XELA The Dead Sea (Type) cd 15.98
Remember the French label Gooom? The label that introduced us to the gauzy blissed out dreampop of M83. As well as similarly beautiful pop buzz from bands like Cyann & Ben, KG, Abstract Keal Agram, Montag, Mils., Purple Confusion and others. Well, while Gooom seem to have dropped off the map, Type has stepped up in their bid to be our new favorite label of blissy abstract wonder. While the two labels do share an aesthetic, a sort of blurry buzzy dreamy drift, each approaches the sound from dramatically different angles. Gooom bands are, at their core, simply pop bands, or slow core bands, or post rock bands, but bands nonetheless. Guitar, bass and drums. Choruses, verses, bridges, lyrics, but these seemingly normal elements are then twisted and distorted, blurred and fuzzed out, into the glorious sounds and shapes we fell in love with. Like hearing sweetly psychedelic pop music, filtered through a cracked funhouse mirror made out of amp buzz and fuzzy sheets of reverb. Type are obviously fans of the same sort of cracked sonic shimmer, all of their releases shimmery and ethereal, rife with lots of buzz and hiss, glitch and fuzz.
Such is the case with Xela, the debut release from Type label head honcho John Twells. His cracked pop vision fits perfectly alongside the other outfits on Type, Ryan Teague, Mountaineer, Machinefabriek, Goldmund, North Sea & Rameses III. Twells wanders through a strange world of abstract sound making, fuzzy dreamlike blurs, and manner of mechanical musics. Melodies are rendered indistinct, actual songs are turned into blurry fragments, everything is pulled apart into abstract skeletal soundscapes, like seeing buzzy dream pop from the inside, watching all the gears and bits and parts and machinations that make that sort of music so dang pretty on the outside. But the view from the inside is so gorgeously alien, grinds and clicks, disembodied melodies stretched over rhythmic skitter, it's almost like being shrunken down and exploring some huge music box. Or better yet, imagine the Dead C making a record for children, playfully noisy, subtly melodic, a disembodied dream folk bathed in dreamy static, murky record crackle, and tangled up with little bits of video game music, all stretched into a gauzy later afternoon soundscape. So great. When we first heard about this album, we read a description the label wrote that pretty much seemed intended to make us at AQ curious, as it cited both Italian horror soundtracks by Goblin, AND Jewelled Antler improv soundscapes as references for Xela's sound!! Amazingly enough, The Dead Sea lives up to the expectations thus generated, and we're hooked.
Amazingly creepy cover art. Black and white line drawings of people drowning and being attacked by some sort of underwater zombies. Cool!
MPEG Stream: "Linseed"
MPEG Stream: "Drunk On Salt Water"
MPEG Stream: "Wet Bones"

BRUSH!? s/t (Shadoks) cd 15.98
Kudos to Shadoks for searching this one out! We'd never have heard it otherwise, and we're glad we did. Dude from early '70s Japanese psychedelic proto-metallers Flied Egg (who sounded a bit like Blue Cheer, and recorded for Vertigo!), by the name of Masayoshi Takanaka, made his recording debut in 1971 (yup) with this rare rare rare album of underground hippy conceptual weirdness, called Brush!? (punctuation theirs, but deserved). Quite a few other Japanese psych scenesters of the day participated as well. Results? There's some truly freaked out shit here, and some really lovely, folky parts too. It's an eclectic mix of the following ingredients, and more: acid fuzz guitar rockin', atonal electronic experiments, gentle pop grandeur, organ drones, raga-like jamming, avantgarde piano improv, Velvets/Dylan balladry, and West Coast/Woodstock Nation psych. In other words, all over the place, and pretty darn tripped out!! Hearing reissues of interesting '70s Japanese psych acts like Brush!?, Flied Egg, Far Out, Food Brain, Strawberry Path, Les Rallizes Denudes, etc. etc. it's clear that all the great psychedelic underground outfits active in Japan today, from Acid Mothers Temple to LSD-march to Green Milk From The Planet Orange to (of course) the Boredoms, are keeping alive a grand tradition begun some 30+ years ago!
Includes 20 page cd booklet full of all kinds of cool photos and drawings and lyrics (many of 'em in English). Seriously, we're pretty sure that if you could just take one look inside this cd booklet, you'd want to hear the album! On one of the tracks, in addition to musician credits for sitar and tabura [sic], we see this: "Lafing [sic]: Elf, Fairly [sic], Goblin." and "Effects: Crow, Raven, Fowl, Triton." WTF?? The song titles are good too: "All Most Cut Your Hair (including) I Did Cut My Hair", "Die A Dog's Death (In Vain)", and "Tomb Stone".
MPEG Stream: "The People Of Glass"
MPEG Stream: "Foolish Guy"
MPEG Stream: "Die A Dog's Death (In Vain)"

HAINO, KEIJI Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku (PSF) cd 16.98
It's interesting for us to note that the last few releases we've had from black-clad Japanese psychedelic shaman* Keiji Haino have been big sellers, doing better even than usual for Haino discs here at AQ, perhaps on account of how they were put out by limited edition specialists aRCHIVE in super swank packaging (also, they were definitely excellent albums). So we've got to figure that a lot of folks who'd never before bought a Haino cd got one or both of those aRCHIVE releases as their first. Which is great, more people should definitely be getting into Haino's music -- he's an intense, impassioned talent (if an acquired taste...). It's funny, though, 'cause what he's really best known for is his searing guitar playing (and equally intense vocals). But those aRCHIVE cds, and several other of his recent releases, have highlighted other areas of creative exploration: electronics and hurdy-gurdy drones, solo percussion, a collaboration with a twenty-piece sitar orchestra, and primitive acoustic guitar improv... Not the heavy-duty, feedback-filled, freeform electric guitar he plays in Fushitsusha. As if on cue, this new solo release from Japan's PSF label documents just that: an hour-plus long set of electric guitar and vocals. So, Haino fans new and old, here's a must-have. Utilizing overdubbing (an infrequent technique for Haino), Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku starts all sinister and ominous, notes vibrating alone in the darkness, joined by more guitar lines, sounding totally HAUNTED but marching quietly forward, joined eventually by Haino's unique, plaintively tormented vocals (here sometimes hushed, sometimes oddly pretty). It builds and builds, becoming more urgent, more tense, more disturbed. Repetitive, feverish yawing, quite hypnotic. At about the halfway point, the volume gets dialed up, and there's an attack of swirling guitar violence... then back to the haunted void, and on, and onward... Haino fans will hear echoes his old classic Affection, and also the multilayered textures of his Next, Let's Try Changing The Shape and Mazu Wa Iro O Nakuso Ka solo albums. Good company indeed.
Such harrowing atmosphere. Such dark beauty. Such power -and- restraint. So emotional, so expressive, and all from one person -- well if there was more than one Haino could the world bear the weight? Hear this, feel it, and maybe you'll understand what we mean.
*shaman, dark lord, some title like that always seems appropriate in describing him!
MPEG Stream: "Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku (excerpt 2)"
MPEG Stream: "Yaranai Ga Dekinai Ni Natte Yuku (excerpt 3)"

MEADS OF ASPHODEL, THE In The Name Of God, Welcome To Planet Genocide (Firestorm) cd 11.98
We all knew the Meads Of Asphodel were a weird bunch. Every record was a baffling slab of confusional black metal, often laced with all manner of VERY non-black metal sounds and ideas. Well, no matter how weird we though they were in the past, they've totally outdone themselves this time. So much so that we would hesitate to even classify this as black metal.
There's a lot to be confused by here, from a bizarre collage of military speeches and snippets of random dialogue, to huge swelling synths, super dramatic and over the top, to strange synthesized spaghetti western jams, to not-all-that-metal blasts of propulsive spaced out rock and roll, with groovy Stooges-y riffing, simple pounding drumming, some serious guitar leads, and over the top some Motorhead gone black metal vocals... but that's not all. There are lots of lots of pianos, and soaring female vocals, blissed out stretches of space rock whoosh, some full on old school punk rock. And then there's the completely fucked final track, called "Aborted Stygian Foetus", a sort of industrial electronic metal jam, drum machines, heavy riffing, weird vocals, like some weird mix of Ministry and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult. But it's not over. After about 20 minutes of silence you'll find the secret track, an intense and seriously silly and fucked up stretch of testifying, over a swirl of church organs, a heavily (British) accented 'preacher' gives a fiery sermon on how we are all wankers and how we are all full of shit. Woah.
The new sound could have something to do with the addition of a whole mess of new Meads: Alan Davey of Hawkwind, Mirai from Japanes metal weirdos Sigh, Lesion from Worms Of Sabnock, as well as some synth, trumpet, and not one but TWO female vocalists.
The more likely reason for this new direction should be obvious from the cover, all sepia toned, with a crucifix, and piles of dead bodies and that instantly recognizable Crass style text. Like maybe they were going for some sort of Flux Of Pink Indians / Crass / Rudimentary Peni sort of crust vibe!! Although on the inside they're still clad in their armor and chainmail and helmets...
So fucking weird.
MPEG Stream: "Psalm 364"
MPEG Stream: "My Beautiful Genocide"
MPEG Stream: "A Baptism In The Warm Piss Of Slaughtered Children"

