WATCHMAKER Erased From The Memory Of Man (Willowtip) cd 14.98
In our review of Boston metalcore outfit Watchmaker's previous album Kill.Fucking.Everyone, we stated that they were "THE MOST PISSED sounding band we've ever heard". Well, it doesn't appear that in the time elapsed since that album Watchmaker have been to anger management classes, or tried therapy, or fallen in love, or adopted puppies, or anything like that, as they certainly haven't gotten any happier!!! Erased From The Memory Of Man is as extreme and brutal and p.o.'d as ever. These sixteen tracks feature negative titles like "Lice Crawling Humanity", "Relentless Post Mortem Killing", "Theraputic Dirt Nap" and "Infidelity's Eyestabbing Unease"... and theres an epigraph of sorts in the cd booklet taken from Werner Herzog's film Grizzly Man, as follows: "The common denominator of the universe is not harmony -- it's chaos, hostility, and murder." This is definitely the disharmonic, chaotic, hostile, murderous soundtrack to Herzog's statement! Pounding drums, throat-ripped vox, gnarly guitars...sheer sonic armageddon on cd. Turn up as loud as you dare, and stand back!
But, pissed as they are, it's nice to know that they do have a sense of humor about it all, judging by how the band members are credited with such creative job descriptions as "yearning flame of drum turret" (drums), "vocal fucking sawblade terror" (vocals), "rick and fucking backer" (bass) and "ghetto fucking bee keeper" (?). Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Dawn Of Indifference"
MPEG Stream: "Nuked To Ashes"
MPEG Stream: "Oncrushing Advance"

STRAWBERRY PATH When The Raven Has Come To The Earth (Radioactive) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Some fairly heavy (maaaan) stoner psych blues rawk action here from 1971. Yep, seventy-one. We won't try to tell you that the lone album from Japan's Strawberry Path was one of the best rock releases of '71, 'cause of course there were so many great albums out that year. But if you're a fan of heavy rock of the era, especially the weirder stuff from overseas, you should check 'em out. There's plenty of wailing guitar and jammin' organ on here, but also some mellow moves too so it's maybe more '60s than '70s sounding, and VERY Jimi Hendrix influenced. And we'd guess they were also into such Western acts as Steppenwolf, early Deep Purple, Grand Funk and possibly Black Sabbath. In the realm of early '70s Japanese hard psych they're on par with Speed, Glue & Shinki and Foodbrain, but not quite as as solid as the best Flower Travellin' Band or Blues Creation. These guys (a duo of Shigeru "Jimmy" Narumo on guitars and keys, and Hiro Tsunoda on drums and vocals, helped out by various guests) went on to form the even heavier Flied Egg, who released an LP on Vertigo, a track from which is heard on Andy Votel's Vertigo Mixed disc in fact.
This is totally in that Vertigo vein, with classical flourishes of flute and strings, hard-rockin' boogie blues riffage, wild vocals, kickin' drum breaks, acoustic interludes... it's an acid-prog mix that isn't always in the proto-metal direction we might want but we'll take what we can get. Plus you've gotta love the song titles, which are either really cool and weird like "Maximum Speed Of Muji Bird (45 Seconds Of Schizophrenic Sabbath)" or totally indicative of what you'd expect like "I Gotta See My Gypsy Woman" and "Mary Jane On My Mind". Woah, yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Woman Called Yellow 'Z'"
MPEG Stream: "Mary Jane On My Mind"

CIRCLE Tulikoira (Ektro) cd 14.98
BACK IN STOCK! Circle's next-to-newest is finally repressed and available again (sorry, the newest, Miljard, is currently out-of-stock, but back soon, we hope)...
NWOFHM. That's what it says on the inside of the cd booklet, in big bold letters. NWOFHM? WTF? If you don't get the joke, explaining it won't help, but here goes: New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal. Our Finnish friends Circle are apparently referencing the famed NWOBHM (New Wave Of British Heavy Metal) that took the rock world by storm circa 1979, giving us Saxon, Angel Witch, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Venom, Samson, and many many many more. What's that got to do with the Can and Neu! pulsed space/prog/post-rock normally practiced by Circle?? Well Circle fans know that these guys have indeed established their very own trademark "circular" sound (repetitive, rhythmic, looping, hypnotic rock) that, whirlpool-like, pulls in all sorts of influences, from the aforementioned Krautrock forefathers to jazz and dub and lo-fi drone improv and, yes, metal. When you get a new Circle album, you kinda both know what to expect *and* never know what to expect. Well we'll tell you about Circle's latest studio effort, Tulikoria. In part, it's Circle donning the leather and spikes (metaphorically, perhaps, though they threatened to do so for real live on stage at their show in San Francisco that was happening the night we originally posted this review). Circle's love of metal, specifically the true, traditional heavy metal of the '80s, has borne fruit before, on several of the songs from their amazing Sunrise album released in 2002 (sadly now out of print). So, the heavy metal component present on Tulikoira is precedented in the Circle discog. But, like Sunrise, this isn't just Circle "doing metal". It's a lot of other things besides! Nobody will confuse it for an "actual" metal album. But heavy metal is definitely, proudly an element here, amongst others. And graphically, too, it's an inspiration, as you'll see from Circle's new fangled, tough-looking symmetrical logo, which even incorporates a lightning bolt!
There's four tracks here, starting with "Rautakaarme", an atmospheric seven-minute cut featuring monkish chant, eerie drone, and energetic bursts of rock action. Second track "Tulilintu" is *entirely* active and energetic, really bringing in the headbanging, fist-pumping metal, complete with guitar leads and soaring screams in the manner of Rob Halford. Seriously. The lyrics are in Finnish (presumably) so we don't know how tongue-in-cheek-or-not they are. Track three, "Berserk", is kinda weird, another atmospheric exercise with some lines in English like "I'm a scorpion" and "I'm a crocodile" spoken over rather spooky, bass-heavy grooves. A lot of tension in this one. Could almost be a noirish film soundtrack from the '70s, but with additional "circular" electric guitar riffing. Then the final track "Puutiikeri" arrives, pretty much taking over the album since it's an epic 24 minute affair, beginning and ending with authentic heavy metal riffing, but journeying far and wide in-between. Creaky improv splatter, lush keyboards, gently whispering vocals, spacey electronic effects, chugging, pulsating rhythms (of course!), and even some quasi-techno beats (!) are stirred into this weird mix. Ranging in mood from calm tranquility to flat out rockin', this is a real trip, as is all of Tulikoira. If you've been following Circle's output in recent years, and rolling with all their eccentricies, from Sunrise to Guillotine to Forest to Empire, you'll be happy to add Tulikoria to your collection too!
[And by the way, that show was AWESOME! Circle destroyed! No spikes though.]
MPEG Stream: "Rautakaarme"
MPEG Stream: "Tulilintu"
MPEG Stream: "Berserk"

KLENCZON, KRYSZTOF Trzy Korony (Underground Masters) cd 21.00
Can't judge this by its cover, nosiree. All you get is fairly bland head shot of this Krystof Klenczon guy, with a pensive look to him, wearing a yellow shirt, his hair tousled, with sideburns. Nothing in the background, no guitar in hand. No clues about what this would sound like. Mellow, pop solo singer songwriter stuff maybe? NOPE.
Maybe that's why the folks that reissued this 1971 (there it is again!) album on cd felt the need to include a hyperbolic blurb -- sez here, right on the back cover: "Possibly the best Polish 70's rock album!! Psychedelic rock plenty of dirty fuzz guitar!!"
Well, we're not up enough on our Polish rock to be 100 percent sure about their first claim (nor can we say otherwise), but we do agree that this is chock full of dirty fuzz guitar, that's for sure. Pretty darn kick ass. The songs are all catchy and energetic, real rave ups with enough searing fuzz to impress freakin' Sir Lord Baltimore. You can hear influences from the Beatles, and maybe folk music (but no polkas!) and though it's not Middle Eastern psych rock, but rather Eastern Bloc psych rock, this should appeal to a lot of you into that brand of wild, groovy, exotic psych. And you gotta love the fuzz. So good. If you agree that "prog is not a four letter word" you'd probably like this. In fact, Klenczon was a member of the '60s beat band Czerwone Gitary, who appeared on the comp of that title that we reviewed a couple lists back. We described their track as fierce and fuzzy, so it's no surprise Klenczon solo amps it up even more at the dawn of the '70s.
MPEG Stream: "Spotkanie Z Diablem (Meeting The Devil)"
MPEG Stream: "Bierz Zycie Jakie Jest (Take It As It Is)"

DARK FOG Cosmic Tone (Original Sound Recordings) cd 10.98
Look past the garish, whooah-I'm-trippin'-now psychedelic cover art of Dark Fog's Cosmic Tone and you'll find a quite moody and marvellous and, yes, psychedelic debut album from this Chicago-land band, who've loaded up on trippy guitar effects and super spaced-out vocals to produce this hypnotic 33 minute dose of stoner/psych shoegazer bliss. Some parts are hushed and mellow, others Deetroit drivin', chugging along with nods to Pink Floyd, Spacemen Three, and Hawkwind... we'd also compare these guys favorably to such contemporary comrades-in-arms as Pharaoh Overlord, Acid Mothers Temple, and Dead Meadow. It's heavy (in that "heavy, maaan" way that we differentiate from, like, doom metal heaviness, such as that practiced by labelmates Buried At Sea), with lot of fuzz and drone but definitely also has a lighter, melodic side that makes this swirling dark fog seem rather welcoming, more fragrant than miasmic, redolent of aromatic smoke and suffused with a gentle glow. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Anywhere"
MPEG Stream: "Cosmic Dust"

