5IVE Hesperus (Tortuga) cd 14.98
The cover photo on this digipack release shows placid waters, probably some sheltered harbor near Boston, from whence this guitar-drums two-piece hail. The photo on the interior gatefold also depicts relatively calm seas. But the sonic waves that 5ive stir up are something else, bigger and meaner! 5ive's relentless and riff-repetitive, mostly-instrumental music is HEAVY all right. And thus, floats our boat, even as it tosses said boat about upon its stormy waves.
We've been waiting for some new 5ive for quite some time. This is their first full-length of new material in forever. 2006's Versus ep, featuring a couple remixes by Justin Broadrick (Jesu), only left us hankering for more... so we're glad to report that this new 5ive is finally here and it's got what we want. Thick n' distorted stoner rock meets post rock jams, full of loud soft dynamics for maximum sludgecore beauty and power. Tracks like "Heel" and "Big Sea" have plenty of rollicking psychedelic swing to 'em, after the pretty parts that set you up for the heavier hitting... and while the likes of "News II" gets up into the 12 minute range, even the shorter tunes here manage some epic, hypnotic heft. Fans of 5ive won't be disappointed, and if you haven't heard 'em before check this out if stuff like Pelican, Kinski, godheadsilo, Isis, Old Man Gloom, etc. is on your personal playlist.
MPEG Stream: "Gulls"
MPEG Stream: "Big Sea"

CAVE Hunt Like Devil (Permanent Records) lp+cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
REPRESSED AND BACK IN STOCK! This Record Of The Week from list 286 proved to be super popular, deservedly so. And thus the first pressing diappeared in no time. So if you didn't get one yet, now you've got another chance!
At first glance, it might be difficult to know what this record is all about. The sleeve is just a photo of trees and leaves, a dense overgrown forest. Pull out the cd, that too is cryptic, just some random letters on the disc, the sleeve, an old crinkled photo from some seventies porn mag of a topless cowgirl with a gun in her mouth. There's an insert, with a bunch of strange shapes, the word CAVE right at the top. But we know what it is. We've been waiting for this disc for ages. The debut recording from, wait for it... CAVE! Who just so happen to be the spacerock krautrock dronerock riff heavy jam band side project of one Warhammer 48K, who were already spacey and krauty and droney to begin with, so needless to say this is some seriously kick ass, aQ freakout worthy shit.
For the attention span impaired, howabout some Hawkwind, Can, Circle, Lightning Bolt, Pharaoh Overlord? Sounds good huh? Well, it's easy to hear bits and pieces of all of those bands in the sound of Cave, a dual drummer-ed riff heavy psych rock, that takes single riffs and hammers at them, pounding and pummeling, repetitive and mesmerizing, a sort of kraut flecked hypnorock, but with all sorts of strange twists and turns, bizarre arrangements, baffling breakdowns, but woven into longform jams that should have anyone into the above mentioned bands frothing at the mouth.
The opening track is a gorgeous little tangle of minor key melodies, looped and repeated, over a tense distant drone, thick swaths of keyboard whir over soft tangles of acoustic guitar and space-y backwards guitar swoops, but then the opening riff of the second track kicks in, and it's all fuzzy and feral, the greatest riff Pharoah Overlord never wrote, and they just hang on it, way longer than any normal band would, FOREVER, before the drums kick in, and they're off, a relentless and hooky groove, with brief blasts of super dynamic chaos, before slipping right back into it. Keyboards lay still more hypnotic melodies over the top, vocals, when there are any, are shouted way down in the mix, or are wordless falsetto la-la-la's, adding more texture and sonic complexity than anything. The dual drummers mix it up spitting out occasional tribal squalls, sometimes thick swirls of staticky fuzz wash over the proceedings, but their propulsive fortitude never falters. The first two tracks would almost be enough. Nearly 12 minutes of heavy freaked out space jam nirvana. You can practically feel the walls heaving and the sweat dripping through the speakers. You'll probably need a lie down afterwards. But there's no time, cuz hell, there's 6 more tracks to dig through. The sound is punk rock, lo-fi, but lush and epic, damaged and delirious, like garage rockers raised on Magma and Faust, there's plenty of Neu! in there, Stereolab too then, but it's way heavier than that, the guitars crunchy and thick, occasionally opening up into wailing psychrock blowouts, the drums getting more and more distorted and frenzied. Imagine an amphetamine fueled Circle or Can, but via the basement, the sound a sweat soaked drug drenched mostly instrumental kraut groove
Mathy, murky, like the fucked up younger brother of Yes, a Neanderthal krautrock, laced with awesome grinding space rock riffage, blown out squalls of ur-psych, flurries of percussive splatter, chanting cult vocals, bits of what the fuck vocoder (!), but for all the weirdness, the core sound of Cave is THE RIFF. Whether it's a warbly synth, or a superdistorted guitar, or tra-la-la vocals, they all align themselves with that riff, the mission, to entrance, to ensorcel, a heaving, pulsing, throbbing mass, the sound magnetic and irresistible. Endless jams that aren't really, but feel like they should be. Like they are anyway. Transcending the laws of time and space, dragging us kicking and screaming, bouncing and bobbing, into some blissed out basement at the end of the universe, where we subsist of nothing but riffs, drums and FX. We never want to leave.
Killer packaging, it's an lp AND a cd, same music on both, fold over full color sleeve, full color one sided cd sleeve (all described above) and a full color thick cardstock insert. And of course, limited, only 500 copies!
MPEG Stream: "HLD 2"
MPEG Stream: "Hunt Like Devil"
MPEG Stream: "Seans Inner Ear"

UNO ACTU Hors Des Chemins De La Raison (Tour De Garde) cassette 5.00
Fuck, we love this band. We've only heard one tape from these Canadian electronic black ambient weirdos, but we immediately fell under their spell, and have been dying for new music ever since.
This is the latest tape of their damaged outsider alchemical sonic rituals, and if the first one was mysterious and strange, this one, is fucking baffling. All over the map, and completely wacked.
Opening with some fucked up creepy circusy synths, a buzzy tangle of haunting minor key video game forest drone. Then all of a sudden, they launch into a reverb drenched stumble, the drums blown out and spluttering, the guitar sawing away and emitting a cloud of noxious buzzing riffage, dual vocals, one a black metal rasp, the other a moaning whale call off in the distance. Freaky and super awesome. Those muted percussive thumps get more and more chaotic as the musical tension grows and grows, a lurching dirgey lo-fi doom damage workout. And it keeps getting better. And weirder. The next track is all folky, a strummed acoustic guitar, moaned vocals, all sorts of strange drifting FX, followed up by another acoustic crawl, creeping and slithery, the vocals growled beneath minor key piano plinking. Sheets of electric guitar buzz, insectoid electronic grizzle, huge echoey rumbling baritone moans, more mournful acoustic guitar...
Dense and washed out and fuzzy and murky and muddy and fucking genius. Fans of Dead Reptile Shrine, Circle Of Ouroborus, and other outsider metal outfits should be on all fours, cowering at the feet of Uno Actu, and offering up blood sacrifices as homage. We sure as hell are.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each tape hand numbered.

B.BAPHOMET Einsplundaghn (Small Doses) cd-r 8.98
Okay doomlords and dronelords, it's been a while since we got something in this heavy and grim and bleak and doomic. Something so blackened and crushing, but also so dark and droney, so blissed out and blurry.
The mysterious B.Baphomet, utilizing a strange collection of sound making devices, including bass guitars, Moogs, FX, vocals, Rhodes, percussion, oscillators, seat creaking, vibraphone and of course "knocking something over", has concocted this haunting mysterious collection of blackdrones and downtuned ambient doom, of shimmering whispers and washed out electronic landscapes. Weirdly, two of the tracks here are credited to B.Baphomet, while two of them are credited to M. Colby, who IS B.Baphomet.
Regardless, the opener is for the doomlords, a near black metal crawl, huge guitar chords poured out like black tar, super processed vocals howl and growl, streaks of feedback and long stretches of crumbling rumble, like a black metal version of that Vulture Club record we love so much. This is ultra-ultra-megadoom, an impossibly thick wall of black buzz, of low end sludge, creeping and seeping, the vocals buried in the mix, crushing and pummeling, a slow motion sonic flaying. The track eventually morphs into something much more static, the guitars spread out into throbbing drone, layered with fuzzy synths, and tons of low end, occasionally peppered with barely audible vocals, strange short wave interference, damaged FX,13 minutes of utter and glorious aural punishment.
But from that point on, the other three tracks, are for the dronelords (and hell, by now most aQ customers should count themselves as both, doomlord and dronelord), something much more abstract and minimal, the second track, is a strange swirl of muted melodies, buried rhythms, swells of processed guitar, all smeared into a blurry glimmering dronescape. The third track is similarly minimal and drone-y but much more gritty, the various tones crumbly and distorted, crackle, hiss, whir wrapped around decaying sound, the track slipping from warm alien glow, to subterranean industrial grind, but always stretched into long drawn out alien sounding sonic expanses.
The final track is the prettiest of the bunch, a sort of lullaby, drifting bell like tones, glimmering chimes, muted delicate melodies, warm soft chords, all so soft and shimmery and so unlike the rest of the disc, especially the blackened opener.
SUPER LIMITED!! Only 111 copies! Each disc comes in a super swank hand screened brown on brown cardstock sleeve, with a printed red Japanese style obi, inside, a printed color insert, each one hand numbered.
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 1"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled 2"

