actually an imaginary character thought up by John Howard - who had previously released an album on CBS in 1975 called 'Kid In In A Big World' (which got rave reviews on its reissue...

SBT (Sarabeth Tucek)

Live In Bergen

Ocean Omen

One magical night in Bergen, Norway, Sarabeth Tucek proved to herself that she could muster up the music again. It had been five long years since she performed in Madrid before walking away from being a recording artist for the foreseeable future. She was coaxed to the city known as “Gateway To The Fjords” by HP Gundersen as part of a days-long festival of female songwriters. The acoustic set was comprised of songs from her minimal yet powerful back catalogue, plus two new ones which would foreshadow her return to the music scene via her masterful comeback double album Joan Of All. Along with her longtime producer / guitarist Luther Russell and engineer / bassist Jason Hiller, she played the set of her life, unaware it was being recorded. The audience was rapturous and the vibe in the intimate Scandinavian club was thick as a storm cloud. Live In Bergen features ten tracks which range from a reimagined version of her classic “Something For You” to a maiden airing of “The Living Room” and an emotionally shattering reading of her indelible “Get Well Soon”. 

Heads, The

Still Under Sided

Rooster

Standalone limited reissue of the bonus tracks from the UNDERSIDED BOXSET, boxset now on its last copies. This 2xLP has the relevant Peel session from the original album release and unreleased demos. there will be bonus sticker sheet and bonus rehearsal CDs from the boxset also! 500 only, black vinyl.

Hexerei

Realms...

Sentient Ruin Laboratories

***The second full-length hexation from Finnish terrorizing black metal coven Hexerei: forty minutes of the band's staple assault on the psyche vomited from beyond the shreds of sanity. Five new abysmal, wretched curses of venom-soaked aural pestilence conceived as a gateway to absolute bedlam. On their new vomit of creation titled Realms..., the deranged Finnish cult explores even more outer dimensions of terror and insanity, scouring the depths of delirium to uncover a cryptic primordial essence of complete world inversion. This second full-length disfigurement cements Hexerei’s profile as absolutists of the unutterable, and sees the Finnish scourge distance themselves even further from any concept of musicality, forcing upon the listener a berserk strain of virulent antimusic rarely observed at a such a crippled and primeval state. An intentionally destroyed audio quality and a completely regressive approach to the canonical decencies of songwriting and recording exalt a sonic delirium of complete inhumanity that redefines the concept of raw black metal entirely, reconsigning it to its ancestral and legitimate origin as vector for boundless violence and absolute evil. The ancestral path paved by Cultes Des Ghoules, Katharsis, Armagedda, Vorum and Concrete Winds thus finds new instigators to the propagation of occult and grotesque audio as terror, and “Realms.....” stands grandiose and inscrutable in its defiant goal of returning this particular strain of necrotic extreme music back to a certain dimension of absolute malignancy where it was birthed and belongs.

Biafra, Jello And The Guantanamo School Of Medicine

Audacity Of Hype

Alternative Tentacles

***BACK IN PRINT ON BLACK OR LIMITED SOLID BABY BLUE VINYL!!! In the twenty or so years since his brainchild, The Dead Kennedys, officially disbanded, Jello Biafra has made a career of spoken word gigs interspersed with musical collaborations with some of the most compelling figures in underground music. Recording projects and touring with the likes of Melvins, NoMeansNo, DOA, Mojo Nixon, and Lard (with Ministry's Al Jorgensen) among others have kept his "punk as political weapon" message sharp, but the lack of his own band made these collaborations usually short-lived and left Biafra with a ton of songs that never saw the light of day.Inspired by The Stooges gig on Iggy Pop's 60th birthday in San Francisco, Biafra laid plans for his own 50th birthday party and finally decided it was time to start a band of his own. After cramming practices for a month, the four-piece dubbed themselves Jello Biafra and the Axis of Merry Evildoers! and featured Biafra, Ralph Spight (Victims Family, Freak Accident, Hellworms), Jon Weiss (Sharkbait, Horsey), and Billy Gould (Faith No More) The band took the stage in a sold-out two-night stand at San Francisco's Great American Music Hall. Flush from that exhilarating triumph, nine months of rehearsal and writing followed; they added ace guitarist Kimo Ball (Freak Accident, Carneyball Johnson, Mol Triffid, Griddle), and christened themselves Jello Biafra and the Guantanamo School of Medicine. The Audacity of Hype was produced by Biafra and engineered by hip hop producer and longtime co-conspirator Matt Kelley...

