NADJA Dagdrom (Broken Spine) cd 14.98
We never thought we'd say this, but it's been a while since we've heard from Nadja! Two whole years in fact. There is a collaborative lp we're been meaning to review, but this is the first proper new full length since 2010's Autopergamene, and even if we were inclined to dismissively think "oh, another Nadja record", we throw it on, and are immediately reminded why we remain sort of Nadja obsessed.
Another collection of super distorted, darkly blissed out metalgaze perfection, this time the guitars sound even MORE distorted, crumbling and blurring into washed out smears of chordal gristle, and if that wasn't enough to get you excited about a new Nadja, howabout the fact that in place of the usual drum machine, is none other than Jesus Lizard drummer Mac McNeilly, who adds some human heft to the equation, making Nadja sound more like a real band, a fantastically blown out dirge metal slowcore band, the opener, a lurching super dynamic slab of dream doom bliss out, with hushed vocals, pounding drums, and the aforementioned gorgeous guitar crumble, even at 11 minutes it's still not nearly long enough.
The second track almost sounds like a Jesus Lizard song, a little bit Slinty too, with its spidery minor key guitar part, you can imagine it recast as a burst of bombastic noise rock, but here, it becomes the framework for a cool, constantly shifting metallic blowout, which features some gorgeously hushed moments, but also Nadja at their most propulsive and rocking. The second half gets mathy, and again super dynamic, and it has us wishing Nadja had hooked up with McNeilly long before now. The title track is epic slow burn Neur-Isis style heaviness, a sound that Nadja borrowed, and opted to reimagine and make their own instead of returning, and they continue to do it better than almost anyone else. Soaring and majestic and crumblingly heavy! Which leads into the closer, a 14 minute sprawl of tribal drumming, smoldering drones, blown out psychedelic noise, buried vox, all smeared into a shoegazey shimmer, which fades out midsong, leaving the second half spare and spaced out, a slowcore creep, with big drums driving swirling guitars, delicate melodies, and barely there vocals. So good. And well worth the wait.
MPEG Stream: "One Sense Alone"
MPEG Stream: "Falling Out Of Your Head"

NADJA Dagdrom (Broken Spine) lp 17.98
Finally got enough of these to list the vinyl version!!! Here's our review from when we first listed the cd version back in October of 2012...
We never thought we'd say this, but it's been a while since we've heard from Nadja! Two whole years in fact. There is a collaborative lp we're been meaning to review, but this is the first proper new full length since 2010's Autopergamene, and even if we were inclined to dismissively think "oh, another Nadja record", we throw it on, and are immediately reminded why we remain sort of Nadja obsessed.
Another collection of super distorted, darkly blissed out metalgaze perfection, this time the guitars sound even MORE distorted, crumbling and blurring into washed out smears of chordal gristle, and if that wasn't enough to get you excited about a new Nadja, howabout the fact that in place of the usual drum machine, is not other than Jesus Lizard drummer Mac McNeilly, who adds some human heft to the equation, making Nadja sound more like a real band, a fantastically blown out dirge metal slowcore band, the opener, a lurching super dynamic slab of dream doom bliss out, with hushed vocals, pounding drums, and the aforementioned gorgeous guitar crumble, even at 11 minutes it's still not nearly long enough.
The second track almost sounds like a Jesus Lizard song, a little bit Slinty too, with it's spidery minor key guitar part, you can imagine it recast as a burst of bombastic noise rock, but here, it becomes the framework for a cool, constantly shifting metallic blowout, which features some gorgeously hushed moments, but also Nadja at their most propulsive and rocking. The second half gets mathy, and again super dynamic, and it has us wishing Nadja had hooked up with Mcneilly long before now. The title track is epic slow burn Neur-Isis style heaviness, a sound that Nadja borrowed, and opted to reimagine and make their own instead of returning, and they continue to do it better than almost anyone else. Soaring and majestic and crumblingly heavy! Which leads into the closer, a 14 minute sprawl of tribal drumming, smoldering drones, blown out psychedelic noise, buried vox, all smeared into a shoegazey shimmer, which fades out midsong, leaving the second half spare and spaced out, a slowcore creep, with big drums driving swirling guitars, delicate melodies, and barely there vocals. So good. And well worth the wait.
MPEG Stream: "One Sense Alone"
MPEG Stream: "Falling Out Of Your Head"

NADJA Excision (Important) 2cd 16.98
A sprawling collection of previously released, (mostly) vinyl-only tracks from this aQ beloved doomdronedirge duo, many of which were extremely limited, most of which are now out of print, all culled from a three year period from 2007 to 2009.
First up is a track from a three way split between the band, and its two members Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, which was originally released on Die Stadt. The song begins all dark and serene, but quickly builds to an incendiary blown out doom trudge, quite possibly the heaviest and most distorted we've heard the duo, the guitar thick and crumbling and so distorted it almost obscures any melody, the drum machine a chaotic splatter, the last few minutes so intense and heavy and freaked out, the squall of swirling black psych and drum machine sputter almost completely obscures the churning riffage below. The second track is another sidelong jam, from a second three way Nadja / Baker / Buckareff split, released on Important back in 2008, this one begins with blissed out harmonized guitars, super spare drums, a digitally treated, slightly glitchy soft minimalism that drifts delicately until the inevitable crush, but this time the crush is not only massive, it's weirdly warped and warm and soft, processed and distorted making it sound a bit alien and otherworldly, almost more warm and washed out than heavy, a bit like a doom metal Galaxie 500, sun dappled and multihued, dreamy and ethereal, while somehow managing to remain incredibly heavy. The song grows slightly less blissy and more intense and ominous by the end of the side, but even then, the sound is still mysteriously transcendent.
Track three comes from Nadja's split with 5/5/2000 (featuring members of Cattle Decapitation and Creation Is Crucifixion) called Tumpisa, released on Accident Prone, and is all action, no slow builds, no pretty simmering, it's straight into a big ol' lurching doom, the drums big and reverbed, the guitar offered up in swells, and allowed to drift off, leaving just the drums to pound away between bursts of crumbling distortion. Very industrial sounding, dark ambient, the drums locked into a loop, a distant keening high end hovering just above the rumbling whir, there is a build up, but the duo begin the build already in the thick of it. The guitars grow more and more fuzzed out, the sound becomes thicker and more distorted, the background becomes more chaotic, riffs seem to coalesce out of those abstract swells, strange harmonics drift into the picture, the recording sounds decayed and damaged, as if it was some unearthed archival slab of ancient doom bliss, until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when yet more buzz and distortion enter the fray, and while the drums remain constant, they seem to sink deeper and deeper beneath the blossoming swirl of blown out noise and warm dense fuzz, all the while the sound threatening to crumble or collapse, a gloriously fractured post industrial doom bliss crawl for sure. The final track on disc one comes from 2008's Magma To Ice, released on Fario, a split with Netherworld, Nadja's track a 19 minute crusher, but as heavy as it is, and as doomy, it manages to be more effulgent and incandescent, the guitars grinding and shooting off rainbow colored sparks, thick radiant swells of sound, that seem to stand still yet manage to convey inexorable forward momentum, in fact this track finds Nadja giving Sunroof! a run for their money. This is a seriously transcendent ur-drone, keening high end, sine waves, crumbling distortion, soaring, whirring, static buzz and fuzz and skree, all over a whirling undercurrent of throb and pulse. Truly one of the most intense and unique tracks we've heard from Nadja.
Two of the tracks on disc two are drawn from Nadja's Bodycage record, originally released as a cd-r on NOTHingness, then as a cd on Profound Lore, reissued on vinyl by Equation, and then cd again via Broken Spine, the two alternate versions presented here were bonus tracks on the lp release, and while these versions are different enough from the original mix to be interesting/essential for folks who have the record proper, they're still similar enough that our original review still applies, which was almost more of a description of the duo's sound, than these songs in particular anyway: Call it doom. Or drone. Or dirge. Or better yet deathdoomdronedirge. It's a sound we can't get enough of, the logical extension of our obsession with the drone. And while we still love to drift off to the soft shimmer of a distant rumble, when you imbue a drone with more power, and more volume, and more wattage it becomes something new, a fearsome sonic beast, whether it's a subtly snarling growl of grit and grime, or a massive undulating wave of black hole fury, a drone possessed of power becomes a glorious thing to behold. And no one has as deft a hand with the drone than Baker, and Nadja is the ultimate drone via rock band. Beyond the ultra minimalism of SUNNO))), way prettier than the filthy dirges of Moss or Monarch, Nadja are almost like some indie slowcore band but lit from within by some otherworldy source. Every track is suffused with a warm rich glow that is almost blinding, but at the same time warm and inviting. It's heavy, sure, but it's more just plain beautiful. Like staring into the sun until your eyes start playing tricks on you. Imagine listening to a sound so loud, so bright, that the synapses in your brain misfire, and your ear scrambles to make sense of this sound, and in doing so, forges all kinds of unlikely connections, subtle melodic threads, paints a lush sonic portrait. Now imagine a music that was played to already sound like that, before it even got to you. Just imagine what your mind and your ears would do with a sound like that. Some sort of unreachable aural nirvana suddenly within reach. That's the music of Nadja. It's like watching a sunset slowed down so each subtle shimmer stretches out forever, each ray of sunlight is tangled up with another, writhing in sparkling glistening knots, slowly unraveling, stretching, into endless streaks of gorgeous muted color. Imagine Jesu, but dosed to the gills on Prozac, a shiny happy Godfleshian dirge, or a My Bloody Valentine riff looped and repeated forever, underpinned by some Can drum loop at 16 rpm, or a Teenage Filmstars 45 played at 33. This is epic ultradoom metal, but with the metal replaced by soft billowy clouds of fuzzy distortion, the howling fury twisted into dreamlike tranquility, the blasting beats pulled apart and sprinkled here and there like percussive raindrops. This is as soft and pretty as a dirge-y drone can get while still retaining its inherent doomic mass. Utter and absolute loveliness drenched in a thick patina of crushing heaviness.
Also included on disc two is Nadja's track from a split with Kodiak, originally released on Denovali in 2009, a record we were never able to get the first time around, another churning slo-mo drift through gauze-y ethereal swells, shot through with jagged shards of feedback, and heaving melting melodies, which while already dense and heavy, somehow explode part way through and become exponentially moreso, a churning sprawl of soft focus white noise crumblingly distorted dronedrift bliss, a rapidly expanding cloud of bleary supernova buzz, that like all of the tracks here manage to be both crushingly heavy, and dreamily washed out. And finally, the collection finishes off with a track from a one sided etched 12" originally released on Vendetta in 2009, and is most definitely one of the duo's most subdued and contemplative tracks, a creeping somnolent slowcore, rumbling blurred bassline, skeletal smears of guitar, the programmed drums a barely there framework, the whole thing delicate and crystalline, brooding and melancholy, shot through with ominous drones and a dense rib cage rattling thrum, all blurred into a warm wispy background for the hushed melody, and ethereal dreamlike drift.
Definitely essential for Nadja obsessives, and we know there are a lot of you out there, and a pretty fantastic introduction for folks who are just discovering this duo's blissed out heaviness, and doomdrone beauty.
MPEG Stream: "Jornada Del Muerto"
MPEG Stream: "Kriplyana (Melted And Refrozen Snow That Looks Blue In Early Morning"
MPEG Stream: "Spahn"
MPEG Stream: "Autosomal (Version 2)"

NADJA Long Dark Twenties (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.
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
Even though this is one of FIVE Nadja releases on this week's list, and they're all pretty amazing, this one might just be the most essential of them all.
LIMITED of course. One sided vinyl, hand letterpressed covers, pressed on all sorts of different colors, including black, don't ask, you'll get what you get!

