WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Diadem Of 12 Stars (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.
Finally available on vinyl! Super deluxe, double lp, extra thick colored vinyl, incredibly thick gatefold jacket, amazing layout, just the sort of epic treatment this sort of epic blackness deserves.
Here's our review of the cd from a while back:
We'd been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys a few years back (2004). And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does their first proper release and debut full length, blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals (courtesy of Jamie Myers, ex-Hammers Of Misfortune). It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests...
MPEG Stream: "(A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem Of 12 Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Face In A Night Time Mirror Pt. 1"

MB (MAURIZIO BIANCHI) Symphony For A Genocide (Hospital Productions) cd 12.98
Hospital Recordings has just reissued the first proper M.B. album, which first came out on Sterile Records in 1981 and then again on CD on Alga Marghen in the mid '90s. They've redone the design, making it look more stripped down, lo-fi and punk rock with gritty scans of the Alga Marghen artwork and old school cut and paste liner notes (that unfortunately seem to be missing some of the original notes), but don't let the makeover fool you, this is still some of the most abject and brilliantly bleak dronemusic ever.
Symphony For A Genocide wasn't the first recording for the Italian Industrialist, as he did have some earlier recordings as Sacher-Pelz and the infamous Leibstandarte SS MB albums (on which Whitehouse's William Bennett dubbed various Nazi speeches on top of Bianchi's music without Bianchi's permission). Bianchi's work does come out of a transgressive mindset; but one that is uniformly misanthropic, nihilistic, and utterly black. On this album, MB construct brutal, hallucinatory blasts of electronic noise and grinding rhythms of hand-cut tape noise and overblown synthetic distortion. These, bleak chilling drones are reminiscent of Conrad Schnitzler at his most neurotic, Nurse With Wound at their most droning, and Whitehouse at their least annoying. MB's very prolific career in the early 80's with more than a dozen records was cut short in 1984 at which time he declared himself a Jehovah's Witness and ceased making music until recently when he finally returned to the blackened ambience of old.
It should also be noted that the recordings of Symphony For A Genocide are drastically different from another set of recordings called SFAG (Symphony For A Genocide), which has also gotten the reissue treatment twice, adding extra confusion into the mix.
MPEG Stream: "Treblinka"
MPEG Stream: "Auschwitz"

STRIBORG Spiritual Catharsis (Displeased) cd 14.98
Once again, we head back into the grim black rainforests of Tasmania, to unearth more of one-man-black-metal-misanthrope Striborg's amazing back catalog, a constantly evolving and devolving soundworld of washed out buzz, chaotic black blur, and haunting dreamlike ambience. If you're already a fan, and have made it this far in Displeased's reissue campaign, odds are you're probably gonna want this one too, and if you've yet to experience the gloriously grim what-the-fuck brilliance of Striborg, then this is as good a place to start as any, in fact it might be one of the best ones to begin with as it's the most varied, and thus the most freaked out and bizarre.
Beginning with a surprisingly melodic almost poppy guitar part, 2004's Spiritual Catharsis quickly unravels into the buzzing stumbling confusional blackness that's so near and dear to our withered hearts. The core of Striborg's sound, is the ever present sheet of white noise guitars, that still sounds like a microphone placed on the floor of a shower, a constant and nearly overwhelming shhhhhooooosshhh. While behind this wash of hissy sibilance, lurk creaking shrieked vocals, and simple stumbling drums, and of course thick epic washes of grandiose keyboard. The drums flipping between punk rock pound and doomic plod, while that wall of blown out buzz remains fairly static. Totally hypnotic. At it's most straight ahead, it sounds like a way more blissy Burzum, loping and midtempo, with those haunting keyboards offering up creepy minor key melodies, but where Burzum buries those keys in the mix, Striborg shoves them right to the front, where they warble and whir and threaten to swallow up the rest of the sounds around it.
But as we mentioned before, Spiritual Catharsis is all over the map. "Glorification Of Mother Nature" is a gorgeously minimal expanse of ambient creep, sci fi synths swirling and shimmering, soft focus layers of sound shifting subtly like fog in an old crumbling graveyard, but then there's the title track, thirteen minutes long, probably the harshest and most chaotic of the bunch, the guitars whipped into a nearly Merzbowian frenzy, the effects so dense it's almost like black metal dub, the vocals careening and rippling out in all directions, the drums like a landslide of snares, the whole thing enveloped in a rippling cloak of black ambience, until part way through when the track shifts into some cinematic doom, the hiss and buzz pushed back a bit, allowing low end rumbles and whirs to play out a super intense melody, while the drums lurch and stutter, other keyboards joining the fray, drifting like soft glowing orbs against the jagged buzzy backdrop, before finally building back up into the fierce fury of the track's opening. The rest of the record constantly shifts between buzz and bliss, blast and crawl, from the minimal rumbling drone of "The Haunted Gum Trees", to the relentlessly blasting black chaos of "Misanthropic Necroforest", to the echo drenched plodding doom of "Dicksonia Antarctica" (replete with more of those dubbed out FX), to the tripped out funereal dreaminess of "Eternal Blackness Surrounds The Bushland", to the full on pounding in-the-red crush of "Black Metal Is The Forest Calling...", Spiritual Catharsis, is indeed just that, a spiritually cathartic, beautifully bizarre, darkly droning musical journey through a black forest of sound, and into the even blacker musical mind of Striborg
Re-mastered, with all new artwork, including a swank metallic silver front cover, and drawings and lyrics inside.
MPEG Stream: "Within The Depths Of Darkness And Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Beneath The Fields Of Rapacious Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Spiritual Catharsis"

STRIBORG Ghostwoodlands (Displeased) cd 14.98
Deep in the damp backwoods of Tasmania (yes, Tasmania!), one of our very favorite one-man black metal bands lurks. Sin-nanna is that man, Striborg is that band. The eagerly awaited Ghostwoodlands is the latest manifestation of Striborg's musical misanthropy, another extreme and extremely "outsider" statement of black metal idiosyncrasy and fucked up brilliance.
Starting with track one, "Bete Noirs", every other track on Ghostwoodlands is an ambient episode of beautifully droning, isolationist electronics, psychedelic blackness that's not overtly metal at all (and could give some additional weight to the ridiculous rumor we once heard that Sin-nanna is actually Australian dronologist Oren Ambarchi). The longer, even-numbered songs, though, are indeed recognizable as a species of black metal, wherein Sin-nanna's guitar (and voice, and keyboards, and much else) still sounds like some noxious gas escaping under pressure. This aerosol mist of grim musik is, as always, accompanied by his own primitive "timekeeping", percussive thump and clatter full of many confusional fills, blasts and beats. This drumming is seemingly (and sometimes startlingly) one of Sin-nanna's primary expressive outlets, having more active physicality than the spectral presences of his other instrumentation -- and its artistic effectiveness proves that desire trumps ability in his realm. With woozy alien synths wandering over from the "ambient" tracks, Striborg's steam clouds of croak-encrusted, broken-down black metal require hails all around. Indeed, the next time someone asks, "what's so great? -- and what's so fucked up?" about Striborg, track two here is one we'll immediately want to play 'em. The slowly paced, 19 and a half minute "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery" is a monument to Sin-nanna's unique genius, as we're sure you'll agree after just a few minutes into it, when you're fully enveloped in his hissing, buzzing, chuddering world, and the ambient Aphex synth droplets start falling amidst his percussive extemporaneity. So good! Like a brain-damaged Burzum, and we mean that in the best possible way. And these abnormal atmospheres continue throughout the rest of the disc, furthering our love of Striborg. A great followup to the taster offered by the Striborg / Xasthur split single we listed just last week!
PS. God what we wouldn't give for a Striborg / Keiji Haino collaboration!!!
MPEG Stream: "Wandering The Wilderness Of Eternal Misery"
MPEG Stream: "Light Anomalies In The Phantom Woods"
MPEG Stream: "Ghostwoodlands"