BATS (MICHEL BARATAUD) The Inaudible World - A Sound Guide Of The French Bats (Ballade Dans L'inaudible - Methode D'identification Acoustique Des Chauves-Souris De France) (Sittelle) 2cd 39.00
I know we've said this before, but the more crazy animal sounds we hear, the more we wonder why musicians even bother. Sure, you'd be hard pressed to get a pop song out of a sled dog or a purring kitten or an insect or a croaking frog, but for any other sounds all bets are off. Be it rumbling or clicking or squeaking or whirring or chirping or some impossible mix of all of those, or even (especially) those sounds we're not exactly sure how to describe, the animal kingdom has us beat. Thousands of years of evolution, technological advances, every manner of sound making device imaginable, and somewhere, there's some little furry thing that can make those same sounds with its mouth or by rubbing its legs together, or using some parts only they possess. That's what makes records like this totally fascinating and completely humbling.
Most of us have seen bats at one time or another, flitting overhead, barely visible in the dark, or maybe at the zoo. But who among us has ever really heard a bat, until now? And these recordings aren't the mewlings and scratchings and other various sounds that small animals make, no these are the sounds of the bats' ultra sensitive sonar, recorded by expert Michel Barataud using a heterodyne detector and a simple tape recorder, culled from a study that lasted from 1988-1995 and covered 251 different bats of 20 different species! The neat thing about this collection is the fact that there are two discs, one with the original recordings, the other with those same recordings slowed down 10 times (we we can hear what the bats are "hearing"). So cool!
The first disc is an expansive series of creaks and clicks, percussive knocks and thumps, strange melodies that sound like analog synths, high pitched pulses, shortwave-like squawks, chattering, sputtering Geiger counter-like rhythms, all very minimal and totally hypnotic. Sounds so much like a record on ultra-minimalist label Raster-Noton it's not even funny. One can almost imagine Ryoji Ikeda or Alva Noto, after spending years locked in a pressure sealed white cube of a studio, packed with state of the art sound modules, liquid cooled speakers, hard disc recorders, every bit of sound recorded and played back in a perfect listening vacuum, each click and tone painstakingly crafted and carefully placed, stepping outside with finished disc in hand, and then upon hearing the delicate fluttering pattern of clicks and chirps of the bats' sonar, throwing their disc to the ground and stomping it to bits, uttering in their best Simpsons Comic Book Guy voice, "Oh... I've wasted my life."
Gorgeously spare and hauntingly musical, an uber-minimal intricate rhythmic soundfield with impossibly abstract barely there melodies and surrounded by the sounds of no sound. Lovely.
On disc two, those very same sounds are slowed down, and thus become less like percussive clicks and more like melodic chirps. The slowed down versions sound remarkably like bird calls, but unlike the trills and songlike elements of birdsong, each note here is suspended all by itself, floating in a soundscape of ambient whir, before it is supplanted by the next. An extended melody spread out over minutes instead of seconds, like a 45 rpm record of bird calls played at 16 rpm. The sped up sounds on disc two are occasionally joined by the sounds of insects and the surrounding landscape, filling out the sound with the chirp of crickets and the croaking of frogs, a distant cacophony underpinning the bats' mysterious melodies.
Included is a 50 page oversized book which contains all of the field notes, recording details, notes on each track and each animal, complete with charts and graphs, very dense and scientific, and there's even a page with a blank chart so you can go out there and take some field recording notes yourself!
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track One"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Two"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Four"
MPEG Stream: "Disc One, Track Six"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track One"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Two"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Three"
MPEG Stream: "Disc Two, Track Four"

BRINCOS World Devil Body [aka Mundo Demonio Carne] (Zafiro) cd 16.98
Another gem from Spain's psychedelic past! We've been getting some very interesting reissues of Spanish stuff lately (Agamenon, Tapiman, Eduardo Bort, Smash, The Spanish Trip comp, etc.) and this Brincos disc is one to add to that list. From 1970, this is psych-pop with a bit of a prog bent, especially on the album's ambitious lead-off / title track, "Mundo Demonio Carne", which clocks in at over twelve minutes long and is a real psych odyssey. Fuzzed out rockin' morphs into gentle folky melodicism and back into dramatic prog soundscapery. Worth it almost for this track alone, though happily the rest of the album is equally excellent and eclectic, from blues rock workouts to handclapping pop to fake raga ("Kama-Sutra"). There's lots of groove, and lots of lush, infectious melodies -- the kind that make you hit 'play' over and over again.
Some comparisons we could make, which may only make sense to those well versed in the pop/prog/psych obscurities of the era: Los Dug Dug's meets The Millenium? Aphrodites Child + Os Mutantes + Kak?? Well, if you know who some/all of those bands are you're probably the sort of person who would enjoy Brincos -- though that's not to say that if you've never heard of any of 'em you wouldn't like Brincos. Far from it. This is some appealing stuff that anyone with an ear for colorful, poppy psychedelia should dig...
This import from Spain is World Devil Body's offical reissue version and includes both Spanish and English language versions of many of the album's tracks.
MPEG Stream: "Mundo Demonio Y Carne"
MPEG Stream: "Esa Mujer"

TRUCK Surprise, Surprise (Guerssen) cd 21.00
Here are the few facts we've gathered about this band Truck and their (apparently only) album entitled Surprise, Surprise: they were from faraway Malaysia, released this rare record back in 1974, and were obviously pretty big Beatles fans by the sound of it! And (less of a fact, more of an opinion) they're pretty rad. Sung in English, the ten tracks here are wonderful pop psych that could have come out of London in '68, by a band like Kaleidoscope... well, except for one element: the unexpected strains of spacey analog Moog synth heard in many of these songs. That helps make this Truck album extra-special. But it would be pretty special anyway, with its blend of dreamy, sunny melodies, lush studio orchestration, and a bit of fuzz guitar riffing. And while seemingly inspired by the Fab Four, Truck aren't just about them. We hear hints of The Who, The Creation, and even Joe Walsh in there just as much as ELO or Badfinger. But of course we'd recommend it to people who like obscure, Beatlesy bands like The Aerovons or Peru's We All Together. Released on cd (supposedly limited edition) by the Spanish label Guerssen, this is one of those cool out-of-the-blue reissues we're always stoked to hear! Nice!!
MPEG Stream: "Surprise, Surprise"
MPEG Stream: "This Is Our Love Song"

CICADAS AND CRICKETS (JEAN C. ROCHE & JEAN THEVENET) Cicadas And Crickets (Gigales Et Grillons) (Sittelle) cd 24.00
Chirp chirp chirp chirp... those of us who grew up somewhere outside of the city where you get to hear the sounds of nature at night are familiar with the wonderful, pulsating background drone provided by crickets and cicadas in warmer weather. These particular "singing" insects (60 different species!) were recorded all over the world (in France, China, Boreno, Cameroon, Australia, Venezuela, Sengal, and many, many other locales), but some of them could just as easily been in my parents' wooded backyard in Pennsylvania. OK, well maybe if I was an expert I could tell otherwise. But the buzzing chirping sounds still sound familiar, comfortingly so. Yet alien too, when you think about it... as with the somewhat similar Sublime Frequencies volume Broken Hearted Dragonflies, this could just as easily be the work of an experimental electronic musician! Ryoji Ikeda, Noto, or Nerve Net Noise perhaps...and the examples of "buzzers" on the Conet Project also come to mind.
With sixty tracks here, it's hard to pick faves. They all have their individual charms, each group of insects its own rhythmic and timbral signature, plus the different background ambience (frogs, bumble bees, woodpeckers) found from track to track, some recorded at "nightfall in a banana plantation" others at "twilight in a plam grove", or "during the day from a tree" etc. Also, these bugs' high pitched whines and massed chattering vary in intensity levels from the soothing to the downright frightening...
Definitely recommended to all you fans of the likes of Sounds of North American Frogs and Chris Watson's field recordings. And, as further recommendation, this comes from the from the same label that brought us Rutting Red Deers, The Inaudible World of Bats, and this week's Record Of The Week, Pastoral Bells!
MPEG Stream: "Crickets: Reunion Island (track 14)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: China (track 35)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: Venezuela (track 47)"
MPEG Stream: "Cicadas: Malasisa (track 40)"

MUDBOY This Is Folk Music (Last Visible Dog) cd 12.98
We first heard the oddly named Mudboy on Last Visible Dog's recent mammoth six-cd Invisible Pyramid: Elegy Box. Curiousity thus piqued, we're pleased to now find a Mudboy full-length cd has now also just been released by LVD (actually, this is a reissue of a recording previously put out by an even smaller label). This Rhode Island feller's woozy music, performed with home-built electronics and modified vintage keyboards (a circuit-bent church organ we're told), would be the perfect soundtrack to a creepy, sleepy sort of imaginary movie... this cd's full of ominous drones and sinister synth but it's also soothingly repetitive and goshdarn lovely. Whooshing interludes bridge the spaced out explorations of minor-key organ melodies that permeate the disc, occasionally infiltrated by field recordings and broken rhythmic glitch. It's an atmosphere of menace that's strangely warm and inviting. If Bo Hansson's ghost made Halloween music, or down on his luck Eric Malmberg (keyboardist of Sagor & Swing) was hired to play a lullabies for a monster baby...they'd sound a bit like Mudboy, perhaps. And if "this is folk music", then Cluster and John Carpenter are folk music too, 'cause Mudboy seems to be inspired by both kraut-tronics and analog fright flick scores. And we're ready to snuggle up with that monster baby...
MPEG Stream: "Solitron Wave"
MPEG Stream: "Lost"