NADJA Radiance Of Shadows (Alien8 Recordings) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
As much as we love Aidan Baker's solo recordings, and we most definitely do, from gorgeous expansive minimal dronescapes to haunting melodic abstracts to dreamy deconstructed pop, it's all pretty genius, we have to admit that our hearts will always belong to Nadja. Everything we love about Baker, but presented in the form of a massive buzzed out doom. Even at its heaviest and most plodding, it glistens and glimmers, the melodies shimmering and ethereal, the heaviness washed out into a metallic blur.
Radiance Of Shadows is the latest offering from Nadja, a duo featuring Baker and his partner Leah Buckareff, and is shaping up to be at once the prettiest Nadjar release so far, and the heaviest.
Three 20+ minute tracks, each perfectly balanced between suffocating crush and hazy dreamy bliss. Most folks obviously focus on the heavy crushing riffage, but the magic of Nadja happens just as much if not moreso during the quiet parts, the rhythmic parts leading up to the bombastic climaxes. The build up is just as satisfying sonically as the pay off, the musical version of the whole journey / destination thing. But that said, the pay off is a massive and gloriously impossibly heavy crush, like being beaten to death with rays of sunshine or being suffocated under layer after layer of soft fuzzy concrete slabs.
Each track while hewing close to the Nadja sound we know and live is distinctly different, exploring all the various facets of the duo's dreamy metallic dronepop.
The opening track is a glistening slowcore crawl, a lush swirl of granular textures, and lurching crumbling riffage, but suspended in wide open space, languorous and woozy, with a strange staccato riff, that gradually blossoms into a blown out slow motion dream doom supernova, continually seesawing back and forth between the soft and the heavy, a hypnotic blown out two part doom symphony, wrapped around a dreamy slow motion pop core.
The second track is even dreamier and poppier, with hushed breathless vocals, buried in a swirling soft focus My Bloody Valentine / Galaxie 500 sun dappled blur, punctuated by heaving industrial metal riffing, like a softer prettier Godflesh.
The third track is maybe the strangest of the bunch, the quiet parts near silent, the heavy parts seriously and intensely punishing. The quiet parts are all haunting high end distant drones, glitched out minimal guitar strum, soft barely audible drumming, martial and machinelike, haunting near spoken vocals. The heavy parts pummeling and downtuned, but laced with haunting pianos, and some seriously aggressive growled death metal style vocals, roiling and furious, still plodding and slow, but within that plod, the various elements careening and crashing and threatening to crumble into jagged bits. The dynamic between the loud and the soft is super dramatic, culminating in a washed out buzzscape eventually dissipating and leaving that quiet, insistent melancholy strum.
The sound is so much more epic and massive, but warm and 'live' sounding. For the first time, it actually sounds like A BAND, more than a record constructed in a room by a guy (and a girl). Not sure if it's the songs, or the arrangements, the recording or all three, but whatever it is, made a sound we already thought perfect, even more perfect.
MPEG Stream: "Now I Become Death The Destroyer Of Worlds"
MPEG Stream: "I Have Tasted The Fire Inside Your Mouth"

NADJA Radiance Of Shadows (Conspiracy) 2lp 37.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Now available on vinyl from the fine folks at Conspiracy Records. Super limited (we only have about 15 copies, not sure if we can get more), super expensive, but so worth it. Incredible new artwork, an embossed, diecut jacket, printed thick full color inner sleeves, visible through the diecut, photos by Seldon Hunt, the vinyl thick as well, weights a ton and sounds amazing. Limited to only 750 copies, and there's a killer etching on the fourth side too!! Here's what we said about the record when it came out on cd:
As much as we love Aidan Baker's solo recordings, and we most definitely do, from gorgeous expansive minimal dronescapes to haunting melodic abstracts to dreamy deconstructed pop, it's all pretty genius, we have to admit that our hearts will always belong to Nadja. Everything we love about Baker, but presented in the form of a massive buzzed out doom. Even at its heaviest and most plodding, it glistens and glimmers, the melodies shimmering and ethereal, the heaviness washed out into a metallic blur.
Radiance Of Shadows is the latest offering from Nadja, a duo featuring Baker and his partner Leah Buckareff, and is shaping up to be at once the prettiest Nadjar release so far, and the heaviest.
Three 20+ minute tracks, each perfectly balanced between suffocating crush and hazy dreamy bliss. Most folks obviously focus on the heavy crushing riffage, but the magic of Nadja happens just as much if not moreso during the quiet parts, the rhythmic parts leading up to the bombastic climaxes. The build up is just as satisfying sonically as the pay off, the musical version of the whole journey / destination thing. But that said, the pay off is a massive and gloriously impossibly heavy crush, like being beaten to death with rays of sunshine or being suffocated under layer after layer of soft fuzzy concrete slabs.
Each track while hewing close to the Nadja sound we know and live is distinctly different, exploring all the various facets of the duo's dreamy metallic dronepop.
The opening track is a glistening slowcore crawl, a lush swirl of granular textures, and lurching crumbling riffage, but suspended in wide open space, languorous and woozy, with a strange staccato riff, that gradually blossoms into a blown out slow motion dream doom supernova, continually seesawing back and forth between the soft and the heavy, a hypnotic blown out two part doom symphony, wrapped around a dreamy slow motion pop core.
The second track is even dreamier and poppier, with hushed breathless vocals, buried in a swirling soft focus My Bloody Valentine / Galaxie 500 sun dappled blur, punctuated by heaving industrial metal riffing, like a softer prettier Godflesh.
The third track is maybe the strangest of the bunch, the quiet parts near silent, the heavy parts seriously and intensely punishing. The quiet parts are all haunting high end distant drones, glitched out minimal guitar strum, soft barely audible drumming, martial and machinelike, haunting near spoken vocals. The heavy parts pummeling and downtuned, but laced with haunting pianos, and some seriously aggressive growled death metal style vocals, roiling and furious, still plodding and slow, but within that plod, the various elements careening and crashing and threatening to crumble into jagged bits. The dynamic between the loud and the soft is super dramatic, culminating in a washed out buzzscape eventually dissipating and leaving that quiet, insistent melancholy strum.
The sound is so much more epic and massive, but warm and 'live' sounding. For the first time, it actually sounds like A BAND, more than a record constructed in a room by a guy (and a girl). Not sure if it's the songs, or the arrangements, the recording or all three, but whatever it is, made a sound we already thought perfect, even more perfect.
MPEG Stream: "Now I Become Death The Destroyer Of Worlds"
MPEG Stream: "I Have Tasted The Fire Inside Your Mouth"

NADJA Skin Turns To Glass (The End) cd 12.98
With some bands, you want something new and different every record, strange new sounds, that confound as much as confuse, pushing boundaries, and stretching the limit of that band's 'sound'. But some groups, you don't want to ever change. You want every record to be a continuation of the one before it, you long for some way to make every song, and every record, seemingly play forever. Each release, more like a movement in a massive symphony stretched out over multiple records and multiple years.
The key though, is to somehow, within this sonic stasis, to continue to evolve, however subtly. Sure the sound remains unchanged, the tone and timbre is consistent. But within these boundaries, the songs do in fact change and shift, and offer up new ideas, new landscapes of sound, new hooks, new angles with which to hear, varied and wonderfully assorted pieces of a bigger whole.
Such is the case with dreamdoom duo Nadja, who much like their mainman Aidan Baker, release records at an alarming rate, often topping one a month, and while it's been challenging to review each and every one, we have, and we've enjoyed all of them. But listening to this latest Nadja, we began to view the band, and their record differently. There was no point in approaching this record as if it was their first, or as if it was something completely new, that we'd never heard before. Because we have. It's quite similar to past Nadja releases, the sound they've created is so much their own, the guitar impossibly full and blown out, organic, but wreathed in digital fuzz, and it's no studio trick, they played right here in aQ, and even at a less than deafening (but still plenty loud, thank you!) volume, they managed to conjure up the same heaving heaviness, the same gauzy atmospheres, the buried thump of the drum machine. In fact, as I was writing this, someone came up and asked if this was Nadja. C'mon! Most doom bands, drone bands, heck non-pop bands in general, you'd be hard pressed to immediately recognize. But Nadja have transcended all the descriptors often flung at them, doom, shoegaze, drone, metalgaze, they all apply, but none so much more than simply the name Nadja.
So why buy this one? Or the two forthcoming releases? Or the 30 or 40 past releases? Well, if you're like us, we can't get enough of the sound of Nadja. And like we mentioned above, we HAVE figured out a way to make this sound go on forever. Each record, takes the dense blissed out buzz, the lurching doomic trudge, the gloriously effulgent majesty of Nadja, and stretches it out just a little bit further. Each time adding something crucial that wasn't there before. On Skin Turns to Glass, the songs are evenmore meditative and repetitive, looped endlessly, the riffs churning mantra-like, a buzzing slow motion hynorock, separated by spaced out stretches of glimmering ambience, and deep cavernous drones. Every Nadja record we're tempted to declare it the best yet, but we'd bet you if we went back to one of the first releases, we'd immediately think that it was in fact the best one. Such is the magic of Nadja, the sound they've created, the soundworld, each piece is as important as any other, the sound wouldn't be complete, in fact can naver be truly complete, until there are no more records, no more songs, no more pieces to add to the ever expanding puzzle. Hopefully that will never happen.
Includes an unlisted bonus track, nearly thirty minutes of shimmering doomic minimalism, droning dark bliss, that explodes in the last minute or so, in a flurry of incendiary white noise, a drum damaged blown out psychguitar metallic meltdown, that ends quite abruptly, leaving us to wait patiently for the next movement, coming soon...
MPEG Stream: "Sandskin"
MPEG Stream: "Skin Turns To Glass"