QUARTZ Stand Up And Fight (Majestic Rock) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Last list (#249) we reviewed the reissue of Quartz's amazing 1977 debut album. For those who missed it, we've got two words for ya: Black Sabbath! Quartz were pals of the Sabs, hailing from the same industrial city in England's grotty midlands, Birmingham. And Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi produced that first record of theirs, helping Quartz create what amounts to a great lost late '70s (pseudo-) Sabbath album: same guitar sound, same songwriting vibe, same riff magistery. Hearing that, who wouldn't want more? Hence, now we're listing this, the cd reissue of Quartz's second studio album, originally released in 1980. And it's definitely another slab of classy bashing from this shoulda-been-big, Black Sabbath meets New Wave Of British Heavy Metal sounding bunch.
The title cut is an vigorous, must-hear NWOBHM classic if there ever was one. That's followed by "Charlie Snow", which we'd be forgiven for thinking was song stolen from Sabbath's Born Again sessions! And we should also mention the grinding "Wildfire", which you could slag for being re-write of "Megalomania" from Sabbath's Sabotage album (yeah, the riff is certainly similar!), but while it's playing you'll certainly be banging your head -- and besides, Sabbath seemingly borrowed one of Quartz's tunes themselves on another occasion. Then there's the bonus track, a b-side called "Circles" that features uncredited guitar work from Queen's Brian May, and uncredited vocals from Ozzy Osbourne!! That's some b-side! Heck, everything on this disc is pretty killer, driving metal rockers with few peers outside of Sabbath's albums of the era. "Can't Say No To You" is the only sorta skippable track here, veering dangerously close to Foreigner or Bad Company territory. Not to say that's bad, but their Black Sabbathy stuff is way better... and this album is indeed recommended to all who appreciate the brilliance of later '70s, early '80s (end of Ozzy era through Dio and Gillan) Black Sabbath! And also the best melodic n' heavy NWOBHM stuff as well, of which this is a prime example.
MPEG Stream: "Stand Up And Fight"
MPEG Stream: "Circles"

QUARTZ s/t (Majestic Rock) cd 17.98
BLACK SABBATH! There. Got your attention. Now let's explain.
We thought we were pretty up on all the bands that followed the Sabbatherian path: Witchfinder General, Angel Witch, Trouble, Saint Vitus, Cathedral, Candlemass, Pentagram, etc. etc. But we'd missed out on one -- Quartz, from Sabbath's hometown of Birmingham, England, in fact. Turns out that this New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (NWOBHM) band definitely also deserves a place in that list -- because they're very, VERY Sabbathy and also an awesome band! First off, this, their self-titled debut LP from 1977 (ok, predating the NWOBHM explosion by a couple years actually, though their later records were in the thick of it) was produced by none other than Black Sabbath's riff king Tony Iommi!! And, also, one of the Quartz guys, Geoff Nichols, ended up playing keyboards for the Sabs later on...
Yet Quartz don't sound very much like any of those other aforementioned Sabbath-worshiping bands. Not at all. That's because, with Iommi at the helm, this takes after what Sabbath sounded like at the time, albums like Sabotage (1975), Technical Ecstasy ('76), and Never Say Die ('78). If you're familiar with those, you'll definitely hear their influence here! This later '70s Sabbath sound isn't as often emulated, being so much more proggy and polished than their rawer, earlier, doomier LPs. Which is great, 'cause it's not a done-to-death sort of Sabbath sound. As the Sabbath clones proliferate, even today, -these- guys still sound fresh. It also helps that they seemingly share the Sabbath attitude that they're just playing rock music, not something as strictly defined as 'heavy metal'. There's no metal formula being followed. So while this IS heavy and metallic '70s style, there's bombastic prog and pretty pop and acoustic folkiness here too, with Tony Iommi contributing an uncredited flute solo to "Sugar Rain". (Ozzy apparently also sang back-up on that track!) Furthermore, Quartz, formerly known as Bandy Legs, had their roots in '60s psych-pop (featuring members of obscure acts Idle Race and World Of Oz). Though sounding -most- like Sabbath, you'll also hear Yes and Queen and Rush and the Beatles and more...
But if it's Sabbath parallels you want, you got 'em: their vocalist exudes sincerity and emotion, echoing Ozzy's loss-of-control laments. And Tony's mid-seventies guitar (and synth) sound is reproduced perfectly...apparently he's playing on a couple tracks, in fact. The riffs on here could have been written by the man -- "Around and Around" sounds like it should have been on Sabotage! And leadoff track "Mainline Riders", one of the heaviest here, sounds remarkably like Sabbath's "Heaven And Hell" even though the latter wasn't recorded until three years later... hmm, who was influencing whom?
Ultimately, Quartz' debut is a great, varied, hard-rockin' album that uniquely captures all the energetic yet melancholic charm of the latter days of Ozzy's original tenure with the Sabs, unlike any other band ever did. A lost classic for sure. We wish someone had told us about Quartz before, which is why we're duty bound to tell you about 'em now that we have this new reissue!!
MPEG Stream: "Mainline Riders"
MPEG Stream: "Sugar Rain"

A s/t (Die Schachtel) cd 18.98
Previously the Die Schachtel label has brought us several very cool reissues of some very obscure '70s art/prog/avant music from Italy -- such as Luciano Cilio, Prima Materia and Insiememusicadiversa. Weird and wonderful stuff. Now, they've got a brand new band for us, not a reissue (though it totally seems to fit in with their "thing"). It's apparently the first in a new series called Zeit devoted to the current-day Italian underground, and comes from a trio calling themselves A (actually, an A with what looks a little circular diacritical mark above it, which we can't reproduce on our website easily. Maybe we should write Aa, that might be the correct way to do it. Furthermore, Wikipedia tells us that in Norwegian, Danish and Swedish it's a word meaning rivulet or stream.). They've got a lot in common with fellow Italians (and AQ faves) Larsen, 3/4hadbeeneliminated, and Sinistri/Starfuckers, playing a sort of mysterious, mostly instrumental, deconstructed, experimental post-rock music. No wonder in iTunes it comes up as genre = "unclassifiable". They're definitely carrying on the tradition established by those '70s artists Die Schachtel has documented.
The percussive beat-booming and crackling drone of the disc's longest track, the sixteen minute "Something A Long Time Ago. And There Are No Buttons Either, Because" brings to mind This Heat. There and elsewhere Aa also conjure suggestions of Village Of Savoonga, Richard Youngs, Dean Roberts, and even Bohren & Der Club Of Gore, among other good things. Additionally, we'll mention that this was mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi, which isn't a bad reference point either if you've heard his music. We just can't resist this sort of semi-abstract, organic post-rock, with its rainy day piano, meandering guitar, tinkling clock-ticking textures, dreamy violin sawing, wordless (?) floaty vocals, glitchy electronics, and birdlike horn warble... all woven together gorgeously and with a sense of the dramatic. Very very nice. As is the packaging too!
By the way, the wordy song titles are all sentence fragments taken from a paragraph belonging to Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night-time.
MPEG Stream: "My Memory Is Like A Film. That Is Why"
MPEG Stream: "I Am Really Good At Remembering Things, Like The Conversation I Have Written Down In This Book, And What People Are Wearing, And What They Smelled Like, Because My Memory Has"
MPEG Stream: "A Smell Track Which Is Like A Soundtrack, And When People Ask Me To Remember Something I Can Simply"

HIGGS, DANIEL Plays The Mirror Of The Apocalypse And Other Songs (Open Mouth) cd 12.98
Way back when, years and years ago, before Mr. Daniel Higgs was a well established solo artist, and revered modern mystical musical troubadour, when he was still mostly known as the vocalist of Lungfish and offshoot the Pupils, we listed a super limited cassette containing some of the most amazing raga-drone guitar playing we had heard, and we knew then, that there was more to Higgs than just playing rock music. Every bit of that tape oozed with some cosmic light, as if he was using the guitar to travel between alternate universes and other worlds, the tales of those travels rendered in gorgeously warm and mysterious drone and buzz, strum and shimmer.
Higgs is one of the very few contemporary artists who we would absolutely consider a sort of modern day shaman. A musical alchemist, an artistic cypher, an abstract philosopher, a strangely charismatic, yet disarmingly humble master of any artistic endeavor he puts his mind to. For those new to the work of Daniel Higgs, he's a legendary (but now retired) tattoo artist, an incredible painter, whose paintings are at once hallucinatory and gorgeous (one painting adorns the cover of Leviathan's Tentacles Of Whorror record) and of course an incredible musician, whose sonic experiments range from the mesmeric riffrock of his band Lungfish, to an entire record of solo Jew's harp. But in addition to being an incredible lyricist, an amazing vocalist, and a master of the Jew's harp, Higgs is also a seriously mean guitar (and banjo) player, with a style and sound as familiar as it is totally alien. A gorgeous buzzing steel string drift through the cosmos. Lengthy droning ragas, that drift hypnotically from deconstructed Appalachia to John Cale like slow-shifting skree (joined on those tracks by violin), to moody melancholy crawls, to thick serpentine swirls of snake charmer melody and reverberating steel string shimmer. Raw and lo-fi for sure, but so darkly emotional, and dreamily hypnotic. This cd reissue reminded us of how smitten we were by the original tape release. It sounds just as powerful and intense as it did the first time we heard it. And even now, it continues to unfold more and more on each listen, gradually and subtly revealing mythical musical secrets and lost universal truths, and just like with the cassette, we're thinking seriously about grabbing a cd player, taking a ton of peyote, blasting this disc and laying in the thick grass, sprawled naked on a hilltop in the middle of nowhere, beneath a sparkling moonlit sky. In other words, WAY RECOMMENDED!
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 3"

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (aka Et Fugit Interea) (Appease Me) cd 10.98
Finally back in print and available again, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Here's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite new weird black metal records!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "IV"