CATHEDRAL The Garden Of Unearthly Delights (Nuclear Blast) cd 15.98
These leading British doom eccentrics doom it up in their usual unique style on this, their eighth long-player. The Garden Of Unearthly Delights sees Cathedral happily (yup, happy doom!) doing just what they want, secure in the knowledge that they've reached a stage in their career where they have fans who love 'em for just being themselves. In other words, their '70s prog obessions are waaaay to the fore here, resulting in the disc's grand finale, a tricky five-hour opus (well, not quite that long, it's more like half an hour) called "The Garden". And we must say they do a better job of it this time than they did some years ago on the equally epic ep-track "Voyage Of The Homeless Sapien". Back then they bit off a bit more than they could chew, now they're up to the task. It helps having a guest female singer with a sweet voice to duet with Lee Dorrian's characteristic gravelly gargle. There's about a million parts to it, bits echoing Led Zeppelin at one moment, Magma at another, etc. etc.
But besides that utter progfest, there's plenty of other crushing tracks here to provide Cathedral fans with more in the way of straightforward Sabbathy rifforama (and other surprises), just like you'd expect from these guys. We also have to mention the hidden bonus track on which Lee runs down a list of all their favorite obscure '70s prog/kraut/psych bands, while the band does some heavy vamping behind him! Blast Furnace, Cosmic Dealer, Irish Coffee, Supersister, Icecross, Paternoster, Nosferatu, Hairy Chapter, and a bunch more all get name-checked. Gotta love that.
Sorry, we don't have the import digipack anymore with the scratch-and-sniff apple smelling cd, just the regular jewel case edition.
MPEG Stream: "Tree Of Life And Death"
MPEG Stream: "North Berwick Witch Trials"

LEAF HOUND Growers Of Mushroom (Repertoire) cd 21.00
Along with the likes of Captain Beyond, Bang, Dust, and Sir Lord Baltimore, the UK's Leaf Hound are one of the obscure '70s proto-metal acts often cited in the annals of stoner rock history. Heck they're called Leaf Hound and their (only) album is titled Growers Of Mushroom! Can't get much more stoner rock than that. Originally released in (you guessed it) 1971, Leaf Hound's album was a showcase for the powerful pipes of vocalist Pete French (who later spent stints at the mic for both Atomic Rooster and Cactus) and the heavy-duty hard rock riffage of guitarist Mick Halls (who, along with French, previously was a member of the Brunning Sunflower Blues Band and Black Cat Bones). And really Growers Of Mushroom is worth it to all '70s metal fans for the fierce "Freelance Fiend" that leads off the album. That track's a screamin' classic. If the whole album rocked as hard it'd be hard to beat as the heaviest thing from '71. But, while some other cuts on here approach a "Freelance Fiend" level of metal mania, such as "Stagnant Pool" (which sounds like anything but), there's some mellower material to be found as well, wherein French shows off his soulful side. But Led Zeppelin fans won't mind such bluesy workouts as "Drowned My Life In Fear", either. And Zep fans were probably just who Leaf Hound were hoping to hook when they recorded this record way back when. Too bad this was pretty much it for Leaf Hound (more on that in a sec), but their legacy lives on. A lot of AQ customers probably know that there's even a doom/stoner rock label in Japan named after this band! So, we're happy to have this swank 2005 Repertoire cd reish, remastered and complete with lyrics and liner notes in a nice digipack. And it's got three bonus tracks. Two non-album cuts (one wimpy, one pretty good) from back in the day, and a brand NEW track as well. Yep, that's right. Pete French has hooked up with some young 'uns to form a new, revitalized Leaf Hound, who've been gigging anew -- they even played a show with spiritual descendents Witchcraft! Normally we'd cringe at the thought of sullying the reissue of a cult album from 30+ years ago with a "bonus" track recorded recently, but the new Leaf Hound's "Too Many Rock 'n Roll Times" ain't that bad. The guy can still sing and it sounds like Leaf Hound, so why not?
MPEG Stream: "Freelance Fiend"
MPEG Stream: "Drowned My Life In Fear"

DR. KNOW The Best of... (Mystic Records) cd 14.98
The best of '80s Oxnard metalli-punks Dr. Know collected on one handy disc. Maybe you've heard Slayer's version of "Mr. Freeze"?

FLAMEN DIALIS Symptome - Dei (MIO Records) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
BACK IN STOCK, last ever copies however as the MIO label has sadly chosen to close up shop! So we grabbed a few of our faves (this and the Jean Cohen-Solal). Here's our review from when we first listed this:
We've been doing this long enough to know that there's certain types of AQ customers we can rely upon. One catagory being those into the weird, obscure '70s prog-psych stuff. Folks who know what the Nurse With Wound list is (heck maybe even have it memorized), and can't help but be more excited about lost treasures from 30 years ago being reissued on cd than they are about the latest indie-rock or electronica gem (though chances are you might dig those too). Well if you're one of those folks, or maybe just feel especially sonically adventurous today, we've got another reissue for ya: Flamen Dialis. Which is, we're told, the ancient Roman name for the high priest of Jupiter, and is a suitably archaic name for an quite arcane sounding band. Like Magma (and some of our favorite previous MIO reissues, Jean-Cohen Solal and Birge-Gorge-Shirac) this group hailed from France, and indeed this has a bit of that cosmic Magma vibe to it. They released this now very rare record, their sole album, in 1979, and there's also a 7" Flamen Dialis single from 1978 included on this cd reissue too. The music they made was progressive and psychedelic, but not exactly rock. It's weird and atmospheric, soundtracky stuff, very ritualistic and repetitive in nature. With chants and whispers, martial drums and zinging synths, vibraphone and Mellotron, flutes and even some brief blues guitar licks and what sounds like a rhythm machine, this is quite otherwordly and dreamlike -- not exactly dreamy (or nightmarish either) just strange. Both eerie and a little goofy too... Like a soundtrack (or a dream), themes are revisted, and the album drifts smoothly from Medieval European to Eastern sounding exoticism. We're reminded a bit of that Musique de la Grece Antique album of pseudo-ancient Greek music by the Atrium Musicae de Madrid (an AQ perennial) and Igor Wakhevitch and Franco Battiato and Magical Power Mako and, well, if you're with us this far you *are* one of the AQ customers mentioned above and maybe should just trust us when we say you ought to check this out!
MPEG Stream: "Dernier Croisade"
MPEG Stream: "Decouverte"

JESU Heartache (Dry Run) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This debut ep from Justin Broadrick's (of Godflesh) new outift Jesu has been a bit tough to keep in stock, and since when we originally had it we loved it so much we made it Record Of The Week, and since we finally managed to get more, we figured we'd relist it so those of you who missed out the first time can get another crack. Here's what we had to say about it last time:
Since we made Jesu's debut full length on Hydrahead one of our records of the week recently, it was pretty much a no brainer that Jesu's Heart Ache ep would have to be a record of the week as well. Especially since some of us might actually even like it a little better than the full length, and unlike the Hydrahead release, this one has been impossibly difficult to track down, until now.
Heart Ache, released on Dry Run, a tiny UK independent label, was to be our first glimpse of Justin Broadrick's much anticipated post Godflesh project (but for most of us, it's actually a second glimpse since it's taken until now for us to get copies to list) and sonically it sounds exactly like you might imagine a record between the last Godflesh record and the totally amazing Jesu full length would sound.
We had all pretty much given up on Godflesh. Gone was the glorious industrial pummel of Streetcleaner and gone too was the dubbed out machine metal of Slavestate, and in their place, tired rehashed riffs, shouted atonal vocals, and uninspired songwriting. So while our age-old love of early Godflesh had us super excited to hear this Jesu everyone was talking about, we were pretty much ready to be disappointed. Which was precisely why we were so blown away when we finally heard it. Everything we loved about Godflesh was there, plus a new found love of melody, swoonsome clean vocals, expanded insturmentation (piano!) and extended slow building tracks of brooding intensity and smoldering instrumental ferocity, all smeared into dreamy industrial bliss drone epics!
Unlike the full length, on which Jesu is a full band with a live drummer, on Heart Ache, Jesu is just Broadrick, a guitar, a piano, and of course a drum machine. Ahhh, the drum machine. How it warms our Streetcleaner worshipping hearts. Clangy and clattery, brittle guitars soar over crumbling distorted rumbles, all machinelike and clinical but imbued with a weirdly organic lushness. Drifting clouds of ghostly feedback, sonic vapor trails of haunting minor key swells, all slip and shift into vast stretches of shimmering cinematic ambience, with slowly pealing guitar tones and synthesized chant-like vocals, gorgeously melancholy almost Goblin-esque in its creepy beauty. Everything held together by smooth, clean, barely affected vocals, all dreary and weary, repeating simple mantra-like lyrics, distant and otherworldly. The whole thing sheds its industrial armor as it moves forward, showing more skin, becoming more vulnerable, becoming less and less rigid, and more and more soft and indistinct. Pretty, dreamy, blissed out and sweetly sorrowful, with Broadrick's endlessly repeated, haunting refrain drifitng and fading, like a mirage that may have never been there at all. And that's just the first track.
The second track is just as surprising as the first, starting off with spare solo piano, joined eventually by simple, finger-picked guitar, eventually drifting into a simple low end piano chord, repeated over and over and over, floating in the inky blackness, until the song lurches into a sludgy crawl, with huge murky downtuned riffs (think Fudge Tunnel's "Hate Song" at 16rpm), but then Broderick confounds again with heavily delayed, clean vocals, singing in a strangely hypnotic counterpoint to the main riff. Dizzying and quite lovely. It's a constant tug of war between the black hole tar pit dirge and the almost hopeful sounding vocals. Like the first song, track two devolves into a whole 'nother beast, as it slows down and blisses out, with lilting melodies creeping into the sludge and making what was only moments before a metallic behemoth crushing all in its wake, into a creepy rickety, buzzy back porch crawl, spare and skeletal, with distorted piano, buzzing fret noise and lots of ambient reverb that's gradually smoothed out into a fuzzy smear of static, beneath a simple low end piano figure, chiming and ringing out into nothingness. One of those rare records that manages to be heavy yet pretty, beautiful but scary, sweet and sorrowful, darkly doomy and gloriously luminous!
MPEG Stream: "Heart Ache"
MPEG Stream: "Ruined"