ELEMENTAL CHRYSALIS, THE The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion (Glass Throat Recordings) 2cd 23.00
Finally, the return of the Elemental Chrysalis, the duo of Chett Scott (aka Ruhr Hunter, he also runs Glass Throat Recordings) and James Woodhead, who were responsible for The Calocybe Collection, one of our favorite discs of 2005. A sprawling woodlandscape of dark ominous dronemusick and fluttery forest folk. It's been 3 years but once you hear The Dark Path To Spiritual Expansion, you'll understand what took so long.
A gorgeously packaged double disc set, looooooong tracks, four songs on each disc, the shortest clocking in at 7:32, the longest at 26:55. Gone is much of the drone, leaving their sound much more folky, the focus on the strings, plucked and strummed, buzzing and humming, the sound a mysterious mystical crawl, foresty, funereal, dark and dolorous and dreamlike.
The first nearly 15 minutes of the opening track consist of the same acoustic melody, repeated over and over, like some magical mantra, and it works somehow, the repetition trancelike, the subtle variations, propelling the track forward. Eventually, the track spreads out, the vocals ghostly moans, the strums become more abstract, the sound underpinned by haunting shimmers and whirs.
While these guys do get lumped in with the free folk or freak folk of forest folk movements, on The Dark Path, they are definitely something more akin to classic seventies folk. It could be some lost disc from a mysterious UK hippy commune in 1971. Opening for Comus and The Incredible String Band. This is some serious Wickerman shit. But without all the silliness or overt weirdness. The Elemental Chrysalis have created timeless folkmusic. A sort of foresty country music. Bits of twang definitely inform the band's dark wistful threnodies. The pace is lugubrious, the sound is sprawling and soporific, the voices drawled to the extent that they often sound like just another instrument. And the instrument list again is extensive and massive, a handful we'd never even heard of, but the band don't do the usual, everything and the kitchen sink, instead, they are employed subtly and judiciously, so much that you could be forgive for believing it to be just voice and guitar and a bit extra ambience. There are a few moments, especially on the second disc, where the band stretch out and craft some serious sonic soundscapes, but even then, they tend to drift above that same gorgeous forest floor folk flutter.
A gorgeously languorous countrified folk flecked slowcore, that will no doubt appeal to all the various folks mentioned above, but should also appeal to fans of later Earth, and anyone into dark beauty and haunting musical mystery.
Fantastic packaging, an oversized thick cardstock 6 panel fold over sleeve, green and black, stunning cover art, linernotes and credits, the cds mounted on nubs on two of the panels...
MPEG Stream: "In Through A Desert Door Of A Wooded Heart"
MPEG Stream: "Procession Of Burning Flowers"
MPEG Stream: "Hehaka"

GOSLINGS, THE Occasion (Not Not Fun) cd 14.98
Not many artists can lay claim to their very own musical genre, but Hollywood, Florida's The Goslings are among the elite few who most definitely can. On first listen their sound seems to fit pretty comfortably amongst the current crop of distorted deconstructed decaying blissed out dreamy dirge rock that seems to be all the rave (Nadja, Alcest, Hjarnidaudi, Procer Veneficus, etc.), after all they often get described as half SUNNO))) and half My Bloody Valentine, but that's really only half (again) true. And while their sound does share some of the elements of those other bands, The Goslings are their own perfect, synergetic sonic force, an organic, original soundworld that has absorbed and re-synthesized those influences entirely. In other words, on this latest record, they somehow manage to sound way, way heavier and much, much more lush, transforming any vestiges of other bands' sounds into something distinctly theirs. Formerly just a husband and wife duo, Max and Leslie Soren, Occasion finds the couple joined by two apparently full-time members which does nothing but help make their sound, thicker, and more dense, more intense, more distorted, and impossibly, more beautiful. It's not a huge departure from the sound of their previous outings, but that's not really a bad thing. Occasion just serves to demonstrate that their sound is now even more of a particularly refined and menacing chunk of skull crushingly gorgeous sound.
Each of The Goslings' records has been self-recorded straight onto tape in their $15 an hour rehearsal space. Before it was a 4-track, now it's a reel-to-reel 8-track tape, with any additional tracks being added at a friend's house in Pro Tools -- a slight upgrade, but again, one that merely serves to push their sound even further into some hellish sonic realm. Mastered by James Plotkin, their commitment to relatively lo-fi, analog recording a significant part of why each and every track is so totally ear-stabbingly, skull-fuckingly shit heavy. But beneath the obvious doom veneer, the crushing sludge, the washed out hiss and buzz, there are buried some lovely melodies and more of the Goslings' near perfect pop songs. Fear not though, it's not like Nadja or Jesu, where there is potentially enough of said pop to turn-off those more dedicated to the seriously heavy and/or utterly grim. Regardless of the surprising melodic structures lay hidden beneath the blown out bluster, or the prettiness of Leslie's vocals drifting ethereally throughout, the music, the sound, the Goslings' sheer power continually threatens to overwhelm, a bludgeoning slab of sonic destruction that's systematically destroying your entire life, note by note. Then out of nowhere, there's a weird little bluegrass number, a brief respite before the band lurch back into motion, unleashing another avalanche of village crushing, ultradistorted, stumbling, downtuned beautiful brutality.
A higher recommendation would be difficult to give. Essential!
MPEG Stream: "Mew"
MPEG Stream: "Parsley Halo"
MPEG Stream: "Vitium"

GUTTER TWINS, THE Saturnalia (Sub Pop) cd 13.98
There had been rumors circulating about this record for ages. Either that, or it just -seemed- inevitable, these two grunge icons who both went on to redefine themselves long after the bands that made them were long gone, and the scene that spawned them was long dead, finally together. It seemed like a no brainer. Two of the most distinctive voices in rock, both able to conjure up some seriously dark and volatile sounds, emotional, personal, intense, we couldn't actually imagine what this pairing would sound like. Who are we talking about? Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees) and Greg Dulli (Afghan Whigs).
So does it live up to the hype? Most of the press has been about the personalities, the debauchery, the drugs and alcohol, they did name themselves The Gutter Twins after all, so we would imagine some folks doubted the record would ever get made at all. But here it is, and it's a dark beauty. A lot more lush and heavy than we expected, and thankfully it manages to bring out the best in both Lanegan and Dulli. The songs Dulli sings definitely sound like later era Afghan Whigs, which is no bad thing at all, Lanegan adding some gravity with his whiskey soaked gravely growl. And Lanegan gets to lead the slow smoky crawls, the guitars unwinding all serpentine, organs buzzing and warbling, he just always sounds more at home in a cloud of smoke, barely lit by the corner of a stage, bottle in one hand, microphone in the other.
But there are surprisingly few slow brooders, the drums play a big part, the guitars load and soaring, there are strings everywhere, a few tracks even have programmed drums, but the duo manage to imbue each song with some serious pathos, wrapping them in dark clouds and wreathing them in stale smoke. The production helping make the songs epic, evoking wide open spaces and rain swept highways as much as dark bars and shuttered rooms.
"Circle The Fringes" is all swirling strings, and shimmery FX flecked ambience, beneath strummed minor key steel string guitar and moaning cellos, eventually launching into a sweeping groove, complete with staccato dynamics, wailing guitars, the whole thing ultra intense and pretty dang heavy. "Seven Stories Underground" gets all Tom Waits, haunting abstract percussion, the duo's vocals tangling up in strange harmonies, a slithery brooding drift, that builds to a super dramatic climax, before drifting off darkly. "Front Street" begins with the sounds of birds, a pastoral background for a simple folk fingerpicked guitar, again the two vocalists, their different voices, blending in perfectly unlikely ways, unfurling in tense, moody slow motion, peppered with swells of timpani, and warm whirring organ, and eventually soaring strings.
It's hard to be objective, considering how much we loved the Afghan Whigs and the Screaming Trees, how much we dig the Twilight Singers, and treasure Lanegan's solo records, and fans of any and all of those will most likely love this, but like all great collaborations, it's not merely the sum of its parts, the two obviously draw from each other, discovering things that they don't on their own, the resulting music a sort of sonic push and pull, but it's subtle, the sound cohesive and assured, seemingly the essence of the two personalities, both dark and troubled, and with a certain loner vibe, but together, they manage to create a sort of hopeful sadness, a melancholy warmth, the gorgeous sound of dark rainy nights, but with the promise of a new day to come.
MPEG Stream: "The Stations"
MPEG Stream: "God's Children"
MPEG Stream: "All Misery / Flowers"

ICON Night Of The Crime (Rock Candy) cd 17.98
Most of the metalheads we know, especially ones with a soft spot for classic eighties metal, are unanimous in their love of Phoenix hard rockers Icon. Their first disc was an all time classic, super rocking, crazy catchy, hooks galore and a raspy vocalist with a voice that sounded quite a bit like Blackie Lawless from W.A.S.P., in fact the whole band was sort of a dead ringer for W.A.S.P., or early Great White even. One of those records we NEVER get tired of listening to. Both Allan and Andee rank it as one of their all time favorites.
Icon's follow up was this disc right here, finally given a super deluxe reissue treatment, by Rock Candy, the UK label that gave us killer reissues from the Sea Hags, Zodiac Mindwarp, the Plasmatics, Billy Squier, and now this, Night Of The Crime.
The liner notes call this "without doubt one of the greatest melodic hard rock records ever made," and while we might not go quite that far, it is pretty awesome. But be warned, it's way more AOR than hard rock a lot of the time, plenty of keyboards, some ballad-y bits. But the songs are all crazy catchy, and the hardest rockers, like "Raise The Hammer" and "The Whites Of Their Eyes" could easily have been outtakes from their first record.
The sound hovers somewhere between Whitesnake, Autograph that sort of poppy hard rocking eighties sound and more commercial fare like John Parr. But it's the hooks and the killer voice that makes this stand out. The songs stick in your head like crazy, and it's difficult to imagine why these guys weren't huge. The liner notes are packed with photos and stories, the band had some serious Behind The Music drama going on, it makes for a good read. But again, if you don't dig the sound of the eighties, poppy melodic radio ready hard rock, big hair, all that, you might not be able to get into this. Allan and Andee both love the first Icon desperately, but only Andee is willing to stand up for this one, but he stands proud, hair teased, spandex pants, bullet belt, Chuck Taylors, lots and lots of scarves, head banging to his heart's content.
MPEG Stream: "Raise The Hammer"
MPEG Stream: "The Whites Of Their Eyes"
MPEG Stream: "Rock My Radio"