SPEKTR No Longer Human Senses (aka Et Fugit Interea) (Panik Terror Musik) lp 22.00
Available on vinyl for the first time, the debut release from one of our favorite far out and fucked black metal bands EVER!! We made their more recent release, The Near Death Experience, our record of the week a while back, and their debut is just as good. Packaged in a super thick, super striking gatefold sleeve, all super minimal grey on black, and pressed on amazing, white, black and gray splatter vinyl! LIMITED TO ONLY 300 COPIES!!
Here's what we had to say about it when we first laid ears on this demented black gem:
Not a list goes by without a review declaring some record THE WEIRDEST EVER. So, okay, we can be a little hyperbolic at times, but it's just cuz we get so damned excited. But since we're always on the lookout for the weirdest records ever, it's not really all that strange that we might actually keep discovering some new weirdest record ever! They just get weirder and weirder. AND, as you probably could tell, it just so happens that we have a definite thing for bizarre black metal, the more fucked up and strange the better! And again, always being on the lookout for weirder and weirder metal records, we manage to stumble across quite a few. Recently we got a copy of a record by a band called Spektr, without a sleeve and a paucity of any useful information. But we were totally struck by its bizarre take on grim black metal, spending most of the record not blazing and thrashing, but instead, creeping through funhouse mirror ambiance, plodding mathrock doom, dreamy acoustic breakdowns, bizarre sound collages and lots of Jeck / Basinski style fuzzy smeary loops. Woah. Eventually we tracked it down, and learned that No Longer Human Senses had been released on the Appease Me label run by French black metal squad Blut Aus Nord! Not too long ago we reviewed the most recent release by Blut Aus Nord a bizarre and brutal, sprawlingly complex black metal record equal parts classic Norwegian style black metal, pummeling Industrial crunch a la Godflesh, creepy droning dark ambience and strange squiggly plain old weirdness. So when we discovered BaN had a label it made perfect sense that this Spektr record would end up there. No Longer Human Senses is definitely a black metal record, as is evidenced by the buzzing droning riffage and thrashing blast beats, some serious Darkthrone worship for sure, but that's really only a tiny piece of the whole picture. The bursts of black metal, marked by a particularly virulent strain of brutally brittle and harsh guitar sound, float through a twisting serpentine maze of random sound events, almost like a massive Christian Marclay installation. Haunting church organs, weirdly affected spoken word, all manner of creepy lilting melodies over lots of hiss and static and record crackle. Loops repeated over and over, but gradually decaying into stretches of fuzzed out shimmer, often erupting into bursts of super harsh black metal mayhem, only to fall apart moments later into a chaotic mess of buzzing, malfunctioning machinery, super distorted industrial sludge with more warbly minor key loops, all beneath thick waves of dense buzz and crumbling melodies, thick swaths of ambient blur and strange ghostly tinkles, peppered with brief snippets of classical music, found sounds, field recordings and random bits of sonic skree, the whole mess dropped into a swirly abyss of blackdrone and super creepy psychedelic ambience. This is one of those rare records that is so fractured and demented and wonderfully bizarre that is has you constantly checking to see what the hell it was you were listening to! Definitely one of our favorite fucked up black metal records ever!
MPEG Stream: "II"
MPEG Stream: "III"
MPEG Stream: "IV"

V/A Demonic Freak Scene (Time Bomb) cd 16.98
Total demonic freakbeat garage rock heaven! This disc has had everyone at AQ bouncing and bopping. We're all gonna go out and get skull and crossbones tattoos, shag haircuts and Voxx guitars. Seriously. This is a super wild garage fuzz blowout. Lots of customers in the store assumed this was some old old reissue, but figured it couldn't be cuz it sounded so good. But that should give you an idea of how great this comp is. Classic and old school sounding but at the same time super modern and rocking. We originally wanted to track this comp down when we discovered that Japanoise legend Masonna had a garage rock band ACID Eater, a sort-of spin off of his psychedelic noise combo Christine 23 Onna, but once we finally did get these in, we ended up digging all the bands equally.
ACID Eater is probably the heaviest of the bunch, a fuzzed out outer space graveyard blast of super blown out fuzz guitar, chaotic caveman drumming, killer Fuzztones style organ and superdistorted vocals, all wrapped in some freaked out far-out FX, a freakfuzz reverb that occasionally spin the vocals into oblivion like some weird garage dub, but other than that, this is surprisingly un-NOISEY and sort of straight ahead, but still super fierce and in-the-red. All four tracks are recorded ultra hot, so it feels like you're in some tiny sweaty underground club, pressed right up against the P.A. getting drenched in sweat and beer and getting blasted with a thick wall of full on garage RAWK!
Then there's The Go-Devils, an all female garage rock combo, with murky buzzy riffing, droning organs, and lazy drawled vocals, with some sixties girl group background vocals, super fuzzy with tribal drumming and some seriously catchy hooks, we even hear a little Redd Kross in there, must be the sort of psychedelic sixties vibe.
Finally there's the Bai Tones or the Bait Ones, sort of hard to tell from the album art, who are definitely the weirdest of the three, whose sound is sort of lazy and laid back, droney and midtempo. A sort of slithery stomp, with plenty of strange guitars, abstract riffs, wild harmonica, drawled distorted vocals and some super weird, distinctly un-garage rock-like droney buzzy parts, each song is dripping with dirgey swampy buzzy garage rock murk...SO KILLER. Makes us feel like it's 1982 and we're in some sleazy little dive, bouncing and dancing and sweating and going completely and gloriously deaf.
We're not always huge into garage rock, but all three of these bands totally and completely knocked us on our asses!! SO RECOMMENDED.
MPEG Stream: ACID EATER "A.C.I.D."
MPEG Stream: THE GO DEVILS "Hairy One"
MPEG Stream: BAIT ONES "Teenage Hate"

CIRCLE Tyrant (Latitudes 0:10) (Latitudes / Southern) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BRAND NEW CIRCLE ALBUM!!! TYRANT!! INCREDIBLY LIMITED LATEST INSTALLMENT IN THE LATITUDES SERIES!!! IT'S HERE!!!!
Okay, just wanted to get your attention. We've been waiting for this for a long, long time. As have many of you, we imagine. We've all been loving the Latitudes series of ultra limited releases from bands like Ginnungagap, Shit And Shine, the Grails, Ariel Pink, Sir Richard Bishop... so when we heard that Finland's gods of metallic hypno drone rock were going to do one, we were so psyched, and so we waited anxiously, but patiently, until finally, after months of waiting, they arrived, just a few days ago, and as if we even have to tell you, IT'S AWESOME!!!
But this declaration of awesomeness does require a bit more elaboration, as Circle have a wide variety of awesome sounds: murky propulsive modern day krautrock, wild guitar heavy NWOFHM proto-metal, extended ambient drones, loping mesmeric jazzy shuffle, it's really hard to know where the band will head next. As if it were too much to wish for, Tyrant, somehow manages to combine all of their disparate sounds into one practically perfect whole, and some of us are declaring this our favorite Circle record in ages (no mean feat, since their last one, Miljard, was fantastic, a Record Of The Week too). Three 15 minute tracks, each one a slow building epic, droning, dense, dark, hypnotic, but each with its own unique elements.
The opener, "Screaming Luovutus", is an endlessly looping space rock drone mantra, a relentlessly throbbing bassline, haunting little swirls of fluttering keyboard melody, little bits of guitar filigree, simple propulsive rhythmic shuffle, all woven into a endlessly throbbing krautrocky swirl, when suddenly over the top strange whispery demonic growls surface, super distorted, another layer of fuzzy sound, howling and whispering all ragged and harsh, almost like Circle covering Abruptum or a black metal Necks, if that makes any sense. Dizzying and weirdly heavy, a black ambient krautrock drone groove, if such a thing were possible. And if it were, you know Circle would be the ones, ahem, ARE the ones to make it happen.
The second track, with the very metal title "Steel Torment Warrior", is maybe the least metal of the batch. A super creepy, almost jazzy, soundscape, of muted rumble, bursts of super effected dubbed out drums, flurries of spaced out FX, hushed hissed vocals, splattery free jazz skitter, warbly, seasick guitar tangles all wrapped in a druggy blissy ambience. It's like a less propulsive Necks, a damaged jazzy shuffle looping into infinity, but twisted into a uniquely Circular shape.
The closer, with the even MORE metal title of "Amputation Crusade", is the grooviest and space rockiest of the three, a simple darkly melodic guitar figure, loops lazily above a slow slithery bassline and a super laid back, barely there rhythmic shuffle, like Can or Faust in extreme slow motion... you can hear the Necks again, but the band add some extra druggy fuzz guitar, and the laid back riffing is pregnant with the possibility of imminent explosion. Strange vocals lurk below the surface, the whole thing an epic trawl through some jazzy black space rock soundscape. Near the end, things build to a bit of a subdued climax, the guitars ringing and chiming, the drums pounding a bit more, very epic and majestic, but still somehow muted and laid back, petering out into a creepy little coda of guitar FX and gurgling monster vocals...
Wow. Seriously, we love Circle and everything, more than most folks, but this disc is an absolute killer!! Heavy and droney, groovy and jazzy and completely epic and mesmerizing and amazing!!
Comes packaged in a super intricate hand screened die cut fold over sleeve with a full color insert (featuring the band posing with spiked gauntlets in front of Stonehenge!!! Well, actually, in front of the chainlink fence in front of Stonehenge, which somehow makes more sense). The cover has two strange NWOFHM / Tyrant (the 't's in tyrant are battle axes of course) hooded knights silkscreened on the front and each copy is hand stamped and numbered. Limited to 1000 copies worldwide, 500 of which made it to the United States, about 250 of which made it HERE. That's right, we got an entire quarter of the pressing. And we're pretty sure that still won't be enough, we guarantee these will not be around for long...
MPEG Stream: "Screaming Luovutus"
MPEG Stream: "Steel Torment Warrior"