NADJA Sky Burial (Latitudes) cd 14.98
Yet another new Nadja, this one part of Southern's Latitudes series, where bands are given some time in Southern Studios to write, rehearse and record a new and exclusive, often improvised set of songs. The duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, aka Nadja, whipped up two sprawling epics, both near 20 minutes long, and by now fans of Nadja pretty much know what they're getting into, it's gorgeously ambient, droney, blissed out and heavy, these two are after all probably the preeminent purveyors of dreamdronedoomdrift or metalgaze or whatever you want to call it, and the tracks here are as good as anything else they've done. And anyway, Nadja fans also tend to be a bit obsessive, and will probably not even read this far, but be warned, these are quite limited, and we got WAY fewer copies than we ordered, especially of the cds, so if you want one of these, you're gonna have to act fast.
For those new to the world of Nadja, or just want to know how these two jams stack up. The first, "Jaguar", is a slow smoldering ambient soundscape, all crackle and rumble and creak and groan, laced with static, and tolling bells, mysterious voices, soft chordal swells, and of course a thick swirl of crumbling distorted guitar, that takes more than half of the song to full surface, and when it does, it doesn't launch into crushing doom, instead it roils and churns, a thick undulating expanse of effects drenched guitar dronebliss, abstract and ambient, but still dark and heavy and blissfully buzz.
The title track begins with keening streaks of high end over a swirl of rumble and whir, some spare programmed drumming, all beneath thick clouds distorted guitar chords, left to ring out and fade away slowly, streaked with feedback, this track too forgoes the usual bombastic onslaught, and instead, offers a gradual build, and a less obvious climax, a swirling tangle of melodies and effects, the guitar and bass droned out and thick, an epic squall of murky and muddied psychedelia, all still anchored to that machine like rhythm, fantastically space-y and spaced out.
Like we've said in the past, you can fault Nadja for having an un-keep-up-with-able release schedule, but you sure as heck can't accuse them of releasing anything but gold, and these two tracks definitely rank up there with the rest of the highlights in their highlight heavy catalog.
As with all Latitudes, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, cd and lp, the covers are the immediately recognizable brown and white origami style Latitudes sleeves (the lp sleeves are black and white, and not so origami), the Nadja one with a hand rubber stamped cover (on the cd), and a full color insert inside. And we didn't get as many as we ordered of this one, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Sky Burial"

NADJA Sky Burial (Latitudes) lp 16.98
Yet another new Nadja, this one part of Southern's Latitudes series, where bands are given some time in Southern Studios to write, rehearse and record a new and exclusive, often improvised set of songs. The duo of Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff, aka Nadja, whipped up two sprawling epics, both near 20 minutes long, and by now fans of Nadja pretty much know what they're getting into, it's gorgeously ambient, droney, blissed out and heavy, these two are after all probably the preeminent purveyors of dreamdronedoomdrift or metalgaze or whatever you want to call it, and the tracks here are as good as anything else they've done. And anyway, Nadja fans also tend to be a bit obsessive, and will probably not even read this far, but be warned, these are quite limited, and we got WAY fewer copies than we ordered, especially of the cds, so if you want one of these, you're gonna have to act fast.
For those new to the world of Nadja, or just want to know how these two jams stack up. The first, "Jaguar", is a slow smoldering ambient soundscape, all crackle and rumble and creak and groan, laced with static, and tolling bells, mysterious voices, soft chordal swells, and of course a thick swirl of crumbling distorted guitar, that takes more than half of the song to full surface, and when it does, it doesn't launch into crushing doom, instead it roils and churns, a thick undulating expanse of effects drenched guitar dronebliss, abstract and ambient, but still dark and heavy and blissfully buzz.
The title track begins with keening streaks of high end over a swirl of rumble and whir, some spare programmed drumming, all beneath thick clouds distorted guitar chords, left to ring out and fade away slowly, streaked with feedback, this track too forgoes the usual bombastic onslaught, and instead, offers a gradual build, and a less obvious climax, a swirling tangle of melodies and effects, the guitar and bass droned out and thick, an epic squall of murky and muddied psychedelia, all still anchored to that machine like rhythm, fantastically space-y and spaced out.
Like we've said in the past, you can fault Nadja for having an un-keep-up-with-able release schedule, but you sure as heck can't accuse them of releasing anything but gold, and these two tracks definitely rank up there with the rest of the highlights in their highlight heavy catalog.
As with all Latitudes, LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES, cd and lp, the covers are the immediately recognizable brown and white origami style Latitudes sleeves (the lp sleeves are black and white, and not so origami), the Nadja one with a hand rubber stamped cover (on the cd), and a full color insert inside. And we didn't get as many as we ordered of this one, so act fast...
MPEG Stream: "Sky Burial"

NADJA Thaumogenesis (aRCHIVE) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
One of two new releases from Mr. Aidan Baker. One under his own name, a gorgeously druggy twangy slab of slowcore, and this the latest from his slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

NADJA Thaumogenesis (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This is a super limited re-press of the long out of print Thaumogenesis record, released on aRCHIVE a while back. Only 500 copies, and supposedly the second and final re-press so don't miss out again...
Here's our review from when we first listed it:
The latest from Aidan Baker's slow motion sludge metal doom duo Nadja.
And it's a killer. One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel.
The disc begins with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering. About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

NADJA Thaumogenesis (Broken Spine) cd 17.98
Originally released in 2007 on the now defunct aRCHIVE label, this gorgeous slab of blown out metal gaze bliss from aQ beloved dronedoomdirge duo Nadja, is available again on cd, housed in a nice silkscreened, textured paper sleeve. Here's what we had to say about Thaumogenesis the first time around...
One single 62 minute long track, bass, guitar and drum machine, all woven into a slowly undulating soundscape of blissy drone and monstrous pummel, beginning with 5 minutes of glistening shimmer, a slowly shifting swirl of bleary eyed sound. before the hammer falls and the beast lurches forth. A lush, massive, lumbering dirge, but rife with dense layers of sound, nearly orchestral in it's depth, a cyclical main riff, downtuned and dripping with distortion, beneath that, a strange glimmering melodic sparkle, as if millions of tiny diamonds were sprinkled into the blackened tarpit sludge, beneath it, a simple machinelike rhythm pulses relentlessly, like some sort of robotic heartbeat. It's like some Frankensteinian collage of Godflesh, Jesu, SUNNO))) and old Swans. It's heavy and bleak and doomy, but like Jesu, the sound is imbued with a strange warmth, and emotional mystery, that makes this much more than an exercise in guitardrone.
And the sound is not static, it wavers and shifts, the melody subtly changing shape, all without the rhythm ever wavering.
About 20 minutes in, the wall of guitar drops away, leaving simple distorted strums to float weightless above a single drum hit, repeated over and over, strangely meditative and serene. Before building back up again, but instead of sounding metallic, it sounds lush and expansive, the guitars billowing and glowing, a mighty Ur-drone, alive and vibrant.
Almost halfway through, a totally amazing riff is introduced, a moaning minor key melody that soars over the swirling blackness below, and adds all sorts of tension, a lurching slow motion stoner rock almost, that gives away once again to a blissed out soundscape of soft fluttering tones and warm muted colors, before erupting into one final salvo, a blinding burst of white light from the mouth of infinity, a soul shearing wave of incandescent guitars and psychedelic overload. Like Merzbow filtered through M83 and played by Philip Jeck, a glorious blast of spectral majesty, radiant and absolutely breathtaking.
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 1)"
MPEG Stream: "Thaumogenesis (excerpt 2)"

NADJA Thaumoradiance (aRCHIVE) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Besides being one of FIVE, count 'em, FIVE new releases from the ever prolific Nadja on this week's list, Thaumoradiance also just so happens to be a companion to a previously released disc, Thaumogenesis, which has just been repressed and is also reviewed elsewhere on this list as part of the abovementioned four.
Being a companion release, it of course shares much sonically with its predecessor, a sound shared by most Nadja records in fact, but as we've mentioned before, Nadja have found a sound, and embodied it. Made it absolutely their own. The sound of Nadja is not something you'd easily confuse with their doombliss brethren. While they exist in a scene rife with bands creating similar music, a world of droning dirgey doomy metallic show gaze-y bliss, they also exist outside of it.
Thaumogenesis is gorgeous sounding, recorded live. Two tracks. The first, is the title track from an older Nadja record, reimagined, and begins as a slow core crawl, with hushed vocals, waaaaay off in the distance drum machine skitter, simple soft guitar strum, peppered with HUGE speaker melting walls of sound. Crumbling distortion, garbled vocals, throbbing bass, the cool thing here, is the weird digital skips and stutters, the heavy part always being preceded by some glitched out chunk chunk chunk, before the hammer falls. And the opener transforms surprisingly into a thick shimmery high end whirl, white noise washed out into dreamy feedback speckled glimmer.
The second, is an alternate version of "Thaumogenesis", and is just as gloriously blissed out and effulgent as the original version. Much of the track is spent glistening minimally, melodies and notes nothing but soft smears of sound, a washed out haze of barely there shimmer, but it's Nadja, so the heavy parts manage to be just as pretty, but suffused with blown out buzz, and a rainbow halo of crackle and buzz, whir and hum, the drums a monstrous pummel, the bass and guitar thick and superdistorted, but still shot through with dreamlike melodies, and wreathed in an warm unearthly glow. We describe the original as sounding like M83, Merzbow and Philip Jeck, if anything this version, is less Merzbow and more of the other two, eventually unwinding into a languorous fuzz infused drift, peppered with haunting FX drenched percussion, and dark whirling ambience. Haunting and lovely. Of course.
As with all aRCHIVE releases, the packaging is fantastic, similar to Thaumogenesis, a sort of 6 panel center gatefold, the cd affixed to the inner center panel, artwork by Seldon Hunt, and of course, LIMITED TO ONLY 600 COPIES!
MPEG Stream: "Radiance Of Shadows"