STRIBORG Nocturnal Emissions / Nyctophobia (Displeased) cd 14.98
If black metal has a "Jandek" then Striborg might be it. Certainly, an argument can be made that black metal itself is already "outsider art" and then if that's the case, where to put Striborg? Outside the outside. So much of Striborg's eccentrically intimate, idiosyncratic output (this disc holding many fine examples, for instance at one point when it sounds like he's playing the violin in the shower) is so exquisitely wrong it's right, so inadvertently avant-garde and very much trance-inducing that of course Striborg is a big AQ fave. Until recently, though, it was easier for us to get Jandek cds than those of Striborg. But at long last the gates to Striborg's lair have swung open, and the many previously hard-to-find recordings by this Tasmanian black metal savant (as you may know, Striborg is a "band" staffed solely by the mysterious Sin-Nanna) are now readily available to us... and to you, the discriminating consumer of fucked-up black metal. Among the many Striborg discs that we for so long wanted but were unable to stock, is this one. Another essential in Striborg's damaged discography for sure. This cd combines two demos from 2002 and 2003, so it's material from pretty early on in Sin-Nanna's career of evil, though his demo-days go back as far as 1997, and these are in fact the final two (4th and 5th) demos released before he started making "proper albums" instead, although production-wise we can detect no great differences! This cd compilation of those two demos was originally released in 2003 by Striborg's own Finsternis Productions in a limited edition of 500 copies, and has now been resurrected by Displeased (along with, as we said, several other desirable Striborg artifacts).
Nocturnal Emissions consists of the title track, followed by "Despondent Cries", "Son Of The Moon", and "The Freezing Northland". The latter is interesting 'cause you'd think in Striborg's case it would be "The Freezing Southland", being so nearby to Antarctica, but it turns out that this track is a tribute to another one-man black metal cult, Norway's Ildjarn. We should also note that "The Son Of The Moon" is dedicated to Sin Nanna's baby boy, Zachariah aka Sin-Nanna junior (the name Sin-Nanna that of the god of the crescent moon in ancient Sumer, btw). This might be the first and only black metal song written by a proud father to his newborn son! In welcoming his child to "this world of tragedy, magic and sorrow", he tells him, "the stars of Aquarius is [sic] on your side".
Otherwise, Striborg's lyrical themes are entirely depressive and misanthropic, all mope-tropes matched of course by his music, the ever-present droning black buzz, a fuzzed-out spray of monochrome guitar distortion, through thick fields of which wander Striborg's special, utterly non-metroymic drum-stumble and o'er which he rasps his despondent cries.
The four tracks of Nyctophobia are next, "Under Black Rain", "Through The Dark Fog", "Across Thornfields", and "Into Night Moor". We'll single out "Under Black Rain" for mention, as it's composed entirely of what sounds like woozy violin improv, his jittering string-scrape punctuated by a resonating gong-blows, mixed with field recordings of drizzling rain and ominous thunderclaps... we'd be happy with just a whole disc of just that! But each track here has its unique charms, "Through Dark Fog" in particular notable for Sin-Nanna's excessively distorted vocal turn. And "Into Night Moor" is a beautiful outro of isolationist electronic ambience. It seems everything he touches turns, not to gold, but to blackened weirdness. Weird enough we assure you that you'll be giving your stereo strange looks and often rewinding to hear some choice bit of bizarreness again and again, if you share our taste in outsider black metal oddity! None more sublime than Striborg.
We'll have reviews of a couple more Striborg reissues soon (Trepidation and Spiritual Catharsis) and also look forward to a new release, the Journey Of A Misanthrope DVD...
MPEG Stream: "Nocturnal Emissions"
MPEG Stream: "Despondent Cries"
MPEG Stream: "Under Black Rain"
MPEG Stream: "Through The Dark Fog"

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB Neon Pibroch (Important) cd 14.98
You thought UK space drone freeks Vibracathedral Orchestra were prolific!? Well get a load of Neil Campbell, one of VCO's founding fathers, who split that scene a while back, only to whip up a new ensemble, well, ensemble is maybe not the right word, since Astral Social Club is just him, let's just call it an Astral Social Club then, even more spacey, abstract, and experimental than the 'Orchestra. Oh and outrageously prolific. An avalanche of cd-r's, every one of them a mind blower, difficult to keep up with, but well worth the effort...
This is one of two new releases, the other being vinyl only, both sort of two sides of the same sonic coin, although they definitely both have their own distinct vibe. Read about the lp elsewhere on this list, but the funny thing about the cd is, we could probably describe it in 4 words, and if you are anything like us, those 4 words would have you diving madly for the Add To Cart button.... So what does Neon Pibroch sound like? Well, at least the first track sounds just like *Spacemen 3 on Kompakt*!!! That's right. Imagine those endless loops of druggy effects, the subtle melodies stretched into gauzy soundscapes, super head nodding and hypnotic, but then imagine it with a strangely propulsive, almost techno beat, a relentless pulse, it's easy to imagine that endless spaced out groove pouring out of the sound system on some alien dancefloor. It's nearly twenty minutes long too, so that alone would be worth the price of admission. But hold up... there are two more tracks, and 40 more minutes of drifting beatless bliss to come...
The title track begins as a glistening ur-drone, all buzzing strings and keening high end, but part way through erupts into a white hot wall of coruscating grinding guitar buzz, super distorted and blown out, before drifting off again, leaving that burbling cosmic drift to fade gracefully out. The final track offers up more of the same, but if anything it's even more rich and thick and dense, it's the sort of sound that is almost visible, physical, it's like staring into the sun with your ears, makes you want to shade your eyes from the glorious sonic glare...
Can this man do no wrong? Guess not when it comes to transcendental sonic space drone... Absolutely essential listening for fans of such things, as is Super Grease, this record's vinyl analog... 
MPEG Stream: "Tripel Foment"
MPEG Stream: "The Big Spree"

ASTRAL SOCIAL CLUB Super Grease (Important) lp 16.98
Two new ones from Mr. Neil Campbell in the last few weeks, formerly a founding member of the mighty Vibracathedral Orchestra, now the main (and only?) man behind Astral Social Club, who continue on in a similar direction as VCO, taking sounds and weaving them into epic ur-drones and outerspace ragas, stretching and looping them into long form sonic chunks launched into the cosmos.
This lp only, two song killer, comes on gorgeous swirled milky blue vinyl, and fills up each side with a single blast of blissed out druggy drift. Side one begins with looped machine like rhythms, which frame a vast pool of liquid sound, cricket like chirps, chunks of fuzz distortion and swirling reverb, glistening bits of synthy sparkle, all building gradually into a manic chattering wall of cyclical fuzz and blur, culminating in a grinding jagged angular coda.
Side two begins with a brief swooshy, flanger flecked krautrocky jam, simple and propulsive, that slowly changes timbre and texture as the effects cycle through, the rhythms and song structure sinking beneath the ever increasing wash of FX, splintering into near tranquil ambience, another ASC slow building celestial wash, undulating swells of synths and electronics, gorgeous and massive and dreamy, sounds a bit like what we imagine it might sound like standing on some alien planet watching a new universe being born from the endless blackness of space. Intense and epic.

BONE AWL Meaningless Leaning Mess (Nuclear War Now! Productions) lp 12.98
For the latest installment in their ongoing, all-analog blackened onslaught, local raw, primitive, black-thrash duo Bone Awl unleash another full length lp, the third by our count, not including a clutch of limited run cassette tapes and 7"s. And as always, it's another fantastically furious and filthy slab of relentlessly pounding buzz, hateful howl and sheer black force. 
For the uninitiated, Bone Awl are the duo of He Who Gnashes Teeth and He Who Crushes Teeth, just guitar and drums, but the two are a whirling dervish of harsh negative energy, not so much blasting and buzzing black metal style, as pounding and pulsing, a blown out D-beat style garage thrash pummel. Every track takes a single black riff, and pounds it into the ground, the guitar a swirling cloud of dark energy, the drums some sort of harnessed chaos, hewing closer to the abject blown out pound of the Brainbombs than perhaps any of their more metal forebears. No real blast beats to be found, instead the sound is a blackened punk rock, crusty and crumbling, on the verge of total collapse, barreling hellward with unstoppable momentum.
Pressed on super thick 180 gram vinyl, housed in a thick cardstock inner sleeve, printed with lyrics, and housed in a gorgeous black and white poster sleeve, that opens to be pretty massive. The whole thing tucked in a plastic jacket with a sticker affixed to the front. And as always, probably crazy limited...

MOUNT FUJI DOOMJAZZ CORPORATION, THE Doomjazz Future Corpses! (Ad Noiseam) cd 17.98
Last year we reviewed a disc by the evocatively named Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble, who we described as "equal parts DJ Shadow's Endtroducing, seventies horror movie soundtracks, late night jazz and super sluggish blown out trip hop" which is exactly what it sounded like. Long languid musical excursions through some dark rainy late night film noir wasteland, ghostly moaning horns, skittering minimal percussion, haunting strings, all tangled into super cinematic musical drama. Another band, who if there was any justice, would be the ones scoring big Hollywood thrillers instead of Danny Elfman...
Anyway, we recently learned that the Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble had an alter ego, a more metallic dark side, called, appropriately enough The Mount Fuji Doomjazz Corporation, we were pretty much sold after just hearing the name, so evocative of some mysterious 'star chamber', holed up in a secret underground bunker, tucked in some cave in the mountains, where mysterious hooded figures work alchemical magic creating mysterious and monstrous 'doomjazz'...
Supposedly, this Kilimanjaro offshoot was meant to sound a bit like SUNNO))) or Earth, albeit run through with bits of jazziness and smoke-y ambience. Well, it's not quite that heavy, but it is a bit, definitely heavier and darker and more ominous than the KDJE mothership, a sort of drone-y dark ambient drift, long stretches of low tones and distant horns, of rumbling guitars and thick washes of swirling low end. Actually it sounds more like Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble with all the jazz sucked out, leaving nothing but a blackened husk, a skeletal landscape of bleak blissed out shimmer, and slow creeping nightmare melodies. In some ways it sounds like a jazzier, more ambient, less primitive and ritualistic version of the Taj Mahal Travellers... A couple tracks do rev up to a full on SUNNO)))-y dirge, with the guitars threatening to engulf the dark ambience beneath it, but they never truly explode into actual sludge drenched doom, instead, they sort of drift darkly, roiling like a sky full of thick black clouds... It is most definitely doomy though, just not in the traditional sense, the sounds here are more Lustmord, Nordvargr, Bohren und Der Club Of Gore, Cold Meat Industries, with some more melancholy melody mixed in, disembodied reverbed guitar, the occasional almost-jazzy creep, it's more a sort of ambient slow core, wait a minute, "slowcore ambient doom" might be exactly the descriptor we were searching for. 
Definitely recommended for fans of any of the above mentioned bands, or anyone into slowcore ambient doom!
MPEG Stream: "2"
MPEG Stream: "5"
MPEG Stream: "8"