SOLAR ANUS Skull Alcoholic: The Complete Solar Anus (tUMULt) 2cd 16.98
It's hard to believe, but it's true. SOLAR ANUS IS HERE! It took almost 5 years, but it was well worth it! But what exactly is Solar Anus? An essay by French writer/philosopher Georges Bataille... a burst of plodding pummel from UK freedrone outfit Skullflower... but also, and as far as we're concerned more importantly, a band whose music conjures up a mysterious land of legendary monsters, ancient customs, cult beliefs and ritualized incest, all hidden just below the surface of our everyday world, a place only accessible through Matsuri, a group trance during which music and sound, lights and pictures help transport participants back to those mysterious other worlds and ancient times.
Such is the strange world of Japan's mighty tranced-out psychedelic doomlords Solar Anus, whose sound most definitely exists as Matsuri, a music designed to lull us into a trance and carry us off...  mesmeric, hypnotic and HEAVY.
Here, for the first time ever readily available outside of Japan, is the entire recorded output of the legendary Solar Anus, all collected into one massive head crushing, mind melting double cd.
Skull Alcoholic chronicles the band's dizzying trajectory, from stumbling, buzzing, bloody-stumped, sludge doom behemoths to druggy, tranced out psychedelic outer space visionaries, swinging wildly toward both extremes the whole time. An impossible blend of Black Sabbath, Hawkwind and the Boredoms, Flower Travellin' band, Pink Floyd, Boris and the Melvins.
Beginning life as a dizzy and druggy, slow motion stoner doom outfit, with their 1997 album On, Solar Anus channeled both the garagey spacestomp of old Monster Magnet, the epic miserablist doomscapes of Candlemass, and the purposefully obtuse sludge riffery of the Melvins, taking all of these disparate but distinctly heavy sounds and incorporating all manner of primitive percussive rituals, drifting dronescapes, 16 rpm Krautrock groove, dreamy angelic female vocals, massive fuzzed out guitars, huge in-the-red monster drums and swirls of creepy crawly dirge into a truly epic dronedriftdoomgroove sound.
The band's blend of propulsive tripped out krautrock, dizzying drum jams and glacial stoner sludge is at once ominous and swoonsome, crushing and psychedelic, lurching wildly from tripped out tribal Can worship to massive bulldozing metal grooves to super abstract druggy dreamscapes, often within the same song.
Album number two, 1999's Trance!! found the band trudging even more resolutely into a bleak and blown out world of dark doom, sounding more and more like classic doomsters, My Dying Bride, Paradise Lost and Cathedral, but completely tweaked of course, and confusingly blended with epic stretches of lurching lo-fi psychedelic Krautrock blow outs a la Amon Duul II.
By the release of their final album, 2000's Next World News, the band had stretched out yet again, dragging their druggy doom into a head spinning world of cracked skull outerspace trance, spinning even further into the void, not so much heavy as blissed out and psychedelic. Lots of abstract rhythmic workouts, like a more demented, damaged version of Finnish dronerockers Circle, a swirl of confusionally dense and relentless FX drenched Krautrock spacejams rife with belching foghorn brass, squawking birds, dizzyingly dense tangles of hippy drum freakouts, chanted vocals, as well as all sorts of studio fuckery, chopped up tape loops, warbly pitch shifts and layer after layer of fuzz and buzz and psychdrone blur.
Each languorous stretch of fuzzed out metallic groove is swathed in blown out clouds of Hawkwind bongsmoke, but broken up by bleary expanses of chilled out 4am trancemusic, but instead of a post-rave laid back Ecstasy come down, it's like crashing and burning in some dirty back alley from an all night PCP binge, silvery streaks of electronic glitch laid over a pulsing techno throb, surrounded by thick washes of processed tribal drums, the whole thing a very Boredoms like primitive percussive ritual, hypnotic and heavy, sprinkled with all kinds of sparkling sonic twinkles and drifting chimes, and underpinned by a wasted moody muted sixties psychedelia.
A quick look at the band's convoluted thanks/inspiration list gives another glimpse into their twisted musical world: German Oak, Crash Worship, Twink, The Electric Prunes, Stooges, Nebula, Pungent Stench, Timothy Leary, Monster Magnet, Ash Ra Tempel, Sodom, Sleep, Amon Duul II, Exit-13, Cathedral, Joel Peter Witkin, Saint Vitus, Church Of Misery, Corrosion Of Conformity, Romain Slocombe, Jimi Hendrix, Gong, Funkadelic, Budgie, Guru Guru, Electric Wizard, Brutal Truth, the Beatles and more. Phew.
And for all you Asian psychrock obsessives: The Solar Anus track "Dear Mother Coral" is actually a cover of a classic tune by Japanese psych legends JA Ceasar!
One of the weirdest, wildest, heaviest collections of druggy, dreamy, dirge-drone-doom-kraut-space-noise-sludge rock EVER!
Mind blowing psychedelic collage cover art, housed in a super deluxe die-cut 'solar anus' slip cover. Includes a massive 12 page booklet, with the original album art and liner notes. These two discs contain every single bit of Solar Anus ever, including their final recording, the previously unreleased nine minute title track, "Skull Alcoholic"!
2006 truly is the year of the anus! SOLAR ANUS!!!!
ONE TIME PRESSING OF 2000 COPIES!!!
MPEG Stream: "Skull Alcoholic"
MPEG Stream: "Dear Mother Coral (JA Ceasar)"
MPEG Stream: "Don't Run"
MPEG Stream: "Conceive Bang"
MPEG Stream: "Die In The Space"
MPEG Stream: "Nightfall New Year"
MPEG Stream: "The Extreme North"

SEKKUTSU JEAN s/t (Magaibutsu) cd 13.98
There's been an onslaught of Ruins-related releases on Ruins drummer Tatsuya Yoshida's Magaibutsu label this week, folks!! Here's one from a brand-new band formation we'd never heard of before, Sekkutsu Jean, an improvising duo featuring Yoshida on drums, keyboard and vocals, and Sato Kenji on bass, cello, and voice. The results are most often SUPER distorted and heavy and fierce. Some of this reminds us a bit of some real old Ruins stuff, when they went for the ultra-dirty fuzz bass sound on such albums as Infect and Stonehenge. Total blurting bass bludgeon. Other parts are more "jazz", or even "classical" oriented, with droning sawing strings battling Yoshida's drum battery, or accompanying his keyboard lines. And then there's things that we can't even begin to classify, like track six, "Wihytcujmo", which is based around a drum machine beat and vicious cello bowing. Overall, this is some seriously mean stuff, without the strain of goofiness that oftentimes shows up in other Yoshida-related improv projects. There's 19 slices of killer improv weirdness here, with easy-to-remember titles like "Ghijuhnkkumn" and "Qyxoichdbihm" and "Bysjiahvoskkn"!! Over the course of all these tracks, there's a lot of creativity and intensity. Recommended.
And as with all of this new batch of Magaibutsu discs, this comes packaged in a handsome tri-fold full-color cardboard cd sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Ftohkmofhtt"
MPEG Stream: "Wihytcujmo"

BURNING SAVIOURS Hundus (I Hate Records) cd 16.98
Enjoying this so much right now, it's hard to actually write about it, I just want to sit and listen... but here's what I've managed to come up with so far:
Oh yeah! We've been looking forward to this second album from Sweden's Burning Saviours for months, it was supposed to come out earlier this year but got delayed until now. Basically, we can make this simple if a) you've heard the first Burning Saviours and liked it and/or b) you're a fan of that -other- Swedish band that channels Pentagram, Black Sabbath and all that good obscure early '70s proto-metal heavy prog psych stuff, namely Witchcraft. If those conditions apply, then get Hundus, 'cause this new Burning Saviours disc is just as good as their amazing debut, sounding (due to shared influences, and perhaps something in the water over there in Sweden) EXACTLY like Witchcraft's equally fine retro-proto-metal. But again, we don't see them as being blatantly unoriginal vis-a-vis Witchcraft or anything, it's just that both bands are so good at capturing the authentic vibe of their heroes, making music well worthy of the upper echelon of Vertigo swirl label heavies.
Those not already tuned in and turned on to Witchcraft / Burning Saviours / the current retro-heavy-psych scene, well, you're gonna think this sounds like Black Sabbath. And maybe a bit Led Zep too, especially some of the vocal phrasing on the epic "Lilly Marion". And some of the riffing and soloing reminds us of very early Judas Priest, in their pre-leather, psychedelic Rocka Rolla phase. So, obviously, lots of appeal here to classic rock lovers! One thing that really makes Burning Saviours sound so great is the "openness" of their sound, spacious and clean, every part hitting our ears just right... the more quiet n' pretty moments making us think of -another- current band of retro-obsessed Swedes who are favorites 'round here, Elope. Even the heavier riffing is still sorta laid back, loping.
Witchcraft definitely already have a cult following (and are gonna be touring the States soon, hitting SF in October with Danava, yeah!), and these guys deserve the same... but their name just isn't as good as "Witchcraft" is it? Burning Saviours are named after a Pentagram song, but maybe we'd have chosen a different one... coulda been called, uh, The 20 Buck Spins? No, that's no good either. Well anyway, another essential hippy-doom album that really seems like it must have been recorded in 1971 and recently unearthed!
MPEG Stream: "Dark Lady"
MPEG Stream: "Ballad Of Time"

FALL OF THE IDOLS Womb Of The Earth (I Hate Records) cd 16.98
Here's another heavy one from a label that all doom-heads should pay attention to, Sweden's oh-so-positive I Hate Records, who recently brought us the latest from Burning Saviours and Gates Of Slumber, among others. Finland's wonderfully gloomy Fall Of The Idols play slow and lumbering, classic doom with tons of feeling. This debut album of theirs is a downer trip all right, supremely mournful, sunken into depression, like old Candlemass on Quaaludes. It's melancholic and miserable, and somehow melodically peaceful too. The plodding, repetitive guitar riffs and martial drumming (punctuating stretches of spacey quietude), along with the molasses-thick production, help produce this band's hypnotic aura of doom, but what's most crucial are the wretchedly, wrenchingly emotive vocals. The singer reminds us of Pentagram's Bobby Liebling just a bit, but deeper, dronier, and more chant-like, singing of such things as "when heart dies and soul is torn" and "drifting through the blizzard, wondering how lonely you've become"... In addition, the occasional use of acoustic guitars and uptempo attacks of metallic chug, vary the album nicely. But overall, with this one, you're simply doomed, doomed, doomed. For fans of fellow Finns Reverend Bizarre, and also early Cathedral, early Trouble, and maybe even CoC's Blind... A class act.
MPEG Stream: "Sown Are The Seeds Of Doom "
MPEG Stream: "Atonement For The One"