Burnside, R.L.

Too Bad Jim

Fat Possum

***BACK IN STOCK!!! R.L. Burnside's album Too Bad Jim is a record worth owning. “I didn't mean to kill nobody ... I just meant to shoot the sonofabitch in the head.

Kimbrough, Junior

God Knows I Tried

Fat Possum

***BACK IN STOCK!!! "...we went into the backwoods of the Delta, where there was an illegal Sunday Juke Joint run by Junior Kimbrough, who was a contemporary of Muddy Waters...The whole thing was extraordinary - like an IV introduction to the blues." - Bono (of U2)

Propagandhi

Potemkin City Limits

Fat Wreck Chords

***BACK IN PRINT!!! PROPAGANDHI’s album Potemkin City Limits is now available on vinyl for the first time through Fat. Aside from a small original run on another label, it has been out of print and unavailable for years. Fans have been trying to get their hands on this one for a long time.

Unknown Mortal Orchestra

s/t (Black Vinyl)

Fat Possum

***BACK IN STOCK ON BLACK VINYL!!! UMO was initially conceived by New Zealand native, Ruban, to release some tracks via a Bandcamp page to promote his limited addition vinyl in 2010. He pieced a band together, with a skilled producer, Jake, on bass and a brilliant teenage drummer named Julian to fill out the band. They are based in Portland.

Blood Incantation

Hidden History Of The Human Race

Dark Descent

***BACK IN STOCK ON BLACK AND EXCLUSIVE ULTRA CLEAR WITH LIME GREEN AND METALLIC BLUE SPLATTER VINYL!!! ***Received an 8.3 Best New Music rating from Pitchfork.  Featuring classic 1970s artwork by sci-fi god Bruce Pennington, Hidden History Of The Human Race promises to be both a meditative inquiry on the mystery and nature of human consciousness, and a dynamic foray into the realms of progressive, brutal and atmospheric death metal, as revealed by Blood Incantation. Recorded completely analog at World Famous Studios in Denver, Colorado, Hidden History Of The Human Race expands the sonic cosmos explored on Blood Incantation’s critically acclaimed debut album Starspawn.

Ultha

Belong

Vendetta

***ULTHA's ninth release in five years and features two extended tracks—"No Fire, Only Smoke" (17:04) and "Constructs of Separation" (21:07). “Ultha have done it again, somehow. Converging Sins is the sort of album that any band would be lucky to release once in their career, but with Belong, Ultha proves that they are among black metal’s most inspired forces. This is atmospheric black metal, with strong elements of doom intertwined now and again, that you do not simply listen to—no; you feel it. Ultha are communing with some unseen force, and through their dense sonic tapestries, they afford us the same opportunity. Recommended!”—Ippocalyptica

Totalitar

Sin Egen Motstandare

Prank

***BACK IN PRINT!!! Sin Egen Motstandare was originally released in 1994 on CD-Only By Finn Records. A reunion album of sorts, the reconstituted band sought to get back their original hardcore roots, while at the same time sparking a direct reaction to the rising right wing political climate of time in Sweden. One of the all-time most rampaging Swedish Punk albums, it affirmed the band's template of D-beat hardcore that they continually challenged and re-imagined for another decade and a half of releases, and inspired a legions of bands worldwide. This 30th Anniversary edition is a 1-time press at RTI with a stoughton tip-on gatefold with spot gloss, new liner notes from the band, unique center labels for the release, a printed inner sleeve, a reprint poster of the flyer for the original CD release show.

Amp

Stenorette

Kranky

***The third album from this UK dream'n'drone duo returns to the drifting sound of their first album with an emphasis on rhythms, lock stepping, and clattering percussion to move the music through. Many of the songs were composed on the piano for a more delicate sound to loop drones, grooves, guitar and vocals around. Twelve dreamable tracks.