MARBLEBOG Wind Of Moors (Tour De Garde) cd 11.98
Finally available again, the gorgeous all ambient second album from Hungary's Marblebog, who on other records (which we gushed about on past aQ lists) combined bits of ambient drone with their mournful black buzz, but for Wind Of Moors, they jettisoned all traces of metal completely, and in their place, crafted a gorgeous slow moving world of drifting melancholy ambience. Very krautrocky, and quite reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, Popol Vuh and the like, the opening track is soft and sun dappled, gentle muted bongos, beneath a constant low level raga like buzz, soft synth swells, shimmering streaks of ethereal whir, a gorgeous laid back sprawl of nearly new age mesmer.
The next track is even lighter and dreamier, chords smeared into shadows as they drift by, chords suspended in soft swirls of sound, the notes, floating weightless, a breathless whisper of a song.
The third track has a bit of muted propulsion, a gentle heartbeat like pulse, beneath some thick, but still soft, buzz, a gorgeous minor key melody played out in high end tones, draped over the droning blurred raga below, so completely entrancing and hypnotic. Slightly ominous, dark clouds drifting across a steel blue sky, but still, the vibe is more like a forest just before the storm, hauntingly calm but still slightly uneasy.
The final track is the darkest of the bunch, a creeping sonic fog, layered melodies, gauzy and shimmering, slowly drifting, casting dark shadows, filling the speakers with dead leaves and cold rain. A chilling, but mysteriously lovely bit of dreamlike sound.
MPEG Stream: "Waves Of Inner Seas"
MPEG Stream: "Gateless Gate Of Nothingness"

VEEE DEEE s/t (At War With False Noise) 2x3"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.
Another blast of caustic freaked out psychedelic overload from this Japanese duo (well, they LIVE in Japan, they're Canadian, or at least one of em is), and while they may not BE Japanese, they sure sound Japanese. Trafficking in a sound that definitely touches on modern Japanese psych, White Heaven, Fushitsusha (even though the duo despise Mr. Haino), and the like, these two spit out fierce fiery ultra thick blasts of snarling buzz and in-the-red psychrock chaos.
But since they're a guitar and drums duo, their sound ends up going in all sorts of different directions. They don't kick up a Lightning Bolt style skree here as much as weave thick buzzscapes, the guitar impossibly heavy, unfurling massive layered waves of blown out buzz, the drums beneath pounding and skittering, shuffling and blasting away. If anything they fall closer to bands like the Psychic Paramount, rhythmic and HEAVY as all get out.
The first disc is just that, a fucking furious wash of thick buzzing guitars and octopoidal drumming, pausing partway through for some mathy postrock skitter and meander, before the band rev it back up, working their way through some pounding chaos, eventually returning to that soaring epicness of the opening few minutes. Some seriously majestic buzz. Verging on shoegaze territory, which is not a bad thing at all. And stick around after the fade out as the band return for a brief burst of buzz that we wish had gone on for the length of the disc again.
The second disc begins with some serpentine riffing, and some random drum splatter, and some howled vocals, and sort of drifts aimlessly for a while, very sort of old school emo, the vocals sparring with the drums while the guitars percolate underneath, but about 4 minutes in, the guitar kicks it up and starts roaring, spitting out gorgeous super distorted slabs of sound, the drums growing equally intense, the two sparring back and forth building to a serious frenzied freakout, before starting the process all over again, another gradual build from minimal splatter to full bore crush. Definitely some Ruins and Lightning Bolt going on here, and the band do it well, taking elements of those two influences but tangling them all up and smashing them to pieces, and tossing the pieces into a woodchopper and spraying them out the other side into your headphones.
Packaged in super fancy cd sized double dvd style digipak, cardstock covers facing out, lyrics and liner notes facing in, visible through the clear case, pro printed 3" cd-r's.
MPEG Stream: "Ikebukuro Incinerator (excerpt)"

WRNLRD Cperadt (Small Sacrifice / Order Of The Cloven Eye) cd-r 8.98
The Midwest is beginning to feel like the new Norway. So is the South. Tons of fucked up grim blackness seems to be constantly seeping outward from the blackened heartland. We're gonna have to come up with some new sobriquets for these apparent movements, MWBM is now a new, more region specific USBM, or maybe ECBM, for those in the South, but the sudden onslaught from middle and Eastern America is threatening to overtake the much lauded West Coast scene, which while still represented by the few elite metal warriors (Leviathan, Xasthur, etc.), hasn't really produced the same number of outrageously creative black metal outfits lately. Much of could well have much to do with the places these guys call home. Black metal is all about isolation, looking inward, darkness and depression, and while those emotions and ideals are indeed universal, it sometimes seems more difficult to be miserable and suicidal and full of grim energy when you're wandering through green trees beneath a sunshiney Spring California day.
But whatever. All you need to know for now, is that the strangely monickered Wrnlrd (thanks to aQ pal Will for the recommendation) is from Virginia, (hail VABM!) And offers up a dense twisted blown out frenzy of utter blackness.
And it's hard to think of a better word to describe it than frenzied. The sound is so thick and gnarled, the riffs so distorted they seem to exist in a churning sonic morass, the guitars and vocals constantly on the verge of crumbling to pieces, the sound so blown out, the drums are barely audible, a flurry of beats buried way in the mix, but that drumless feel only adds to the organic sound of Wrnlrd, this epic heaving cloud of black swirling sonic mayhem, slowly and systematically engulfing everything in its path. But that's not so say the riffs here aren't amazing, they are, and the tracks are surprisingly catchy, and the overall sound is very textural, almost like someone like Christian Fennesz or Tim Hecker recorded it, and occasionally things slow down and the band lurches onto some staggering buzzy dirge, here and there the tracks spread out into near ambient drifts, the guitars ghostly and haunting, but it's all about the gorgeous wall of sound this guy can produce, managing to sound utterly frosty and grim, but also epic and majestic, woozy, drone-y, druggy and utterly and terrifyingly black.
MPEG Stream: "1590"
MPEG Stream: "Mnemonomagia"
MPEG Stream: "Blood"
MPEG Stream: "Flower"

WRNLRD In From The Night Herd (Small Sacrifice / Order Of The Cloven Eye) cd-r 8.98
aQ pal Will turned us on to the amazing Wrnlrd (not really sure how you pronounce that), a Virginia based one man black metal band whose most recent disc, reviewed here a few lists back, totally hit the spot, with its furious fuzzed out and frenzied twisted blissy blackness. There is definitely a tendency these days for black metal bands to get all shoegaze-y and we're not complaining, we totally love that stuff, but a handful of bands are doing more than that, taking that sort of spaced out blissiness and twisting it all around into something more unique, and darker and noisier. Which is precisely what Wrnlrd's Cperadt was all about. A nearly drumless wall of buzzing blackness that reminded us as much of Tim Hecker or Christian Fennesz as much as Xasthur or Paysage D'Hiver.
So we were super psyched to explore the rest of Wrnlrd's catalog, starting with this one, In From The Night Herd, also from last year. The disc begins with some seriously creepy and harrowing black ambience, all haunting windswept whirs and distant moaning rumbles, ghostlike melodies drifting throughout, wraithlike and shimmery, the opening track, obviously the intro, so as track two begins, a twelve minute epic, the record shifts gears, and offers up still more thick cavernous drone. Weird, we were thinking, to have an intro after another intro, but then Wrnlrd is nothing if not weird. Then some gauzy skeletal guitars surface, offering up fragmented bits of melancholy melody, soon swallowed up by the roiling low end whirl below, haunting and creaking, almost industrial sounding. As the second track ends and the third begins, it suddenly dawns on us that this in fact an ambient disc, perhaps, since it was released around the same time, a companion to Cperadt. Which makes a whole lot more sense, and allows us to stop waiting for the inevitable black buzzing onslaught, and to enjoy the murky mysterious atmospheres on offer.
The third track, another long one, begins with chiming guitars, looped and minor key, eventually being joined by some deep glimmering reverberations in the background, the guitars gradually growing more and more distorted. Suddenly we're thinking maybe we were wrong, that in fact there is some black metal buzz here, but instead, the guitars continue to ring out, cycling through their melancholy mantra, very soothing and hypnotic, mesmerizing and trancelike, the background whirring and rumbling and eventually overtaking the forlorn guitar melody, leaving just deep smears of blurred blackness.
That blurred blackness bleeds into the brief final track, offering up a muted coda, the slow drifting sonic clouds barely obscuring tolling bells, and shards of mournful melody, soft smeared layers of disembodied guitars woven into a strangely beautiful black lullaby.
Maybe too abstract and dreamlike for the true grim throng, but perfect for anyone else into droning dark mystery and haunting otherworldy black ambience.
MPEG Stream: "Pain Planet"
MPEG Stream: "Specimen / Satellite"