HORNA Sotahuuto (Grievantee) cd 13.98
We definitely don't give enough love to the mighty Horna. Finnish masters of raw and primitive, grim buzzing blackness. They're HUGE favorites with the metalheads around here and yet as of the writing of this here review, we've only ever listed ONE record by these guys, the recent split with Peste Noire, and while normally we would laugh in your face if you told us any band could beat the pants off of Peste Noire on a split, Horna damn near pulled it off.
So here's one of two new-ish Horna releases, this one was recorded in 2004, which, according to the liner notes was "before the Master's journey from here to eternity." Which master are they referring to? Well, as Sotahunto is a tribute to Swedish black metal masters Bathory, the master in question is Quorthon, the mastermind behind Bathory, who inspired a legion of blackened followers before passing away in June of 2004. And of course, as this is a tribute, the songs were composed in a style more similar to Bathory than Horna in some ways, although Horna always owned a sonic debt to their Swedish forbears, old school, raw blasting, almost punkish sounding black metal, pounding beats, relentless riffing, that unmistakable Horna shriek, fast and furious but with a definite groove. Not blasting so much as just relentlessly churning, midtempo dirges building to bursts of intense blackness. Lots of this still sounds like classic Horna, but they definitely honor their master with a suite of songs that sound like they could have come straight out of Sweden circa 1988. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "Lahtolaukaus"
MPEG Stream: "Vapise, Vapahtaja"
MPEG Stream: "Verimalja"

HAACK, BRUCE The Electric Lucifer (The Omni Recording Corporation) cd 16.98
Can you imagine if "Music To Moog By" maestro Gershon Kingsley had dropped acid, joined a commune, got religion, and jammed with the Silver Apples and Lothar And The Hand People? That might approximate what the unique, wondrous psych-pop "Mooglove" of 1969's The Electric Lucifer sounds like!
YES!!! It's about time. We've always wanted this album to come out on cd. This HAD to be our Record Of The Week. Heck, years and years ago, Allan (long before he worked at Aquarius) became a bit obsessed with this record. He'd found a beat-up old LP of it at a yard sale, bought it mainly 'cause of the title and the freaky colorful cover graphics, and then was blown away by the weird music within. It's what we've described as being "perhaps the most awesomely bizarre psychedelic pre-Kraftwerk electronica album ever to be released on a major label (Columbia) or elsewhere." Allan actually went so far as to try to track down Bruce Haack for an interview, but without any luck (turns out Haack had already passed away back in 1988, a couple years before Allan discovered the record). And Allan's not the only one here at AQ to have a longtime soft spot for this record... so we're all so happy that it's finally, FINALLY been given the cd reissue treatment. It's absurd, really, that this wasn't reissued sooner. The legend of eccentric electronica pioneer Bruce Haack has only grown in recent years. There's been several compilations of his work (Hush Little Robot was the best, since it featured a couple tantalizing cuts from this album), expensive imported Japanese reissues of several of his Moog music albums for kids, a posthumous Electric Lucifer sequel from the vaults, and even a documentary released on DVD, entitled Haack - The King Of Techno! But Haack's crowning glory, his masterpiece The Electric Lucifer, wasn't available at all. Until now. And The Omni Recording Corporation (a label new to us) have done it right, even down to the very welcome notion of including a 5-minute track of silence to separate the 13 tracks of the album proper from the over thirty minutes of additional bonus material that they've added on -- which consists of a 1970 Canadian radio interview with Haack on the subject of Electric Lucifer and an alternate take of "Electric To Me Turn". The packaging is top notch as well, reproducing the amazing artwork and Haack's trippy sleevenotes from the original LP (wherein he discusses his concept of "Powerlove"), plus cramming tons of additional stuff into the thick cd booklet. There's loving liner notes by several of Haack's friends and colleagues and lots of vintage photos and graphics. Nicely done.
How can we explain the utter charm of this album? Well it's about as psychedelic as you can get, a concept album that's futuristic and Biblically ancient at the same time. Haack used an electronic "computer voice" (long before it was cliche) that he named FARAD, as well as regular human vocals, to convey deep Age of Aquarius astrological/philosophical concepts, sometimes in the form of sinister liturgies, at others like playful rhyming lullabies. These Moogy, moody and groovy compositions feature churchy organ sounds, bleeps and bloops, and rhythmic percolations that wouldn't sound out of place in the Star Wars cantina. There's lugubrious droney passages, mechanical beats, switched-on classical flourishes, and musique concrete style sound collage. Very weird *and* oh-so-catchy. It's definitely every bit as wonderful and essential as the Silver Apples albums, which we know so many AQ patrons love dearly. Again, we're so happy this has been reissued. Highest recommendation. Listen to the love angel, people!
MPEG Stream: "Electric To Me Turn"
MPEG Stream: "National Anthem To The Moon"
MPEG Stream: "Program Me "
MPEG Stream: "Word Game"

AMOCOMA Go To Hell (self-released) cd-r 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The first thing that struck us about this debut release from Amocoma, a mysterious black metal horde from right here in San Francisco, was the cover art, a child-like pen and ink drawing of a pile of heads, but instead of being bloody or gory or horrific, they're sort of more cartoonish, like a whole slew of stick figures were decapitated, their heads tossed in a huge pile, beneath the scrawled band logo, wreathed in clouds of smeared ink. We were definitely intrigued. And if anything, once inside, we were even moreso...
Amocoma traffic in an ultra lo-fi, muddy murky blackness. It's definitely black metal, there is plenty of buzz and blast and howled vocals, but at the same time it's sort of stumbling and noise rocky, it's probably a little of both, but it's all rendered nearly indistinct by the incredibly FX drenched lo-fi production. 
Beginning with dreamy swirls of soft focus harmonics and distant rumbles, it doesn't take long for the band to lurch into action, a simple hypnotic riff, looped over and over, almost sounding more like a bass than a guitar, and not so heavy as it is trancelike. The drums are mechanical and repetitive, the vocals are howled and swathed in reverb, spread out over the proceedings like a black cloud, so much so that at times they just sound like another layer of buzz. And the more you listen, the more pretty it sounds, sure it's raw and harsh, but the melody is so hypnotic, and the swirling clouds of distortion and reverb give everything a sort of soft focus shimmer. 
We're definitely reminded of WOLD, in the sense that these little fragmented pop songs, are rendered black and buzzy by the application of super saturated distortion, tape hiss and amp buzz, reverb and delay, so even at its heaviest, it's washed out and abstract, and downright dreamy. The drone element is through the roof, and it's impossible not to hear Tim Hecker or Machinefabriek or any one of those masters of smeary dreamlike sound. At some points things get super psychedelic, like halfway through "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body" where the guitar drops out, leaving just the drums, to sort of pulse and putter in a wide open expanse of soft swirl, while drifting above are all manner of glistening guitar harmonics, spacey FX sparkles, and warm warbly melodic hum. 
Damaged and dreamy, freaked out and fucked, one of our new favorite slabs of black beauty for sure... 
MPEG Stream: "Cowards Live Forever"
MPEG Stream: "Small Dark Sea That Was A Body"
MPEG Stream: "These Are Your Chocies / ...Darkness"

BLACK FUNERAL Waters Of Weeping (Season Of Mist) cd 14.98
The last Black Funeral record, Ordog, was one of our favorite black metal records of last year. We already liked the band quite a bit previously, but with Ordog, the buzzing blackness was transformed into some sort of experimental black noise metal, reminding us of bands like Spektr and Blut Aus Nord and Phobos, a sort of processed industrial vibe, lots of drones and ambient interludes peppered with machine like riffing and all sorts of black atmosphere. We should be used to it by now, but while we were blown away, much of the BM community shied away, not at all digging Black Funeral's new damaged direction. 
So we were pretty psyched to finally hear Waters of Weeping, the brand new record, to see where they took their black sounds next. And as much as we were secretly hoping they would do something super radical, WoW is actually more of a straight ahead black metal record, but then it's all relative. This is still plenty weird, just compared to Ordog, it's a bit more traditionally black and buzzy.
The sound and the vibe are very reminiscent of Xasthur and Leviathan and the like, the new wave of depressive black buzz-ers, with long drawn out minor key dirges, dense clouds of washed out buzz, loping blackened dirges, dense convoluted song structures, lots of creeped out ambience, but thankfully, here and there lurk some of that crumbling industrial blackness left over from Ordog. In fact, those are probably our favorite moments, like track 4, "Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell ­ HOD (Smal/Adramalech) ­ Mercury", an almost Godflesh worthy ultradistorted industrial dirge, with strange processed alien growls and pounding percussion, all wrapped up in buzzing synths and FX drenched guitars. But then the next track is a classic, old school sounding slab of relentless black metal buzz. But before you know it, we're on to track 6, and back to Ordog territory, "Lord Of The Dead ­ Tiphereth (Belphegor/Paimon) Tagahrim" another slowed down, black industrial buzz drenched plod that is SO fucking dismal and bleak and amazing. The more we listen to this disc, the more it all sounds so perfect. More and more and more like some meticulously assembled black artifact. The buzzing blackness spilling into the industrial pound, long streaks of minor key dirge wrapping inky tendrils around bursts of relentless black blasts... It's hard to explain exactly, but any of these tracks, take on their own, sounds pretty dang great, but taken together, as a sort of hellish suite, an extended ritual, they mesh into a grim and black, buzzy and blown out, haunting and soul wrenching sonic journey...
MPEG Stream: "Nehemoth ­ Malkuth (NAMVTh) - Earth"
MPEG Stream: "Sha'arimrath, The Eighth Hell ­ HOD (Smal/Adramalech) ­ Mercury"