Water Damage

Repeater

12xu

***"There is something really special about music based on drones. Whether it's the vocals of Pandit Pran Nath, the ARP 2500 of Eliane Radigue, or the nearly-blown amps of Sunn O))), by changing the listeners's focus on details to one that favors flow, drones are uniquely capable of transporting our brains far far away. The debut LP, 'Repeater', by this loudly droning Austin septet is a goddamn splendid example of how the process works. Using the motto, “Maximal Repetition Minimal Deviation,” Water Damage create glowing fields of post-rock lava that pretty much suck you right in and boil you alive. Water Damage, while technically a septet, actually operate in various configurations, with the proviso there should always be two drummers and two bass players on hand. They prefer if each of their sonic ideas takes up a whole reel of tape, and once they start they don't look back. Everything proceeds towards an imaginary end point that is only achieved when the tape starts flapping. What a way to run a railroad! But the folks in the band are all vets of various projects—Spray Paint, USA/Mexico, Marriage, Black Eyes, Thor & Friends, among others—so let's assume they know what they're doing. And why not? They sound fucking great. Their approach to the form is less front-loaded than most of their peers, and the surface of their sound is sometimes ruffled by aural events of an un-drone-like nature. But the main gush is usually a blend of harmonic tones and textures pointing towards...

Sex Messiah

Metal Del Chivo

Nuclear War Now

***Sex Messiah returns from the Satanic brothels of Japan to satiate our depraved appetites for morally-corrupt black metal with four new tracks and five live tracks. Although their overall sadistic formula remains consistent with prior atrocities, their language of choice has shifted to Spanish, providing a new vehicle to spread their gospel of fornication and degradation.

Carter, Daniel / Evan Strauss / 5-track / Sheridan Riley

The Uproar In Bursts Of Sound And Silence

577 Records

***The Uproar in Bursts of Sound and Silence is a sort of emergent collage that came together over four years of composition, improvisation and production. The foundations for this album were initially recorded in 2018 by producer/engineer Jack Endino (Nirvana, Soundgarden, Mudhoney, Skinyard) at Soundhouse in Seattle, WA with myself (Evan Strauss, electric bass and upright bass), 5-Track (Guitar) and Sheridan Riley (Drums). The initial foundations of this music consisted of my long-form graphically notated conceptual compositions based on the calls of the Veery songbird (Catharus fuscescens), the astrological transits at the precise time of the recording session and some thematic elements from Ursula K. Le Guin’s novel The Dispossessed.   In 2019 the album was given the working title Bird Songs for the Stars and I commissioned the cover art, Night Fisher, from Jeane Cohen. Also around this time, Daniel Carter had emphatically told me, “I’m going to become a rapper by the time I turn 90.” So, a few weeks later Daniel and I were hanging out, recording music and eating stir fry in my Ditmas Park apartment and I convinced him to make some progress on his goals by recording his voice into a microphone. Daniel began by recording an excerpt from Virginia Woolf’s The Waves and continued by recording some of his own poetry.  The recordings of Daniel from that afternoon would eventually make their way onto this album alongside my own experimentations in production inspired by Lee Scratch Perry, J Dilla and Ingram...

Artificial Peace

Live at The Wilson Center - June 25, 1982

Alona's Dream

***Released on the 40th Anniversary of ARTIFICIAL PEACE's best live show ever, this album features 15 tracks. Recorded, mixed and mastered by TOM LYLE of GOVERNMENT ISSUE. For anyone who was there that night, they can close their eyes and practically re-live the experience. For those who werenʼt, they can sonically experience the intensity of Artificial Peace live! This first ever official release of this live recording documents the intensity of this important band in the early DC hardcore punk scene, and in a more authentic way than their well-known studio recordings. Limited edition 160-gram white vinyl LP in a 20pt board jacket with printed inner sleeve featuring Artificial Peace show flyers. Mastered by Tom Lyle, lacquer cut by CARL SAFF, pressed in Chicago at Smashed Plastic Record Pressing.