ZARACH'BAAL'THARAGH Eternal Darkness (At War With False Noise) cd 10.98
Woah, this is some seriously filthy and hateful, damaged and demented, utterly raw black metal primitivism. A collection of long out of print demos from the tongue twistingly titled Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, a band/man the label refers to as "The French master of bedroom black metal", and who are we to argue.
Right off the bat, we should just say, that all of you who are into the weirdest of the weird, the damaged, retarded, stumbling, freaked out what-the-fuck black metal we can't ever get enough of, a la Necrofrost, Furze, Dead Reptile Shrine, Striborg, then this is pretty much ESSENTIAL.
The sound will also definitely appeal to folks who dig the ultra personal grimnity of the French Black Legions, but Zarach'Baal'Tharagh takes that sound, and douses it with noise, lets riffs unravel, lets rhythms unwind, songs collapse, and then suddenly seem to fall back together, the drums blast and splatter, stumble and shuffle, the guitars roar and buzz, the vocals a paint peeling rasp, and then there are the leads, wild and dizzyingly off kilter, somewhere between actual shredding and completely random noodling, but all wound up into the buzzing swirl, it sounds perfect. A massively head spinning unhinged blackened assault.
The slow parts are gorgeous and creepy, the guitars wavery and warbly, the drums a stuttery tattoo, some tracks are killer stretches of FX drenched ambience, vocals reverbed and delayed into strange sonic echoes, everything including the blasts of black are muddy and murky and ultra lo-fi.
The record is separated into three parts, Primitive Era, Apocalypse, and maybe our favorite El Borak, the harshest and heaviest of the bunch, the guitar supercharged, the four parts of El Borak, laced with completely wacked Buttholes Surfers style leads, spidery and chaotic, the four parts together forming a totally mesmerizing chunk of looped sounding black buzz, with some AWESOME riffing, but the riff is locked into an endless black groove, over and over and over, the whole thing dragged into some completely other dimension by the damaged lead guitar. So fucking awesome. Some of us around here can't help but think (even though technically this stuff is not 'new') that this could very well be a contender for black metal record of the year. At the very least, damaged demented outsider what-the-fuck black metal record of the year. Either way, totally recommended.
MPEG Stream: "In Your Grave"
MPEG Stream: "Demon Seed"
MPEG Stream: "El Borak"

BELONG Colorloss Record (St. Ives) lp 13.98
Belong are just one of many new bands exploring the sound of decay. The sound of music within murk, the sound of pop, melted down and smeared into shapeless forms. For a while there it seemed like every band was lacing their delicate pop with bits of glitch and electronic shimmer. To the point where ANY band, no matter what they sounded like originally, were suddenly 'experimental' with nothing but a bit of crackle and bleep added to the mix. A similar thing has happened lately, another movement has taken hold, of bands burying their sounds under distorted drones, blistering feedback, bleary eyed shimmer, oceans of crackle, sounds pulled apart and layered into strange organic ambient blurs. We're not complaining though, we've long been proponents of distressed sound. The more distressed and heavy and fucked up and crackly and distorted the better. The problem lies in the fact that a movement usually entails everyone and their brother suddenly wanting to sound like whatever band or sound is 'happening' at the moment. SUNNO))) spawned a legion off doomdrone combos, and these movements are not all that different.
A band, be they pop or metal or whatever, can wrap everything in buzz and distortion and suddenly whatever genre they were can get hyphenated with the suffix GAZE, or alternately, a band can blur everything, slow it down, make it muddier and murkier and dronier, and voila, become a doomdronewhatever outfit.
But with all these things, it's not as easy as the truly amazing artists make it sound. And this becomes evident on almost first listen. Anyone can plug their guitar into a laptop, but no one can create gauzy gristly soundscapes like Fennesz. Anyone can tune way down and let their guitars ring out, let riffs crumble to pieces, but it takes more than that to make something a compelling listen.
From the very first listen to Belong's last full length, October Language, we knew these guys were special. They were one of those bands who had the sound down, but were using the sound to create glorious sonic worlds of their own invention. Not aping anyone else's sounds, merely absorbing elements, and transforming them into something new, and distinctly Belong. And the other thing about Belong, was they weren't just making beautiful noise, they were writing songs, that were infused with beautiful noises, sometimes obfuscated by them, but there was always a song, a melody, never just sound for sound's sake.
This new four song ep takes things even further, by being about someone else's songs. Reinventing, reimagining, reinterpreting the sounds of four different artists, and making them all sound like they could have come from nowhere else than this mysterious entity known as Belong.
The first might be the best of the bunch, and it's no coincidence that it's the most song-y. A Syd Barrett cover, via the somewhat more obscure Cleaners From Venus, "Late Night" in the hands of Belong becomes an epic sweeping cinematic warped record spinning underwater, on the surface of some alien moon, beneath the warm glow of twin suns. Soaring vocals, gorgeous melodies, all beneath a thick churning lush wall of crumbling, shimmering sound. Woozy and seasick, dizzying, dense and warm and absolutely gorgeous, it's almost like a more blurred and buzzed version of Oval, digital skipping replaced by indistinct slow motion riffage, everything gauzy and washed out. The other three tracks, covers of '60s psych pop songs by Tintern Abbey, Billy Nicholls and July, are even more ethereal, almost choral sounding, voices and streaks of sound drifting in a softly churning sea of hum and whir, and breathy blur. The final track a thick, viscous outro, the July original barely audible beneath a blown out swirl of creeping low end and free floating metallic flutter, somehow sounding heavy and intense, but laid back and soporific at the same time, eventually fading to a whispery hum. So good. Definitely one of our favorite groups exploring the world of distressed / decayed / deconstructed / dreamy / dronelike sound.
SUPER LIMITED! ONLY 300 COPIES!! Each one hand made by the group using recycled sleeves.
MPEG Stream: "Late Night"
MPEG Stream: "My Clown"

EARTH The Bees Made Honey in the Skull of the Lion (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
Cool cover art by Arik Roper, housed in a gorgeous black slipcover, letterpressed and printed in gold metallic ink.
MPEG Stream: "Omens And Portents I: The Driver"
MPEG Stream: "Rise To Glory"
MPEG Stream: "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)"

EARTH The Bees Made Honey in the Skull of the Lion (Southern Lord) 2lp 35.00
FINALLY! The most recent Earth album on vinyl, but this ain't just any old vinyl, even by Southern Lord standards, this is so deluxe it's off the charts. Metallic gold ink on faux leather hardcover, like an old fashioned, and very big Bible, inside the lps are attached like pages in a scrapbook, loads of full color artwork, but the most important thing about this limited vinyl version, and perhaps the most frustrating, is the extra bonus track, available only here. More gorgeous sunbaked gospel flecked blues, languorous guitars, minimal drums, with horns and slide guitar, so beautiful and fits perfectly with the record proper. And again, only available here. Limited to less than 5000 copies, which seems like a lot, but for Southern Lord, and Earth in particular, it's probably not nearly enough. Here's what we had to say about The Bees when it first came out:
Our beloved Earth return, and continue to move ever farther away from their pioneering slowmotion riffage, into a world much more stately and elegiac. A sound that more and more resembles A Cormac McCarthy novel rendered in notes and chords. In fact, some forward thinking movie exec, might consider having the modern incarnation of Earth score the next (inevitable) McCarthy movie adaptation. Blood Meridian? Would be pretty amazing. And almost overkill. As the sound of Earth evokes all of those images all on its own. The heat rising off sunbaked desert highways, animal carcasses beneath leafless tress, carrion circling overhead, old farmhouses burnt out and abandoned. The sky thick with a haze of campfire smoke, a dusty path stretching out forever into the horizon.
The sound on Bees is not a huge departure from Hibernaculum, more a subtle progression. The first track sounds as if since the last record, the fields have grown more fallow, the creek dried up, the youngest passed away and is buried in the backyard, beneath a pile of stones so the coyotes don't dig her up, the factory in town closed down, everything quietly and sadly fading away, leaving nothing but ghost towns and weed choked fields.
But the music on Bees, is not all as dour as that, it's also strangely hopeful, glimmers of sunlight through the slowly parting clouds, the chords major, the melodies, sweeping and majestic, it's hard with Earth to not think in cinematic terms, like coming over the hill to discover a verdant valley, a rushing river, and cows grazing, fattened on the bounty of the land.
The guitars on Bees are thick and full, but not distorted or heavy really, just massive, paired up with piano, and organ, thick ropy bass, leaving plenty of space, lots of drift and shimmer, the drums not so much a pound as a soft insistent shuffle, the music moving in waves, like a heavier Low playing country music, or Godspeed slowed way down, darkened and simplified. Earth is now a four piece and it shows, the sound is definitely more expansive and sprawling, cinematic and subtly complex. They're even augmented by jazz guitarist Bill Frisell on a few tracks.
Fans already know they need this (and probably already have it), but folks who have yet to check out Earth, or found their doomdrone trailblazing unappealing, might really dig this, as might fans of the Dirty Three, Calexico, Friends Of Dean Martinez and other outfits who traffic in the twangier strains of dark dolorous slowcore.
MPEG Stream: "Omens And Portents I: The Driver"
MPEG Stream: "Rise To Glory"
MPEG Stream: "Miami Morning Coming Down II (Shine)"