LIGHT SHALL PREVAIL Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
By now, it should be painfully obvious, that around these parts we seriously love our damaged and demented, fucked up and freaky music. The weirder the better, be it strange production, inept playing, shoddy recording, or truly inspired madness, we can't get enough strange sounds. The sad thing is that many of our favorite strange sound makers, gradually evolve, which is not always bad thing, but often means as bands get better, as the recordings get tighter, the production more polished, the songwriting less haphazard, well, often a band begins to sound more and more like the rest of the regular bands, and less like all the things that made them so unique and special. 
Thankfully, such is not the case with king of the unblack scene, Light Shall Prevail. This is the fifth or sixth release so far from this one man Christian black metal band, and most definitely the tightest and most polished, but just as far out, fucked up, brilliant and blackened as any records past. Sure some of the older stuff benefited from insane production, turning black blasts into buzzing smears of what the fuck, or making blurred frosty riffage sound like alien house music, and on Goatcrush, he may have crafted the greatest chunk of buzzing blackness EVER, in the title track, be it black, unblack or whatever... But Unearthen Hymns Of Revolt is another glorious step in his songwriting evolution, and a definite step up in production and we're loving it. No matter how much we dug all the fucked up weirdness in the past, at the heart of all of those tracks, every one, was an amazing riff, and a killer song. Now it's just easier to hear them. 
Three songs may seem like an ep, but these three looong tracks add up to almost thirty minutes. And as usual, every inch is packed with roiling buzzing fuzzed out blasts, insane programmed drums, bizarre super effected vocals, all tangled up into super complex and convoluted arrangements that manage to be trancelike and droney at the same time. We've gushed like crazy about LSP, the E.E.E. label, all the other unblack bands, check the AQ site for more words and sounds testifying as to the baffling brilliance of this stuff. Needless to say, if you're already a convert, you need this one too, and if you've yet to be baptized in the unblack waters of Light Shall Prevail, this is as good a place to start as any. In fact, it might be the best place to start, as these three tracks sound the most like classic grim black metal out of any of the previously released LSP stuff. But what makes it all so great, is that the weirdness, the fucked up-ness still lurks right below the surface, revealing themselves more and more on subsequent listens. Trust us, some of the best (un)black metal you'll ever hear. Check out the last few minutes of the 15+ minute closer, as the guitars begin to digitally crumble, the drums splintering into clouds of sizzle and skitter, a weird blackened meltdown, so bizarre and so fucking awesome. And how about the best (un)black metal song title ever: "Bonded By (His) Blood". Needless to say SO RECOMMENDED. 
And while you're at it, order ALL the E.E.E. stuff, not only is it all amazing, but the label recently had their headquarters broken into and burgled, losing tons of money and equipment, instruments and computers, they're amazing folks, making amazing music and could use the support!!
MPEG Stream: "Spake"
MPEG Stream: "Bonded By (His) Blood"

RACCOO-OO-OON Behold Secret Kingdom (Release The Bats) lp 14.98
Here at AQ, we're well acquainted with multiple 'o's. Most often used in reviews of ultra doom records, you know Moss, Monarch, Asunder, Catacombs, Celestiial, Bunkur, and usually used to denote -more- doom. The slower and the filthier, the sludgier and the more buzzing and trudging, the more 'o's. So describing a band as doooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom is not at all unheard of around here. But we rarely see multiple 'o's anywhere else. So what's the deal with Raccoo-oo-oon? What are all of those extra 'o's for? Do they mean anything? And what about the hyphens? What the heck are they all about? Is that how you pronounce the band name, ra coo OO oon. 4 syllables. Or just the more traditional two, as in the middle 'oo' is silent?
No matter how you interpret the 'o's and hyphens, it's strange and unusual and not a little bit confusing. Which pretty much perfectly captures the essence of these guys' sound. A dizzying collision of free rock splatter, jazzy skronk, stumbling outsider folk, and full on noise. What makes Raccoo-oo-oon special is the fact that they somehow manage to sound like all of those things at once. An ultra dense blitzkrieg of sounds, that impossibly manages to be heavy and free, skronky and melodic, spastic and pretty all at the same time.
We've listed a few other releases from these guys, a clutch of lps and a cd, all of which kicked our asses big time, but as much as we dug those discs, Behold Secret Kingdom trumps them all. Songs, sound, it's all so much more focused, the melodies are catchier, the blown out blasts are even more caustic and abrasive, the vocals are much more 'present', a strange sort of howled primitive wail, the guitars are heavier, more dense, the rhythms, groovier, a surprising amount of 'swing' for a noiserock combo.
With Behold Secret Kingdom, Raccoo-oo-oon have sort of emerged as super distinctive noisemakers, in a scene rife with same sounding combos, these guys don't really sound like anybody else.
Right out of the gate, the sound is a wall of thick guitars, swirling and keening, loads of buzz and squealing feedback, the drums a dense tribal blow out, the vocals drifting over the top, some strange invocation. It's equal parts krautrock, noiserock, and post rock, all smeared and tangled into a glorious blast of super fresh, garage-y psychedelic free rock whatthefuck. The next track veers into some angular synth drenched new wave noisiness, with squiggly synths, droning high end guitars, thick buzz swaths of sound, relentless, almost funky drumming, and moaning atonal speaking-in-tongues vocals. As hard as it might be to imagine, it sounds a bit like some impossible mash up of Crash Worship, Excepter and Faust, but with some weird new wave-y sheen.
The songs are definitely rhythm based, the propulsive drumming guiding everything, the vocals sort of trailing after the drums, the guitars, at once riffing and defining the shape of the songs, but at the same time drifting and swirling totally free, unmoored from any sort of traditional song-based structure and wrapped around the jams like thick tangled ropes of sound. There is occasional sax, which is where a lot of the skronk element comes from, but even sans sax, the songs retain a bit of skronkiness, angular and atonal as often as warm and melodic (maybe more often in fact.
Occasionally, the band -really- let loose, the guitars erupt in acidic squalls, the drums splattery and abstract, everything spinning wildly, the result a huge dense cloud of super distorted psychrock freakout. And just as often, they lock into some strangely new wavey garage rock stomp, like a less misanthropic, more groovy and druggy Brainbombs, and as if that weren't confusing enough, they also often just let loose and engage in endless dopesick jamming space rockery, a roiling blown out FX drenched space rock pound, relentless and so goddamn good. And like we mentioned before, the magic here is that Raccoo-oo-oon don't just switch gears from space rock to weird free rock jam and back, all of those different sonic sides bleed into each other, and all over each other, one at a time but then ALL AT ONCE, a slithering, shimmering, constantly shifting, shape changing organic sound sprawl that is as amazing to hear as it is difficult to describe.
And if we were in fact, to apply the same sort of rules regarding the extra 'o's, to these guys, that we do in our doom reviews, then we might as well begin calling these guys Raccoo-oo-oooo-oo-ooooooo-oo-o-o-o-ooo-oo-oooo-ooo-oo-oo-oo-ooooooo-oon. Fuck yeah.
MPEG Stream: "Black Branches"
MPEG Stream: "Mirror Blanket"
MPEG Stream: "Visage Of The Fox"

SIGH Hangman's Hymn (The End) cd 12.98
It's a panic attack of over the top black metal theatrics from this notoriously 'round the bend band from Japan! The frantic tempo barely ever lets up as Sigh cram as much in the way of grandiose keyboards, blazing fretwork, thundering drums, and pompous choirs as they can into every nutty nook and crazy cranny of this album. The rapid, rasping delivery of the liberetto is dizzying too... we say "liberetto" because this album is divided into three acts, and has a definite operatic feel to it. Black metal opera. At 200 mph. It's like they've been listening to a lot of Devil Doll and Cradle Of Filth back to back, on crack.
Starting off years and years ago as Japan's truest "Nordic" black metal act (with their first album set for release on Euronymous of Mayhem's record label, before his murder by Count Grishnack of Burzum), Sigh went on to establish a career of horror soundtrack-inspired genre-fuckery that had critics comparing 'em to John Zorn and the Boredoms as much as Burzum. After their brilliant mashup of stoner rock psych and black metal mayhem on 2001's Imaginary Sonicscape, this cult took things maybe a bit too far for some of their fans with the unexpected (even for them) chipmunk-voiced poppy power metal moves of that album's long-awaited follow-up in 2005, Gallows Gallery. WE were happily confused and amused, though. And now Sigh has sharpened their blades to shred even harder on this album, dispensing with the chipmunks and also with the occasional saxophone lounge jazz and techno detours that popped up on Gallows Gallery. Absurdly bombastic, mixing heavy metal heroics with Morricone melodies, the fierce, frenzied, fixated Hangman's Hymn is as ridiculous as anything they've done but also undeniably, insanely impressive and entertaining.
MPEG Stream: "Introitus / Kyrie"
MPEG Stream: "Inked In Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Me-Devil"