GIRTH Living In Truth (Hector Stentor) cd 9.98
FINALLY BACK IN STOCK!
Wow! This is one for all of you always seeking out the ultimate mathy heaviness. Girth are a guitar and drums duo from up Seattle way, and they dish out some seriously deranged, detailed, devastating instrumental mayhem here. There's a dozen songs on this 42 minute debut and they're all hella herky and jerky and heavy. Did we just say Hella? Well that'd be one comparison, along with Bozart and Breadwinner, though Girth are way more of a metal-riffed monster that those bands, something of which we totally approve. Girth's spazzy string-strangulation and amazing octopoidal drumming is balanced by their crushing low-end chunk and high-tension rocka rolla, and there's even some nice, calming interludes of post-rockish near melody. It's sorta like Crom-Tech or Orthrelm, but just a bit less maddening, more musical. At times this could be the Melvins, playing Black Flag's Process Of Weeding Out while on a caffine binge, throwing in some Entombed or Eyehategod riffs while they're at it. Or the Fucking Champs and Slayer as possessor demons doing battle for control of the same host body. The most important point is, that as hectic and heavy as this can be, it manages to be super listenable as well, something that we don't always get from the math core crowd. We like it. A lot. An impressive debut for sure, packaged with some suitably beautifully chaotic yet precise Stephen O'Malley designed graphics.
MPEG Stream: "Defaced By Her Unconscious"
MPEG Stream: "Discreet Rendezvous"
MPEG Stream: "Monopolizing The Pleasure Dome"

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR H To He Who Am The Only One (Virgin / EMI) cd 16.98
Yay! Three classic albums by one of our favorite '70s prog rock bands just got reissued, with bonus tracks and remastering and vast new liner notes and all that good stuff, with more reissues to come. So we thought we'd list the two that we'd reviewed previously, and then maybe next time we can write up the other one we've got as well. Back when we first reviewed these, we did it 'cause we knew that lots of AQ customers had been digging our Italian prog recommendations (like Osanna) and buying tons of Magma reissues and of course always loving the good ol' Krautrock, and we figured that such customers are just the types who'd probably like VDGG too.
As you may know, several folks here are pretty big into the '70s prog thing (despite having been but little kids back then) and one band we really all agree on is the mighty Van Der Graaf Generator from the UK. They're definitely a bit out of the ordinary. He To He... was the group's third album, from 1970. It's a great example of their bombastic, dark power and unique instrumental formula. Saxophone (with "devices"), Hammond organ, and tympani are the sort of thing that dominates VDGG's sound, along with the crucial component of Peter Hammill's dramatic, declamatory vocals of course. He's had his own successful solo career running in parallel with Van Der Graaf from the band's very earliest days, and clearly he's a cult figure, a frontman that some will love and some will hate. His wide-ranging voice courses like blood through the flesh of this album's five epic conceptual tracks (the shortest song here is over 6 minutes, the longest more than 12), tracks that must have elicited many a "heavy, man" comment at the time. The heaviest might be opener "Killer", the sad saga of, yes, the lonely killer whale. Other songs, like "House With No Door", are more gentle and melodic, yet still quite gloomy and bleak. Please don't mistake our use of the term "heavy" here -- although Hammill's voice will sometimes rise into a metallic shriek, the Generator have more in common with jazz than heavy metal, being way more Soft Machine than Machine Head (Deep Purple).
The bonus tracks are but two in number but one of 'em is over fifteen minutes long, the previously unreleased "Squid 1 / Squid 2 / Octopus", an early VDGG concert staple recorded live in the studio.
MPEG Stream: "The Emperor In His War-Room"

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR Pawn Hearts (Virgin / EMI) cd 16.98
Reissued and remastered and w/ five bonus tracks! Pawn Hearts was Van Der Graaf's fourth album, originally released in 1971. Like its immediate predecessor He To He Who... it's certainly one of their classics, equally as epic, emotive, and extravagant. These guys were outrageous musicians, ambitious lyricists, and definite prog rock nutters who made music so outre and intense at the time that it should appeal to weirdos today just as much as it did back in the early 1970s.
The side-long, ten-part "A Plague of Lighthouse Keepers" is one of those prog rock suites that belongs in the pantheon alongside "Karn Evil 9", "Supper's Ready" and "Gates Of Delerium" for sure. Next to King Crimson (whose Robert Fripp contributes some guitar work on both of these albums), VDGG is the darkest, weirdest, most "outside" commercially-popular '70s prog rock band we can think of from the UK. A worthy contemporary to the likes of Magma, Amon Duul II and Goblin from the Continent.
MPEG Stream: "Lemmings (Including Cog)"

VAN DER GRAAF GENERATOR The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other (Virgin / EMI) cd 16.98
Real nice, these new Van Der Graaf Generator reissues are. We're glad they they've now got US distribution, though we'd have happily paid $30 for the import versions (Andee and Allan both did for some of 'em, actually, oops). All the prog fans here are stoked, 'specially since VDGG are one of our top prog faves. We've already listed the reissues of Pawn Hearts and H To He Who Am The Only One, and we'll try to get to them all, one by one... so here's VDGG's second album, from 1969 (following their debut Aerosol Grey Machine, not a part of this reissue series though there is a cd we do stock), maybe the first that really displayed their signature sound in a fully formed fashion. That sound: bombastic, epic, emotional, complex, slightly jazzy, eccentric. And probably an acquired taste. Partly because VDGG's instrumentation isn't the standard guitar/bass/drums -- they've got saxophone and keyboards, mainly, alongside the drums. Plus their most distinctive sonic feature, Peter Hammill's exceedingly dramatic, dominating vocals! Love 'em or hate 'em vocals, we'd venture to guess. His voice is perfect, though, for the sweeping grandeur of VDGG's music, which can be quite gentle (as on this album's most pop hit, speaking loosely, "Refugees"), and at other times so much darker, heavier, and more hectic (as on "White Hammer" wherein Hammill sings about the Inquisition). All this power and passion is reflected in Hammill's intelligent, questioning, quasi-mystical lyrics, and is furthermore augmented by the suggestion of church and worship brought in by the use of the electric organ.
Yes indeed, VDGG is very weird and very much it's own thing... there's definite connections to the likes of King Crimson and Genesis, and '60s psychedelia, but ultimately nothing else sounds quite like these guys. The Least We Can Do, which features a surreal depiction of an actual Van Der Graaf generator on its cover, is a fine starting point and/or an essential part of their discography for fans building a VDGG collection. This reissue, in addition to being digitally remastered and boasting extensive liner notes in the cd booklet, also features two bonus tracks, the single version of "Refugees" and its non-album B-side, "Boat Of Millions Of Years". Recently we came across an old print advertisement for this single, the tag line of which was: "Some of today's violence is innocence defending itself... some of today's music is Van Der Graaf Generator."
MPEG Stream: "Refugees"
MPEG Stream: "Whatever Would Robert Have Said?"
MPEG Stream: "After The Flood"

NADJA Truth Becomes Death (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
Crashing waves of balls of yarn. That's one attempt to explain this band's sound... Along with bringing in the usual Earth, SUNNO))), and Boris comparisons. The Toronto based duo of Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, flute, piano, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass and vocals) are an "atmospheric doom" band whose slow moving, heavy and heavily distorted music definitely shares something with the likes of early Earth, but although they've done a split 3" with UK doom nasties Moss (among several previous underground releases) you can't really define them as being a "metal" band at all. Their gauzy, droney, doom-spelled-backwards music has a warm, melodic underpinning, somewhere within the billowing clouds of distortion that form the three long tracks found here. I guess it's something like the churchy, "funereal" doom of Finland's Skepticism, really, but even more calm, echoed and ambient. Melancholic but very pleasant, with both growled vocals and gentle singing hovering just beneath the surface, this music somehow suggests rays of pure white light shining down from on high to illuminate their low-end murk... and during the final third of the last track "Breakpoint" the heaviness drops away altogether for a quietly sung coda that could be from the most mellow and poetic of indie-pop albums. Nadja's music is definitely more abstract and altered than, say, Ocean (another sludge-dirge outfit reviewed elsewhere this list), and is so much more beautiful than the monochrome darkness dwelt in by many other doom bands. If you can imagine an ultra-distorted hybrid of Growing, Codeine and, uh, Ras Algethi you'd maybe come close to the sound of Nadja... Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Bug / Golem"
MPEG Stream: "Breakpoint"

OLSSON, BJORN s/t (lobster) (Gravitation) cd 15.98
Ooooh. The fifth self-titled album of achingly melodic, wide-open spaces atmospheric, instrumental music from Sweden's Bjorn Olsson is here! And that makes us very very happy, although we must admit that what we've come to call his "seafood series" sure is confusing, and not just 'cause (aside from the cover art) we have any idea what it has to do with seafood. Probably nothing. However, each of his last four albums so far, including this one, have had some manner of delicous sea-creature depicted on the cover. Apparently this one's lobster, but y'see we thought that the second disc in the series was lobster. Turns out that was actually crawfish. Duh! Make a note of it. So, after shrimp, crawfish and crab comes lobster. Don't care for seafood? Well what about pasta? 'Cause it's Spaghetti Westerns that this music most reminds us of... 'Cause as you may know, soundtrack maestro Ennio Morricone is definitely one of the most obvious influences on Bjorn Olsson, and he brilliantly recreates the Morricone sound here, including bringing back the wonderful whistling that we so loved on the disc that we now know as Olsson's self-titled (crawfish) album. Along with that haunting whistling, this moody high plains drifter music has got all the hallmarks of a Morricone composition: lonesome acoustic guitar, snappy militaristic snare, and the elegiac hum of a wordless choir. You can definitely imagine Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef squaring off to a soundtrack like this, cigars clenched in teeth, sun beating down, dust and desperation heavy in the air. Which is to say, it's goddamn gorgeous. There's eight tracks, the eighth being almost one full hour in length, incorporating and expanding upon melodies visited earlier in the disc, much in the manner of a soundtrack, where themes are often reprised. Compared to Olsson's last album, the one with the crab on the cover, this is much less gritty and lo-fi, and without the hints of '60s psych-rock guitar. But no less recommended. Is this the best Bjorn yet? Andee, for one, thinks so. Of course, we do like 'em all... this one, though, may be the cleanest sounding, and perhaps the most Morricone.
MPEG Stream: "Melodi i H-moll"
MPEG Stream: "Lang lat i A-dur"