WRATH OF THE WEAK Alogon (Profound Lore) cd 14.98
The buzziest black metal band in the land? That's precisely how Wrath Of The Weak were described to us, and the truth wasn't all that far off. The sticker on that cd compared them to Burzum and Ildjarn as well, which was also pretty right on the money. But the buzz factor, turned WOTW into something much drone drenched and spacey, tripped out and trancey, like Velvet Cacoon before them, the buzz defined them, every note, every melody, was designed to be wreathed in buzz, to blur and smear into streaks of sound.
This is record number two from WOTW and it's just as buzzy as its predecessor, but a few things have definitely changed. The tone and timbre is different, a bit more bright and brittle, less murky and washed out, more high end, more a wall of blackened skree. And within the sound, the the songs seem to be more musical, more complex melodically, there's a whole lot more going on beneath the buzz. Blasting at full volume in headphones, this record is an epiphany, your ears grow accustomed to the relentless buzz and begin to dig out sonic subtleties, picking up on all sorts of hooks and riffs, sounds and voices, different parts flow seamlessly into each other, the drums actually seem to crystallize before your ears, instead of just another layer of buzz, they are a distinct rhythm a flurry of beats, the vocals seem to emerge from the surrounding skree, offering up another unique layer sonic fury, but everything is so intertwined with the buzz, that these occurrences shift back and forth, the drums drift in and out, the vocals buried surface briefly, sometimes everything locks together into a total static blur, other times they all swing and swirl seemingly haphazardly, before locking into step again. It's the nature of a sound this dense, of music this furious and this buzzy, so blown out, so distorted, that it require some serious alchemy to make get all the sounds to hold their own, and even then, it requires some serious listening to hear them.
And like the record before it, which ended with some weird skittery electronica, this record finishes strangely as well, with a nearly 22 minute ambient drift, all wheezing organs, and deep shimmering tones, woven into dense sonic drifts, some definite soothing aural warmth after the frosty chilly buzz of the preceding 45 minutes.
More musical manna for the buzz hungry, definitely some of the fiercest, most distorted and noise drenched black metal you'll hear. Been wallowing in the extreme buzz of Velvet Cacoon, Mausoleums, Brown Jenkins, Procer Veneficus, Animus, you might as well add Wrath Of The Weak to that list...
MPEG Stream: "Chapter I: A Leap Of Faith Ends When You Crash Into The Ground"
MPEG Stream: "Chapter II: Using Self-Destrution In The Pursuit Of A Better Life"

SLEESTAK The Power Of Gemini(a (Thumbprint Press) cd 10.98
We still can't figure out how the hell we missed this band when they were still a going concern. Ex-members of the mighty Man Is The Bastard, a sound that is so aQ at times it sounds like they made this record just for us. Super rhythmic, hypnotic, krautrocky, heavy, noisy, squalls of analog noise, walls of feedback, buried distorted vocals, heavy and mesmerizing, like a power violence This Heat for sure. Sound familiar? It should. We described former aQ record of the Week honorees Geronimo similarly, which makes sense since basically, Sleestak eventually morphed into Geronimo shedding some of the grit and noise, but not all of it, tightening up their sound into something almost machinelike. Sleestak also sonically predated/predicted another aQ Record of the Week outfit, French post kraut noise rockers Aluk Todolo. So anyone who went nuts for either of those discs, or loved the Sleestak disc we listed a few lists back, you're probably gonna need this one too. Another mind blowing collection of mangled avant krauty noise rock, that is both brutal and abrasive, as well as weirdly repetitive and seriously heavy.
The drums are the core, and the heart of the sound, locked into seemingly simple grooves, the belie surprisingly complex arrangements, the drums are dense, hard hitting, the recording lo-fi but still thick and crunchy, swinging from doomy plod, to tripped out and space rocky, to totally abstract and spacious. While the drums pound away, the rest of the band wrap the rhythms in thick clouds of buzzing analog crunch, all manner of glitch and grit, squealing synths, rumbling downtuned bass, streaks of malfunctioning electronics, strange sound bites and snippets, and vocals, that range from howling guttural roar, to hysterical shrike, to hushed whisper. The band lets the drums drop out, sometimes for long stretches, the electronics and synths spread out swirling and churning, changing shape and sound, building all sorts of tension so when the drums do crash back in, it's super intense.
The Power Of Gemini(a was the first Sleestak record, originally released in 1997, and as such, it's definitely much more raw, more noisy, more lo-fi, the connection to MITB and various other post Bastard projects much more pronounced, but even back then, the band were already forging a super fucked up and gloriously idiosyncratic path, creating a sound, that managed to fuse the crushing heaviness and DIY roots of the members' previous bands, with a near maniacal future vision of some twisted, off kilter, and rhythmically obtuse post-everything sound.
Gorgeously packaged in a silkscreened letter pressed fold up origami style cardstock sleeve.
MPEG Stream: "Endo"
MPEG Stream: "Mothball Coffin"
MPEG Stream: "Viva Santanas"

TENHORNEDBEAST / MARZURAAN split (Aurora Borealis) cd 15.98
BACK IN STOCK!
Every once in a while, someone will release a record, and we can't help but feel like it was made specifically for us. And for you. Some records just perfectly speak to the aQ aesthetic, as undefinable as that seems to be. This is another one of those cases. Someone thought it would be a perfect combination to match up UK one man ambient drone outfit Tenhornedbeast, with UK slow motion doomlords Marzuraan. And it is perfect. And a fantastic idea, but just because something is a great idea, doesn't always mean someone thinks of it. And we're not saying we had been thinking someone should get these two bands together specifically, we're just glad they did, and we sort of wish we HAD thought of it. But that's neither here nor there. The important thing is that it happened, and now we can all luxuriate in the deep dark heaviness both of these bands explore. And while the bands are indeed different, their aesthetics are not all that far removed. The both exist in some blackened nether region, haunting sonic realms, where heaviness can be expressed in both utter darkness and extreme force, sometimes both, and once in awhile neither.
Tenhornedbeast offer up a nearly 30 minute long sonic ritual, beginning as a bit of swirling black minimalism, but slowly building to a truly intense wall of doomdrone, the sound thick and textured, a churning cauldron of low end buzz and downtuned disembodied riffs, all brought to a boil and poured out in a viscous black torrent, left to flow like some subterranean river. But these deep drones are laced with melodies, and keening high end shards, allowed to shine forth occasionally, but often swallowed up before they can fill those caves with their unnatural light. The track continually changes shape, sound and timbre, various shades of grey and black, lightening and darkening as the landscape changes, a haunting journey through some lost world, where sound replaces sight, allowing us to navigate ever deeper.
Marzuraan counter with what must be one of their prettiest tracks ever. It's still sludgey and doomy, but the notes ring out, the melodies almost soar, the sound fuzzy and glimmering, almost like these guys have caught the shoegaze bug as well. Washed out and blissy, super melodic and melancholy, but the coolest part is that the track seems to warble and waver, almost like someone is manually adjusting the tape speed, so the notes sound drunken and drugged, the track lurches and weaves drunkenly, only adding to the haunting and off kilter beauty. Part way through, the riffs get a little more riffy, and then the vocals come in, a moaning distant croon, and we're most definitely in serious Jesu territory, but that weird speed shifting hitch, keeps it from sounding too pretty, or two blissy. But if these guys keep heading in this direction, they could definitely give Jesu, and Nadja and other metallic shoegazers a run for their money.
The packaging is super swank, a three panel gatefold, each of the front panels diecut with each band's symbol, printed inside and out, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a sticker affixed to the front.
MPEG Stream: TENHORNEDBEAST "Law Of The Needle"
MPEG Stream: MARZURAAN "Into Countless Battles"

WRATH OF THE WEAK Just A Momentary Diversion On The Road To The Grave (Earth.Space Noise Research Laboratories) cassette 4.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A two song blast of extreme noise drenched buzz to tide us over until the next Wrath Of The Weak full length (which we actually have in stock, we just haven't gotten around to reviewing it yet). When it was first suggested we check out WOTW, we were told they were the BUZZIEST black metal band around, and damn if it wasn't pretty much true. But if that first record was indeed the buzziest, not sure what this tape is all about. If anything it's even more droney and dense, whatever riffs are happening are blurred and smeared and stretched into one massive roiling buzzscape. There might be drums in there, but if they are they are buried deep beneath the churning black mass of buzz above it. Very close listening reveals some distinct riffage, and even some melody, but back away and it's like standing in a super collider, gloriously and ear splittingly, head spinningly, rib cage rattlingly LOUD. The second side is a bit more defined, but only in that the sound is a little murkier, a little more melancholy, a heaving dirge-y dismal minor key drone, that seems to shift druggily back and forth between two thick shimmering buzz drenched chords, creating a creepy, melancholy melody out of massive walls of crumbling fuzz and blasting black blur. Barely even black metal, but fucking awesome nonetheless.
Fantastic packaging, an all black tape, not even a little window in the middle. Spare black and white sleeve, white on the outside, black on the inside, minimal text, housed in a black and yellow transparent slipcover. Super striking. CRAZY LIMITED TOO. ONLY 100 COPIES. Out of print already, we got a bunch, but they won't last long...

BURMESE / CADAVER EYES split (Heart & Crossbone / New Scream Industry) cd 11.98
We'd be hard pressed to think of ANY band that could hold their own on a split record with our very own local noiseniks Burmese. But if anyone can, it's Israeli noise combo Cadaver Eyes.
But first off, holy shit are we psyched to have new music from Burmese. These guys are seriously sloooooow workers. Other than a handful of shows, we've heard nary a peep from these guys, there was the reissue of the tUMULt release on vinyl, but it's literally been years we've been waiting for a new record. Multiple lineup changes, disastrous tours, scrapped recordings, the sort of luck that has plagued these guys forever. But finally, they've beat the curse, and gotten us 11 new blasts of brutal, speaker shredding ultraviolence. Some confusion mix of Whitehouse style abstract noise, pummeling grind, damaged metal, freaked out power violence. They may be down to one drummer, but they still have two bass players, and now THREE vocalists.
They sound as good as ever, still furious and freaked out, sometimes offering up sprawling electronic dronescapes, sometimes, frantic flurries of lightning fast grind, sometimes convoluted lurching metallic crunch, and often all of the above at the same time. Hypnotic and heavy and seriously fucked up. Just another reminder, since they're loath to do it themselves outside of their sporadic releases, that these guys are quite possibly the best band in SF.
But then there's Cadaver Eyes, recorded live on WFMU, using just drums, vocals and no-input mixing board. And listening to this, it seems impossible that there's not two guitarists and multiple drummers and synths and who knows what else. The sound is dense and freaked out. Spastic spurts of strangled grind, long stretches of speaker shredding electronic buzz and skree, long drawn out abstract dronescapes of howling vox and pounding drum plods spaced WAY out, culminating in the nearly eight minute closer, beginning with the strangely titled "Ba Yom Yom" and finishing off with an absolutely unrecognizable cover of "Sweet Home Alabama", a convoluted blow out of maniacally howling vocals, sputtering percussive crunch, LOTS of feedback, and thick walls of rumbling crumbling distortion.
Awesome. And about as UN-easy listening as we can imagine.
MPEG Stream: BURMESE "War Vs. Women"
MPEG Stream: BURMESE "Hard Cell"
MPEG Stream: CADAVER EYES "Execution Procedure # Three"
MPEG Stream: CADAVER EYES "Ba Yom Yom / Sweet Home Alabama"