VELVET CACOON Genevieve (Southern Lord) 2lp 19.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of our absolute favorite black metal records ever, musically, conceptually and sonically, gets what might be one of the most deluxe vinyl issues EVER. Double 180 gram vinyl, each lp in a picture inner sleeve, all housed in a super deluxe double-wide jacket, with the band logo, embossed on metallic foil silver, ONTO ACTUAL VELVET!! They look amazing, and somehow, reflect the mysterious, refined, damaged and buzz drenched musical blackness within. LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES!!! We got a bunch but they will be gone before you know it...
Since we first reviewed this, the debut from Portland's Velvet Cacoon, it came to light that much of the weirdness and rumor surrounding the band, was in fact utter bullshit. The drugs, the eco-fascism, the diesel powered guitar harp, but heck, the music was still totally mindblowing, and the stories and drama and controversy, only made us dig them more, pulling one over on the always uptight metal world, sending metalheads into utter tizzies for swallowing VC's impossible to believe tales of lost band members and intense and disturbing live shows (we fell for it too! But we wanted to!), but how is their decision to come up with an alternate persona really that different than the corpsepainted demons who lurk in the frosty forest. If anything, it's way more interesting and creative. Much like the music they make...
here's our original review, complete with all the amazing fabricated band background info, to read more about the 'truth' check out the review of their other disc, Northsuite. But regardless of all that, this most definitely ranks as one of the most amazing black metal recordings of all time.
We were sold on this band before we even heard 'em (thanks AQ pal Drucifer for the recommendation). First off, they're called Velvet Cacoon. That's right C A C O O N. WTF? Not sure if it's just a typo that was never corrected, to maybe save face, or if it means something entirely different that we couldn't possibly understand... [it does, here's what the band said in an interview a customer later pointed us to: "The name originated back in 1996 when we formed the band. Velvet is one of many names applied to the chemical dextromethorphan, and CACOON are the initials of a catacomb just outside Portland city limits where we usually go to write music."]
Second, they're a super reclusive eco-fascist (huh?) black metal horde from Oregon. Yep, OREGON. And finally they invented, designed and built an instrument they call a dieselharp, a sort of diesel fuel powered pick up driven fuzz-drone-guitar thing. Wow. So before we even threw this on, we were already pretty into it. And thankfully, the music is every bit as cool and weird and grim and haunting as we could've hoped. Massive slabs of blackened fuzz, and we mean FUZZ. Imagine the buzziest fuzziest Burzum riff, smeared and stretched into a mesmerizing black metal blur. The droning dieselharp is the key, turning what could otherwise be some straight up grim black metal, into a blown out, buzzing black drone. The drums and vocals are barely even there, satisfied to lurk under an oppressive cloak of suffocating heaviness and the seemingly endless, relentlessly hypnotic crush. Fans of the buzzy drone-y end of the black metal spectrum will be blown away. And drone freaks will luxuriate in the absolutely gorgeous final twenty minute track, a slow building lowercase shimmer, worthy of Chalk, Coleclough, Hafler Trio and the like.
MPEG Stream: "Laudanum"
MPEG Stream: "Bete Noir"

VELVET CACOON Northsuite (Southern Lord) 2lp 19.98
Another one of our absolute favorite black metal records ever, musically, conceptually and sonically, from Portland's Velvet Cacoon (their other release Genevieve is right up there too!) gets what might be one of the most deluxe vinyl issues EVER. Double 180 gram vinyl, each lp in a picture inner sleeve, all housed in a super deluxe double-wide jacket, with the band logo, embossed on matte black, ONTO ACTUAL VELVET!! They look amazing, and somehow, reflect the mysterious, refined, damaged and buzz drenched musical blackness within. LIMITED TO 1500 COPIES!!! We got a bunch but they will be gone before you know it...
We fell in love with this band before we even heard 'em! And the more we find out about this mysterious outfit the more we can't get enough! A while back an aQ customer suggested we check out this bizarre black metal band from Portland called Velvet Cacoon. Supposedly they were super reclusive eco-fascists who built their own instruments, their main home-built instrument was the diesel harp, a huge diesel powered guitar contraption that spit out impossibly fuzzy and Burzumic drones, and when we finally heard the record, we could totally tell! No guitar could sound that heavy and fuzzy! It was that fucking diesel harp! Holy shit. That record was a dense drone-like slab of buzzing black metal like we had never heard, heavy enough for metal heads but deep, dark and droney enough for folks into stuff like Troum and Lustmord to get into.
Well, a year or so later, another aQ customer pointed us toward a website where the band had posted an interview with the band, and guess what? It was all a hoax. Well, not the music obviously, but they were not in fact eco-fascists, there was no diesel harp, they were just a couple dudes from Portland who loved black metal but were intent on pissing off the black metal community. In the interview the band went on to talk about how they had short hair, and listened to Nina Simone, and that one or both of them played music in a local wine bar. Pretty hilarious actually. And then if you went to the Velvet Cacoon website, there was a solitary link, to an Air mp3. Yep, the French electronic group Air. What the fuck? But c'mon, it just made us dig their band even more! They now have a much less mysterious website and Velvet Cacoon now apparently consists of just Josh "and his dreampop muse Angela, two souls mesmerized by chemicals and the after-hours". Woah.
So no more mysterious politics, no more homemade instruments, but the band are indeed working on a second album (which is out and we have, the equally amazing Dextronaut), but in the meantime, their first two demos have been packed up and released as a single cd. And WOW! It's just as amazing as the first one. The oldest demo, Music For Falling Buildings, shows the band at the beginning, when they were super raw, super aggressive, total Burzum / Darkthrone worship, fierce and fuzzed out and furious, but even back then, they employed plenty of experimentalism, strange ambient interludes, studio fuckery, found sounds. The later demo, Red Steeples, finds the band much closer to where they would end up with Genevieve. A buzzing droney black metal mixed with suffocating dark ambience. Monstrous drones, rumbling minimalism, fuzzed out soundscapes, above, below, beneath and amidst thick swaths of ultra grim black metal. Considering how much we love Genevieve it's really saying something when we say that this whole disc is AS good as, if not even better, due in no small part to the fact that it's WAY more damaged and freaked out sounding, and you know how much we love that!
MPEG Stream: "Northsuite"
MPEG Stream: "Dieselflame Novapyre 1892"

IRON BITCHFACE / CHAOS THROUGH PROGRAMMING We Are Trolls / Grave Rave (Slut Factory) cd 11.98
We weren't really sure what to think when we were first exposed to the strangely named Iron Bitchface (thanks AQ pal Guy from Guelph), ostensibly a black metal band, IBF ended up being so much more than a mere metal band. In fact, barely a metal band at all, more some sort of metallic techno digital hardcore sort of thing. Needless to say, we LOVE it. And odds are you will too. That is if the idea of grim black metal crossed with spastic DHR style techno pushes your buttons. And c'mon, it really should, cuz this stuff is amazing. Completely baffling, wild and heavy and totally fucking bizarre.
Iron Bitchface is K-Rot and We Are Trolls collects four out of print releases, Return To Gran Mountain, Flirtinis All Round!, I Hate The Internet and Caffeine:Caffiend. Each one a confusional blend of relentlessly inhuman drum machine blasts, bizarre synths, buzzing blackened guitars and growled demonic vocals. The synths pluck out playful melodies over washes of guitar buzz, the drums spastic and hyperspeed. Some songs are almost straight black metal, others are weird abstract synthscapes, others are weird block rockin' techno, like some sort of lo-fi Basement Jaxx, while still others are some weird sort of alien house music. But as you might imagine, the best bits, and thankfully, that means most of the tracks here combine all of the above into totally damaged danceable black thrash techno hardcore whattheefuck. Awesome.
And even more awesome is the fact that this is a split, with the also strangely named Chaos Through Programming, who as much as we hate to admit it, might be even cooler and weirder than IBF. Where Iron Bitchface is sort of buzzy and lo-fi and home brewed, the sound of Chaos Through Programming is HUGE, a dizzying chopshop, mixing big dance beats, bizarre samples, and massive crunchy metal guitars, like a metal obsessed Chemical Brothers with ADD, but with surprising moments of melodic lucidity and killer rhythmic complexity scattered amidst the brain melting bursts of collaged metal dance weirdness.
Packaged in an oversized slimline DVD case with full color artwork and a full color insert.
MPEG Stream: IRON BITCHFACE "Crimson Sun (The Journey Begins)"
MPEG Stream: IRON BITCHFACE "Monsters Awake!"
MPEG Stream: IRON BITCHFACE "Doom Doom Doom Doom"
MPEG Stream: CHAOS THROUGH PROGRAMMING "B-Boy Barfight Monolith"
MPEG Stream: CHAOS THROUGH PROGRAMMING "Grave Rave"