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

NADJA Truth Becomes Death (Conspiracy) lp 37.00
BACK IN STOCK!!!
Latest in Conspiracy's series of super deluxe vinyl Nadja reissues, this latest one the lp of a former Record Of The Week, our very first Nadja and still one of our top faves. The music is fantastic of course (keep reading), but like the other Nadja vinyl reissues, the packaging is spectacular. Housed in an embossed, diecut jacket, with printed thick full color inner sleeves, visible through the diecut, photos by Seldon Hunt, the vinyl thick as well, weights a ton and sounds amazing. Limited to only 750 copies, and there's an amazing forestscape etching on the fourth side too!! Super limited of course, so not sure if we can get more when we run out), and super expensive, but so worth it.
Here's what we said about the record when it was ROTW back on list 226:
Crashing waves of balls of yarn. That's one attempt to explain this band's sound... Along with bringing in the usual Earth, SUNNO))), and Boris comparisons. The Toronto based duo of Aidan Baker (guitars, vocals, flute, piano, drum machines) and Leah Buckareff (bass and vocals) are an "atmospheric doom" band whose slow moving, heavy and heavily distorted music definitely shares something with the likes of early Earth, but although they've done a split 3" with UK doom nasties Moss (among several previous underground releases) you can't really define them as being a "metal" band at all. Their gauzy, droney, doom-spelled-backwards music has a warm, melodic underpinning, somewhere within the billowing clouds of distortion that form the three long tracks found here. I guess it's something like the churchy, "funereal" doom of Finland's Skepticism, really, but even more calm, echoed and ambient. Melancholic but very pleasant, with both growled vocals and gentle singing hovering just beneath the surface, this music somehow suggests rays of pure white light shining down from on high to illuminate their low-end murk... and during the final third of the last track "Breakpoint" the heaviness drops away altogether for a quietly sung coda that could be from the most mellow and poetic of indie-pop albums. Nadja's music is definitely more abstract and altered than, say, Ocean (another sludge-dirge outfit reviewed elsewhere this list), and is so much more beautiful than the monochrome darkness dwelt in by many other doom bands. If you can imagine an ultra-distorted hybrid of Growing, Codeine and, uh, Ras Algethi you'd maybe come close to the sound of Nadja... Recommended!!
MPEG Stream: "Bug / Golem"
MPEG Stream: "Breakpoint"

NADJA Under The Jaguar Sun (Beta-Lactam Ring) 2cd 16.98
Brand new double disc from prolific drone doom duo Nadja, each disc a whole record unto itself one crushing and heavy, the other blissed out and shimmery, but both discs meant to be played together simultaneously, Zaireeka style, if you're so inclined (and equipped).
Both discs sound a bit clearer on their own, the doomier disc is spacious and spaced out, bass driven with simple programmed drums, hushed vocals, lots more tripped out effects than usual, a dizzying cloud of glimmers and chimes, swoops and bleeps, all wrapped around simple lumbering crush and heaving swells of lush heaviness, very Godfleshy sounding actually, pretty stripped down, long stretches of low end rumble and drum pound. One track is all ambient, washed out and hushed, some woozy slowcore drift, that gives way to a final track that is gorgeously caustic, blown and and sun baked, heavy heavy heavy, the weird thing is that without the second disc, it definitely sounds less lush, more murky, which for Nadja is not actually a bad thing. Probably most folks don't have a way of listening to both discs simultaneously, so know that the first disc is a killer blast of sludgy Nadja doomdrone that sounds great as it is.
The second disc is a much more abstract affair, obviously as it's meant to add texture and depth to the original, but it actually sounds pretty amazing on its own, all looped and hazy and gauzy, very Philip Jeck sounding in places, and in fact, this second disc has becomes a great late night drifting off record, with only one track that gets loud, and even then it's a soft cacophony of tones and blurred melodies, like a timestretched gamelan broadcast through a kaleidoscope.
So together, it's a little difficult to get the balance right, but when you do, it sounds pretty neat, the slower prettier numbers seem to work better, as the two tranquil drones have an easier time blending, the heavier jams get pretty chaotic, but listening to the final super heavy track, with both discs blasting, it is pretty transcendent, if there was some way to run both these through headphones at the same time, it might just send you spinning into some other dimension, certainly it'll probably invoke some sort of spontaneous hallucinations. Heavy, and pretty, and together, way dense and psychedelic!
And the packaging, wow! A huge hardcover book-like digipak with full color fold out panels, inside two printed inner sleeves (the only bummer being that their are no pockets, so the sleeves just sort of fall out when you open it), super striking for sure, and super limited too we're pretty sure.
MPEG Stream: "SUN1jaguar"
MPEG Stream: "SUN2windstorm"
MPEG Stream: "Ocelotonatiuh"
MPEG Stream: "Ehecatonatiuh"

NADJA When I See The Sun Always Shines On TV (The End) cd 14.98
Covers records can definitely be a cop out. They're easy, and fun, and who doesn't want to just jam out to their favorite tunes. But some covers records do transcend, whether it's song choice, theme, or those particular versions and interpretation, the right covers, played the right way, can be as good if not better than a band's records proper. Which makes sense as you're typically covering songs that are, at least to you, if not everyone, 'classics.'
Which brings us to When I See The Sun Always Shines On TV, which is in fact, a collection of covers, many of which might seem like super obvious choices. Which is okay, it's as if Nadja wanted to acknowledge their influences loudly and proudly in the face of folks who accuse them of ripping off some of these very same bands. And at least half of these tracks are actually by bands that we've compared Nadja to in past reviews. So we were sort of psyched to see how instead of infusing their own music with the influences of other bands, they might approach it the other way around, taking these songs and bands they love, and filtering them through their own sound. Alongside those obvious choices though are some totally out of left field choices, that on the surface seem to make no sense, but in the context of this collection fit perfectly, and when heard all buzzy and blissy and Nadja'd up, sometimes sound better than the originals.
The album opens with My Bloody Valentine's "Only Shallow", and Nadja make it their own, which is no small feat considering how iconic that main riff is, but heck, in the past we'v talked about how everything sounds better slower, well imagine that jam, slowed way down, and beefed WAY up, so what was already THEE shoegaze anthem of all time, is transformed into a lurching, heaving, crumbling mass of glorious blurred and blown out soft focus heaviness. Then comes Codeine's "Pea", another obvious Nadja influence, we would have gone for "Cave In", some doom band needs to cover that one, but "Pea" suits them, they don't even rock it out that much, it's a bit heavier, but not much slower, and Aidan Baker's soft tentative croon is a dead ringer for Codeine's Stephen Immerwahr. The band also tackle the Swans, and the Cure, the latter's "Faith" stretched out to almost 13 minutes, and expansive glorious woozy gloomy sprawl.
But it's the unlikely choices that seal the deal. A-Ha? It's the track that gives this comp its title, and although we're not familiar with the original (well, actually Cup is!), the Nadja version is gorgeous, heavy and poppy and gloriously blown out.
Then there's the Slayer cover, "Dead Skin Mask" from Seasons In The Abyss, not as obvious a choice as "Raining Blood" or "Angel Of Death", but for Nadja a much more suitable choice, that main riff, sounds soooooo good, all sludgey and washed out, that main melody even more seasick and woozy sounding, the new version somehow even creepier than the original. However our favorite two tracks here are definitely the least likely, one you may have heard, one you most likely haven't.
First, Elliott Smith's "Needle In The Hay", which of course is a fantastic song, but in Nadja's capable hands, it becomes even more harrowing, much more minor key, the vocals worn and weary, the drums a trudging death march, all beneath a thick layer of droning buzz and keening keyboards, and then that main hook, so epic and mysterious and sorrowful. You can almost imagine this is what Smith was imagining when he wrote it. And as much as we love this whole disc, this is the one we keep returning to.
And then there's "Long Dark Twenties", which was previously releases as a super limited 7", and which just happens to be a cover of a song from the Kids In The Hall movie, and yeah, that makes no sense at all, but as far as we're concerned it's become a Nadja song, we actually reviewed that song in depth when we had the 7", so let's revisit that briefly:
Folks who managed to catch Nadja performing live at aQuarius not too long ago, were treated to quite possibly the heaviest, catchiest, grooviest Nadja track yet. An awesome hook filled seventies rock style ultra jam, wrapped in thick clouds of billowing distortion and anchored by the crunch and pound of programmed beats, Aidan Baker's vocals a whispered croon, Leah Buckareff's bass throbbing and rumbling, but the main riff, SHIT, unbelievable, even after our ears stopped ringing, we were all humming that riff for days...
Well the funny thing we learned later, was that there song was in fact a cover. And an incredibly unlikely cover at that. The only obvious link between the original and the band covering it? Canada. The song, some of you might remember, is in fact from the Kids In The Hall movie Brain Candy, and proves that Nadja can turn hooky pop into hooky sludge-y doom. The chorus is an absolute killer, and similar to how Torche transform pop into skullcrushing hook filled heaviness, Nadja take that pop and wrap it all up in some of their distinctive blissed out fuzz and we're talking HIT. Well, a hit if there were actually some sort of blissdoomdronesludgepop chart. Which there should be. And there sort of is, in our heads, but anyway...
So yeah, for folks who missed out on that single, or who just want to have it on cd instead of vinyl, well, it's worth the price of admission for just that jam. But thankfully, every song on here is a crushing doom drenched, pop infused, slow motion chunk of dreamy blissed out, ultra catchy heaviness. And even though it's not technically a proper Nadja record, it just may well be our favorite Nadja record yet.
MPEG Stream: "Only Shallow (My Bloody Valentine)"
MPEG Stream: "Pea (Codeine)"
MPEG Stream: "Needle In The Hay (Elliott Smith)"
MPEG Stream: "Long Dark Twenties (Kids In The Hall)"

NADJA & NETHERWORLD Magma To Ice (Fario) cd 16.98
Number five of five (!) on this week's list from uber prolific doomster Aidan Baker and his doombliss duo Nadja. Thankfully each release has something new to offer, so even if you have a whole shelf in your house dedicated to your Baker/Nadja collection, all four of these are definitely worth making a little extra space for.
This one especially, since if you're a fan of things dark and shimmery, dreamy and drone-y, then you're bound to be enthralled by the Netherworld tracks here, which help balance the loooong Nadja track at the end. Plus the two collaborate on a song as well, so there's lots of doomdreamdrift to be had.
The first three tracks are all Netherworld, and they do in fact sound like some strange Netherworld, all soft swells and muted chimes, gentle drifts of warm whir and distant shimmer, long slow tones, deep lush chordal smears, all very serene and sprawling, minimal, yet somehow epic and cinematic, sweeping soundscapes that evoke, wide open expanses of ice and snow, rolling hills, emptiness, an endless horizon. Soothing and meditative, a disembodied abstract new age, quite lovely for sure. And definitely reminiscent sonically of Thomas Koner, Lull, Biosphere and the like.
The Nadja track that closes the cd is a 19 minute crusher, but as heavy as it is, and as doomy, it manages to be more effulgent and incandescent, the guitars grinding and shooting off rainbow colored sparks, thick radiant swells of sound, that seem to stand still yet manage to convey inexorable forward momentum, in fact this track finds Nadja giving Sunroof! a run for their money. This is a seriously transcendent ur-drone, keening high end, sine waves, crumbling distortion, soaring, whirring, static buzz and fuzz and skree, all over a whirling undercurrent of throb and pulse. Truly one of the most intense and unique tracks we've heard from Nadja.
But before we get to this explosive coda, the two outfits team up for a transitional piece, which manages to perfectly meld the two aesthetics, and acts as a bridge between the serene contemplative drift of Netherworld, and the luminous roar of Nadja. A whirring slow building dronescape, deep resonant rumbles and soaring string like melodies, the layers of sound, thickening, gradually becoming more corrosive, more active, more volatile, until the sound is a roiling organic mass, a heaving sea of tangled tones, woven into a single whirling orb of sonic fire, threatening to engulf everything around it, which perfectly and almost seamlessly leads into Nadja's closing salvo.
Packaged in an oversized, 6 panel gatefold cardstock jacket, glossy and full color, the cd in its own plastic sleeve.
MPEG Stream: NETHERWORLD "Closing To A Winter Night"
MPEG Stream: NADJA & NETHERWORLD "Ice To Magma"
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Kriplyana (Melted And Refrozen Snow That Looks Blue In Early Morning"