Blatant Dissent

1985-1986

Alona's Dream

***BLATANT DISSENT's story is the story of evolution. They started in Dekalb, Illinois, in 1983 as a cover band. Over the next few years, Blatant Dissent developed and recorded their own distinct brand of midwestern indie-skate punk. By 1988, the evolution was complete and they had become Midwest noise-rock stalwarts TAR. Their music had the backbone and energy of hardcore punk but Blatant Dissent were too smart and well informed to play run-of-the-mill uniform hardcore. Their style was also illuminated by the innovations of contemporary bands including Naked Raygun, whose JEFF PEZZATI produced their first session. Also influential were Chicago punk pioneers Trial By Fire as well as innovative national acts like Husker Du, The Minutemen and The Replacements. After an initial demo, Blatant Dissent eventually recorded a total of 22 songs over two sessions between 1985 and 1986. Recorded by IAIN BURGESS and STEVE ALBINI respectively, these sessions offer insight into the development of the group as they tightened their song writing and laid the groundwork for later becoming Tar. During 2021 the original multi-tracks were remixed by the band with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio in Chicago. The music was subsequently mastered by CARL SAFF and pressed into 160-gram color vinyl in Chicago at Smashed Plastic Record Pressing. 22 song limited edition blue / white swirl color vinyl LP. Comes in 20pt board jacket with full color, four page booklet.

White Lightning

Thunderbolts Of Fuzz

Riding Easy

Standout favorites of Riding Easy Records’ Brown Acid compilation series, White Lightning’s stellar discography of rare and under-appreciated heavy psych, proto-metal rock gets a vital revival for new generations to learn how swinging, swaggering and often blazingly fast rock’n’roll is done. White Lightning was formed in Minneapolis, MN in 1968 by guitarist Tom “Zippy” Caplan and bassist Woody Woodrich after leaving garage psych band The Litter (themselves popular standouts from the Nuggets and Pebbles series of garage rock rarities.) Originally a power trio, the band later expanded to a five-piece in 1969 while shortening its name to Lightning. The quintet’s brilliant and rare 1970 self-titled album on Pickwick International’s P.I.P. imprint provides six of the ten tracks on Thunderbolts Of Fuzz. The original White Lightning trio only released the one 45-rpm single “Of Paupers And Poets” during their existence (on local Hexagon label in 1968, later reissued by major label ATCO Records in 1969.) A long out-of-print posthumous album released in 1995 gathered unreleased recordings, three of which are found here. This rounds out this collection of recorded highlights from the band’s rocky history. Taking their name from a particularly potent type of LSD, White Lightning laid out from the start that it was not cute and cuddly ’70s rock. In fact, the band’s aggressive tempos are like punk rock way before punk. However, their dirty blues groove and musical prowess shows the band was more than unrefined ne’er-do-wells, they had true versatility.

Ruth, Rich

I Survived, It's Over

Third Man

***Recorded under a loft bed in the guest bedroom of his Nashville home, MICHAEL RUTH aka RICH RUTH's I Survived, It’s Over starts in a humble space. And while many contemporary music projects are produced in such an environment, I Survived, It’s Over sets itself apart in its transformative properties as well as its transparency. What we have here is honest sound exploration, session musician-level instrumentation, and a true love for nature run through the fingers of a dude who can channel some acute and undeniable magic. Underneath the swell of the strings and the shredding of the guitars, this record has hard working, rustbelt, drum-heavy roots all over it (which makes sense as Ruth hails from outside of Toledo, the album was mixed by JOHN MCENTIRE from Chicago band Tortoise). Many of the flutes, saxophones, pedal steel, and other instruments were recorded remotely because we live in the future, but this only adds to the collage of sampled and sample-able material that Rich Ruth has to offer. The organic relationships between the artist and other musicians on the album is evident even in the compilation style sampling that needs to occur in putting such a project together. I Survived, It’s Over is a record you should buy for your friend, your foe, and yourself. It’ll sit perfectly on your shelf between Alice Coltrane and Hiroshi Yoshimura.

Dead Void

Volatile Forms

Dark Descent

After some silence since their magnificent demo, Dead Void return from the depths to bestow a crushing debut album—Volatile Forms—upon the world. Drawing in on doomy, yet certainly not meek, atmospherics—the sheer monstrous tone of which will pin one to the wall—it is clear this is something unwieldy. Murmuring bass seeps through buzzing guitars in a manner that sounds profoundly unwelcoming, while the daunting vocals and crashing drums give no alleviation from the bludgeoning force. While the hostile and claustrophobic sounds of this record cannot be ignored, equally impactful are the grooves which hit like a hammer of pure malice when carefully spliced with the caverns of eerily contorting death metal. When the pounding drums break through the guitars, they have a real hard tone, while the seeping filth of the strings is not overshadowed. Clearly the three demos and spacing between them have allowed the band to develop into the best version of themselves, as on this debut album one hears a refined but unpolished and inhospitable cut of truly awesome music taking form. Moving forth, the hooks, the grooves, the expanses of doom and desolation, all conjure something inescapable and dread-tinged while the malignant hammering of pure old school violence is not lost or forgotten, as warped riffs and blast-beats meet gutturally-spewed vocals and occasional lead oddities. Contrasting often nuanced moments with an assault of bestial ferocity, there is no predictability or obvious pattern, rather a chaotic and honest approach to all of the songs. These tracks move...