AKITSA Sang Nordique (Hospital Productions / Tour De Garde) cd 13.98
Another long overdue reissue from these French Canadian masters of stripped down black buzz. We reviewed their amazing 2001 debut, Goetie, a few lists back, and now we've got Sang Nordique originally released in 2002, it's just as black and buzzy, offkilter and strange. And as hard as it is to believe, maybe even better than the debut, certainly weirder!
Beginning with a damaged super reverbed guitar intro, that sounds like some impossible cross between blackened surf music and a Morricone western score, featuring a gorgeously melancholy, super distorted guitar buzzing within a cloud of thick reverb, the band immediately launch into some gloriously relentless Darkthrone-ish pounding old school blackness, with looped riffage, killer blastbeats, and some super harsh hellish howls. But by the next track, they've switched gears, and are spitting out some weird sort of crusty punk rock, flecked with a little old school classic metal, sounding for the most part, minus the blackened vocals, like this could be Doom or Discharge or some missing D-beat band from the eighties. Track three, the title track, has them switching it up once again, with a strangely melodic midtempo groove, pounding out a garage-y sort of stomp, sounding not a little bit like the Brainbombs, filthy and blown out, in the red and dripping with crumbling distortion, lots of swagger and groove, but painted all sorts of black. 
The next two tracks are straight ahead D-beat black thrash, furiously frenzied blasts of buzz and howl, veering from full on black metal, to more of that sort of blackened crusty punk. But then things get super strange... The second to last track, "La Nature De Mon Pans", begins as a loping swinging dirge, all demonic howl, caveman pound, and some super stripped down riffing, until the -other- vocals come in, a monotone Jandekian drawl, a slightly atonal croon, that suddenly gives this a Circle Of Ouroborus vibe, and the track is transformed into a lurching demented, seasick downer slab of doomy crust pop, complete with soaring minor key lead guitar. Whatthefuck?!? So goddamn good! It had us almost wishing the whole record sounded like this. 
At least until the final track, a 10+ minute drone and buzzscape of rumbling low end glitches, distant reverbed drum pound and haunting vocals, like a black metal Whitehouse maybe, the whole track a grinding rumbling glacial dirge, with those creepy vocals drifting ghostlike over the machinelike murk. Another seriously amazing WTF moment on a record packed with 'em. Definitely one of our favorite weirdo black metal bands, and Sang Nordique is one of their best records for sure. We can hardly wait to get their most recent full length La Grande Infamie (from 2006) reviewed and on the list! But until then, this should most certainly hold you over...
MPEG Stream: "Riposte"
MPEG Stream: "Frontiere"
MPEG Stream: "Sang Nordique"

MARDUK Rom 5:12 (Regain) cd 14.98
For a band much loved by the metalheads around these parts, there's a serious dearth of Marduk albums on the AQ site. Only four out of maybe a dozen full lengths. WTF? No excuse, other than just too much amazing metal to cover...
So let's try to right that wrong! We meant to get going on Marduk reviews again when Mortuus from Funeral Mist joined on vocals. We couldn't think of a better combo, the blazing buzz of Panzer Division Marduk, and the grim frosty howl from Funeral Mist, but it seemed most long time fans were super bummed on the change, we however were not. Even though we never got around to reviewing 2004's Plague Angel, it ranks as one of our favorite Marduk records. 
So for those new to Marduk, the thing with them, is they are fast. Really fast. Furious, relentless, the embodiment of pure black buzz. Lots of folks found the band to be boring because of the lightspeed blur the band seemed to constantly inhabit, but we reveled in their blazing blackness. So we were pretty surprised by this latest disc, sure the band had dabbled in midtempos in the past, even a bit of dirge here and there, but Rom 5:12 is pretty heavy on the midtempo Burzumic buzz, and even the doomy downtuned plod, but fear not those chunks of blackness are surrounded on all sides by that classic ultrafast Marduk buzz. 
The opening track is all spacious and mathy, even post rocky, sounding not unlike recent Deathspell Omega, lots of gnarled squalls of blackness amidst almost groovy black riffing. The second track though returns Marduk to more familiar ground, but not for long. Check out track three. "Imago Mortis", it's downright pretty, sort of major key, with huge sweeping melodies, a dirgey dramatic breakdown in the middle, and a pounding groove laden back half, all complex and mathy, but not at all blazing fast. The weird thing is it really suits them. It makes the perfect balance for the blinding lightning strike of the other more typically furious and fast numbers. 
Probably the coolest song on Rom 5:12 is "Accuser/Opposer", which features Alan Averill aka Naihmass Nemtheanga from Primordial and Void Of Silence, who adds a whole 'nother dimension with his throaty wailing clean vocals, sounding quite a bit like Mike Scalzi from Slough Feg at moments, wrap your head around that, Slough Feg vocals over dirgey Marduk, hell yeah. 
What else to say? This totally rules, much more varied than past releases, but still with plenty of ultra fast fury and black buzzing blast, but with a whole lot more going on. Definitely one of our favorite Marduk discs...
MPEG Stream: "Accuser / Opposer"
MPEG Stream: "The Levelling Dust"
MPEG Stream: "Cold Mouth Prayer"

EGONOIR Der Pfad Zum Fluss (Amortout) cd 14.98
From the same label that brought us music from Bethlehem, Costes and the debut/swansong recording from SF's The Gault (featuring members of legendary SFBM outfit Weakling) and which just so happens to be run by the guys in Diamatregon (who have a record out on Andee's tUMULt label, and a new one on the way!) comes this bizarre black beauty, the debut full length from bizarre German black horde Egonoir. 
The label mentions the usual blackbuzz culprits in their description of Egonoir: Burzum, Leviathan, Bethlehem, Strid, Manes, and while it does have much in common with those obvious influences, it is somehow so much more. Darker, moodier, more melancholy, prettier, and definitely weirder. 
The root sound is a slow crawl, a barely midtempo buzzing Burzumic plod, with harsh vocals, and blown out guitars, but the whole thing is wreathed in a strange smoky production, making everything fuzzy and murky and muted and strangely lovely. The tracks often drift into swirling ambience, with the buzzing guitars transformed into amorphous clouds of foggy blurry guitar, a backdrop to the lilting melodies in the foreground. 
Then there are the vocals, that range from harsh howls, demonic growls to haunting crooning, but the strangest thing, and what makes Egonoir sound so unique, is the bizarre humming/crooning that lurks beneath the more traditionally blackened vocals, almost like American Music Club or Crash Test Dummies or Leonard Cohen, drifting darkly and melodically beneath the buzzing crawl... at some points female vocals drift into the picture, and suddenly it's a black metal Mazzy Star, almost, it's these creepy beautiful vocals that make this sound like some ultra depressing black metal lounge band, performing at some blackened dive perched on the edge of the abyss, flames licking at the foundation, the facade illuminated by buzzing black neon signs, and packed with a motley crew of hellish beats and down on their luck, southward headed earthlings. 
Lots of acoustic guitars (a couple tracks are mostly acoustic), muted wandering bass lines, gorgeously sorrowful melodies, those crooning humming vocals, loping seasick tempos, arpeggiated guitars, hushed monk-like chants, snippets of German wartime speeches, all wrapped in thick swaths of buzz and reverb, slowly drifting, like some buzzy black dream. 
Fans of all things depressive and slow, blackened and Burzumic, fuzzy and washed out, will freak for this. If Make A Change... Kill Yourself, Burzum, Xasthur, Nortt, Inferi and the like are your late night downer black metal soundtrack, Egonoir might just be perfect for those bleak early morning hours after a long night of misery and hopelessness...
Or as the label so succinctly puts it: "Total psycho dark metal, noir, noir, noir."
MPEG Stream: "Der Pfad Zum Fluss"
MPEG Stream: "Ego Noir Teil7"

GRAVELAND Drunemeton (Forever Plagued) lp 16.98
Now available on vinyl! Super limited! Only 500 copies! New artwork, and a BIG poster. Don't be mislead by the text on the back cover re: a patch, that was only the first hundred copies and those are gone. But it hardly matters, this record is AWESOME, and is maybe the most demented and fucked up sounding Graveland record ever, which means of course quite possibly our favorite. And as you're probably painfully aware of by now, black metal vinyl never lasts long around here, so don't miss out...
We gotta go way back for this one. A serious slab of black metal history. Graveland's infamous third demo, originally released on cassette in 1992, Drunemeton!! And while it is way more grim and lo-fi that we've come to expect, it's also way weirder, and you know how we love that.
From the very Graveland like intro, tape hiss and church bells, whirling wind, huge buzzing swaths of primitive synth and harsh whispered vocals, you know this is gonna be good, but you definitely can't possibly be prepared for how weird and fucked it's going to be as well. This is so awesomely lo-fi, machine like drums (drum machine we presume) are the focus, WAY up in the mix, louder than everything else except maybe the vocals. The guitars are a churning throbbing pulse more than actual riffing, the vocals a harsh growl laid over everything. The only time you can actually hear the notes and riffs are when things slow down to a dirge and the blast beat becomes a mechanical plod. But the second the blast beat begins again, the guitars become a muted blur and suddenly it's some strange alien industrial jam.
In fact, in a lot of ways, it's hard not to hear Godflesh or Pitchshifter in these songs. The drums are so industrial and relentless, a pounding that defines the sound here. Imagine if Godflesh had been into black metal, this is almost what it would have had to sound like. The slow parts are equally strange, with huge sweeps of ultra cinematic keyboards nearly swallowing up everything else, making the guitar buzz seem tiny, and the drums sound like throwing rocks against an aluminum garage door, everything during those slow parts is about the epic synths, moody and melodramatic, before the drums kick back in and we're back in black metal Godflesh territory.
Some of the best moments are when those two sounds mix, the sweeping synths, and the industrial pound, and during those stretches the drum machine seems to stumble, struggling amidst a black sea of synth swells and crunchy guitar buzz. Elsewhere, there are weird backwards gongs (at least that's what it sounds like) strange circusy piano melodies, haunting chantlike vocals, the sounds of birds, mechanical clanging and clatter, all wrapped up in the record's machine-like black pound.
As if it wasn't obvious by now, this is most definitely the strangest and least obviously traditionally black metal Graveland record, managing to push both our old school industrial buttons and our grim damaged black metal buttons, AT THE SAME TIME!! The more we listen to this, and we can't seem to stop, the more it seems inevitable that Drunemeton is quite possibly our new favorite Graveland record.
MPEG Stream: "The Eyes Of Balor"
MPEG Stream: "Shadows Of Doom"
MPEG Stream: "The Days Of Black Sun"
MPEG Stream: "Drunemeton"