DEAD LETTERS SPELL OUT DEAD WORDS A Line : Align (Mystery Sea) cd-r 17.98
Found a stash of these in the back room. Lucky thing too since these Mystery Sea discs are limited to 100 copies, AND they're amazing, so you get one more chance you lucky bastards, don't blow it:
This is the first time we've reviewed anything by Swedish dronescaper Thomas Ekelund, aka Dead Letters Spell Out Dead Words, which is weird as folks around here are big fans. It's not for lack of releases, he's been pretty prolific, it just one of those things, so many releases, artists, records, so little time.
Well, we aim to change that all right now, with this, the latest from Ekelund, a limited cd-r released on night-ocean-drone label Mystery Sea, and Ekelund's sounds here sound right at home. Three looooong tracks, the first, ultra minimal, it takes minutes to get going, but once it does, it's a fantastic expanse of ultra minimalism, so minimal in fact that much of it borders on Francisco Lopez territory. But turn it up, and listen close, and Ekelund's soundworld will reveal itself to you. A washed out murmur, peppered part way through with footsteps, the sound of metal on metal, some sort of random field recording, of men working, the clang and clatter overshadowing the whispery sounds beneath, but by the end of the first track, those whispery sounds have built into growling swells, thick smears of muted melody, crumbling and almost industrial sounding when paired with the grind and creak of the workmen.
The second track starts off in a similar fashion, strange super close mic'd sounds, thumps and scrapes, crinkles and cracks, over a super busy microscopic dronescape, all hisses and whirs and little bits of almost invisible melody, but it doesn't take long for that track to also swell into something dense and thick, high end tones rest atop a pulsing sea swell like drone, the low end fading out leaving a strangely dreamy high end shimmer, eventually fading out and leaving just those strange clunks and scrapes and that whirling swirling whisper beneath.
The closing track is a continuation of track two, in fact, they all sort of fit together into one sprawling soundscape, but the closer remains murky and minimal, a subtle scraping floating on a thick, but soft and smeared low end rumble, it's only in the last minute or two that other sounds join in, strange twinkles and glimmers, like laying on the ocean floor and watching bits of sunlight slowly make their way through the swirling blue grey sea.
Amazing packaging too, full color tray card, numbered, the booklet a half booklet, leaving half of the cd face exposed. Very striking.
And as always LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: "At Keiller's Park (Summer 2006)"
MPEG Stream: "At Keiller's Park (Fall 2007)"

PESTE NOIRE Mors Orbis Terrarum (Debemur Morti Productions) 2lp 25.00
The super limited, and long out of print double cassette boxed set demo collection from French masters of twisted and fucked up blackness, Peste Noire, originally released in 2007, is finally available again, albeit for a limited time, as a super deluxe double gatefold lp!!! And deluxe it is. The jacket is super fancy and thick, the lps pressed on super heavy vinyl, housed in black sleeves, and just in case you need to be told again, LIMITED LIKE CRAZY!!! Here's what we had to say about this when we reviewed the cassettes last year:
Okay black metal freeks and fanatics. We've all been going apeshit for everything and anything from the super tangled and inbred French micro-scene that spawned Alcest, Amesoeurs, Mortifera, Valfunde and of course... the mighty Peste Noire.
We've reviewed pretty much everything we could get our hands on from these guys, their debut full length K.P.N. / La Sanie Des Siecles - Panegyrique De La Degenerescence, their second full length FolkFuck Folie and the Lorraine rehearsal lp, all of which were crammed with amazing, stumbling chaotic, filthy fucked up blackness, and these two lps are no different. If anything, they're more raw, and more gritty and blown out. Lo-fi and ultrablack. The first track is so fast it almost sounds like it was recorded at the wrong speed. But much like the records proper, the sound lurches from furious black blasts to stumbling midtempo buzz, to plodding almost-doom, but even on these early ultra lo-fi recordings, the mood and vibe is already in place, haunting and creepy, demented and freaked out, borderline psychedelic at times. Noisy as fuck, crumbling and super distorted, everything painted a washed out black, grime-y but at times weirdly melodic and blissy.
Mors Orbis Terrarum collects pretty much all of Peste Noire's recordings outside of their 2 proper full lengths and the rehearsal lp (including their problematically titled 2001 Aryan Supremecy demo, which seems out of character since according to Encyclopedia Metallum, their lyrical focus is on "Aesthetics of Evil, Medieval Demons and Decadent Poetry") including a couple unreleased bonus tracks. But probably, unless you're a crazy obsessed collector / trader, you haven't heard any of this stuff anyway.
Needless to say, WAY recommended, and again, probably super limited, so act fast.

SHIT AND SHINE Cherry (Riot Season) 2lp 24.00
The first time we heard from the UK's bass and drum (not to be confused with drum and bass) ensemble Shit And Shine, we were already predisposed to love them. Seeing as they featured multiple bass players, a stage full of drummers, and most importantly, at least to us, several lawnmowers. Fuck. Yeah.
Over the course of the last three or four years, these guys have continually pummeled us within an inch of our lives, with their throbbing tribal Butthole Surfers style onslaught, a furious blown out in the red drug drenched psych rock, but only the loosest approximation of rock. More like some sort of government drug experiment, where various deviants and ne'er do wells, criminals and sociopaths, were incarcerated, dosed with all manner of experimental psychotropics, then let loose in a concrete bunker filled with drums and amps and busted up old bass guitars, everything recorded for posterity, until someone started leaking the tapes, code name: SHIT AND SHINE.
This was the most wacked shit we'd heard since Terminal Cheesecake or the Strangulate Beatoffs. And every record drifted further and further out, as the band became more and more unhinged, and now there's this, Cherry, a massive double lp that while still demonstrating the kind of physical and psychic damage Shit And Shine can do, also reveals a whole new world of fucked up sound these guys have tapped into. In fact, when we first threw this on, we weren't even sure it was the same band.
The record opens with a simple percussive drum jam, all toms, sort of tribal, beneath a series of samples, and film clips, a little weird, reminiscent of old industrial, until the next track obliterates the first with a blast of awesome processed metallic riffing, almost like some heavily FX-ed Iron Maiden leads, draped over some shitty shiney sludge, then suddenly guitars flip backwards, the sound becoming some freaked out psych damage, lurching into some killer stop / start dynamics, a churning what-the-fuck sort-of metal jam. Oh yeah, there's also a long long track of old school proto disco, groovy, druggy dancefloor shit, unexpected, but it sort of works in S+S's tweaked sound world. And all of that stuff is peppered with brief super short tracks of classic Shit And Shine tribal drugpsych pummel, but it always slips back into somethingŠ curious.
Side three is a single side long track, a gorgeous chunk of layered drone, guitars buzz and rumble, basses throb and pulse, there are probably some synths in there too, the various layers churning and shifting, drifting and shimmering, super hypnotic but still subtly fucked up and creepy.
And finally, for those folks who were put off by all this weirdness, meaning even more weirdness than normal, all of side 4 is taken up by a full on, head crushing Shit And Shine blow out. Doped up and spaced out, huge loping rhythms, pounding multiple drumkits, the basses and guitars a chaotic tangle of crumbling riffs and throbbing distortion, everything locked into relentless looped churning crush. So completely filthy and crusty and damaged that it sounds constantly on the verge of falling to pieces, but it's this continuous chaos and impending doom, that makes S+S's freaky jams so intense and so fucking awesome!
Need we say, TRES RECOMMENDED!
More totally and hilariously garish cover art. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES! We got a bunch but AQ folks seem especially partial to Shit -AND- Shine, so these will probably go pretty quick. You have been warned.