UGLY THINGS Issue #24 magazine 7.95
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Whoo-hoo! As always, the latest issue of editor/publisher Mike Stax' well-researched magazine devoted to "wild sounds from past dimensions" is a major event here. Aware of its impending arrival, we had to block out some time ahead of time just to spend reading the thing, which surely does require some hours indeed, as each ish is bigger (and maybe even better, tough as that's got to be to achieve) than the last. #24 weighs in at 208 pages, more than 50 of 'em filled with small-print reviews of desirable reissues of rare old albums and so forth, the '50s / '60s / '70s garage punk psych beat r&b stuff we need to hear about. A great resource. The rest of the magazine's got the usual columns and features, including super in-depth articles and interviews dealing with various obscure and semi-obscure bands. This time around: The Mustangs, The Bush, The Phantom Brothers, Sweetwater, Stiphnoyds, The Flamin' Groovies, The Rubber City Rebels, Mike & The Ravens, and more. Haven't heard of most of those? Well for just $7.95 you could become an expert on 'em. Seriously, we -always- find something of interest in these stories. A couple of the other features this issue that caught our attention: Johan Kugelberg discusses the joys of what he terms Australian "grillfat rock", Mike Stax waxes enthusiastic about vintage radio show airchecks, Randal Wood runs down the Peruvian '60s scene, Patrick Lundborg lists twenty hard to find collectibles that he'd like to see reissued, and Jeff Jarema talks to the recording engineer who worked on the first Blue Cheer album. Turns out the guy was talking time off from his job as a police officer, of all things, and lets just say didn't quite appreciate the pro-drugs, proto-metal heaviness churned out by the 'Cheer!
Now we count the days until #25 comes out...

ROCHE, JEAN C. Le Monde Des Singes 1 (Primate World 1) (Sittelle) cd 16.98
There always seems to be labels vying for the coveted position of coolest record label in the world. EM in Japan of course, with their insane array of amazing, and amazingly packaged reissues. aRCHIVE is a contender, with outrageously deluxe packaging and some of the coolest weirdest music out there. There's PseudoArcana, Celebrate Psi Phenomenon, and let's not forget Andee's tUMULt label. But France's Sittelle label constantly blow us away, and are inching ever closer to being the one.
C'mon, there was the rutting red deer disc, a whole record of deers mating, that sounds as amazing as you might imagine. Then there was the insane Bats record, two whole discs, one of normal recordings, the other of slowed down bat sounds, coupled with a massive book! Cicadas and Crickets was another great one, transporting us to some filed in the middle of nowhere. Bizarre Birds? Indeed, an outrageous collection of, well, bizarre bird sounds. And finally, Pastoral Bells, one of our all time favorites, the sounds of cowbells, drifting over the hills as cows wander and graze, so gorgeous and tranquil.
And as if it couldn't get any better, they bring us MONKEYS!!! You may not know how obsessed we are with monkeys, but WE ARE!!! (Andee even got to hand feed monkeys when he was in Japan!!) WE LOVE MONKEYS!!! But this is no ordinary collection of monkey sounds, these sounds are amazing, and amazingly varied, some do in fact sound like monkeys, but some sound like sirens, some like strange electronics, some even like black metal.
And like most of the stuff on Sittelle, it's not just the sounds, but the surroundings, the sonic bed in which the sounds exist. Here, it's the sound of the jungle, a lush, living thing, crickets and insets, a nearly constant buzz, birds chirping, the sound of wind, leaves, branches, that would almost be enough even without the monkeys, and come to think of it pretty sure there's at least one or two discs on Sittelle specifically of jungle sounds...
But monkeys is why we're here and the monkeys represented here are remarkable. There's the hooting Siamangs, engaged in an intricate call and response, multiple monkey calls piling up into confusional squalls. Then there's the Lar Gibbons, who alternately whistle, trill like birds, or scream like a frightened hysterical woman. How about the Male Orangutans who sound nothing like Clyde from Every Which Way But Loose, and instead sound a little like strange electronic whooshes and bleeps. Almost like a human making video game sounds. There are the chimps, whose calls are the most recognizable of the bunch, but who also have a call that sounds like a screaming woman or a mewing kitten. Then there are mountain gorillas, who grunt and pant, and growl a little like wild dogs. Then it gets strange. The Black Colobus, who groans like a wizened old man, or croaks like some giant frog, and sometimes sounds like Popeye, the calls separated by what sound like a very human grunts and coughs. Then there are the howlers, whose tracks, complete with the haunting forest backdrop, sound almost like Abruptum, some haunting black metal ambience, distant groans and growls, a drawn out demonic rasp, whispering like the wind, a growling monstrous rumble, very intense and ominous sounding.
And there's more. WAY more. Far too much to describe here. But all of it fascinating and bizarre and funny and completely amazing. And the most remarkable thing about these discs, is they are somehow not just "nature recordings", they are recorded, and sequenced, and presented in a way that makes them eminently listenable. It is more than the sounds of nature, it is a strange form of natural music, the music of nature. It can transport us to some far away jungle, some lost world, or it can just fill our ears with strange and wonderful sounds. Either way, this is a fantastic listen. Surprisingly musical, totally mysterious and so great!
As with all Sittelle releases, included is a big booklet with extensive liner notes in both English and French, which includes detailed notes on each track and on each type of monkey!
MPEG Stream: "Family Of Siamangs"
MPEG Stream: "Pair Of Lar Gibbons"
MPEG Stream: "Harem Of Proboscis Monkeys"
MPEG Stream: "Group Of Chimpanzees"
MPEG Stream: "Group Of Black Colobus"
MPEG Stream: "Two Mantled Howlers"

LOS NATAS El Hombre Montana (Small Stone) cd 15.98
Attentive Aquarius customers probably already know Argentina's Los Natas as a band that, over their career to date, have recorded riffy Kyuss-inspired albums for seminal stoner rock label Man's Ruin (RIP) -and- also released proggy, droned-out space rock experiments for Circle's Ektro imprint, in all cases solidifying our Los Natas fandom here at AQ. Not that the stylistic distance 'tween the Man's Ruin and Ektro albums is that much of a stretch -- certainly not for these guys, who have become masters at making modern psychedelic hard rock that harks back to the druggy daze of '70s krautrock and their own South American hippie heroes, as much as it does the "desert rock" of Kyuss.
Well, we're glad to report that Los Natas are back and bringin' it with this, their latest album, the long-awaited, full-on follow-up to their previous Small Stone release Corsario Negro from back in 2002. They've definitely got the stoner rock rolling here, El Hombre Montana being on the more metallic side of the Los Natas equation, super heavy and percussively driving and seemingly haunted by the spirit of Black Sabbath in the guitar crunch department. Full of fuzz and distortion, these songs spiral in intensity -- lots of wild acid rawk GUITAR bursting out all over the place -- but also find room for some gruff vocal melodies (all songs sung in Spanish only). There's even a track of lovely, acoustic campfire folk. So we'd say that this is a stoner-rock-en-Espanol album with broad appeal to people into the likes of, say, Six Organs of Admittance, Comets On Fire, The Heads, and Boris.
Indeed, while Stateside these guys have their fans (we know quite a few AQ regulars are into 'em), they still don't have quite the profile of another AQ fave, Japan's Boris. And while Los Natas don't -quite- ever go to the extremes of heaviness and weirdness as Boris sometimes do, both bands occupy a lot of the same middle ground in the '70s inspired psychedelic hard rock realm, so we'd like to point out that there's not reason why anyone who loved Boris' Akuma No Uta, or Pink, or (especially) Heavy Rocks shouldn't also thrill to the music of Los Natas!
MPEG Stream: "El Bolsero"
MPEG Stream: "La Ciervo"

COMETS ON FIRE Avatar (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
Everybody's favorite Bay Area band of fuzzy freak rock throwbacks are back with their fourth proper album, the eagerly-anticipated follow-up to 2004's Blue Cathedral. In the past, though very much inspired by '60s psych and '70s acid rock, Comets On Fire would always go a bit beyond, get more frenzied and noisy than any of the bands back then really got, at least on records we've heard. And they still do. But as any fan of Comets will tell you, they've gradually progressed percentage-wise from totally over-the-top distortion and Echoplex FX fueled mania to much more song- (and singing-) oriented music, reigning in their more noisy psychedelic excesses, to an extent. And Avatar is the next logical step in that progression, though rest assured there is still PLENTY of the original Comets sound shining through, blasting chaotic supernovas of spaced out electronic squiggles and fuzz guitar.
But at other times, you could actually almost mistake this for an actual, authentic '70s era classic rock record, melodic and mellow, frontman and guitarist Ethan Miller honing his whiskey-soaked Southern-rock vox, a surprising set of husky pipes last aired on the recent album by his side-project Howlin Rain. Plus you've got the influence of band member Mr. Six Organs Of Admittance Ben Chasny, known for some glorious tunefulness in his own band (as well as Rallizes-like mayhem).
Really we're a bit shocked at how darn pretty some of this is. And what's probably our fave track on this album, the nearly nine-minute, mostly-instrumental "Sour Smoke", sounds more like vintage Wishbone Ash (but with keyboards), kinda folky and proggy and definitely untouched by the "unclean" sounds of what we might term "classic Comets". Very cool though!
So, this is, to our ears, a successful mix of Comet's new-found laid back approach, alongside sonics that are still quite reminiscent of in-the-red Japanese psych destroyers like Mainliner. The common ground are the cuts wherein they kick out the jams in the vein of an especially drug-damaged Blue Oyster Cult, who we hear here especially on the song "The Swallow's Eye".
Bottom line: if you liked Blue Cathedral, you'll like Avatar too!
MPEG Stream: "Dogwood Rust"
MPEG Stream: "Sour Smoke"