4 LEVELS OF EXISTENCE, THE s/t (Lion Productions) cd 15.98
Gosh. We're just constantly amazed at the wealth of obscure psych/prog "buried treasure" from all over the world that's continually being unearthed by all the industrious reissue labels out there. Lion Productions in particular has a darn good track record, we'd say (they blew us away earlier this year with the Classical M disc, amongst other cool reissues). Here's a great example, as out of the blue they present us the lone album by a Greek band called The 4 Levels Of Existence, originally released as a (now very rare and expensive) private press LP in 1976. And while a few of our far-gone record collector geek friends knew about this already, we sure hadn't ever heard of it before, but we're glad to get introduced to it now! It's a real folk-flavored fuzz monster, full of wailing guitar leads, melancholic lyrics (sung in their native Greek), majestic melodies, acoustic interludes, and did we say FUZZ? With all the fuzz this is fairly hard and heavy, but in a '60s garage band sorta way (despite being from the mid-'70s, this sounds earlier). Pretty much exactly what you'd hope a bunch of young, basement dwelling longhairs from an Athens suburb would create if they spent all their time jamming, studying philosophy, and drinking ouzo, as we can pretty much assume was the case here. Prog-laced and imbued with traditional folk melody, in a lot of ways this has got a similar vibe to the many awesome '60s and '70s Turkish psych bands we dig, even though Turkey and Greece have been far from friendly neighbors historically.
This legendary record (as we now know it to be) certainly is one of the coolest things we've heard from Greece from back when, alongside Socrates Drank The Conium and Aphrodite's Child. And as we've come to expect from Lion, this reish is no shoddy package. It comes with a thick booklet of liner notes (scribed by 4 Levels' rhythm/acoustic guitarist Athanasios Alatas), lyrics (in both Greek and translated into English too), and photos. Recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Wilderness"
MPEG Stream: "Someday In Athens"

EARLY MAN Closing In (Matador) cd 14.98
These guys hit us last year with a three-song ace to the face taster of their very VERY heavy metal music, and we've been waiting to get hurt with more ever since. Now is the time. That utterly ass-kicking demo (released as a cdep on Monitor) led to this NYC based duo getting signed to Matador, who have just released their debut full-length album. It's already in our mental list of top ten metal discs of the year and we recommend these eleven songs (including one, "Death Is The Answer", reprised from that ep) to everybody and everybody with a headbanging bone in their body. But of course, the fact that these guys, despite totally looking the part of long-haired heshers (and, more importantly, sounding like it), are on an indie rock label and used to have indie scene notable Dave Pajo (Slint/Tortoise/Aerial M) holding down the bass position, might cause some metal purists to question their cred. Not to mention that this disc was produced by Matt Sweeney (of Chavez and more recently Superwolf with Will Oldham fame) and he threw some of his own six string action on there. But whatever. Suspect poserdom all you want, but the fact remains, this band rules. These songs are just so darn heavy and aggressive and catchy, with real vocals, sing-along refrains, and plenty of energetic, killer riffs. Can't argue with the riffs. Simply classic stuff.
Our pal Josh holds that music is never really "about" anything, other than music itself, referencing and commenting upon prior musical forms and examples (he should know, having been the guitarist for The Fucking Champs, who've always been very upfront about admitting and celebrating the influences they synthesized into their own distinctive sound). This notion certainly seems to apply to the music of Early Man, big time. And perhaps it could act as a defense against those who will accuse Early Man of sounding too much like certain other bands. Which it can't be denied that they do -- Early Man makes it easy to spot their influences, as was already made plain by that ep release last year. You'd have to be deaf, or I guess really old, not to hear the Metallica and the Black Sabbath in there. But hey, what's wrong with that? Metallica's NWOBHM influences (a la "Am I Evil") have also trickled down to Early Man for sure. So, if you dig the Sabs and the 'tallicatz and the NWOBHM (don't you??), you should definitely give Early Man a listen. Likewise if you're into such current bands as Wolf, High On Fire, The Champs, and Sheavy who keep the '70s and '80s metal spirit alive. Packaged in a digipak, with a nice stencil included so you can more easily spraypaint Early Man graffitti all over your neighborhood.
MPEG Stream: "Four Walls"
MPEG Stream: "Like A Goddamn Rat"

PISSED JEANS Shallow ( Parts Unknown) cd 14.98
A punk record for people who haven't bought a punk record in a while. It's not a retro exercise, but still something about this young Pennsylvania band brings back memories of '80s hardcore, Black Flag or Flipper back in the day, nasty punk scuzz with lots of badass guitar distortion and feedback, shambolic rock n' roll with rabid bite. The lyrics are sadsack smartass dumb, yowled over the band's noisy, catchy trashcan stomp, the vocalist really letting it all (down-and-)out on such songs as "I'm Sick," "Boring Girls", "Ashamed Of My Cum", and "I Broke My Own Heart." Can you feel sorry for someone who's wallowing in it? Doesn't matter, just enjoy the careening chaotic entertainment that results. The packaging features cool cartoon graphics of surburan banality.
MPEG Stream: "Boring Girls"
MPEG Stream: "Closet Marine"

31 KNOTS Talk Like Blood (Polyvinyl) cd 13.98
Quickly following up their fine The Curse Of The Longest Day ep with this excellent new full-length, Portland, Oregon's 31 Knots are satisfying all our abundant cravings for pop-smart, sonically rich indie rock gone prog. Prog as in Yes, to whom these guys have often been compared. And that's a good thing (if you aren't sure that's the case, you really should check out Fragile or Close To The Edge, to mention just two of the great Yes albums of the early '70s). As with such ye olde prog, the 31 Knots guys are top knotch instrumentalists... and no slouches at singing and writing songs either. Their Yessisms are more like hints of Yes (both their complexity and melodicism) informing and subverting songs that a less ambitious band might have crafted into more typical examples of the current "new wave" of white belted indie dance rock. And along with the pull of prog, this material is also shaped by the push of (arty) punk rock aggression as well. Fugazi, Yes, and I dunno, Elvis Costello might make strange bedfellows but 31 Knots make it seem like such a pajama party would be a good idea. Talk Like Blood's ten tracks bombastically blend heartfelt vocals, rubbery basslines, precise drumming, classical piano, electronic glitchscapes and lots more besides, always making moody and powerful and undeniably poppy music.
MPEG Stream: "Hearsay"
MPEG Stream: "Chain Reaction"

DUNGEN Stadsvandringar ( Astralwerks) cd 15.98
Huzzah! This is not only finally available again, but it is now also a much more economically priced domestic release! We used to stock the Swedish import, back before Dungen got popular enough to have US releases, but it went out of print pretty much exactly just before most people over here realized they wanted one. For all of you who have been digging Dungen's much-hyped third album Ta Det Lugnt or the recent cd reissue/expansion of their self-titled debut, but haven't yet had the opportunity to delve into the psych-pop wonders found on Dungen's second album Stadsvandringar, well here it is at long last!! It's probably our favorite Dungen release, at least as good or better than those other records. Here's what we said about it back in 2003 when we first listed it as an import:
Dungen's Stadsvandringar is Allan's new favorite cd (favorite new cd?). After a couple listens, he was well and truly hooked. Dungen is a Swedish band and what they play is Swedish retro psych-pop. Really really good Swedish retro psych-pop! This disc is, apparently, Dungen's second album after a vinyl-only effort that started a buzz. It looks and sounds perfectly '60s (or early '70s) with a front cover photo-collage in which wunderkind bandleader/singer/guitarist/songwriter Gustav Ejstes could be a dead ringer for a long-haired Owen Wilson. Musically, it sure casts a spell that that's definitely not-of-our-era... with sugary vocal refrains, wild fuzz guitars, Hammond B-3 organ riffing, lush arrangements, and some quite lovely flute bits (gettin' a bit proggy there, nothing wrong with that). Hints of trad Swedish folk music show up as well, not unlike that Arbete Och Fritid, one of Dungen's Svenska psych-prog-folk forefathers. The vocals are all in Swedish, and are sorta nasal, but good. Overall, this disc is just magical, convincingly retro yet standing on its own songwriting-wise. Melodically it's just as irresistable as the latest from Dungen's pal Bjorn Olsson, also reviewed here recently, but of course Dungen is more of a psychedelic rock thing. Imagine, maybe, if you can, something somewhere between the Kinks and Caravan, circa '69, with Swedish singing... Or just take Allan's word for it, this is great!
MPEG Stream: "Stadsvandringar"
MPEG Stream: "Solen Stiger Upp Del 1 & Del 2"