NADJA + OVO The Life And Death Of A Wasp (Bar La Muerte / Broken Spine) cd 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Ever wonder what it would sound like if Yoko Ono joined doomdrone duo Nadja? No? Well, we're guessing it would sound a little like this collaboration between Canadian doomgaze two piece Nadja and Italian chaotic weirdo avant punk duo OvO. The overall sound here seems to fall more toward the Nadja end of the sonic spectrum, but OvO definitely add their own twisted vibe, the result something dark, and creepy, and abstract, and occasionally very heavy and very fucked up and awesome. Separated into four movements and based on some strange concept about killing a wasp in a cup of coffee, the record begins with some loping heavy slowcore, big drums, lush clean guitar chords, and all sorts of swirling weirdness, detuned melodies, harmonics, strange FX, long stretches of ambience, buried guttural vocals, streaks of feedback, it's not until nearly the end when OvO vocalist Stefania lets loose, with her childlike Ono-ish trill, operatic and creepy as hell, sometimes slipping into a monstrous gurgle, but just as often wailing like a banshee, while the music churns underneath. Can't help but be reminded of Bloody Panda too, the same sort of weird vocal / heaviness hybrid.
The second and third movements are shorter, and continue on in the same vein as the opener, with loping post rock rhythms, swirling blackened ambience, haunting chiming melodies, thick guitar thrum, more FX, Stefania's vocals never quite getting to the maniacal shriek stage, instead, slipping from hushed whisper, to almost black metal rasp, to cookie monster gurgle, the vibe almost Goblin-ish, heavy and dark, but cinematic and really creepy, the third movement the heaviest so far, a lurching doom, trudging grimly beneath wild drumming, and even wilder vocals, until finally, the 13 minute denouement, the final movement, which begins like some horror movie soundtrack, all fragmented melancholy melody, and deep heaving low end, droney and so ominous, gradually building to a strange industrial style drone-plod, which eventually explodes into something primal and tribal, pounding drums, those trilled super dramatic vox, an intense cathartic climax, which eases back into that ominous drift, this time with the vocals in full effect, the result, dark, bizarre, intense and fantastically out there!
MPEG Stream: "Movement 1: A Wasp Flying Around The Sugar Jar"
MPEG Stream: "Movement 4: Drowned In Coffee"

NADJA + OVO The Life And Death Of A Wasp (Vendetta) lp 15.00
Now on vinyl (and the cd version went out of print already).
Ever wonder what it would sound like if Yoko Ono joined doomdrone duo Nadja? No? Well, we're guessing it would sound a little like this collaboration between Canadian doomgaze two piece Nadja and Italian chaotic weirdo avant punk duo OvO. The overall sound here seems to fall more toward the Nadja end of the sonic spectrum, but OvO definitely add their own twisted vibe, the result something dark, and creepy, and abstract, and occasionally very heavy and very fucked up and awesome. Separated into four movements and based on some strange concept about killing a wasp in a cup of coffee, the record begins with some loping heavy slowcore, big drums, lush clean guitar chords, and all sorts of swirling weirdness, detuned melodies, harmonics, strange FX, long stretches of ambience, buried guttural vocals, streaks of feedback, it's not until nearly the end when OvO vocalist Stefania lets loose, with her childlike Ono-ish trill, operatic and creepy as hell, sometimes slipping into a monstrous gurgle, but just as often wailing like a banshee, while the music churns underneath. Can't help but be reminded of Bloody Panda too, the same sort of weird vocal / heaviness hybrid.
The second and third movements are shorter, and continue on in the same vein as the opener, with loping post rock rhythms, swirling blackened ambience, haunting chiming melodies, thick guitar thrum, more FX, Stefania's vocals never quite getting to the maniacal shriek stage, instead, slipping from hushed whisper, to almost black metal rasp, to cookie monster gurgle, the vibe almost Goblin-ish, heavy and dark, but cinematic and really creepy, the third movement the heaviest so far, a lurching doom, trudging grimly beneath wild drumming, and even wilder vocals, until finally, the 13 minute denouement, the final movement, which begins like some horror movie soundtrack, all fragmented melancholy melody, and deep heaving low end, droney and so ominous, gradually building to a strange industrial style drone-plod, which eventually explodes into something primal and tribal, pounding drums, those trilled super dramatic vox, an intense cathartic climax, which eases back into that ominous drift, this time with the vocals in full effect, the result, dark, bizarre, intense and fantastically out there!
MPEG Stream: "Movement 1: A Wasp Flying Around The Sugar Jar"
MPEG Stream: "Movement 4: Drowned In Coffee"

NADJA / 5/5/2000 split (Accident Prone) lp + cd 15.98
This long in the works split matches up doombliss duo Nadja (this is one of FIVE new Nadja releases on this week's list! Yowza!) with ambient soundscapers 5/5/2000 (featuring aQ pal Nathan, from Creation Is Crucifixion, M. Kourie, Human Quena Orchestra, and Travis Ryan from Cattle Decapitation) and it proves to be a pretty potent and appropriate pairing.
Nadja start things off, and waste no time, no slow builds, no pretty simmering, it's straight into a big ol' lurching doom, the drums big and reverbed, the guitar offered up in swells, and allowed to drift off, leaving just the drums to pound away between bursts of crumbling distortion. Very industrial sounding, dark ambient, the drums locked into a loop, a distant keening high end hovering just above the rumbling whir, there is a build up, but the duo begin the build already in the thick of it. The guitars grow more and more fuzzed out, the sound becomes thicker and more distorted, the background becomes more chaotic, riffs seem to coalesce out of those abstract swells, strange harmonics drift into the picture, the recording sounds decayed and damaged, as if it was some unearthed archival slab of ancient doom bliss, until the last 4 or 5 minutes, when yet more buzz and distortion enter the fray, and while the drums remain constant, they seem to sink deeper and deeper beneath the blossoming swirl of blown out noise and warm dense fuzz, all the while the sound threatening to crumble or collapse, gloriously fractured post industrial doom bliss crawl for sure.
5/5/2000 reply with what might be their heaviest recording to date. A nearly 17 minute low end sprawl, groaning, coruscating distortion, rumbling and roiling, while beneath some sort of shimmery soundscape plays out. Delicate and dreamy, abstract melodies drifting and swirling, fuzzy and gauzy and blurred into soft focus streaks, until right near the end, when the soft tranquility is overtaken by a dense swell of layered guitar, grinding and buzzing, a blissed out, blown out blackened drone.
LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each lp comes with a cd featuring the same music, as well as a printed cardstock insert.
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Spahn"
MPEG Stream: 5/5/2000 "Shadows In The Valley Of Death"

NADJA / ARMCHAIR MIGRAINE JOURNEY Transmit Acoustique Abstraction (Beta-Lactam Ring) lp 37.00
You think by now, that after a million or so releases, we'd be sick of Nadja, and could nor possibly need/want another record to add to our already overflowing Nadja collection, but somehow, we just never get sick of it, and love pretty much everything we hear, and still get excited when we hear about a new record, and every one seems to sound better than the last, what's not to love? Heavy, spacey, doomy, droney, shoegazey...
This latest sonic missive is another gem, a sidelong epic of hazy, druggy, rhythmic, almost krautrocky minimal post rock doom drift, but the thing is, it never gets loud, or heavy, whereas most Nadja jams eventually explode into a roiling crushing blissed out wall of heaviness, this one refrains, instead, loping, and drifting, and shimmering, and pulsing hypnotically, while all around the main riff and the simple motorik rhythm, backwards sounds swoop and swirl, guitar drones are layered and blurred, the bass sticks close to the drum machine, a solid anchor for the various other sounds to hover and float, the whole thing an endlessly mesmerizing chunk of softly shoegazey krautdrone slowcore. So good.
Nadja get teamed up here with someone called Armchair Migraine Journey, who counter Nadja's sidelong epic with one of their own, a field of glimmering, chiming, shimmering guitars, melodies and chords and notes swirl and shift and merge and tangle, all over a bed of low end hum, peppered with occasional echo drenched, deep and dramatic vocals, giving the sound a bit of a cold wave / gothic vibe, but only briefly, as the vocals drift off, and the tangle of guitars take over again. The side finishes off with a coda of minimal metallic buzz and haunting music box melodies. Pretty great stuff, and a good match for the Nadja track, which definitely ranks among their best.
And the packaging, WOW. A super fancy, super heavy black sleeve, printed in metallic silver, with a printed insert and pressed on thick thick vinyl. LIMITED TO 200 COPIES, each one hand numbered.

NADJA / ATAVIST / SATORI Infernal Procession... And Then Everything Dies (Cold Spring) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This record was pretty much custom made for most of you. A three way split of extreme heavy bliss out dream doom, featuring the WAY too prolific Nadja, who continue to get a pass, because we STILL can't get enough of -that- sound, the not nearly prolific enough Atavist, and a new name to add to the list of bands to obsess over, Satori, a duo featuring the head honcho of the always awesome Cold Spring label who made this disc happen.
Not sure if there was a reason for this three way split, a tour or something, or maybe it's just cuz the three bands fit pretty nicely together, whatever the reason for this happening, we're glad it did.
Starting with Nadja, who again offer up a gorgeously gauzy sprawl of Jesu meets M83, all super distorted crumbling melodies, lurching buried in the mix drum machine, weary ethereal vocals, melancholy minor key melodies, wrapped into an awesome chunk of doomed metallic slowcore, lots of dynamics and texture, a loooooong slow build a la Godspeed, with an epic and triumphant climax. So good. One of the best Nadja track yet maybe.
Atavist do their own sort of doom thing, this time a skeletal mathy post rock, clean guitars spread out over spare drumming, very Slint-ish, all spidery and delicate, until a minute or so in, when the hammer falls, shrieked blackened vox, super distorted crumbling guitars, pounding percussion, a strange flurry of off kilter jagged mathiness, before it's back to the moody Slinty sprawl. Eventually, the track becomes blown out and so in-the-red all the instruments seem to melt together, until the band unfurl a blackened post metal jam that might sound more at home on a Deathspell Omega record, culminating in a gorgeous almost symphonic sounding high end coda.
Finally, Satori, who have a lot to prove in such esteemed company, take an entirely different tack, with processed garbled vocals, over distant whirring drones, a creepy hellish machinelike soundscape of post industrial hiss and grind, deep rumbling swells, thick hissing walls of muted buzz, buried melodies, disembodied voices and buried melodies, all very grim and apocalyptic, think MZ412, Lustmord or Wolf Eyes, some seriously haunting and harrowing black ambience.
Packaged in a multi paneled black and white jacked and housed in a plastic sleeve. LIMITED TO 1000 COPIES.
MPEG Stream: NADJA "Time Is Our Disease"
MPEG Stream: ATAVIST "Certitude"