NSU Turn On, Or Turn Me Down (Breathless) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NSU's record taught me (Allan) a little lesson. I came across a cd reissue of the lone LP by this obscure Scottish sixties psych band a couple years ago, and picked it up for its heaviness potential (it had been described as being really heavy by an overseas dealer). At first hearing, though, the heaviness I wanted wasn't really there. I had been hoping for a proto-metal album like, say, Toad or Leaf Hound, and so was disappointed and set the NSU aside. But then, some weeks later, I gave it another chance and, as so often happens when you aren't judging something by your wishful expectations but instead taking it on its own terms, I ended up really really liking it. I realized, this was a pretty nifty album with some marvelous songs and vibe from a pretty cool band, that while not quite competition for Black Sabbath or Blue Cheer, still operates on the cusp of proto-metal heavy, sixties style, and surely provides lots of wailing guitar! So now we're quite happy to have this in stock, a new nice digipack cd reissue of what we've come to regard as a bit of a gem, if you have any sort of a soft spot for Cream-y British '60s guitar blues psychedelia! Originally released in 1969 on Stable, the same label (and year) as the record by Lemmy's old band Sam Gopal that we love so much, and that this reminds us of just a bit, especially the more mellow and laid back parts, and they also share a penchant for lyrical subject matter that tends towards the dark and/or druggy! One song is even simply titled "Stoned".
So again, a lesson, give stuff more than one listen! You never know what you might like better then second time... We're still wondering, though: N.S.U.? What's it stand for?
MPEG Stream: "Turn Me On, Or Turn Me Down"
MPEG Stream: "You Can't Take It From My Heart"

V/A Electro Grind Gore Compilation (Alarma Recs) cd 14.98
Back in stock! (And, also, when we reviewed this a few weeks ago, we spaced out and somehow listed it under the title of Electro Grind Holocaust, which is a totally different comp on the same label, whoops!)
For those of you who just flipped over our recent Record Of The Week selection the Drum>MachineGun compilation, and want MORE crazed drum machine grindcore insanity, this other collection entitled Electro Grind Gore Compilation should also be of interest! It's slanted a bit more toward the underground and obscure than the Drum>MachineGun comp, and also more towards the porno/gore obsessed side of this bizarre metal/punk subgenre -- a subgenre that features, as displayed here, razor sharp spastic guitar riffage, techno dance beats, belching death metal grunts and growls (some so subsonically extreme that they sound like bubblings from below the earth), non-sequitorial samples (often offensive and, um, humorous), and lots of bleepy bleepy bleargh distortion and noise. There's a unexpectedly high catchiness quotient, in spots, but these tracks are definitely utterly maddening at the same time. It's kind of a "chocolate-in-my-peanut-butter" deal with the electro danciness and the harsh splattermetalgrindnoise in collision. In fact, it's kind of unclear just who this sort of music is supposed to appeal to: we can't imagine techno fans digging all the noise and gore, and we didn't think so many metalheads liked techno-dance beats -- but I guess we were wrong! Of course we like it, so...
Electro Grind Gore contains 28 tracks from 17 bands, most of whom we'd never heard of before. Some names: Atomik Surfing, Shunt Incision, Basket Of Death, Vomitrone, Skrotum, 666.Porn.Star, SMES, Posthuman Worm, Absurd God, Tourette Syndrom, Firbrosarcoma... A very international line-up indeed, the bands hailing from Brazil, Japan, Mexico, France, Croatia, Holland, Germany, Panama, Spain, Australia, and Italy. It's a veritable World Cup of sick underground electro grind! While here at Aquarius we're better versed in black metal, doom, and "true" metal, if we ever do decide to turn this drum machine fueled electronic grindcore deviancy into an AQ specialty, we'd definitely start by tracking down more stuff by the bands on this comp!
MPEG Stream: TOURETTE SYNDROM "Giggle Geriatric Gypse Giggolo"
MPEG Stream: FIBROSARCOMA "Angiokeratoma"
MPEG Stream: SKROTUM "I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll"

AMON DUUL II Yeti (Revisited Records) cd 16.98
It's been reissued again and again, as well is should 'cause this is one of the best albums EVER everyone at AQ agrees and should always be in print, and you should even own more than one copy it's that good. For some reason, the rights to this album (and ADII's others as well) seem to constantly be in flux from one label to the next -- this time it's in the care of an outfit called Revisited Records, who have put it in a digipack almost identical to its previous incarnation on Repertoire, but sadly without the two bonus tracks from singles that that one had.
Anyway, maybe you're wondering what the heck the big deal is with Yeti, so here's our review we wrote last time it got reissued:
The absolute hardest albums to write about are those we hold in the highest esteem and though we have an aversion to the general notion of a "desert island selection", this Amon Duul II disc is one of those albums that we could see as an definite inclusion on a short list of "must have" rock records! 1970's Yeti is the second album of Amon Duul II, succeeding Phallus Dei, and captures these krautrockers at their zenith. The album opens with the four movement opus "Soap Shop Rock", an amazing 13+ minute track that encompasses the gamut of psychedelia. It begins as an uptempo number with driving bass and drums in which vocals, guitars and amplified fiddles swirl around in a multitude of melodic variations in counterpoint before breaking down into one of the most kick ass tempo changes ever performed in rock; a heavy dirge that never fails to knock my knee caps loose, and it's got a guitar line that certainly must have been held in immense reverence by Kramer at some formative point in his career. The song doesn't settle down there, but continues in its focused meanderings for another ten minutes, retaining enough of an anchor of its beginnings to give it coherence as a unified whole. The rest of the album is equally amazing, touching everything from blasted proto-punk psych ("Archangels Thunderbird" and "Eye-Shaking King") to spacey drone improv (the fifteen minutes of "Yeti Talks To Yogi" and "Sandoz In The Rain"). Essential krautrock. In fact, one of the best records EVER.
It's one of those albums, like First Utterance by Comus and Satori by Flower Travellin' Band, that when it's playing, we think, why listen to anything else again??
MPEG Stream: "Soap Shop Rock - Halluzination Guillotine"
MPEG Stream: "Archangels Thunderbird"
MPEG Stream: "Soap Shop Rock - Flesh-Coloured Anti-Aircraft Alarm Clock"

DEAD C, THE Vain, Erudite And Stupid - Selected Works: 1987-2005 (Ba Da Bing!) 2cd 10.98
All right, while Andee is the biggest Dead C expert here at Aquarius, we're ALL fans of New Zealand's long-running noise rock geniuses. And since he took responsibility for writing the extensive and effusive reviews we've published in recent weeks for the repressings / warehouse finds of The Dead C's Harsh 70s Reality and Trapdoor Fucking Exit albums, I (Allan) thought I'd step up and take over reviewing this brand new release, which is in fact a sort of "best of" anthology selected and compiled by the band themselves, featuring 22 tracks spread over two compact discs, spanning their career to date. Not being as much of an expert as Andee, but still a fan (I've got a few of their albums, and would have more but missed out on some releases when I wasn't as 'hip' to this band as I am now), this 2cd is just what I needed: a primer of sorts on this sometimes confusional, confounding, and obscure-but-important band. And as far as reviewing goes, what's to review? THIS SHIT IS ESSENTIAL! End of story. It's an ideal introduction for newbies and even the most dedicated Dead C fanatic will want it as well. Even if you've collected every last rare tape or vinyl track from these guys it's still nice to have a few of 'em on cd.
You'll hear how The Dead C trio of Michael Morley, Robbie Yeats, and Bruce Russell blazed their own unique path through the down under underbelly of indie-rock experimentation, pushing the boundaries of (between?) noise and rock in their New Zealand laboratory. True originals, appreciated at first only by a hardy few (themselves, mainly, as well as the likes of Sonic Youth). Their deliberately lo-fi, song-subverting, willfully 'wrong' music-making was and is perhaps an acquired taste. We'd venture to guess though that at this point, few regular AQ customers would have less than positive reactions to The Dead C's seasick lurchings, to their sounds of droning flybys from UFOs made out of straw, and feedback stomp and damaged thrash. No complaints about caustic liquids somehow coursing through guitar strings, amps, and ears. Thumb up to their hazy hints of melodies, buried beneath solid static storms of guitar distortion, or their moments of quietly emotive indie-pop prettiness in the NZ tradition, left to rust and decay.
The tracks are arranged chronologically, from "Max Harris" off their 1988 Flying Nun album DR503 starting off the first disc, to the track "Truth" taken from The Damned released in 2003 that ends the second disc. Disc one might be considered a survey of their "songier" era, going up to about 1992's Harsh 70s Reality, while disc two deals with material from 1994 on that saw them becoming less of a particularly noisy indie-rock band and more of truly abstract, improvising noise band, still with some rock and pop elements weirdly woven in. The tracks selected comprise both some "greatest hits" (things we'd have picked too, for sure) and some total rarities from long-deleted cassettes and limited vinyl-only releases, like the Clyma Est Mort LP, The Operation Of The Sonne LP, the Xpressway Pile-Up cassette comp, and the Helen Said This mini-LP, among others. Actually most of these tracks are rarities, in the sense that a lot of their '90s cds on Siltbreeze like The White House and Repent, and even more recent albums like the incredible self-titled double disc on Language Recordings from 2000 are out of print now too. There's two tracks from Harsh 70s Reality, but strangely enough nothing from Trapdoor Fucking Exit, by the way.
The thick cd booklet contains essays, in ascending order of non-fictional detail, from Seymour Glass of Bananafish mag, Tom Lax of Siltbreeze, and Nick Cain of Opprobrium fanzine. And there's track-by-track commentary from Bruce Russell as well, adding to the "primer" value of this release. It may be true that this band's stuff takes a while to "get". Years maybe. But this crash course gives a great head start.
The blurb sticker on the front of this proclaims The Dead C as "the GREATEST noise/drone rock band of all time" and we really might not have any argument with that at all! It goes on to suggest that fans of Wolf Eyes, SUNNO))), Lightning Bolt and Growing would/should dig The Dead C quite heavily. Probably true as well. The implication being, though, that fans of those bands wouldn't have heard of The Dead C before. Perhaps -- and if that's the case, and that's you, you definitely should check this out!!! We'd probably go on to say that as much as we enjoy all those bands, The Dead C is much closer to our hearts for sure...
MPEG Stream: "Hell Is Now Love"
MPEG Stream: "3 Years"
MPEG Stream: "Tuba Is Funny (Slight Return)"
MPEG Stream: "Bitcher"