High Back Chairs

2 Songs

Dischord

***Two songs by the High Back Chairs, released in 1992. Peter Hayes (vocals & guitar) Jim Spellman (guitar) Charles Steck (bass & vocals) Jeff Nelson (drums & vocals)

Warmers

s/t

Dischord

***The Warmers' full-length record, released in 1996.

Juliff, Simon

Stars

Dog Meat Records

Much-loved Melbourne rock 'n' roll label Dog Meat Records returns with first solo release from former singer/guitarist/songwriter of The Roys and God / Hoss / Powder Monkeys associate, Simon Juliff The first new Dog Meat release in over a quarter of a century is the new single “Stars”, taken from the forthcoming album of the same name, from reticent Melbourne pop-rock singer/songwriter Simon Juliff. Juliff, who was singer/guitarist/songwriter for Melbourne band The Roys in the ‘00s, was a friend of many of the ‘90s Melbourne bands on Dog Meat and nearly a Dog Meat signing with his first band The Evil Dead. Produced by long-time friend Joel Silbersher (God, Hoss, Tendrils etc) and featuring backing from members of Hoss and Kim Salmon & the Surrealists, “Stars” – both the new single and the forthcoming album - combines brightly dappled glimmers of classic pop-rock melodicism with a darkened, frazzled vibe.

Doomsayer

Awake In Darkness

Nuclear War Now

***In celebration of the 30th anniversary of their sole demo from 1992, Awake in Darkness, NWN is proud to present Doomsayer’s legacy on LP for the very first time! This burning triumph- described as “Pestilential Death Metal” by the band back in the early ’90s when they were establishing themselves in the Italian extreme metal scene- combines all of the power of their varied influences, giving both a perfect snapshot of the heavy metal and occult tinged nascent scene in their country as well as an image of a power, creative band that managed to create a single work that still resonates now decades later. Though Doomsayer fits squarely in the saga of other cult Italian bands, it has plenty of its own voice to offer and fans of early extreme metal will be pleasantly surprised at the strength of this long-hidden obscurity. For fans of Varathron, Sadist, and Necrodeath.

Owners, The

s/t

Dischord / Red Room Records

***THE OWNERS are a band from Washington DC, featuring DANTE and CATHERINE FERRANDO, ALEC BUDD and LAURA HARRIS. Over the years, they have played in bands ranging from IRON CROSS, GRAY MATTER, THE SHIRKS and EX HEX. Their first full-length is a split between Red Room Records and Dischord The vinyl is a limited edition pressing on splatter vinyl.

Raffa, Ryan J

4 e and a

Group Tightener

***4 e and a is about the infinite spaces between. As a classically trained percussionist, RYAN J RAFFA has sat in front of a metronome for the majority of their life. In their mind, they would play with the spaces between those clicks. In especially challenging times, they would attempt to expand and stretch those spaces into forever. Just existing in the between. This record is about these moments (and places) living in those infinite spaces. The title "4 e and a" is a play on words, in reference to counting and subdividing rhythmic patterns. Ryan would need to play these patterns on a drum as a child. “4 e and a” is also a reference to a country or a place with a name. Like Argentina is a place, "4 e and a" (said run all together) sounds like a country. A place we all know about and sometimes go to because it's beautiful and full of spirit, but it also can be a bit unnerving, uneasy, and eerie when we explore new places there. In mathematics, we have Cantor's diagonal argument and the understanding that the infinity between each integer (such as between 1 and 2) is larger than the infinite space that every integer that exists can fill. Like, one infinity is larger than another infinity? Huh?! When you start subdividing time (like 1 e and a, 2 e and a, 3 e and a, 4 e and a), you start creating those ever-expanding spaces, one larger...