NADJA / BLACK BONED ANGEL s/t (20 Buck Spin) cd 10.98
A match made in dreamdrone heaven, one that has now spawned a second collaboration, between two of the most prolific in their field. Swapping files back and forth to create a devastatingly potent sonic brew, Nadja and Black Boned Angel have delivered two crushing epics, heavy and blackened, a sonic representation of their combined might.
Unlike the surprisingly poppiness of their first match up, this is a much grimmer beast. Starting with an almost Xasthur-esque opening, rife with slightly sour funereal guitars, a creeping wave of distortion slowly moves in like a persistent rainstorm. After about 6 minutes, the drums kick in like the beginning of a forced march towards a very bleak end. Soon a cloak of industrial strength feedback takes over everything else with occasional pounds of a drum popping up here and there. The results are somewhat like Skullflower's recent work with pulverizing feedback and a harsh grinding feel. Eventually, the blankets of distortion subside and the song ends with a low rumbling sound and a sustained burst of high pitched skree. The second number here opens with a low hum that constantly turns on itself before a sloooooooooooow dirgey beat comes in, taking the on its strange circular path. Some heavy subsonic riffs enter the picture at the 13 minute mark, merging with the rest of the fuzzed out drones, and the song becomes so heavy that it seems like at any moment it might collapse on itself due to the sheer density of it all. Still, a discernible melody cuts through to bring the piece to its SUNNO)))-styled conclusion, 26 minutes later. Whew.
Perfect listening for anyone looking to get lost in the epic sonic sludge of these two masters.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

NADJA / BLACK BONED ANGEL s/t (20 Buck Spin) lp 15.98
NOW ON VINYL! And comes with an MP3 download as well...
A match made in dreamdrone heaven, one that has now spawned a second collaboration, between two of the most prolific in their field. Swapping files back and forth to create a devastatingly potent sonic brew, Nadja and Black Boned Angel have delivered two crushing epics, heavy and blackened, a sonic representation of their combined might.
Unlike the surprisingly poppiness of their first match up, this is a much grimmer beast. Starting with an almost Xasthur-esque opening, rife with slightly sour funereal guitars, a creeping wave of distortion slowly moves in like a persistent rainstorm. After about 6 minutes, the drums kick in like the beginning of a forced march towards a very bleak end. Soon a cloak of industrial strength feedback takes over everything else with occasional pounds of a drum popping up here and there. The results are somewhat like Skullflower's recent work with pulverizing feedback and a harsh grinding feel. Eventually, the blankets of distortion subside and the song ends with a low rumbling sound and a sustained burst of high pitched skree. The second number here opens with a low hum that constantly turns on itself before a sloooooooooooow dirgey beat comes in, taking the on its strange circular path. Some heavy subsonic riffs enter the picture at the 13 minute mark, merging with the rest of the fuzzed out drones, and the song becomes so heavy that it seems like at any moment it might collapse on itself due to the sheer density of it all. Still, a discernible melody cuts through to bring the piece to its SUNNO)))-styled conclusion, 26 minutes later. Whew.
Perfect listening for anyone looking to get lost in the epic sonic sludge of these two masters.
MPEG Stream: "I"
MPEG Stream: "II"

NAGELFAR Virus West (Van) cd 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've been meaning to re-list this for a while now. A reissue of one of our favorite black metal records EVER. Virus West, originally released way back in 2001, was the final step in this German band's progression, from folky Viking black metal to experimental avant black metal to something way more primal and raw, but somehow no less original or avant.
AQ list subscribers who might not have been hip to these guys back in the day, might recognize the name, as some of the Nagelfar folks went on to form big time aQ faves Ruins of Beverast and Kermania as well as the equally brilliant Graupel and Verdunkeln (who we have yet to review/list).
So what is it exactly about this disc that makes it so amazing? It's a bit hard to describe. The sound is very Scandinavian, harkening back to the classic sound of the nineties Norwegian elite. The sound is thick and buzzing, the vocals a chaotic howl, the drumming a crushing pound as often as a thrashing blast, but as with most things like this, much of the magic is mood and atmosphere, and these guys conjure up a truly intense and darkly magical mood, while at the same time, kicking out some of the most classic sounding riffs ever. Much of their time is spent plodding doomily along, buzzing midtempo lurches in the spirit of Darkthrone, but they also offer up some serious thrashing blackness, peppered with long slow crawls, chanted monk like vocals, lots of dynamics, stop start riffing, weird keyboards, little bits of triumphant majesty giving way to brutal growling black metal buzz, field recordings, bits of dark fluttery folk, but again it's the mood that makes this record, the way the band capture a certain essence, the spirit of black metal, managing to be true and grim and classic sounding, but also just fucked up enough to make it special, and part of that is the fact that the songs are all crazy catchy, with a certain amount of groove, hooks everywhere, the riffs stick in your head, the songs, as black and buzzy as they are, linger like pop songs long after the record ends.
The final track, "Meuterei", is the perfect encapsulation of what was so great about Nagelfar. Beginning with some strummed acoustic guitars, some Viking style chanting, the band launch into a cool midtempo mathy metallic old school metal groove, underpinned by furious blast beats, until they switch it up into a triumphant metal march, complete with what sounds like horns playing a regal fanfare. Then we're back in the grimy old school black metal filth, a buzzing snarling midtempo crush, before exploding into some chaotic blackened riffing, various guitar parts all tangled up into a heaving roiling whole, the drums holding it together with their relentless pound, so goddamn good.
Such a shame this marked the end of Nagelfar, but for those who still need more, be sure and check out Ruins Of Beverast, Verdunkeln and all the rest...
MPEG Stream: "Hellebarn"
MPEG Stream: "Sturm Der Katharsis"

NAHAR La Fascination Du Pire (Avantgarde) cd 13.98
Latest blast of black metal murk from this French duo, whose grim brand of depressive bedroom black metal has been getting lots of play around here, the sound muddy and muted and washed out, lo-fi for sure, but lush in its low fidelity, the long stretches of blasting buzz, seeming to melt into a more droned out buzz, the tempos constantly shifting, with a second guitar adding some woozy post rocky melodies, not to mention some tripped out synths that add a folky vibe, that sounds almost Native American at times, opener "Face Of Extinction" is the perfect example, it's all grim buzz, but the sounds are sort of soft focus, blurred a bit, instead of being fierce and frenzied, it sounds warped and droney and sort of druggily dreamy, there's some gnarled Deathspell style riffery going on, and its easy to hear that with a huge production, these guys could sound epic, but this murkier sound suits them, the lurching lumbering groove wreathed in strange atonal guitar melodies, and underpinned by bursts of double kick drumming, and then when that synth swoops in, it's weirdly dramatic and folky, and at last here almost Native American sounding.
The sound on the rest of the record is pretty varied, with lots of more traditional blackness, for sure, but also plenty of swooping backwards effects, warbly droned out guitarscapes, that sound like Fear Falls Burning or some other experimental guitarscaper, there are stretches of doomic plod, rife with twisted melodies and bursts of distorted crunch, plenty of loping post rockisms, some D-beat pound (coupled weirdly with monklike chanting), and plenty of noise drenched midtempo lo-fi blackness, culminating in the strange anguished abstract atmospheric blackdoom of the closer.
MPEG Stream: "Face Of Extinction"
MPEG Stream: "Where Others Have Drowned"

NAHUAL TLI End Of The Path (Self Mutilation Services) cd 14.98

NAHUM / FLASKAVSAE split (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another killer match-up between two different UN-black warriors, and yep, that means Christian black metal, a genre we've become pretty dang obsessed with. This one slipped through the cracks, we've had it for a while, bit for some reason never got around listing it until now.
Flaskavsae is one of our favorite of the UN-black hordes (another Flaskavsae split is reviewed elsewhere on this list, teamed with our other favorite, Light Shall Prevail), and these three tracks definite demonstrate why once again. Three murky blasts furious black buzz, the guitars blurred into heaving droney slabs, the programmed drums relentless and machinelike, with awesome off kilter fills, and the vocals a buried monstrous growl, the melodies are epic, the sound sweeping and majestic, there must be keyboards cuz guitars just don't swell like that, or maybe they do, the EEE folks can do fucked up things with sound, the production always as much a part of the sound as the sound itself.
This is the first we've heard from Nahum though, but their sound is a perfect compliment to Flaskavsae's, a furious relentless droned out buzz, the drums chaotic and frenzied, the cymbals awesomely loud in the mix, but it's the vocals that turn this into something fucked up and amazing, a howled falsetto screech, doused in reverb and delay, which results in the vocals careening all over the place, overlapping and getting all tangled up, very dubbed out, which makes the whole track sound sort of psychedelic. Nahum also offer up some gorgeous washed out keyboard-heavy breakdowns, all woozy and dreamy, and some super squiggly leads, all draped over the super distorted murky UN-blackened chaos below. Awesome stuff.
MPEG Stream: NAHUM "Mighty God"
MPEG Stream: FLASKAVSAE "Playing The Harlot"