EARTH Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (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.
It's all been leading up to this. In the early nineties, when most of us heard Earth for the first time, our minds were totally blown. What was that massive slab of fuzzy sludge doing on Sub Pop? Why didn't is sound like Soundgarden or Mudhoney or Tad? It didn't take long before we stopped asking questions like that and began wondering where the hell were all the other bands that sounded like Earth. Well, it took 10 years, but now that whole downtuned slow motion sludge thing is an actual genre. With more and more new bands popping up every day. All honoring the mighty sludge that was Earth. But those of you who were into Earth the first time around, might remember the band changing directions pretty dramatically, adding a drummer, and playing actual songs, even doing a Hendrix cover at one point, the Earth of old having mutated into a groovy sort of stoner post rock, propulsive swinging riffs, relentless chugging guitars, all wrapped in a druggy spacy swirl. Back then we were all a bit bummed out, as Earth became, well, more normal, at least to our ears. It was as close to selling out as Earth were liable to get. Back to the present day. Recordings started popping up here and there, along with rumors of actual Earth shows, limited 7"s and tour only 12"s, all filling us with an impossible anticipation. Earth was back. But if they were back, why were all the recordings from live shows and all several years old? It made sense, the sound of the new Earth practically picked up right where they left off, stretched out, spaced out, druggy post rock with simple drumming and wavering distorted riffs, not heavy per se, but dark and dreamy and mesmerizing. But none of that could have prepared us for the desolate, sun baked, slow crawl, shuffle and twang beauty of Hex. Definitely hewing closer to Earth's more recent post rockisms, Hex is warm and expansive, slow building and contemplative, with simple drums, heavily reverbed, not distorted, guitars, occasional lapsteel, the whole thing unfurling into a haunting twang, a ghost town desert lullaby, a Cormac McCarthy novel in song, tumbleweeds, miles of scrub and windblown landscapes, old dead trees, plenty of space for the cymbals to sizzle and each riff to drift into black clouded skies. Drone / doom / dirge / sludge purists (if there can be such a thing) may well be a bit disappointed, or at the very least confused. And Earth's history / reputation for black hole heaviness might be an albatross at this point as this new sound falls squarely within the territory of groups like Low, Codeine, Friends Of Dean Martinez, Calexico, Scenic, Torrez, Sixteen Horsepower, even Mazzy Star or Godspeed You Black Emperor. But ultimately none of that has anything to do with the fact that Hex is just simply beautiful. A dark and mysterious and truly haunting record. Huge swells of instrumental tension dissipate into warm washes of drift and shimmer, melodies are slowly uncoiling snakes, waking drowsily and slithering off sun baked rocks, every note and every drum beat, every slippery lapsteel swoop, every stretch of near silence, are all draped lazily over broken fences, fallen power lines, rusted out tractors, fallow fields. Dark clouds drift above, across a steel grey sky, sending small shadowy shapes scurrying across the landscape like mysterious creatures, the breeze is warm and smells of death and desolation. Every one is lost and alone, out of money, out of time, just waiting around to die. The mood is bleak, but the sound of Hex is so so beautiful. Somehow hopeful and full of joy, but the sort of joy that comes from being powerless and close to despair, and simply choosing joy over misery, finding happiness the way animals in the desert seek out moisture. The heart of Hex is heavy, the sound appropriately heavy as well, but in a way few conventionally heavy records can manage. A brooding, storm about to break, dam about to burst, soul about to loose itself from its earthly moorings and escape to a better place kind of heavy. The sound of the desert, and the human spirit, of death, of sadness and horror, of loneliness, of abandonment, of hearts breaking, lovers lost and drifting apart, of life. The sound of laying in the dry dirt, the breeze stretched across you like a moth eaten old blanket, eyes closed, the sun sending all sorts of shapes spinning behind your closed eyelids, memories becoming fuzzy and drifting away, your whole body and soul wrapped in a warm darkness, the world fading into nowhere, you fading into nothing.
THE VINYL HAS SUPER DELUXE PACKAGING, DIFFERENT ARTWORK AND AN EXTRA TRACK NOT ON THE CD!! The colored vinyl copies are gone. It's all black vinyl from now on.
MPEG Stream: "Lens Of Unrectified Night"
MPEG Stream: "An Inquest Concerning Teeth"
MPEG Stream: "Raiford (The Felon Wind)"

YOB Elaborations Of Carbon (12th Records) cd 13.98
Yay Yob! Ever since our doom-lovin' hearts here at AQ first went pitter-pat for the heavy sounds of Portland Oregon's Yob, we've been wanting to sell you this here record, their debut from 2002. But, until now, we were never able to get any. By the time we reviewed and raved about their second album of super-doomy space sludge, 2003's Catharsis, Elaborations Of Carbon had already gone out of print. They've done two more awesome albums since Catharsis (and we'd witnessed some great shows too), so we're bigger fans that ever and it's nice to finally be able to stock the entire Yob discog, now that this is back in print. So if you've been loving their latest, The Unreal Never Lived, as well as The Illusion Of Motion and Catharsis, and you don't have this one, here you go! Thank you 12th Records for finally getting off the couch and putting away the bong long enough to get this repressed.
This debut is definitely the Yob we know and love -- the Sabbathy riffery, the psychedelic drones, the unique, weirdly soaring vocal style, it's all here. If we were reviewing Yob for the first time, we'd probably say something about how this sorta sounds like stoner legends Sleep, but with even more creepy atmospheres and a unique vocal approach that sounds like Geddy Lee doing an Ozzy impersonation through a ton of effects (that's a good thing, really!). And being the band's first record, you know it's gonna have some of their best riffs on it. Compared to their subsequent releases, this one also is notable for having more, shorter songs in its 70 minutes... though there's still only six and most of 'em exceed ten minutes, with two over 15 each. Now they write, like, half-hour songs, but it's not like the head-nodding doom on this disc seems cramped for space. Recommended to Yob fans of course and anyone who hasn't yet checked them out but likes Ufomammut, Corrupted, Electric Wizard, Sleep, and the rest of the doom brigade of which Yob became definite members in good standing as soon as this album was originally released.
MPEG Stream: "Universe Throb"
MPEG Stream: "Clear Seeing"

ABSU Mythological Occult Metal 1991-2001 (Osmose Productions) 2cd 14.98
"The Gold Torques Of Ulaid", "Immortal Sorcery", "The Great Battle Moving From Ideal To Actual"? Are these chapters from a sanity-blasting tome of arcane magicks? Or lectures on mythic history or philosophy? Well, perhaps. But they're also song titles from this decade-spanning double cd collection of Absu tracks. Absu being one of our all time favorite black metal bands... if that's even an accurate description for them, 'cause there's a depth to what they do that seems like so much more than playing corpse-painted dress-up like so many black metal bands get away with. Absu, on the other hand, have definitely done their research. This Texan trio combines the evil old school speed/thrash attack of Slayer with Norwegian-style black metal mystery, adding a immense dose of magickal and mythical erudition and then taking things to a whole 'nother, never-breaking-character, Manowar-esque, Olde English speaking, are they serious or not?? level... They're a whole mindboggling package, a display of "total attention to detail" showmanship (or is it belief?) that utterly wows us, along with their raging musickal assault.
It should be noted that this new double cd is not a "best of". If it was, we'd say that even if you've never heard Absu before, you should check it out, 'cause they're one of the best "extreme" metal bands out there (and we mean "out there") and a "best of" would, therefore, be exceedingly good. Actually we'll say that anyway. But this is really a release for folks who are already fans of the band, 'cause it's a collection of rare tracks taken from various compilations and 7" eps. It also includes some live and otherwise previously unreleased material. So even if you have every Absu album, you don't have some of this. And you need it.
Disc one contains all the tracks from three hard-to-find (we don't have 'em!) 7" vinyl records -- Temples Of Offal, And Shineth Unto The Cold Cometh, and Hallstattian Swords -- plus their song from the the Gummo movie soundtrack, and more. It's all great stuff, from the solo soundtracky synth-scapes of the Hallstattian Swords tracks to the killer Mercyful Fateness of the alternate take of "Stone Of Destiny" from their most recent album, Tara.
Disc two is devoted to covers, live, and unreleased material. You get to hear Absuized versions of tracks by Mayhem (and krautrock's Conrad Schnitzler, since Absu's cover of "Deathcrush" includes the Schnitzler intro that Mayhem sampled on the original!), Possessed, Iron Maiden, and Destruction, most of which originally appeared on tribute comps to those respective artists. There's also four live cuts (worth it for the song intros alone!) and a couple unreleased rehearsal tracks. Again, all stuff any Absu fan can't live without. Just try, you'll die (someday, anyway). And you won't die as happy as you would if you'd had this.
MPEG Stream: "The Gold Torques Of Ulaid"
MPEG Stream: "The Winter Zephyr (...Within Kingdoms Of Mist) [live]"

CARPENTER, JOHN Escape From New York (OST) (Silva Screen) cd 16.98
Why are we making a soundtrack for a movie from 1983 starring Kurt Russell (who hams it up in a piratical eye-patch) our Record Of The Week, this week? Well, we've got a few reasons... first off, the music is awesome and we love it (good reason right there). Secondly, this cd has been out of print and hard to find for several years now, going for silly sums on eBay, sought after by soundtrack collectors and electronic music fans. When we heard that Silva Screen was finally going to reissue it, we started thinking Record Of The Week thoughts immediately... and now, after some further delay, here it is at last!
While director John Carpenter is known for making quite a few classic films in the B-grade horror and sci-fi thriller genres (Halloween, The Thing, Assault On Precinct 13, The Fog, They Live etc.), it's perhaps not as well known that he personally composed the soundtrack music to many of his movies, starting with his first flick Dark Star back in 1974. Working out of a home studio with what was technically advanced equipment at the time (machines which would now be considered awesomely vintage), he composed electronic music soundtracks that some might say are even better than the movies themselves. Certainly they're worthy to stand on their own, anyway (just like Goblin's soundtracks for Argento's films). Carpenter's compositions have influenced other musicians, and not just soundtrack writers. Anyone who loved the Zombi album we recommended last year needs to have some John Carpenter in their collection for sure!
And we recommend Escape From New York as being one of his best. Somehow it combines a lot of stuff that we figure a lot of you like: suspenseful Goblinesque darkness, droning old school synths, kitchy Disco Not Disco style NYC '80s groove... Loaded with claustrophobic nervous tension, these tracks make use of taut, minimalistic, hypnotically repetitive rhythms that make us imagine an Electro version of AQ faves Circle. The atmosphere is further enhanced by the inclusion of sound fx from the film and snippets of dialogue -- the tough guy banter of Kurt Russell's wiseass anti-hero "Snake" Plissken is priceless, especially due to Russell's constipated Clint Eastwood delivery.
Set in a dystopian, wartorn then-future of 1997, Escape From New York sends "Snake" into the maximum security prison that the island of Manhattan has become to rescue (at pain of death) the President of the United States, who is being held captive there by the city's "inmates" after Air Force One made a particularily poor choice of a place to crash-land! The film also stars the likes of Lee Van Cleef, Ernest Borgnine, Harry Dean Stanton, Adrienne Barbeau, Donald Pleasence, and Isaac Hayes, all of 'em capable of chewing the scenery right along with Russell. You definitely don't need to have seen Escape From New York to get a kick out of this soundtrack, but the movie is an enjoyable '80s action thriller worthy of its cult status and listening to this will probably get you to go rent it.
Carpenter composed and performed the score in association with sound designer Alan Howarth, whose home studio (stocked with an ARP Quadra, an ARP Avatar with 16 step sequencer, a Prophet 5 programmable analog synthesizer, and a Linn LM-1 drum machine) was used for the recording. Howarth was further responsible for remixing and remastering the album for the release of this "expanded edition" which first appeared in 2000. It includes several cues originally meant for scenes deleted from the theatrical release of the film, and runs to over 57 minutes in length. 'Bout time it was back in circulation!
MPEG Stream: "The Bank Robbery"
MPEG Stream: "Descent Into New York"
MPEG Stream: "Over The Wall"