Paranoid

Destroy Future Less System

Paranoid Northern Discs

***PARANOID's Destroy Future Less System 7” EP is back in print on its original format for the first time since its original release in 2014 by Konton Crasher. A violent metal-punk storm with cascading sheets of noise punctuated by thunderclaps of d-beat and quick lightning strikes of lead guitar.

Paranoid

Heavy Mental Fuck-Up

Paranoid Northern Discs

***PARANOID's second album album channels the noisy sound of their debut into a heavier, more powerful attack. Part of the band's First Ten Years 2012-2022 vinyl reissue series. "Whether you’re the old guy at the bar with the Discharge tattoo, or the 14 year-old who just discovered punk, Paranoid will bring out your inner discontent. D-beat is an interesting genre, either you do it well, or you don’t. Paranoid, dare I say, have completely mastered the genre and everything from their tone to their album artwork embodies what it means to be in a d-beat band. There is no bullshit attached to this record"—CVLT Nation

Paranoid

Out Raising Hell

Paranoid Northern Discs

***PARANOID's third assault delivers some of their most nasty riffs and songs yet. 10 blackened punk anthems. Part of the band's First Ten Years 2012-2022 vinyl reissue series. "Whether you’re the old guy at the bar with the Discharge tattoo, or the 14 year-old who just discovered punk, Paranoid will bring out your inner discontent. D-beat is an interesting genre, either you do it well, or you don’t. Paranoid, dare I say, have completely mastered the genre and everything from their tone to their album artwork embodies what it means to be in a d-beat band. There is no bullshit attached to this record"—CVLT Nation

Paranoid

Satyagraha

Paranoid Northern Discs

***PARANOID's first album is a manic, noise-drenched d-beat assault. 10 tracks that capture us at our rawest and most aggressive period up to this date. Part of the band's First Ten Years 2012-2022 vinyl reissue series. "Whether you’re the old guy at the bar with the Discharge tattoo, or the 14 year-old who just discovered punk, Paranoid will bring out your inner discontent. D-beat is an interesting genre, either you do it well, or you don’t. Paranoid, dare I say, have completely mastered the genre and everything from their tone to their album artwork embodies what it means to be in a d-beat band. There is no bullshit attached to this record"—CVLT Nation

Gen Pop

Beat Sessions Vol. 9

Shout Recordings

***"In just half a decade Olympia’s Gen Pop have forged a singular style over the release of several EPs and the aptly titled, 2020 full length, PPM66. The group draws water from the disparate wells of early 80’s American hardcore and late 70’s UK post-punk, filtering it through the shitshow chaos of the early 21st century international cultural, political, and environmental climates. A sound fully realized and on display here in the ninth volume of the infamous Beat Sessions, presented by Shout Recordings. Precise, punchy, yet dynamic and fluid drumming underlie a cascade of tones, textures, styles, and voices to form a repertoire of songs where change is the only constant. The music cycles between uplifting, romantic, distressing, aggressive, and disjointed. Tempo and feeling will shift on a dime, and songs often exhibit romance, buoyancy, aggression, and anxiety simultaneously. This performance was captured by Shout’s Mike Kriebel in December 2021 at LA’s Golden Beat Studios. The line up was supplemented on this session by Anthony Gaviria, of the fellow Washingtonian oddball outfit Lysol, on bass guitar."

Vidro

Glod

Beach Impdiment

***And here we have it, the North American pressing of VIDRO's brilliant 2nd 12" titled GLÖD. Featuring an amalgamation of members that span the globe from Brazil to the USA to their sonic and geographical home of Stockholm, Sweden, Vidro have been churning out quality hardcore punk in recorded and live settings for five years now with no apparent signs of letting up anytime soon. Previously released on Germany's Kink Records near the outset of 2022, this North American pressing serves both as a means to alert the uninitiated of what they've been missing along with providing a taste of what is to come. Each record comes in a jacket with a large poster, featuring design work and art by Vidro guitarist LUCAS LIMA .

Indre Krig

Destroyer

Beach Impediment

***Released earlier in the year on the magnificent Adult Crash Records out of Copenhagen, Denmark, Beach Impediment is pleased to handle the North American pressing of an absolute, bonafide international hardcore punk ripper... the Destroyer EP from INDRE KRIG! Six tracks of razor sharp musicianship with truly memorable hooks and riffs to match it, this platter keeps up the reputation K-Town has garnered for generating quality punk music over the course of multiple decades now. Each record comes in a pocket sleeve embellished with particularly striking art by the living legend we call NICKY RAT.