EARTH Hibernaculum (Southern Lord) picture disc 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Not ones to be left out on the whole "you haven't really owned a record until you've bought it in three different formats" thing, Earth re-release their kick-ass last album, now as a picture disc, Packaged in the same sleeve as the original, but inside, surprise, a gorgeous eye-popping picture disc. LIMITED TO 500 COPIES, and knowing how these things go, it's either now, or eBay later...
Here's our review of the record when it first came out:
Holy crap, a new Earth album! Since the full-scale return (and reinvention) of Dylan Carlson's Earth project with last year's highly regarded studio album Hex; Or Printing In The Infernal Method (a Record Of The Week here at Aquarius when it came out) and subsequent tour, fans of the slow and low have had plenty to be happy about. That album took the extreme drone-metal Earth invented in the early '90s (a sound appropriated by SUNNO))) some years later) and turned it into a bleak n' desolate hybrid of post-rock and country-western! Spacious desert drone dirge with lap steel, something like Low meets Calexico meets the old Earth. Most Earth fans, ourselves included, had to give Hex a spin or two just to be sure we were hearing things right. But then, we all knew we were hearing it right and right it was. Such a great album.
What manner of follow up then is this new Hibernaculum? Well, some of it is gonna sound familiar...yet different. Since Earth's approach has morphed so much over the years, Dylan and co. have decided to revisit and re-record some old Earth compositions in the style of Hex, the way they've been playing 'em on tour, like when we saw them here in SF last year. Not a bad idea at all! You get to hear 'em do the classic "Ouroboros Is Broken" from their 1991 debut Extra-Capsular Extraction, "Coda Maesoso In F (Flat) Minor" from their final Sub Pop album, 1996's Pentastar: In The Style Of Demons, and the obscure "Miami Morning Coming Down" from a 1997 compilation on the Ash label called Scatter. These tunes all get the Hex treatment and wind up as windswept and lovely as you'd expect. There's also a fourth track, a new mix of the 16+ minute "A Plague Of Angels" which originally appeared last year on a very limited edition split vinyl release with SUNNO))). All of these pieces are simply gorgeous. Minimalist, Morricone-cinematic, twangfuzzdrone. Glacial twilight shimmer, velvet-hammer heavy. Droning deep and dark but uplifting as well. Weirdly we realize that Earth now sounds more like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore than Bohren & Der Club Of Gore ever sounded like Earth, if you know what we mean. And their instrumentation is a lot more like Bohren's now, including Hammond B-3, piano, upright bass, and trombone among other things (not the typical doom arsenal).
In the recent Earth documentary, "Within The Drone" (available with the cd version of Hibernaculum), Earth mainman Dylan Carlson, discusses LaMonte Young and suchlike inspirations, but he's got no pretentious theories of "the drone" to espouse, though he does opine interestingly that for him, the more complex music becomes the closer it is to noise. So a simple sound, slowly repeated -- a drone -- is much more to his liking. Aha. Hmm. But it's clear from the sounds on Hibernaculum that simple does not mean "easy". Supreme precision and feel is needed. To play music this slow, they've got to be good -- and they are.
MPEG Stream: "Ouroboros Is Broken"
MPEG Stream: "A Plague Of Angels"

RIGGS, DAX If This Is Hell, Then I'm Lucky (Fat Possum) cd 14.98
As always, we were way ahead of the curve. You were too, right there with us. Going all the way back to Acid Bath, that seminal NOLA rock band, that somehow combined Eyehategod style sludge, and groovy dramatic emotional rock a la Alice In Chains or Katatonia or Jeff Buckley, we were proclaiming that not only should Acid Bath have been HUGE, but AB frontman Dax Riggs should be a rock star. So here we are over ten years later, and all that time, Riggs has continued on, first with Agents Of Oblivion, then Deadboy And The Elephantmen, all groups and records we LOVED, and played incessantly, but still, Dax and co. lurked way underground, barely even making a ripple in the mainstream music world.
But come last year, Riggs resurfaced, performing live and releasing a pretty decent disc (that we've yet to review), and suddenly being pushed hard, his sound, not all that different from Agents Of Oblivion, but now with some promotional real label muscle behind him. Unfortunately, not much happened with his solo record, so it was time for plan B, the first Deadboy And The Elephantmen record, re-released as a Riggs sort-of-solo record. Fair enough. We proclaimed it genius way way back when, and time has done nothing but demonstrate what a killer slab of dark grooviness and intensely emotional heaviness this record is, was and continues to be. So since lots of folks may not have been around when we first gushed about this disc, figured this was the perfect time to gush again.
Years and years ago, the big rock n' roll sleeper hit here at Aquarius had to be the awesome Agents Of Oblivion album, featuring two crucial ex-members of the late lamented cult band Acid Bath. Heavy, poppy, psychedelic rock with vocalist Dax Riggs crooning beautifully over it all. We shoulda made it record of the week, we all thought in retrospect. It became one of our favorite records EVER. We were really bummed then to hear that the Agents, like Acid Bath before 'em, broke up not long after the album's release. But, rumors filtered in that Dax and a new crew of New Orleans n'er-do-wells had formed a new band with the unlikely name of Deadboy and the Elephantmen to carry on where the Agents left off. Allan confirmed this when he happened to visit N.O. and was lucky enough to catch a live performance from this new band. They had a demo out then, and we anticipated a full album release on some big label to appear soon...we waited...and waited... and eventually a Deadboy record did come out, but the band had to release it themselves, since once again, the big labels had no idea and dropped the ball big time. Mystifiying, 'cause Dax is a rock star if ever there was one, and these guys should have been HUGE. This record is epic and darkly dramatic, heavy and groovy and weird as fuck, but also catchy and beautiful. Totally accessible yet morbidly underground, we hear everything from some voodoo Alice Cooper darkness and drama, to a little Aerosmith swagger, to the heaviness and angst of Alice In Chains of course -- Acid Bath was always an AIC meets EHG (Eyehategod) hybrid, in a really good way. Radiohead's "Ok Computer" is hinted at too, and Jeff Buckley, as the music combines weirdly sensitive melodicism and dark atmosphere inspired by their hometown's swamps and cemeteries. Dax is as impressive as ever, he really *sings*, drawing out vowels over a dozen notes. His vocals are oddly warm and comforting but also anguished and intense. While the songwriting on this album does not quite match the relatively flowery yet heavy tunesmithery of the Agents of Oblivion album, and neither does the instrumentation call attention to itself, that's not necessarily a bad thing here as it lets Dax' voice take center stage and he... just... wails. He's like a sludge metal Bowie, flamboyant, and dramatic, his vocals impossibly emotive and intense. Sometimes despairing, sometimes incantatory. Oh the angst! And the music is a perfect match, going from brooding and minor key, to explosive and space-y. For fans of Alice in Chains, Acid Bath/Agents of Oblivion (of course), Mark Lanegan of Screaming Trees, and Woven Hand. It may have taken a decade, but finally the rest of the world can discover what some of us knew all alongŠ
MPEG Stream: "Strange Television"
MPEG Stream: "Waking Up Insane"
MPEG Stream: "Song With No Name"
MPEG Stream: "Grave Beyond Windows"

SORE THROAT Death To Capitalist Halmshaw (Area Death Productions) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Okay, Sore Throat are one of our favorite bands. EVER. But for ages their shit has been impossible to track down. Crusty, heavy, fast and furious, stupid, goofy, political, pissy, snarky, clever, wasted, and musically unbeatable. They were cramming hundreds of songs on to 7"s before Anal Cunt was even a bad idea. BUT, and this is the big but here, we tried to get a ton of these to list, and managed to only get 5. But we wanted to give at least a few folks on the list a chance to experience the fucked up grindcrust joy of the mighty Sore Throat. So be prepared to be disappointed. Only the crazy dudes up at 2am on Friday maniacally watching the aQ site for the update will probably be able to snag these, but you never know. Fear not though. There are some upcoming reissues, which we'll be able to get plenty of, enough for everybody. But for now, 5 of you are in luck, get ready, get set go...
Oh yeah, the record. A cd compilation of some super rare demos, 83 songs in all, furious crusty metallic anarcho grind. Comes with an extensive booklet, some inserts and a Sore Throat patch!

MAMALEEK s/t (self released) cd-r 6.98
We complain a lot about the glut of cd-r releases. The whole, "even my Mom has a cd-r out" (and yes, her new limited 3" cd-r will be out soon, ahem)... The ease of recording and pressing up 50 copies, means that lots of stuff that maybe shouldn't get released does. Not everything recorded deserves to be released, and not everything played even deserves to be recorded. A serious lack of quality control for sure. But with the bad comes the good, and in this case, the good is often VERY good, and thus it's well worth slogging through all the shit, to get glimpses into some of the twisted creative musical minds, that otherwise might have toiled away in obscurity with no one but their housemate or mother (depending on the circumstances) hearing the amazing fucked up and far out sounds they've been creating.
It sometimes boggles our minds to think about the various songs and recordings, that due to lack of resource or technology, or even initiative, were lost forever, or were just never even recorded at all. We don't have that problem so much anymore (see above), but what it does mean is that folks who might be too timid to start a band, or too isolated to find likeminded folks, still have ways to create, to attempt to realize the sounds they hear in their heads.
And some of our favorite records of the last few years have been just that, random home recorded cd-r's produced not for cool points, or scene cred, but because the artists were driven to do so. The cd-r micro label is now a cottage industry, my Mom doesn't just have a new cd-r out, she also has her own labelŠ but that is still where we find the most vibrant and ultra personal music being made.
Mamaleek is the work of two brothers, from right here in SF, this is their long in the works debut and it's a killer, equal parts blissed out metalgaze, furious hyper grind, and buzzing ambient murk. In some ways, it's almost the perfect aQ record, bits and pieces of all the stuff we can't get enough of. But deftly assembled into something cohesive and pretty original. Nods to Jesu, Nadja, Xasthur, the Angelic Process, the usual suspects, but Mamaleek are definitely their own queer beast. The lo-fi recording adding to the murk and mystery, and of course the fuzzy blissy vibe.
The record opens with reverb drenched piano, lazy and laid back, all sepia toned and warm summer porch-ed, which makes the second track sound even more epic and massive. A crushing roiling slow motion riff, superdistorted and almost crumbling, the melodies in the distance soaring, the track shifts briefly into a blast of processed grind, before returning to its majestic trudge, sounding like Jesu, if Jesu still sounded like Godflesh. The track flips back and forth, slipping into a tinny, black ambient interlude halfway through, only to transform into a spacious almost math rock drift.
The rest of the record sort of slips easily between those two sounds, harsh washed out blackened bliss, often peppered with jagged sonic shards, and haunting drones, and murky ambience. The disc's centerpiece is the nearly 20 minute long "Shout On, Children", beginning with some straight up bluegrass guitar pickin', still muddy and lo-fi, some slippery slide and some fret buzz, but then, the programmed drums kick in, some gurgling demonic vocals, and then thick sheets of coruscating sunburnt guitar buzz, but that acoustic twang continues on right below the surface. But it never gets HEAVY, it just shifts between gradations of buzziness, murkiness and blur, some parts are wide open, a skeletal rhythm over smears of horn like synth and throbbing bass, other parts are gauzy, the guitar chopped into haunting pulses and layered over washed out whirs, and others incorporate operatic vocals and barely there shimmer, finally finishing off with a brief blast of ultra-lo-fi blackened metal.
The last four tracks lean toward metallic bliss, and pounding buzzing heaviness, the guitars thick and buzzy, the vocals a fierce growl, the drums simple and mechanical, everything whipped into pulsing waves of sound, occasionally coalescing into blasting blackness, but just as often, becoming unmoored, and drifting skyward the various riffs and beats spreading out like a sky full of black wraiths shot through with sunbeams.
Handmade packaging. Fold over cardstock sleeves, with paste on full color front and back images, and a printed insert on nice thick textured paper. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "I Wish I Was Dead"
MPEG Stream: "Winter'll Soon Be Over"