DEATHSPELL OMEGA Kenose (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
This totally essential slab of avant / post black metal brilliance was just re-issued domestically by our doomy pals at Southern Lord, duplicating the awesome packaging of the import exactly. So if you missed out last time, thank your lucky stars, you just got another chance:
Metal heads around these parts have been completely obsessed with Deathspell Omega. And rightfully so. The first black metal band in a long while to totally reinvent black metal and make it their own. In a way that managed to turn lots of non-metal folks to the dark side while somehow remaining true and grim enough to keep the hardcore black metal elite satisfied. We mentioned in our review of the last DSO, that the best way to find out about the best bands, is to check out what the other best bands are listening to, and at the time, everyone from Leviathan to Nachtmystium to Crebain to Draugar were singing their praises. So when the word of a new DSO surfaced, we had the SF black metal horde showing up at the store all the time like kids at Christmastime, chomping at the bit for the new DSO. "Is it here yet?! Is It Here Yet?! IS IT HERE YET?" Well, it is finally here, and damn if it isn't even weirder and more intense and fucking amazing than we could have hoped for. Three tracks clocking in at about 36 minutes, of some of the most unique, idiosyncratic outsider black metal you'll ever hear. The first track starts off with four minutes of meandering and spacious post rock, a lilting melancholic soundscape, of finger picked guitars, big simple drumming, creepy whispered vocals, and snippets of ghostly disembodied voices, before the whole thing builds into a super angular minor key black metal burst of buzzing distorted riffing, arpeggiated melodies and blast beats that all sort of morphs into a very Ved Buens Ende sounding loping midtempo metallic groove, seasick and hypnotic sounding. The entire record is peppered with alien sounding melodies, stretches of ambient flutter, some otherworldly slow motion doom, strange industrial clatter and woozy head nodding arrangements, all aligned around and amidst more traditional blasts of black metal. So cool and so weird. This is indeed black metal through and through, but at the same time it's almost more of a weird avant rock record, incorporating lots of BM elements, making it that much more original and that much more timeless. Packaged in a gorgeous digipak with a huge booklet of BEAUTIFUL creepy artwork very reminiscent of Hans Bellmer, along with all sorts of texts, Biblical, apocryphal and otherwise.
MPEG Stream: "Kenose 1"
MPEG Stream: "Kenose 2"

DIAMOND NIGHTS Popsicle (Kemado) cd 13.98
Damn, this has been in stock for a little while now -- some months now, in fact! -- but for some reason we didn't get around to checking it out 'til just the other day (even though we liked this band's previous ep, Once We Were Diamonds, reviewed here last year). Like we've said before, it's hard to keep up with everything... But better late than never. Everything that was cool about that ep is even cooler here on the full-length, which actually includes the two best songs from the ep, would-be/should-be hits "That Girl's Attractive" and "Destination Diamonds". If the latter track were the only thing you ever heard by Diamond Nghts you'd think they were fully trying to emulate both The Fucking Champs (and/or Thin Lizzy) and The Darkness. But DN have more tricks up their sleeves than just that -- the rest of Popsicle isn't all (ironic?) metal like that... though the adrenalized "It's A Shokka" definitely demonstrates a maybe tongue-in-cheek Judas Priest influence, and also sounds a heckuva lot like Queen's "Stone Cold Crazy". But other tracks here show that besides the Thin Lizzy and Queen albums that these guys undoubtedly love (there's no denying it), they have other influences too that aren't classic rock/metal. On tracks like "Drip Drip" (not the Comus song!) they've got a dancey '80s new wavey thing (hmm, also like Queen got into) going on. And at other moments the hooks and the vocals remind us of the White Stripes, and the chops underlying the pop make us think of 31 Knots... So while Diamond Nights can't lay claim to being the most original band ever, they're definitely talented and have managed to meld their collective influences together in some unexpected ways. Basically, this is everything that we wished the second, disappointing Darkness album would have been.
MPEG Stream: "Drip Drip"
MPEG Stream: "It's A Shokka"

AKIYAMA, MITCHELL Mort Aux Vaches (Staalplaat) cd 21.00
We loved the dreamy yet glitchy album Small Explosions That Are Yours To Keep from earlier this year by Montreal electro-acoustic composer Mitchell Akiyama, as did quite a few of you...so here's something new from him that may be of interest. Akiyama's entry into Staalplaat's Mort Aux Vaches series of cds documenting live-on-the-air performances for the Dutch radio station VPRO. For this 44 minute recording, Akiyama digitally processed his own live guitar playing (no pre-recorded samples were utilized). What you'll hear are placid, ambient guitar melodies given a scratchy, static-y scrubbing, making this sound a bit like one of the loops from Philip Jeck's turntable, or the result of shortwave radio interference. In fact, it's kinda funny that this was meant for a radio broadcast, since any listeners not up to speed with the standards of "experimental" music-making might just think that they had really bad reception! This is mostly quite gentle, but with a bleeding edge of sonic overload that now and then builds to near-painful levels of distortion before subsiding and again letting the melancholic guitar wash and clicking rhythms soothe your ears. Really beautiful.
Packaged in a thin, folded sheet of embossed copper! Watch you don't cut yrself on it...
MPEG Stream: "untitled [excerpt]"

V/A Welsh Rare Beat (Finders Keepers) cd 21.00
Compilations of long-lost '60s and '70s psych/pop/rock gems dug up from the far corners of the world by dedicated crate-digging record collectors are always considered a good thing here at AQ. We can just point to the Hava Narghile, Cambodian Rocks, Love Peace & Poetry and Thai Beat comps for some easy examples. But while we've been stoked on all sorts of stuff from Turkey, Thailand, Brazil, Mexico, Japan, South Africa, and elsewhere, there's always room for more, and for new unexplored territories to freak out about. For instance, what about Welsh psych/prog/folk??? Aha, that's what Welsh Rare Beat is devoted to, as you've already surmised. The 25 tracks here, all of 'em pretty fantastic, were selected from the vaults of the home-grown Welsh indie record label Sain, which could easily be (as this comp argues) the coolest record label you've never heard of before. As the liner notes put it: "You like prog-rock with blueprint trip-hop beats? So did Sain. You like ethereal girl groups with mystical acid folk overtones? So did Sain. You like psychedelic rock operas based on druidism and witchcraft? So did Sain..." And they're not kidding. Psyche-Celtic hoe-downs, dreamy folk singing, Cymru pride protest rock, and incredible grooves abound. These songs are all sung in Welsh (a pleasing tongue we trust you'll find), and due to the language barrier (and doubtless related cultural/political issues) these artists are pretty much unknown outside their own land, despite being just as good as a lot of better known folks from elsewhere in the UK. Really, looking at the names here, we'd only ever heard of Meic Stevens before. Never Bran, Heather Jones, Endaf Emlyn, Y Tebot Piws, or Yr Atgyfodiad, let alone Y Dyniadon Ynfyd Hirfelyn Tesog! But that's what's so great about discs like this, getting turned on to the denizens of a whole new realm of record-collector fantasy. The cd booklet helps mightily in that department, featuring a great deal of text -- there's very detailed track-by-track info plus a lengthy essay that treats this music scene in a political/historical context. VERY thorough indeed. And it even includes an annotated map of Wales. This really well put-together labor of love was compiled by Andy Votel (so recently responsible for the fab Vertigo Mixed comp), Dom Thomas, and Gruff Rhys of the Super Furry Animals who of course hail from Wales, and is released on the same label, Finders Keepers, that also brought us those equally obscure and awesome Jean Claude Vannier and Yamasuki discs.
MPEG Stream: BRAN "Y Gwylwyr"
MPEG Stream: HEATHER JONES "Nos Ddu"
MPEG Stream: ELERI LLWYD "O Gymru"

GOROD Neurotripsicks (Willowtip) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
For fans of NECROPHAGIST!!! Big time. Same label too. Hyper technical deathmetal with INSANE squiggly guitar parts and absurdly brutal vocal gruntings. It's mathy like Girth, dizzingly technical like Capharnaum, catchy like Carcass, and even a wee bit fusiony like Psyopus... and deathly death metal. Grrrr. Lots of stop start jerkiness to mess you up, with riffs swarming like vermin all over the bloody corpses that they call songs. Yet amidst the intense brutality, the guitarwork could even be called beautiful. Certainly impressive. Anyone at all metal-minded will be slayed. It's basically the Fucking Champs/Gorguts fantasy date. And that's probably all you need to know! But can we also say that it's really hard to figure out what they're going on about in their songs? I mean, of course you can't understand what the vocalist is violently belching about. But there's a lyric sheet and we're still confused. We can attribute such song titles as "Hunt To The Weaks" to the fact that they're French and maybe English isn't their strong suit. And yeah, "Smoked Skulls" and "Gutting Job" sound like regular nasty death metal titles. But look more closely into the lyrics and it's not so obvious. For instance, what IS "Gorod"? It's not just the band name, they sing about it. And "Neurotripsicks"? That's all over the lyrics too. Crazy. Just like the music. So, again, Necrophagist fans must check this out. It's the mathy technical death metal guitar-wank record of the week/month/maybe year for sure!!
MPEG Stream: "Smoked Skulls"
MPEG Stream: "Pig's Bloated Face"