Amba, Zoh + William Parker, Francisco Mela

O Life, O Light Vol. 2

577 Records

***New York-based Zoh Amba first cultivated her musical passion in the lush forests of the Appalachian mountains, playing to the woods around her home, before she studied at classical conservatories. Her music honors her roots, full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, repeated incantations and powerfully-executed Free Jazz. Her sound is courageous and bold, soaring from muted hums to squeaky trebles, producing a confident sound imbued with an innate spirituality. On this project, Zoh Amba is joined by legendary artists William Parker (Bass, Gralla) and Francisco Mela (Drums), named the 2021 musician of the year by The New York City Jazz Record, who temper her daring saxophone with a lush percussive foundation and a steady bassline.

Fossilization

He Whose Name Was Long Forgotten

Transylvanian Recordings

***Ritualistic, Primeval Death Metal from Brazil. Featuring members of Jupiterian. For fans of Dead Congregation & Portal.

Black Witchery

Holocaustic Death March To Humanity's Doom

Nuclear War Now

***Fifteen years ago, Black Witchery and Conqueror, both still virtually unknown outside of a small cult of maniacal blasphemers, united for the split release entitled “Hellstorm of Evil Vengeance.” Exploring a style that few North American bands dared approach at that time, Black Witchery and Conqueror inherited their extremist tendencies from the likes of Blasphemy and Sarcofago among others. Looking back, the release can now be regarded as something of a statement of intent in that it signified the establishment of a second wave of Bestial Black Metal and set the course for the future of the genre. Although external circumstances would necessitate the termination of Conqueror’s mission immediately following the release of the split, J. Read continued treading the path of the Superion with Revenge and R. Forster was initiated into the ranks of Blasphemy. Black Witchery also persisted through the years, assuming a well-deserved, prominent place among the bestial legions. Since the split release in 2000, Black Witchery and Revenge have shared numerous stages all over the world and maintained a united front within the underground. Similarly, NWN!, which also began its campaign of atrocities in 2000, established its dominion over the chthonic depths of the Bestial Black Metal underground. Having settled into their respective roles as progenitors of a particular faction of extreme metal, it is time to assemble the unholy triumvirate of Black Witchery, Revenge, and Nuclear War Now! once more. For this release, Black Witchery turn in one of the band’s most primitive and punishing...

Darts, The

Snake Oil

Alternative Tentacles

***NOW ON LIMITED GREEN VINYL!!! Note new price.At last! The Darts return from their Bat Cave Covid lair, with Snake Oil—by far their best album to date. The Darts formed in 2016 with the goal of getting some solid female musicians together to make garage punk rock and roll noise, see the world, and basically have a super-fun slumber party every night. They are now hands down one of the best garage bands in the world. This is a much fuller sound than any Darts disc before, courtesy of their longtime collaborator Bob Hoag (FB Rec) and some remote control co-production wizardry from Jello Biafra himself. Featuring the return of Nicole Laurnne on vocals / Farfisa and Hammond organ, Christina Nunez on bass / vocals, and Meliza Jackson on guitars / vocals, Snake Oil is the debut of new drummer Mary Rose Gonzales. The result? It comes out smoking as if the band had been in a pressure cooker throughout the pandemic. Expect the wider sound and sparkle of Laurnne and Nunez’s previous band, The Love Me Nots (which was also recorded by the brilliant Bob Hoag), but with way more raunch—and Laurnne’s voice has never sounded better. Snake Oil is for fans of agile, sultry vocals and beefy, vintage rhythm sections paired with razor-tone guitars. This Snake Oil was concocted to remedy the most unaffected and stiff-legged garage rockers out there!

The War Goes On

Assisted Armageddon

Black Water

***Second full length of catchy melancholic and bleak Copenhagen punk rock. Continuing to draw influences from early US and UK punk and Danish '80s classics.

The War Goes On

The War Goes On

Black Water

***Hailing from Copenhagen, THE WAR GOES ON formed from the ashes of legendary Danish bands NO HOPE FOR THE KIDS and HJERTESTOP among others. Their first full length is dark and catchy as hell punk that owes as much to the US as it does to the UK, but with a somewhat “pop” sensibility. These songs are packed with big melodies with gritty hooks. An instant Danish punk classic.