GREY DATURAS Owly Claw Hammer (Emperor Jones) 12" 14.98
It's hard for us to come to terms with the fact that the Grey Daturas are from Australia, it seems like they're always on tour, always in the US, and always in aQ! I We feel like they must live just down the street, we see them more than some of us see our own families. Part of it is because SF is their homebase when they're not at home. But part of it is that they ARE indeed always on tour. And as most folks realize, the more a band tours, the tighter they get, and while we loved the Daturas from day one, their shambolic improvised psychedelic drone rock always on the verge of total chaos, they have continued to get better and better, their sound constantly evolving, able to pummel and destroy with the best of them, but also perfectly capable of weaving drifting drone-y ambience, which is what they do here. Mostly.
This limited lp only release, finds the Daturas in Texas, and unlike most bands, who on their days off, drink, and record shop and fuck around, the Dats record. Often with other like minded bands in whatever town they happen to be holed up in. So while the Daturas were in Texas, they borrowed some equipment, and recorded these two sidelong epics. Two halves of what was probably an extensive ambient space jam, surprisingly tranquil for these noiseniks, but not entirely.
The A side is all guitar, no drums at all, an epic expanse of various texture and timbres, of feedback and long drawn out notes, of billowing chords and downtuned buzz, all shifting and drifting glacially, dreamy and druggy, not really menacing or ominous at all, more sort of washed out and sun dappled, rich warm and inviting, really really pretty, quite reminiscent of Fear Falls Burning in factŠ
The B side is more of the same, beginning almost exactly where the A side left off, except for a big chunk in the middle, where the guitars are whipped up into a psychedelic frenzy, and the drums finally come crashing in, not so much pounding out a beat as offering another layer of percussive texture, loose stumbling rhythms, little flurries of fills, nearly buried by the barrage of dense guitars, sounding a bit like a Loop vs. Dead C jam, only to have the drums drop out again, letting the guitars slip back into their abstract, near-ambient drift.
Awesome.

WITCHCRAFT The Alchemist (Rise Above) lp 28.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
NOW ON VINYL! Super limited import though, and we only were able to get a mere handful. Please be prepared to be disappointed, since we'll probably run out in about five seconds, sorry.
In case it's needed, here's our review...
Oh man. The third album from the Swedish prog/psych/doom wizards Witchcraft is finally here. We can barely contain ourselves. They say third time's the charm, and of course with Witchcraft it can't help but being so, since the first two times were charmed as well. This band's debut destroyed us with its incredibly authentic retro Pentagram/Sabbath stylings, with lashings of flute and folkiness too. Their second album, Firewood, captivated us with an equally early '70s heavy progressive vibe. Now The Alchemist succeeds at giving us what we want from Witchcraft -and- pushing further into the realm of melodic, folky proggy rock that stands on its own far beyond being a mere tribute to its '70s ancestors.
Guitarist/singer Magnus Pelander and his band Witchcraft have pretty much proved that the old adage "they don't make 'em like they used to" isn't always true. Witchcraft sure as hell does. That it's 2007 not 1972 isn't evident from anything on here, though it sounds as fresh as a daisy at the same time. These guys are so old school analog you halfway expect that their cd would be made out of black plastic and have visible grooves in it. We certainly could imagine some DJ's looking for breaks wanting this on vinyl real bad, you could do some badass hiphop mix with parts of "Remembered" ferinstance. Bet Andy Votel digs this band. Totally sounds like they could have gotten a deal with his favorite progressive record label back in the day (that'd be the famed Vertigo) had Witchcraft really existed in the '70s... certainly the inclusion of the sax solo (yes, a sax solo!) at the end of "Remembered" helps make it sound like something from an old Vertigo LP! Elsewhere Witchcraft get super sweet and gentle, or break out the heavy riffs Sabbath style (like you'd expect -- Sabbath originally being a Vertigo band y'know) in a blend we can't help but love.
Magnus' emotive, melodic vocals are so crucial here, one of this record's shining strengths. He still sounds a bit like a Swedish-accented Ozzy, yet with a graceful finesse, belting it out expressively or crooning with lilting loveliness. His vocals are matched by the absolutely powerful and gorgeous guitarwork throughout the disc. This album sweeps us off our feet immediately with the instant-classic opener "Walk Between The Lines", which is followed by a re-recorded version of the A-side of last year's 7" single, "If Crimson Was Your Colour", an urgent, witchy rocker embellished with some tasty Moog licks. Then there's the loping "Leva", which though Magnus sings it in Swedish, still goes straight to our soul. The Sabbath factor is ratcheted up on "Hey Doctor", a lumbering doom-riffed downer lamentation/accusation. The next track, "Samaritan Burden" combines the heavy riffs with a mellower mood and more acoustic-y moments, masterfully structured. It's followed by the aforementioned "Remembered", definitely an album-standout that's so '70s in so many ways that pretty much only Witchcraft could have done it in this day and age. And then, speaking of standouts, comes the nearly 15 minute long title track, "The Alchemist"! We'll omit description other than to say it's of course an epic mindblower, closing the album with magnificent, mesmeric, proggier than thou flourish.
Definitely a Top 10 Best of 2007 album, highly recommended. Seriously, we'd have been happy taking all day to write this review, just 'cause we love listening to this album so much.
MPEG Stream: "Walk Between The Lines"
MPEG Stream: "Hey Doctor"
MPEG Stream: "Remembered"

ARCADE AMBIANCE '81 (GDG) cd-r 12.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
You know we love field recordings and "environmental sounds". And you know we love '80s arcade games (witness the vintage Tron and Rastan machines that now make their home in our shop). So when we found out about these "Aracade Ambiance" discs -- which are exactly what the name implies -- we had to have them, and suspect that more than a few of our customers will want 'em too. There's three volumes in this professionally reproduced cd-r series, 1981, 1983, and 1986. We have all three but thought we'd get more of this first and earliest entry to highlight it on our list, this time.
It's one hour of "authentic" eighties video arcade sounds, what you'd hear if you paid a visit to a busy, bustling arcade back in '81. The blips and beeps and blasts of video violence, memorable musical themes from classic games, some crowd noises and of course the occasional clatter of the coin changer/token machine... it's just like we're ten years old again and skipping school. Those of us of a certain age that is -- some of the staff here at AQ weren't even born back then. Actually I might have been a little older before I spent a lot of time hanging out in the local arcades, as when younger I recall having bad day at the "Pennsylvania Spacetion" when some bullies took my tokens... Anyway if you were shooting aliens and asteroids, running mazes and dodging monsters way back when, this is gonna be a definite nostalgia trip!
We put "authentic" in quotes above 'cause this is actually a bit like the Jurassic Soundscapes cd we highlighted on our last list. The fellow who put these together didn't have the amazing foresight to drag a tape recorder out to a real video arcade back in '81. Nor was he able to convert a Time Pilot game into an actual time machine, though there's a good chance that he's dreamed of such a thing (which he probably wouldn't use to meet Jesus or kill Hitler or buy Google stock but instead to blow quarters at his local long-gone eighties arcade). "Composer" Andy Hoyle (whose face appears on the back cover of these discs, for some reason) wanted to create an background ambient soundscape to help give the impression that when playing retro games on his home console, he was actually in an arcade back in the day. Carefully collaging the musical cues and sound effects from period video games (this '81 set including the likes of Centipede, Asteroids, Gorf, PacMan, Defender, Frogger, Qix, Berzerk, Crazy Climber, Missile Command, Rally X, Space Invaders, Tempest, Galaga, Galaxian, Donkey Kong, and many more) with some more generic sounds recorded in a modern day arcade, Hoyle has artificially (and very convincingly!!) re-created what an arcade in 1981 actually would have sounded like. Not unlike the way field recordist Jean-Luc Herelle enabled us to hear the trompings and trumpetings of the dinosaurs of the Jurassic, 200 million years ago... It's a dense, non-looping, almost-hypnotic soundscape that Hoyle has sampled and sequenced. Heck it IS hypnotic for those of us in love with arcades!
And like we said, we also have copies of Arcade Ambiance '83 and '86 available, they're great too, each one guaranteed to bring back remarkably specific memories to those who wasted afternoons (and many quarters) during the golden age of arcade gaming... you can practically smell the cigarette smoke (that's right, they allowed smoking in arcades, and most machines had burns on 'em from players resting their cigarettes) and bask in the imagined video glow. Good times!
MPEG Stream: "track 1"
MPEG Stream: "track 8"

ARCADE AMBIANCE '83 (GDG) cd-r 12.98
Here's the 2nd volume in this cd-r series -- we highlighted volume one, Arcade Ambience '81, last time around. Remember 1983? Remember the video arcade games that were popular that year? The '83 disc will refresh your memory. Burgertime, Dig Dug, Elevator Action, Galaga, Joust, Mario Bros., Millipede, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pacman, Pengo, Pole Position, Qber