MOTOR Klunk (Mute) cd 16.98
Normally the way to get me (Allan) to listen to, let alone like, a record *isn't* to tell me that it's got elements of techno, acid house, and/or Hi-NRG dance music to it. Comparisons to various '80s industrial/club culture icons like Front 242 and Nitzer Ebb are also not terribly enticing, either. Yet this album, with its stark, stylish black and white (and red) graphics and suggestively Kraftwerkian name and title somehow drew me in, and guess what? I ended up really digging it! (No, not dancing to it, though I'm sure people will.) The dozen, almost entirely instrumental tracks on Motor's full-length debut may be a species of techno/house music, but they're sufficiently raw and ominously droning to appeal to me as a pure listening experience... the relentless 4/4 energy here is simply brutal, and this disc is thick and heavy with machine beats and super-distorted synths, the kind that sound like dive-bombing Stukkas! Sure, it's Sprocketsy but ballsy too, this trans-Atlantic duo (one guy from Minneapolis, another from Paris) making the perfect in-my-imagination Euro techno ideal of computer-jerked motorik electro grooves, tranced-out tones, and video game gibbering...
OK, gotta cut this review short as everyone else here is making fun of what I'm listening to, doing robotic dance moves and making raver glow stick comments, but I know they're all secretly enjoying this as well -- AND I think they're getting their work done faster and more efficiently, too!
(Note: this isn't to be confused with another, different electronic outfit also named Motor who hail from Russia.)
MPEG Stream: "Black Powder"
MPEG Stream: "King Of USA"

OUGENWEIDE Ohrenschmaus / Eulenspiegel (Bear Family) cd 22.00
More medieval minstrelry!! Last list we reviewed the cd reissue of the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, early '70s German krautfolksters produced by Achim Reichel. Here's the another disc of their mainly acoustic "Mittelalter-Rock", featuring their third and fourth albums Ohrenschmaus and Eulenspiegel, both from 1976. Again this cd is a delight for anyone who can dig a Teutonic twist on ye olde folk, with dash of hippie psych/prog, played by people who wouldn't look out of place in a Joanna Newsom video.
Singing in Old German -- sometimes in Latin -- Ougenweide took their obsession with the Middle Ages quite seriously indeed. They set old poetry to music, putting 'em in the same realm as that wonderful Kay Hoffman album Floret Silva from circa '77 we reviewed last year, and also reminding us a bit of the approach taken by a more recent (and more metallic!) German band, In Extremo -- remember them?
The vocals are lovely, the various stringed things in the band get an, um, incredible workout, alongside hornpipes and jangling percussion... the mood ranges from melancholic atmosphere to pure reeling energy, and if you let yourself get into it, let your mind dance about in Ougenweide's ancient forest glade, you'll find that their melodies and rhythms are utterly infectious.
Germany's Bear Family label, best known for their elaborate (and expensive) box sets, of course do a nice job with the packaging here, the thick cd booklet full of liner notes (in English and German), lyrics (not in English), and photos. Just turn to page 33 in the booklet for a gander at the appalling original album cover of Eulenspiegel -- the band playing tug-o-war in full RenFaire get-up, with a jester-garbed child dancing on the rope! This is a LOT cooler, and generally less silly, than that picture would suggest!
MPEG Stream: "Kommt, ihr Jungfern, helft mir klagen"
MPEG Stream: "Wol mich der stunde"

OUGENWEIDE Ougenweide / All Die Weil Ich Mag (Bear Family) cd 22.00
Medieval minstrelry!! Andee has been making fun of Allan for liking this so much, so if you want to get into the middle of that argument, give this a listen. This cd reissues the first two albums by Germany's Ougenweide, an early '70s folk-rock act who were sort of a Germanic version of contemporaneous UK folk-rockers Fairport Convention or Pentangle, perhaps. Gryphon, definitely. Or maybe you remember the Norwegian band Kong Lavring, reviewed here some time ago? Ougenweide are sorta like that, but German. (Another parallel would be France's Malicorne.)
Sweet female vocals, bombastic male ones, flutes n' lutes, lots of ye olde melodiousness and harmoniousness, alongside some fairly rippin', energetic "hoedown" parts that will kick your ass for thinking this is even a wee bit too twee, though twee it often is. Those plugged-in interludes allow us to consider this troupe a krautrock as well as a krautfolk (?) band. And speaking of krautrock, their first record was produced by none other than Achim Reichel (of A.R. & Machines fame!).
So we'll sum up Ougenwiede as dexterous and delightful music made by prancing hippies obsessed with the Middle Ages but willing to throw some fuzz bass in where it will do the most good. Pretty cool if you don't mind your acid folk to have strong RenFaire leanings! (It helps that it's all in German, we think.)
The 22 tracks here come from their self-titled debut from 1973 and its 1974 follow-up All Die Weil Ich Mag, and it's the first time on cd for both of 'em. And since this is a Bear Family reissue, it's about as nicely done as a reissue can be, packaged with a 38 page booklet stuffed with liner notes (in English and German), lyrics, and vintage photos. Appropriately, the booklet is styled after an illuminated manuscript and decorated with medieval woodcuts.
MPEG Stream: "Der Fuchs"
MPEG Stream: "Nieman Kan Mit Gerten"
MPEG Stream: "Es Fur Ein Pawr Gen Holcz"

RAM JAM Portrait Of The Artist As A Young Ram (Rock Candy) cd 17.98
We've been geeking out on, I mean rockin' out to, a bunch of the '70s and '80s hard rock/heavy metal reissues coming out on the UK's Rock Candy label... Plasmatics, Armored Saint, Billy Squier, Ted Nugent, Riot, a whole bunch of old favorites, done up all deluxe with nice packaging and copious liner notes. We've reviewed a few already. Here's another we like a lot.
First-time-on-cd for this 1978 album, the second and last from one-hit wonders Ram Jam. That one hit was their high octane cover of Leadbelly's "Black Betty" from their first album (do yourself a favor and look up the video on Youtube!!). So what has Portrait Of An Artist As A Young Ram got to offer? Well, though it didn't produce any hits, it's the better of their two records by far. With a revamped line-up, Ram Jam's hybrid bubblegum / biker blues roots are a thing of the past, the band now a lean, mean, polished, hard n' heavy rock outfit that fans of other, more popular commercial late '70s American rockers like Aerosmith, KISS, Foreigner, and Starz should dig... though at the time they apparently didn't, this record sales-wise spelling the end of Ram Jam's career. Dunno why, people must just not have heard it, as it's quite the party platter, full of kick ass lead guitar, powerful vocals, and energetic, catchy tuneage that would sound great blasting from your souped-up Camaro or custom-painted van...
But now here's a chance to hear this again (for the first time, if you're like us!) and give Ram Jam's swansong its due! Recommended to all rockers.
MPEG Stream: "Please, Please, Please (Please Me)"
MPEG Stream: "Hurricane Ride"

RIOT Narita (Rock Candy) cd 17.98
Holy grail second album from one of the best American metal bands EVER (who never get their due). While we'd say 1981's Fire Down Under (their third) is THE one to get, if you were to get only one, once you've heard that you're gonna want to hear more. And so mucho kudos to Rock Candy for at long last providing the world with a cd reish of Narita, originally released on LP by Capitol in 1979. New York's Riot were what the NWOBHM would have sounded like if it would have happened in the USA instead of the UK. A supercharged, metallized step up from the American '70s hard rock of the mid-seventies (bands like Starz, KISS, Ted Nugent, ZZ Top), definitely melodic, but much more rippin'. And also way more ass-kicking and streetwise than most of the Sunset Strip style hair metal that the US offered up a few years later, though Riot surely were an influence on the best of that bunch. They still exist today, by the way, releasing records (big in Japan!) but lots different from back when, in part due to the fact that their original lead singer, the amazing Guy Speranza, RIP, is long gone from the lineup. That guy shoulda been a famous rock star, just listen to him here.
MPEG Stream: "Narita"
MPEG Stream: "Waiting For The Taking"
MPEG Stream: "49er"