DRAUGURZ A Yell From The Past (Dark Hidden Productions) cd 10.98
Of all the crazy and amazing black metal cassettes we've gotten over the last year or so, this has to be one of our favorites. And while we did just manage to get the tape back in stock (see elsewhere on this list) we also finally got A Yell From The Past ON CD, so we can finally highlight it, and lavish it with all the blackened praise it so rightfully deserves.
A Yell From The Past is a brilliant blast of demented blackness from a mysterious Brazilian black metal horde called Draugurz, who in the past have shared a split with AQ faves Marblebog.
Draugurz are of the ultra anguished midtempo doom drenched black metal persuasion, with a super buzzy and brittle guitar sound, stumbling drums way up in the mix, fuzzed out murky minor key keyboards and EXTREMELY tortured vocals, the kind that howl and scream and caterwaul...
A Yell From The Past (awesome title!) is a collection, a sort of greatest hits, drawn from two demos and the split with Marblebog, and the whole thing is a gorgeously lo-fi, dark and torturous journey through a black musical wasteland. Slow trudging doom gives way to lurching midtempo buzz gives way to a furious blast that is so blown out it threatens to transform into a smear of Merzbowian white noise. Heavy and weird and mysterious, haunting and heavy and so very dementedly black.
Killer cover too, some sort of cartoonish ghost drifting above the forest.
MPEG Stream: "Die Traumburg"
MPEG Stream: "Hatestorm"
MPEG Stream: "A Yell From The Past"

DRAUGURZ A Yell From The Past (Gungnir Productions) cassette 4.50
Of all the crazy and amazing black metal cassettes we've gotten over the last year or so, this has to be one of our favorites. And while it is now available on cd (see elsewhere on this list) , it somehow seems more appropriate to the tape format, all buzzy and lo-fi and completely damaged. But however you swing, digital or analog, it's time to again lavish A Yell From The Past with all the blackened praise it so rightfully deserves.
A Yell From The Past is a brilliant blast of demented blackness from a mysterious Brazilian black metal horde called Draugurz, who in the past have shared a split with AQ faves Marblebog.
Draugurz are of the ultra anguished midtempo doom drenched black metal persuasion, with a super buzzy and brittle guitar sound, stumbling drums way up in the mix, fuzzed out murky minor key keyboards and EXTREMELY tortured vocals, the kind that howl and scream and caterwaul...
A Yell From The Past (awesome title!) is a collection, a sort of greatest hits, drawn from two demos and the split with Marblebog, and the whole thing is a gorgeously lo-fi, dark and torturous journey through a black musical wasteland. Slow trudging doom gives way to lurching midtempo buzz gives way to a furious blast that is so blown out it threatens to transform into a smear of Merzbowian white noise. Heavy and weird and mysterious, haunting and heavy and so very dementedly black.
Killer cover too, some sort of cartoonish ghost drifting above the forest.
Warning: the tape has some drop outs and some serious sonic inconsistencies, but just consider that another element of Draugurz's weird world and they sound almost like they belong...
MPEG Stream: "Die Traumburg"
MPEG Stream: "Hatestorm"
MPEG Stream: "A Yell From The Past"

PELICAN City Of Echoes (Daymare) cd + dvd 32.00
In the overcrowded world of metallic post rock, or post metal, or whatever the heck you want to call it, there seem to be two forces constantly battling it out, Pelican and Isis. But it's hardly a battle, as both bands are friends, share a label, and share a sound too. And the interesting thing is they both seem to be developing in a similar fashion. Each band, in their own way, and at their own pace, seems to be phasing metal out of their sound. Not completely. But where Isis once sounded a LOT like Neurosis, they now sound much more like a post rock band with metal bits here and there. Expansive and epic and only heavy to balance their ultra melodic side. And while Pelican seemed to be on a serious metal bender there for a while, this new record, while indeed rife with metallic moments, finds them at their post rockiest, and we have to say it suits them.
From the opening track, with its loping minor key math rock intro, to it's downtuned metal chug middle, to a killer harmony guitar / double kick bridge, the band never go all out metal, even if it might sound like it on the surface. Sure, we're loving the occasional flurry of maniacal kick drum, and the occasional Fucking Champs like Carcass riffery, but it never completely transforms the sound into pure metal. Metal plated maybe, but regardless, it sounds amazing!
Pelican nowadays sound like the very heaviest band you loved in the nineties, come back to life, supercharged and metallized. We hear lots of Slint, Bastro, Polvo, Shellac, Don Caballero, June Of 44 and bands like that, in the riffs, the arrangements, the melodies, which is fine with us. In fact, a lot of City Of Echoes sounds like a heavier Explosions In The Sky, who obviously owe a great debt to the loud-quiet-loud math rockers of days gone by. Sure it's metal enough to hit the spot for that sensitive metalhead in need of a melodic instru-metal fix, and yeah it may be heavy, and it may be metallic, but c'mon, this is indie rock, a kick ass, heavy as fuck indie rock maybe, but still...
While they last, we have the limited Japanese import Daymare double disc version of City Of Echoes, much like the fancy version of Jesu's Conqueror we carry instead of the domestic Hydra Head version. Ultra deluxe packaging, gorgeous design, thick 6 panel digipak, spot varnish gloss on matte finish, Japanese obi, Japanese liner notes, but most importantly, a bonus dvd of the band performing live at the Knitting Factory in L.A., playing mostly new songs but a few Pelican classics like "March To The Sea". The dvd looks great, sounds great, and unlike some past performances we've seen, the band are on fire -- they've always sounded great, but they didn't always move that much, but here the band are super active on stage, jumping around, swaying, head banging, which makes it way more intense and fun to watch. And it's cool to see the new songs played live too...
MPEG Stream: "Bliss In Concrete"
MPEG Stream: "City Of Echoes"

BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL The Frog Prince (Anthem) 7" 5.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
An ultra-uber-super-mega limited 7" from all time AQ noisemakers Birchville Cat Motel, released on Anthem Records, the same folks who brought us the killer Brainbombs 7" Stinking Memory a while back. The packaging this time around is no frills, a plain sleeve, hand stamped, the record numbered in gold ink (limited to 212 copies) and it's only one song, a one sided 7", but it's unlike any BCM recording we've heard yet. It kills us that it's only a 7"...
It begins with a strange collection of vocalizations, duck calls, metallic shimmers, distant moans, alien rhythms, and what sounds like monkeys or maybe crickets, a dense tangle of sounds that swirl and intertwine before giving way to a propulsive metallic groove, a chugging guitar, plodding drums, but all beneath a mighty chorus of croaking frogs (hence the title?)! It sounds a bit like the main riff from Judas Priest's "You Got Another Thing Coming" looped over and over. And throw in the frogs and suddenly you've got some crazy mix of Circle's Andexelt and Sounds Of North American Frogs, and that is a very good thing indeed. 
LIMITED TO 212 COPIES!!!

HIGGS, DANIEL A.I.U. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) lp 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor. 
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy. 
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself. 
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient  drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
MPEG Stream: "Luminous Carcass Ornament"
MPEG Stream: "Cocoon On The Cross"
MPEG Stream: "Spectral Hues"