NAHVALR s/t (Enemies List) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Black metal by its very nature is fairly isolationist, especially considering that one of the mains strains consists of one man bands holed up in their bedroom / attic / shed / shack / cave, shunning humanity, sunlight, any sort of personal interaction, filtering all of that negative hateful energy into their grim black buzz. Even proper black metal groups, with more than one member, are often quite tribal, kvlt-like you might even say, performing sonic rituals in some dimly lit rehearsal space, channeling all manner of dark energy and creating music both bleak and brutal, evil and cathartic. That sound, created by a group, is still intensely personal and to a certain degree is created more out of a need to create, than a need for adoration or success.
But what if you turned that whole dynamic completely around. Removed all aspects of kvlt-ishness, of individualism, what if you created a black metal horde open to anyone, anyone with an amp and a guitar, or even just a computer, could record tracks, and contribute to what would eventually be woven into the first open source black metal record.
And here it is, masterminded by the guys behind gloomy bliss metal duo Have A Nice Life, Nahvalr is indeed, as far as we know the very first "open source" black metal band. Parts and songs were solicited online, contributed via email, handed off in person, donated anonymously, and eventually the HANL guys took all the various tracks and deftly assembled them into this buzzing black behemoth. And there is in fact, plenty of buzz obviously, layer upon layer of crushing downtuned insectoid buzz, but also loads of creepy ambience, weird warbly doomy bits, super lo-fi blasts of near white noise, insane grinding drum machine stutter, haunting black ambience, deep ominous rumbles and softly glowing shimmers, weird chanted vocals, industrial scrape and pound, blown out blissed out blackened drifts of crumbling soft noise, it's all very schizophrenic, but it doesn't at all sound like a hodge podge, it sounds more like a truly expansive sprawling chunk of demented abstract black metal weirdness. Which is precisely what it is. It just so happens that there's way more than 4 or 5 guys "in the band."
Some songs are so steeped in buzz it sounds like records by Ildjarn, Velvet Cacoon and Wrath Of The Weak all being played simultaneously, other tracks are loosed from their black metal moorings and sound like Skullflower, thick sheets of sound, spaced out noise drenched ur-drones, others are gloomy and darkly melodic, simple guitarlines unfurling over streaks of feedback, howled anguished vocals, and shimmering black drones, while still others are furious dense blasts of raw, noisy black metal, in the red, speaker destroying missives from hell, swirling and roiling and churning maniacally, but often splintering into creepy doomic crawls or fucked up abstract Abruptum like blackened soundscapes.
The record begins with a sample of conspiracy theorist and radio talk show host Art Bell, talking about digging a hole to hell in Siberia, before launching into blown out super saturated black metal blast, but the source material is so varied, that even the parts that sound like black metal on the surface, have so much going on just below, twisted warbly melodies, keening wails, disembodied voices, textures and layers, so immersive and expansive, headphones are like X-ray goggles, revealing a whole other world hidden to the casual listener. The record then swerves from warped slow motion ambient doom, to soundscapes of high end skree and garbled guitarnoise, to grinding blacknoize fury, to downright gorgeous blissy drones and all the other various sonic stops mentioned above. Not at all typical black metal, instead, more of a weird sound experiment, based around black metal tropes, and created with a core of buzzing blackness, but allowed to sprawl WELL past the usual boundaries that define the genre, creating something extraordinary yet still distinctly black in the process.
MPEG Stream: "Chorus Of Blasphemes"
MPEG Stream: "Bloodflood"
MPEG Stream: "Black Elk Speaks, Chokes, And Dies"

NAILGUNNER Apocalypse. Now Or Never (AreaDeath) cd 11.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Also found we had a couple of these, never listed. Another band doing the whole old school thrash metal revival thing, this time from Finland. The cleverly titled Apocalyspe. Now Or Never is their debut full-length. While they don't quite attain the rabid off-the-rails insanity of our particular Finnish thrash faves Pyrotoxic (RIP), they're still pretty entertaining if you're into the current wave of thrash nostalgia. Fast, frazzled, chugga-chugga-chugga bleaaaargh right out of the gate, and it doesn't let up. Wretched vokills lay down the thrash law over pummelling battery and razor sharp riffin' guitar grind. For fans of Slayer and the like.
MPEG Stream: "Futuristic Deth"
MPEG Stream: "On Metal Monsters We Ride"

NAILS Unsilent Death (Southern Lord) cd 10.98
A record this short should probably get an equally short review, just don't want to sell Nails short, cuz for what their record lacks in length, it makes up for in sheer crushing ferocity. 10 tracks in 14 minutes, a relentless onslaught of classic Earache Records style grind from these SoCal crushers, downtuned guitars blasting beats, guttural vocals, screeching feedback, gnarled tangly leads, the occasional bit of lumbering doom, a frantic whirlwind of powerviolent brutality, a nearly non-stop blast of face melting Napalm Death style classic old school grind. Heavy as hell and definitely recommended for folks who like it fast and furious and filthy as fuck.
MPEG Stream: "Conform"
MPEG Stream: "Scum Will Rise"
MPEG Stream: "Unsilent Death"

NAILS Unsilent Death (Southern Lord) lp 16.98
NOW ON VINYL TOO! And in a super heavy gatefold jacket to boot!
A record this short should probably get an equally short review, just don't want to sell Nails short, cuz for what their record lacks in length, it makes up for in sheer crushing ferocity. 10 tracks in 14 minutes, a relentless onslaught of classic Earache Records style grind from these SoCal crushers, downtuned guitars blasting beats, guttural vocals, screeching feedback, gnarled tangly leads, the occasional bit of lumbering doom, a frantic whirlwind of powerviolent brutality, a nearly non-stop blast of face melting Napalm Death style classic old school grind. Heavy as hell and definitely recommended for folks who like it fast and furious and filthy as fuck. (And it's even faster if you spin it at 45 instead of 33!)
MPEG Stream: "Conform"
MPEG Stream: "Scum Will Rise"
MPEG Stream: "Unsilent Death"

NAIMA, TONY & THE BITTERS Dismember (Tosom) cd 15.98
Hard to resist a record with a bloody teddy bear on the cover, its fuzzy arm torn off and laying in a pool of blood, bone and sinew and gristle exposed. The record simply titled Dismember. Even harder to resist when you realize it's actually a country band, covering songs by Swedish death metallers Dismember, and far from being a joke, it sounds amazing, grim and dark, twangy and catchy, the twang and shuffle offset by horns, which add a strange funeral vibe to the proceedings.
Some of the song titles sound like they could very well actually be country songs, "I Saw Them Die", "In Death's Cold Embrace", "Dreaming In Red", but others maybe not so much so: "Where Ironcrosses Grow", "Let The Napalm Rain"... The record begins with a brief whispery intro, hushed female vocals, crooning all intimate right in your ear, before the band launches into a rollicking campfire stomp, all minor key twang, shuffling percussion, warbly Hammond organ, insistently strummed steel string guitar, and a world weary whiskey soaked drawl, culminating in a soaring epic chorus with the repeated line "I tasted blood, now I want more". Sounds like it could be the Old '97's or Sixteen Horsepower. Even a little Decemberists. Elsewhere the band dip into truckstop honky tonk, old time folk, gorgeous languorous swampy blues, epic over the top super dramatic Godspeed bombast (that inexplicably gives way to a super strange electro country tinged new wave jam), Southern rock and shuffling rockabilly...
Our favorite track has to be the darkly doomy and twangy "In Death's Cold Embrace", with its loping rhythmic slither, it's mournful funereal horns, some seriously Woven Hand like vocals, a killer warbly trombone solo, the whole thing just steeped in gothic grandeur, even the lyrics, what little bits you can catch, add to the track's gorgeous creepiness.
It almost doesn't matter that these are covers, fans of Slim Cessna, Sixteen Horsepower and that sort of muddy woodsy gothic swamp blues will definitely dig, but it's sort of thrilling to realize these are bastardized death metal songs, and to realize that melodically, thematically and especially lyrically, country blues is not all that far removed from death metal...
MPEG Stream: "Of Fire"
MPEG Stream: "In Death's Cold Embrace"

NANA APRIL JUN The Ontology Of Noise (Touch) cd 16.98
It's probably no surprise that we were intrigued when we first heard about this disc, after all the press release claims that it "researches the dark associations of post-black metal". And they go on to recommend it to fans of Burzum's masterpiece Filosofem! However, it must be the ambient aspects of Filosofem they're referencing, as you'll find no true frosty guitar buzz here, instead this is a purely digital, all-electronic album released by the UK's ever reliable, experimental Touch label, home to the likes of Fennesz, Philip Jeck, B.J. Nilsen, Chris Watson, and others. Intriguing, eh?
Of course, if we hadn't read that press release, we might never have related this to anything black metal at all, but we'd still like it. It's a very pleasant and varied dronological document, suggestive of field recordings, even though all these sounds are abstract ones, mostly realized inside a computer. There's passages that seem like buzzing insect swarms ("Process Philosophy"), or lashings of wind and rain ("Space-Time Continuum"), or Tibetan temple bells ("Semantic Shift"), or the gentle swaying of leaves and branches in a breeze ("Sun Wind Darkness Eye"). That particular track goes on to generate a mysterious low, soft hum, eventually accompanied by a beating electronic pulse, like much of the minimal techno we enjoy...
It's all quite evocative and lovely, although now that we think about it, some of these sounds could also be, like, cold winds blowing across frozen fjords, or sinister rumblings heard inside a subterranean crypt... And who knows, perhaps Nana April Jun (aka Christofer Lamgren), who hails from Sweden, wears corpsepaint whilst working with his digital tools. Probably not, though, since the majority of the text we read pertaining to this release was on the academic side of things. And although discussions of subjects like "the ontology of noise" and other psuedointellectual concepts can be a mite pretentious, regardless of that, all the whooshing, hissing, droning here is very good listening indeed.
MPEG Stream: "The One Substance"
MPEG Stream: "Process Philosophy"
MPEG Stream: "Space-Time Continuum"

NAPALM DEATH Enemy Of The Music Business (Spitfire) cd 14.98

NAPALM DEATH From Enslavement To Obliteration (Earache) cd 15.98

NAPALM DEATH Noise For Music's Sake (Earache) cd 15.98

NAPALM DEATH Scum (Earache) lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another essential grind metal classic available on vinyl for the first time in years. Exact reproduction of the original sleeve and on colored wax! Just like the Carcass vinyl reissue last list, if you don't already know who they are, you probably don't need this, but 'Scum' is definitely Napalm Death's finest moment. Short sharp bursts of ripping, pounding super political sort-of-lo-fi crusty metallic grind. A classic! And for those of you turntable-less fools out there, it is of course still available on cd!