GARADAMA II (Fiend's Shrine) cd 21.00
A couple years ago, all the Boris / Corrupted / Eyehategod / Zeni Geva fans here at AQ were pleased to discover the debut cd from this band Garadama, released on the Osaka based, eclectic noise/psych label Alchemy. Super heavy riffage, distorted fuzzed out walls of DOOOOM guitar, crashing into your brain with the force of a frantic fiend (as per their song "A Fiend Is Living In My Brain"). Great stuff for everyone into the HEAVY (and no surprise, seeing as how the band featured the former singer/guitarist from the very Sabbatherian outfit Subvert Blaze). So, we've been waiting, and had begun to wonder what had happened to them. Well, suddenly and thankfully, we've got import copies of their brand new second album, as you can tell by the title. Again it's an onslaught of monster dirge crunch distorto sludge, swinging from Sabbathy groove to spooky, droning ambience... plus a dose of that special Japanese weirdness we love. Tracks like "Dogma" parts 1 and 2 are ultra-spooky and almost black metal, while the band display their rockin' side on the likes of the riffy "Who Does Try To Kill A Man?".
The album is not over-long, but their doom is deep, and we're sure Garadama would hold their own in any contest with countryfolk Green Machine and Boris... We should mention also that the nasally strangled doom vocals and the twistedness of their heaviness here reminds Andee of old faves Alice Donut! Recommended, doom fanatics.
MPEG Stream: "Dragon's Shrine"
MPEG Stream: "Soliloquy"

PAPER RAD Taking Out The Trash (Load) dvd 14.98
Warning: NOT FOR EPILEPTICS!!! What's probably the best-yet dvd release from the Load label brings together a bunch of animations from the Paper Rad comics/video/art collective, whose hyper-kinetic, colorful aesthetic relies heavily upon what must be a mega-collection of childhood pop-culture memorabilia, y'know, stickers and stuffed animals and those plastic trolls with the dayglo hair and Muppet Babies and so forth. Animated with intense strobe-effects and eyeball-searing hues, in constantly-moving symmetrical patterns reminiscent of Eastern mandalas, these graphics are some seriously psychedelic shit. LSD for your DVD player. So awesome, yet a bit overwhelming after a while, which is why it's nice that part way along the the viewer is offered a bit of a breather in the form of a very deadpan, nonsensical narrative, wherein things slow down to examine the lives of three very odd flatmates, living in what may or may not be the middle of nuclear Armageddon. In the context of the rest of this disc, this segment almost seems "normal." Stepping up the pace again, other highlights include music vids for The Usaisamonster and Lightning Bolt side project Wizardzz, both bands whose spazzed music fits perfectly with this stuff. Highly recommended for those who'd like to try a potent dose of ocular insanity, but again, bewarned, potentially seizure-inducing!

NEGATIVE PLANE Et In Saecula Saeculorum (The AJNA Offensive) cd 16.98
A couple people asked us/told us about this before we got it... apparently word-of-mouth among cult black metal mavens was strong early on! And all their hushed queries and whispered expressions of awed enthusiasm are well deserved, we discovered, once we heard it ourselves. This is definitely NOT just another run of the mill black metal album. Negative Plane somehow have captured something more ancient and strange than usual in their music. They have a real "old school" mystique about them, that Venom / Celtic Frost / Bathory feel, yet at the same time this is infused and infested further with an especially alien weirdness, a bit of the same vibe as Nordic avant-gardists Ved Buens Ende. The album is drenched in effects, rendering the rasping vocals into an internal, infernal dialogue with themselves due to the amount of reverb, echoing in collusion with the music to make extra-effective what's otherwise indecipherable.
And though so seemingly raw and olden, there's a lot more "going on" here than with some of the dronier black metal efforts we've heard -- these tracks are full of complex runs, twisting turns, sudden changes. And sheer atmosphere is not neglected. Neg Plane's doomy vibe, their church organ tones and eerie melodies, are one important aspect of this record -- lashed with tons of FX to their other aspect, raging riffage, you've got an underground cult already established, the duo of Nameless Void (guitar/vocals) and Bestial Devotion (drums) requiring servitors rather than mere fans. Very special.
MPEG Stream: "Staring Into The Abyss"
MPEG Stream: "A Church In Ruin"

STRIBORG Embittered Darkness / Isle De Morts (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Also available for a limited time (of course) on vinyl, as a deluxe double lp, packaged in a swank gatefold. Clear vinyl while they last!!
Lovers of damaged demented bizarre baffling freaked out and fucked up black metal rejoice!! We couldn't be more excited if there was a brand new Benighted Leams record. FINALLY, we're able to review and list a record from one of our all time favorite outsider one man black metal bands, Striborg. Most folks have probably never actually heard Striborg, even though this will mark release #15 or thereabouts. But it wasn't for lack of trying on our part. We have been completely obsessed with Striborg since we first heard him a few years back and have been trying to get enough copies of ANY of his releases to list. Everytime we found someone who carried Striborg records, we would order 30 or 40 or 50, and would get 1 or 2. Or more likely none. We even resorted to writing letters to the band (he apparently lives in a shack in the woods with no phone and no computer!) And while most folks have never -heard- Striborg, you've probably at least heard OF him. Whether it was in an aQuarius review, we've referenced Striborg as the ultimate outsider black metal band in reviews of records by black metal weirdos Dead Reptile Shrine, Lugubrum, Draugar, Detsorgsekalf, Hidden and more, or on the recent black metallized SUNNO))) record Black One, which even had a track named for the dark mastermind behind Striborg Sin-Nanna.
But what is it exactly about Striborg that has everyone freaking out?
Five words for you: Tasmanian rain forest black metal! And it's just as grim and weird and as amazing as that might lead you to believe. We have Southern Lord to thank for this, the first readily available Striborg release, which continues his tradition of combining multiple releases on single cds, this one includes the brand new 2006 recording. Embittered Darkness, as well as the super rare Isle De Morts release recorded almost a decade ago, way back in 1997.
So what exactly does Tasmanian rain forest black metal sound like? Definitely grim, and lo-fi, ultra personal, demented and damaged, Benighted Leams, Abruptum, Dead Reptile Shrine, Necrofrost, Emit, Furze, Urfaust and all the rest of the baffling black metal hierarchy should give you a rough idea, but Striborg, is even further out, way more fucked up, more strangely psychedelic and freaked out, a doomy drone drenched black buzz, a growling fuzzy missive from the depths of some dark netherworld.
Haunting washes of gauzy synthesizer, mournful minor key acoustic guitars, dreary overcast swaths of depressive melancholia, and you think other black metal bands are buzzy?! Striborg take that black buzz and whip it into a furious freaked out frenzy, a guitar buzz like a million bumble bees, but sped WAY up, a prickly, fuzzy swirl, even at it's most doomy and plodding, Striborg drenches everything in that overblown buzz, a thick sandpapery ambience, that is the metal equivalent of walking through the pouring rain, under a full moon, through a graveyard at the edge of the world. Sin-Nanna growls and gurgles his obtuse black ravings in an impossibly creepy animalistic voice, somewhere between a rabid dog, a tiny demon, and a wicked old witch, often everything will drop out and all that will be left is a buzzing tangle of hissing harsh vocal and fuzzed out black riffing. Buried in the murk and mire are weird, rehearsal space drums, really flat and dry sounding, erupting in spastic and chaotic burts, not just blast beats, but instead bizarre blasts of percussive tangle amidst stretches of almost punk rock drumming, although most of Embittered Darkness is spent at a crawl, a buzzing midtempo dirge, as doomy as it is black, if not more so. Imagine an ultra lo-fi doom metal Xasthur, slow motion misery dotted with occasional barrages of black metal buzz and once in a while surges of slithering black ambience.
So totally creepy and beautiful, fucked up and gorgeous, a massive soul crushing slab of doom drenched black metal brilliance.
Isle De Morts, from 1997, is a lot more traditional, and a lot faster, almost every track a frenetic and frenzied burst of blackened and buzzing brutality, lo-fi but completely blown out and in the red, channeling Transylvanian Hunger era Darkthrone, but filtered through Striborg's cracked sonic kaleidoscope, rendering what might have been just some classic Norwegian BM worship, as a creepy and cracked world of ultrabuzz and overblown acidfried blackness, blast beats so fast they sound like radio static, guitars so buzzy and blurry they turn into thick washes of crumbling prickly sound, and croaking toadlike vocals so high in the mix it sounds like the band is in a different room. So gloriously fucked up and freaked out. One c
MPEG Stream: "Wrapped In A Cacoon Out Of Harm's Way"
MPEG Stream: "Race Of Apathy"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Veils Of Darkness"
MPEG Stream: "Descending From A Black Sky"

HIGH TIDE Sea Shanties (Eclectic Discs) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
New, nice reissues -- in slip covers, with bonus tracks and all the fixin's -- of these two (the only two) original classic High Tide albums. Previous cd reissues were hard to come by so it's even nicer to have these readily available. High Tide were a band at the intersection of psych-pop, prog, and acid rock. A great mix of the proggy, folky -- and HEAVY. For 1969, when their debut Sea Shanties was released, they were one of the heaviest bands around. Heavy due to the monster FUZZ guitar slashings of ax hero Tony Hill (formerly a member of Ugly Things magazine's favorite band, The Misunderstood), who also contributed vocals, sounding a bit like a British Jim Morrison. And High Tide had something else to keep them from being just another English blues rock power trio (a la Cream) -- their music was given an extra edge by the impassioned violin playing of fourth member Simon Hill, who went on to play with the Third Ear Band, Hawkwind and David Bowie.
Both Sea Shanties and the band's self-titled 1970 follow-up feature sinuous side-length songs, shades of light and dark, melodies both regal and rustic, and awesome instrumental interplay betwixt guitar and violin. These two albums are about equally great, and come recommended to anyone into the heavier side of '60s/'70s psych who hasn't yet had the pleasure of hearing 'em! File with The Dark, T2, Groundhogs, Socrates Drank The Conium, Clear Blue Sky, Fraction, and other early-daze proto-metal of the more psych-prog persuasion.
These reissues have copious liner notes, vintage photos, and vast expanses of unreleased bonus tracks -- Sea Shanties featuring five of 'em (two demo cuts and three songs that didn't make the album, including the eleven and a half minute long "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), High Tide with four, again two alternate takes and two unreleased efforts (among them an even longer, nearly 16 minute take on "The Great Universal Protection Racket"), all well worth hearing.
MPEG Str