HIGGS, DANIEL A.I.U. Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot (Thrill Jockey) book + cd 15.98
The return of our favorite modern day shamen, Mr. Daniel Arcus Incus Ululat Higgs, maybe better known to some of you as Dan Higgs, the vocalist for the mighty Lungfish, or perhaps Higgs, the world renowned tattoo artist (now retired). A man who wears many hats: vocalist, painter, tattoo artist, poet, guitarist, master of the Jew's Harp, and who knows what else. We made Higgs' last full length Ancestral Songs record of the week last year, and since this one is just as good, if not better, we figured it deserved the same honor. 
Truly one of the few modern day troubadours, Higgs is a mysterious traveling man, he'll occasionally show up at the store, looking as dapper and disheveled as ever, with tales of various explorations or experiences. The last time he stopped by, he had a little hand held tape recorder, and he had just returned from India, where he spent the whole time recording street musicians and crowds and animals and anything else that struck his fancy. 
His music has the same quality, a sort of restless rootlessness, that is at once warm and familiar, but strangely alien and indescribable. On Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot, Higgs manages to weave all of his disparate sonic interests together into one seamless whole. Buzzing raga guitars, strange lo-fi field recordings, Jew's harp, all in varying states of fidelity, but the recording, the sound quality, the location and the background noise are as much a part of the music as the music itself. 
Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot begins with a burst of static, like a strong wind on a microphone, before Higgs' guitar begins to buzz like some snake charming ritual, an Eastern tinged Appalachia, a rustic raga, the string buzzing, lots of distortion and shifting overtones creating all sorts of glorious tonal color. Ragged and ramshackle but completely mesmerizing. The second track is a dizzying seasick assemblage of wheezing harmonium and pounded chimes, atonal melodies and streaks of feedback, eventually fading out and leaving just Higgs' guitar to buzz and shimmer, a sprawling sun balked stretch of gorgeously pastoral Appalachia. "Spectral Hues" is a stuttering collage of manipulated tones, using just the record and stop buttons on a tape player, a primitive swirl of tones, transformed into a haunting melody, each note separated by the weird swoop and bbbzzzzt of the button being depressed. The title track is Higgs in full on electric guitar mode, or at least what sounds like an electric guitar, wailing and howling chaotically, unfurling some sort of old time jig, before again fading into a 'nother steel string workout, this one distinctly Indian sounding, a dense tangled raga, the notes overlapping and the strings' buzz smearing the sounds into thick swaths of sonic blur. "Creation Moan" is another tripped out psychguitar freakout. A buzzing overdriven squall of tangled upper register skree and low end rumble, what sounds like some traditional folk song transformed into snarling, squirming, grinding crumbling distorted buzz. And finally the nine minute final track, a swirling ambient  drift, running water, some finger picked guitar, that suddenly winks out, leaving a wavering buzzscape, above which Higgs' Jew's Harp weaves haunting alien melodies, sometimes buzzing and reverberating, other times, speaking in tongues as Higgs sings into it. So haunting and unlike anything we've ever heard. Yet at the same time so strangely soothing, meditative and dreamlike.
It's always such a joy to step into Higgs' world, like traveling through the looking glass, or falling down the rabbit hole, and on the other side, in the mysterious world Higgs calls home, a world which we can only visit, and even in visiting, only see what hovers on the surface, we wander wide eyed and open eared, trying to take in everything we can before the record ends and we are pulled back into home, where we wait patiently for our next visit...
As if that weren't enough, the cd version comes with a full color hardcover book of Higgs' paintings and 'poetry', a series of cryptic acrostics to be more accurate. The Atomic Yggdrasil Tarot series of paintings are all, like most of Higgs' work, strange and wondrous, here the focus is on enigmatic amorphous shapes, vividly colored, with all manner of textures and designs, stripes, polka dots, some of the shapes look like whales or fish, others like mushrooms, eyeballs, amoebas, shapeless heads, each filled with symbols, colors and patterns. The accompanying acrostics are cryptic and it's difficult to determine if they are related to the paintings they are beside, MUSIC, BIRDS, MIND, EDEN, PEACE, EMBRYO, BELOVED, COITUS... all offering up mysterious pearls of wisdom like "Always braid your silver serpents" or "Existence manifests between ravenous yellow orbs". 
The perfect visual accompaniment to Higgs' raw and primitive musical rituals...
MPEG Stream: "Luminous Carcass Ornament"
MPEG Stream: "Cocoon On The Cross"
MPEG Stream: "Spectral Hues"

EXPO '70 Animism (Kill Shamen) cd 12.98
It's amazing how quickly Expo '70 went from being a group we had never heard of, whose cd-r we got randomly sent to us in the mail, to a dronerock juggernaut, releasing disc after disc of amazing ambient kraut-flecked drift, what is beginning to seem remarkably like a monthly installment of outerspace sonic exploration. But heck, we'd much rather get a new 'issue' of far out Expo '70 dronebliss every month than say, Star Magazine (well, actually, okay, maybe Star was a bad example, but definitely more than say Spin or Rolling Stone or pretty much any other monthly installment sort of thing, anyway...).
Animism just so happens to be Expo '70's first actual cd as well, the first release that's not a limited edition cd-r, which is one of the reasons we decided to make it record of the week. 'Cuz to be totally honest, every single one of the Expo '70 releases could have been, and heck, maybe should have been Records of the Week. Certainly if we based it on how much they get played in the store, and the reaction of the folks hearing it, and the fact that the cds have been impossible to keep in stock. But that's only one of the reasons. The other, is that Animism, in it's own subtly space-y and psychedelic way, is quite possibly the 'heaviest' Expo '70 release yet.
The record begins much in the same way as most of the others. A huge drifting rumbling soundscape. Spare and wide open. Across this warm expanse drift disembodied guitar squiggles, reverbed scrapes, bits of fragmented melodies, post rock snippets, tinkling percussive shimmer,
all drifting over soft swells of undulating low end. There are tons of FX, but it's not Acid Mothers style freakout, instead, these sonic aktions are muted and smeared into dreamy streaks. Never has a music sounded so much like what it must feel like to drift weightless through space. Cloaked in inky blackness, but with the sparkle of a million stars illuminating the seemingly endless emptiness. And so it goes on, each track, a slow lugubrious crawl through the galaxies, strange shapes drift by, colored lights, every bit of melody like some barely visible shooting star, soft billow clouds of FX enveloping you before dissipating and leaving you to once again drift wide-eyed into infinity.
Track three, though, is where things start to get a little scary. In come the guitars, and this time it's not the little glimmers and twinkles, these are thick sheets of crumbling rumbling distorted buzz. Relentlessly trudging beast like across the same barren soundscapes, but leaving a trail of blown speakers in its wake. The effects here are much more blown out, melodies slip and slither amidst the coruscating heaviness, sounding almost like someone transported SUNNO))) back to the seventies, where they ended up jamming with Klaus Schulze and Ash Ra Tempel. Granted the Expo '70 cd-r Center Of The Earth, was also pretty heavy, but on Animism, the heaviness seems to be more deftly integrated with the lovelier psych-drone-drift parts, an organic space kraut doom, as dark and dense as it is dreamy and effervescent. The record effortlessly drifts back and forth, from black drone to space-y drift, as if one couldn't possibly exist in this universe without the other.
There are some subtle sonic surprises too, like the way-up-in-the-mix, tripped out harmonized guitars on "Entering The Night On A Highway Of Astral Projection", the folky acoustic strum on "Missing Sun", and the swirling SUNNO)))-y murk of "Shape-Shifting Mountain Mover", sounding a bit like the Angelic Process with the treble turned all the way down and the bass all the way up! Blissy and muddy, an epic blown out glistening dirge, suffocated under layer after layer of FX drenched detritus.
If there was ever an ultimate soundtrack for blowing the hatch and floating free, doomed to a languorous eternity of drug fueled drift and buzzing rumbling psychedelic space rock torpor, this is most certainly it.
So recommended.
MPEG Stream: "Mahogany Lake"
MPEG Stream: "Eagle Talons"

HEADS, THE Dead In The Water (Rooster) cd 14.98
This super limited rarity from one of our favorite modern space/psych rock bands finally available as a real cd, and in a run of more than 100 copies!!
As we mentioned a while back, UK garage psych space rockers The Heads have a little cottage industry going, a series of ultra limited cd-r's, usually limited to 100 copies or less, in super elaborate packaging, often, the sounds inside are studio experiments, outakes and the like, and thus are sometimes the freakiest, wildest psychedelic blowouts these guys have ever committed to tape. This one got reissued a while back as a super limited double lp, but is now finally available on cd!
With killer Jaws ripoff artwork on the cover, this disc is some of the most ferocious, druggy, freaked out space psych we've heard in ages. 
From the second the laser touches the aluminum, it's a speaker punishing super blown out ultra aggro wall of druggy psychedelic space garage stomp. Guitars soar and wail, emitting impossible dense clouds of notes and chords, it sounds like the best parts of every Monster Magnet song, the sort of post-song-proper section where the band just freaks out and heads skyward, so think ALL of those parts woven together into seriously EPIC JAMS, everything wreathed in swirling space FX, the drums pounding and guitars EVERYWHERE. Or imagine the relentless psych jams of Earthless, only seriously supercharged and acid fried. So great.  
LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES!!
MPEG Stream: "Side 1: Prologue / '69 Shakes Of The Tail, Mystic Healer ("Suck My Tail Pipe")"
MPEG Stream: "Side 2: A Bite?/ Backpool Loop, It Cannot Become ObsoleteŠ, "Sat Up All Night, Just Looking At It", Less Is More"

THIS HEAT Deceit (ReR) cd 17.98
It's tough to review the records of This Heat separately, knowing that there is a box set, a box set most of us had been waiting for for years! Like imagine if you heard about Christmas, and spent the next decade waking up and rushing out to the living room only to find nothing there. That's what it was like waiting for the long rumored This Heat box. It seems almost self evident that it is honestly one of the few box sets, that is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. But okay, $100 might be a bit much to drop on a band you're not all the familiar with. And probably some folks already have some of these discs, as they were briefly available in the nineties. But let's be upfront and warn you straight up, we know very few people, who on hearing any music from This Heat, even a single song, weren't immediately compelled to get their hands on every single bit of recorded material they could find. The music of This Heat is most definitely that powerful, that intense, having informed almost all of the music we've loved since. And sounding as fresh and forward thinking today as it did when it was first recorded.
Before we get to reviewing This Heat's second and sadly final full length, Deceit, let's give you some background on (and no small amount of gushing over) one of our all time favorite bands.
Trying to explain why this band is so good is sort of like trying to explain why ice cream is so delicious. Or why Bush is such a terrible president.
Or maybe it's kind of like writing an introduction for the new Pynchon novel. Or telling a few jokes before Richard Pryor comes on stage. Or throwing a couple quick passes before Joe Montana comes on the field. It's that daunting, that overwhelming, that impossible.
The trio of Charles Hayward, Charles Bullen and Gareth Williams known collectively as This Heat were one of the few bands that literally changed p