SANHEDOLIN Manjoicchi Wa Muko (PSF) cd 21.00
Sanhedolin is the new name for the project that brought together two of the most exciting artists in the Tokyo underground prog-psych scene, AQ faves progcore duo Ruins and dark psych shaman Keiji Haino!! They did a cd on PSF under the name Knead three years ago (and also an LP on the French Fractal label). Now they've teamed up again, but because the Ruins have a new bass player, they've changed the name of this unit to Sanhedolin (though, the Ruins didn't change their name, so go figure). Anyway, this what you get when guitarist/vocalist Haino has the hyper-excitable rhythm section that is the Ruins backing him up. Incendiary improv action! Heavy-duty guitar/bass/drums interplay. And... flute?
Yep, oddly enough (but much to our approval) this album opens up with the lovely sound of the flute! Haino is not credited with playing flute on the sleeve, but it's got to be him. It's not until a track or so later that Haino unleashes his trademark searing electric guitar devastation. He also screams out some very anguished vocals, more soul-wrenching than those from any black metal throat. Haino's presence is key here (and like we said in our review of the Knead cd, although you can hear both the Ruins and Haino doing their respective, distinctive "things", the combination maybe makes it more of Haino's album than the Ruins -- it's like a really fierce Fushitsusha recording with an uncowed, caffinated rhythm section). And really, we like this better than a lot of other Ruins improv projects 'cause it's not just about the spazz-out bass/drums, the iron first of Haino's guitar playing is so STRONG that it keeps the Ruins in line, it's more purposeful I guess. Fans of either and/or both Ruins or Haino though should like this. And by the the way, new Ruins bass player Mitsuru Nasuno is just as nimble as any who've played with Ruins drummer/mastermind Yoshida Tatsuya before, as he'd better be!
MPEG Stream: "track 3"
MPEG Stream: "track 7"

CIRCLE Forest (No Quarter / Ektro) cd 14.98
This 2004 Circle album is now available domestically on the No Quarter label (who've recently also brought us Psychic Paramount's debut and the Earth remixes cd)! Same tracks as the Finnish import version on Ektro that we previously stocked, and very similar (but modified) artwork -- the cover now boasts a "flame job" that wasn't there on the original. So, here's our review from before of this quite recommended Circle album:
It's incredible how AQ's Finnish faves 'n' friends Circle always manage to maintain their trademark sound -- repetitive, hypnotic post-prog grooves -- even as they produce new albums with such distinct, different identities. Their latest disc, Forest, is another great, unique Circle effort. This time around, they've gone semi-acoustic, kinda folky. Also spooky and sinisterly-synthed. In a way, Forest is perhaps Circle's most "hippie" album. We know Jussi's a big Dead fan after all. And the krautrock stuff they've obviously always been inspired by was hippie rock too. But there's a back-to-the-land, pot smokin' jam vibe here, although night-shrouded and mysterious, NOT rainbow-colored and dippy. This a Forest of nightmares, with whispering and groaning in the trees. Maybe Jussi and Co. have been listening to the likes of Kalacakra and Siloah and Amon Duul... and Goblin, and early Tangerine Dream... For sure it seems that the four lengthy tracks on here (shortest six+ minutes, one nine, the other two in the double digits) owe a lot to Can (maybe moreso than other Circle albums do) and also to...the blues! That's the biggest shock. Vocalist Mika Ratto's love 'em or hate 'em operatic vocals are shucked in favor of a mumbling, moaning, singin' the blues style. And, equally shocking, he's singing in English this time! Not that you can make sense of much of what's coming out of his mouth. And of course most of the time Forest is all-instrumental, spacious, suspenseful, grooved-out, darkness. The final, longest track dabbles in ambient, experimental witch-project drone before those Circle rhythms return and Mika moans his last. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Havuportti"
MPEG Stream: "Luikertelevat Lahoavat"

HYATARI The Light Carriers (Codebreaker / Earache) cd 15.98
Dark, droney, dirgey metal...our favorite! Yep, this new band called Hyattari is an immediate AQ sludge/art metal fave, from West Virgina but sounding like they hail from the deeps of space, giving your ears a cold void embrace in the style of such bands as Skullflower, Halo, and Earth. Hyattari's music consists of uber-heavy sheets of low-end echoing riff-drone on bass and guitar that sound SO GOOD, joined (not even right away, but a little while into the record) by plodding, rigid, militaristic programmed percussion. It's sorta like Growing meets Godflesh! The seven tracks here (with doomy titles like "14,000,000,000 Years Ago", "Collapse", and "Harvesting Sod") pretty much slowly flow unbroken from one to the next, although within a few of the songs you'll find some sudden, short interludes of gentle melody. Haunting and lonely lulls in the sheer HEAVINESS that fills so much of this disc like glacial ice advancing over the globe during the last Ice Age. And it's mostly instrumental, with a small smattering of Neurosisy shouted/screamed vocals, augmented by sampled voices, buried in the massive mix like lost shortwave transmissions or ghostly EVP intercepts.
Besides the abovementioned, a few other artists that this reminds us of include: SUNNO))), Godspeed You Black Emperor!, Isis, Pelican, Cult Of Luna -- and the natural VLF radio recordings of Stephen P. McGreevy, 'cause this disc ends (though it doesn't seem like it ever should end, instead continuing on eternal and infinite like space itself) with a lengthy, mysterious field recording (maybe?) that might just be sferics or other electro-magnetic phenomena from the Earth's atmosphere. Very nice.
Originally self-released, and now wisely picked up by Earache's new avant/extreme Codebreaker imprint (run by the guy who used to do the now defunct Rage of Achilles label), The Light Carriers gets a big AQ recommendation to anyone into this sort of slow n' low majesty.
MPEG Stream: "The Light Carriers"
MPEG Stream: "14,000,000,000 Years Ago"

PENTAGRAM Day Of Reckoning (Peaceville) cd 14.98
These two crucial Pentagram discs were reissued earlier this year and we figured we'd better (at long last) get 'em reviewed for our site, what with the immense popularity of Swedish retro-doomsters Witchcraft (seriously, we sell a TON of Witchcraft records and that's how it should be) and also their friends/countrymen/doppelgangers Burning Saviours, both of whom utterly absolutely obviously *worship* Pentagram. Black Sabbath too of course, but it's Pentagram who provide them with more of a "cult" thrill and inspiration -- Witchcraft has recorded several Pentagram covers, and Burning Saviours are even named after a Pentagram song.
Now, Pentagram's been around for a long time (almost as long as Sabbath) in various incarnations, and we've previously reviewed both collections of '70s era Pentagam material as well as their several recent albums. But the two records that really put 'em on the metal map were these, which date from the mid 1980s. Originally self-titled, Relentless was the band's debut full-length from 1985 (yep, about a full 15 years after they first formed!!) and 1987's Day Of Reckoning was their second. Both are classics of doom metal, up there with the other great '80s post-Sabbath doom LPs by Trouble, Candlemass, and Saint Vitus.
On these albums vocalist Bobby Liebling is at the height of his powers (he sounds kinda like Ozzy, but something about his voice and delivery indicates that maybe he's got even more first-hand knowledge of the dark side, like he's one of the evil creatures that Ozzy would just warn you about!) and current Place Of Skulls guitarist Victor Griffin riffs with the best of 'em. Drummer Joe Hasselvander and bassist Martin Swaney round out this era's Pentagram line-up. Penta-classic tracks found here include "Death Row", "Sign Of The Wolf (Pentagram)" and "20 Buck Spin" (on Relentless) and "When The Screams Come", "Burning Savior" and "Madman" (on Day Of Reckoning), among others. Both discs are great, buy the pair!
Reissued in digipacks, cd booklets replete with lyrics, photos, and brand new jive-talkin' liner notes by the still-kickin' Bobby L.
MPEG Stream: "When The Screams Come"
MPEG Stream: "Wartime"

STOOGES, THE s/t Deluxe (Elektra / Rhino) 2cd 21.00
Hmm. We really should have gotten these listed a few months ago when they first came out, but we were debating with ourselves about whether we really needed to write a review that explained how awesome the Stooges are or not. I mean, we figure most AQ customers are hip to these punk rock pioneers, right? So basically, our recommendation boils down to this: if you don't have these albums, BUY THEM NOW. If you don't like 'em, we can't help you. But we think you'll like 'em. Some of the most primal yet avant-garde heavy garagey punk metallic rock n' roll ever made. Of the two albums, debate can rage as to which is most essential. We don't need to answer that question here. Get 'em both. "I Wanna Be Your Dog" is on the debut, whereas you get all the crazy saxophone freakouts on Funhouse.
Now what about if you do have these albums? Should you buy 'em again 'cause they're now "deluxe"? Well, yeah. They've got an extra disc apiece of alternate takes and unreleased material. Damn!! For instance, the full version of "Ann" on the second disc of the s/t package is awesomely super sleazy -- we love it. And don't you wish you could buy a "new" Stooges album every week? Take this historic opportunity! With one caveat: if you happen to be a lucky owner of the Rhino Handmade Funhouse Sessions box set, you might not need the deluxe version of that album, as we're pretty such (though we didn't do any exhaustive research) that all the extra material on the second disc also must have appeared somewhere on the many discs of that amazing (and long out of print) box set.

AUGUST BORN s/t