NAPALM DEATH Scum (Earache) cd + dvd 15.98
All the Jesu mania of late has definitely had us revisiting Godflesh, and digging the machinelike metallic bombast of all those records, the seeds of what would one day blossom into Jesu's blissy crush. But way before Godflesh, Mr. Justin Broadrick was wielding his axe in the mighty Napalm Death, whose Scum still ranks as one of the greatest heavy records of all time, and certainly one of, if not THE greatest grind record EVER.
And since we've never listed it, and it just got reissued with a bonus dvd, we figured it was perfect timing. We'd like to assume that any lover of heavy music already owns Scum, if that's not the case something is seriously seriously wrong. But maybe you lost it, or lent it out, maybe you have a beat up old vinyl version and just need to upgrade, whatever it is, this is essential. Like the first few Carcass records (including Heartwork sez Andee!), this is intense, furious forward thinking heavy music. Short sharp bursts of ripping, pounding super political sort-of-lo-fi crusty metallic grind. At the time, nothing like it had been heard. Now, we're on the tail end of about a million mediocre grid bands, which makes it even more exciting to hear the original, the template used by pretty much every band since. And this stuff isn't just fast and heavy, it's weird as fuck too, the riffing is convoluted, weird midtempo chugs are paired with thrashing blast beats, some songs barely crack the 30 second mark, others are churning murky blasts that stretch all the way out to 3 minutes in some cases. The vocals a barked growl, the bass a throbbing blur, but it's the guitar, Broadrick's guitar, that roars and howls and chugs and grinds and defines the sound of Scum. Which, as far as we're concerned, is one of the greatest sounds we've ever heard.
This limited reissue includes a bonus dvd about the making of Scum, the early days of Napalm Death, Earache, and the scene and city that birthed the band. It's pretty interesting, lots of interviews, Dig from Earache, write Malcolm Dome, but mostly with drummer Mick Harris, who takes us to the band's old rehearsal space, now defunct venues, and talks all about those good ol' days. It's a bit of a bummer they couldn't rope Bullen or Broadrick into getting interviewed, and it's criminal that there is no awesome unearthed footage of the band back in the day, but even with those minor quibbles, it is a pretty cool extra, and it's definitely fascinating to learn more about the band and their roots. But dvd or no dvd, YOU MUST BUY SCUM NOW!!!
MPEG Stream: "Multinational Corporations"
MPEG Stream: "The Kill"
MPEG Stream: "Scum"
MPEG Stream: "Sacrificed"
MPEG Stream: "Human Garbage"
MPEG Stream: "Life?"
MPEG Stream: "Prison Without Walls"

NAPALM DEATH Scum (Earache) picture disc lp 15.98
All the Jesu mania of late has definitely had us revisiting Godflesh, and digging the machinelike metallic bombast of all those records, the seeds of what would one day blossom into Jesu's blissy crush. But way before Godflesh, Mr. Justin Broadrick was wielding his axe in the mighty Napalm Death, whose Scum still ranks as one of the greatest heavy records of all time, and certainly one of, if not THE greatest grind record EVER.
And since we've never listed it, and it just got reissued with a bonus dvd, we figured it was perfect timing. We'd like to assume that any lover of heavy music already owns Scum, if that's not the case something is seriously seriously wrong. But maybe you lost it, or lent it out, maybe you have a beat up old vinyl version and just need to upgrade, whatever it is, this is essential. Like the first few Carcass records (including Heartwork sez Andee!), this is intense, furious forward thinking heavy music. Short sharp bursts of ripping, pounding super political sort-of-lo-fi crusty metallic grind. At the time, nothing like it had been heard. Now, we're on the tail end of about a million mediocre grid bands, which makes it even more exciting to hear the original, the template used by pretty much every band since. And this stuff isn't just fast and heavy, it's weird as fuck too, the riffing is convoluted, weird midtempo chugs are paired with thrashing blast beats, some songs barely crack the 30 second mark, others are churning murky blasts that stretch all the way out to 3 minutes in some cases. The vocals a barked growl, the bass a throbbing blur, but it's the guitar, Broadrick's guitar, that roars and howls and chugs and grinds and defines the sound of Scum. Which, as far as we're concerned, is one of the greatest sounds we've ever heard.
YOU MUST BUY SCUM NOW!!!
MPEG Stream: "Multinational Corporations"
MPEG Stream: "The Kill"
MPEG Stream: "Scum"
MPEG Stream: "Sacrificed"
MPEG Stream: "Human Garbage"
MPEG Stream: "Life?"
MPEG Stream: "Prison Without Walls"

NAPPYTIME JUNCTION s/t (360 Stereo Abuse) cd ep 9.98
First off, this is going to be a good review. Maybe even a great review. But first we have to talk about something. I was in New Jersey a while back, in a little rock club, out in the middle of nowhere, and there was a flyer on the wall looking for a lead guitar player. The requirements were simple: must be shredding, heavy, into Slayer and Morbid Angel and all things metal. The band was described as heavy and intense and brutal and they of course were serious and had gigs pending and a recording contract. THEN WHY THE FUCK WERE THEY CALLED "THE DANGEROUS DINGLEBERRIES"?! I kid you not. So why *these* local metallers decided to call themselves "Nappytime Junction" is beyond me. Especially since this record kills. Weird spacey, grindy metal. Huge fuzzy Kyuss guitars playing pounding Sabbathy riffs with howled and shrieked vocals, and the occasional thrashy bit and lots of hyperactive effects overloading the whole thing into stoned out trancey drones before it erupts again into chaotic punked out metal. So if you can, smoke a bong, swig some Jack, get high, jump around or whatever it is you do, and just try to forget that that crazy heavy shit you're banging your head to is called Nappytime Junction. Or better yet, embrace it and put that Nappytime patch right next to your Celtic Frost patch on your crusty old denim vest!
RealAudio clip: "Dinosaur Codpiece"

NARGAROTH Amarok (No Colours) cd 16.98

RealAudio clip: "Black Spell Of Destruction"
RealAudio clip: "Into The Void"

NARGAROTH Black Metal Ist Krieg (No Colours) cd 16.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Over the past couple of years we've listed, and recommended, a half-dozen or so titles from German one-man-black-metal-band mainstay Kanwulf aka Nargaroth, including his most recent effort, Prosatanica Shooting Angels, just this last December. But we've never had enough stock of this most essential Nargaroth title to stock -and list- until now! No Colours has repressed this, Kanwulf's seminal third No Colours release from 2001, and we've got 'em. And you should get one too. If you're into the real raw necro black metal that is! And if you've got any Nargaroth, you need this too, and if you don't have any, this is the one to start with!
Subtitled "A Dedication Monument", this seems to be an album of black metal *about* black metal. The song titles indicate as much, from the title track to such cuts as "The Day Burzum Killed Mayhem" and "Possessed By Black Fucking Metal". Hard to resist, eh? And it's very clear the black metal he worships is the cult necro stuff, not "nowadays" black metal as he puts it. None of that gothy commerical keyboard black metal here -- not to say WE don't like that stuff too. But we do understand how undergroundier efforts like this MEAN more. Y'know? Somehow a guy obsessed with Burzum and Mayhem and the length of the spikes on his leather arm-brace sometimes (like in the case of Nargaroth) just makes THE most intense, weird, blackest of black metal. It's that sound we can't ever get enough of. Endlessly droning riffs, lengthy and hypnotic arrangements, buzzing Burzumic melodies stumbling galloping rhythms and of course Kanwulf's demonic demon screech. A spiky, scratchy grim black cloak of cult black fuzz.
Nagaroth IS Kanwulf, but on Black Metal Ist Krieg he's aided by guest musicians from Maniac Butcher and BM legends Moonblood.
MPEG Stream: "Black Metal Ist Krieg"
MPEG Stream: "Erik, May You Rape The Angels"

NARGAROTH Dead-Ication (No Colours) 2dvd 15.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Only a few left...
This one is definitely for the true fans only. The grim, the troo, the obsessive. A double dvd collection designed to give the listener / viewer a glimpse into the soul and spirit of Kanwulf, the man who IS Nargaroth. Through the music of Nargaroth obviously, but also, plenty of more personal stuff, some introspective writing, and lots of Vietnam, but more on that in a second.
The first disc, is the live stuff, all shot pretty lo-fi, handheld camcorders, either from the crowd or the side of the stage, the sound super blown out and buzzy, the vocals so high in the mix they nearly swallow up the rest of the music. But the band are tight, the crowds wild, head banging, thrashing, horns held high, recorded live in Belgium, Austria, Portugal and Italy. Having listened to Nargaroth for so long, not only is it weird to see them/him performing live, but also weird to see them playing in what appears to be a school gymnasium, or a small rock club. The music of Nargaroth is so epic and sweeping and majestic, we always envisioned flaming chariots, and dark snowy forests, storm clouds and black skies, so it takes a minute to adjust to the idea that they are in fact an actual band. And even the shit sound quality doesn't detract from the fierce performances.
The second disc is where it gets weird and personal, but in doing so, makes this so much more interesting than your run of the mill music dvd. The first section is called "Dead Shoots", one subsection is marked "Private" and is a slide show of band photos, live shots, images of hills, and seas and trees and skies, plenty of candid "dudes at rock clubs" shots, LOADS of photos of Kanwulf, hanging out with other metalheads, lurking in the forest, or sitting on a station wagon in front of his parent's house, intercut with images of Kanwulf when he was in the army, or sporting Vietnam style camo, all set to some neo-classical soundtrack. But then, Kanwulf is obsessed with the Vietnam War, the last record was called Semper Fi after all, and the next section of the dvd, called "'Nam" is nothing but images from the Vietnam War set to the music of Jefferson Airplane and classical music. Weird! But pretty interesting.
The next section is called "Live Shoots" and is all clips from the various live shows on he first disc, a slideshow set to Nargaroth songs, not sure what these are for, since the other disc has all the same images LIVE, but still some cool shots.
Next up is a section called "Digital Thoughts", personal writings and thoughts from Kanwulf, on making the dvd, and on his development as a person and an artist, very cool and personal, and not at all hung up on the usual grimmer than though stuff.
The there's LOTS more Vietnam. First a section called "Swamp Thing", A sort of homemade Vietnam documentary featuring some amazing shots of the war, images of helicopters and soldiers, jungles smothered in smoke, this time set to the Doors' "The End", Hendrix and other sixties rock, with voiceover from Kanwulf (we presume) telling the story of Vietnam, and its affect on him.
In the same section, another menu leads us to another section, this one called "Vietnam", where Kanwulf writes extensively on Vietnam, his feelings on the war, and how the war influenced his thinking, feeling and music making, as well as his plans to visit Vietnam to try and understand and experience what went on.
There's also a documentary called "No Mexican Tequila Massacre", which is a short film about an aborted Mexican tour, lots of rehearsing, hanging out and drinking, smoking, some jamming, but lots of nothing going on, the guys in the practice space, changing strings, waiting for the show(s) to be confirmed, which they never are. Plus you get to see Kanwulf in BirkenstocksÉ
The final section is called "A Way" and is a surprisingly personal missive about Kanwulf's development as a person from when he started Nargaroth, moving away from hate and emptiness to become more of a real person with real feeling and emotions, scene politics be damned, not at all what you might expect from a black metal legend, but pretty refreshing and heartfelt.
The first disc will definitely appeal to true black metalheads, some awesome rare live footage, appropriately lo-fi and grim, thrashing and black, but the second disc turns this into something way weirder, and way more intimate, as Kanwulf constantly states on the dvd, this is not the sort of thing that endears him to 'the scene', sharing and feeling and honesty are not typically selling points for black metal, but then, this is far from a typical black metal dvd.
Packaged in a full color cover, with a complete discography (including shirts even!) on the flip side visible through the clear dvd case, full color booklet, with notes, and photos, and strangely the second disc seems to be a dvd-r, while the first disc is a proper factory produced dvd. All region. But, it's PAL (not NTSC) so you may only be able to view it on a computer.

NARGAROTH Geliebte Des Regens (No Colours) cd 16.98
We haven't been able to list much Nargaroth, unfortunately, mostly because we've been unable to get enough in stock. But as far as elite black metal goes, Nargaroth stands tall in a dubious pantheon that also includes AQ faves Graveland. Hateful German TRUE black metal, Nargaroth have been spewing anti-Christian vitriol for years now, culminating in their legendary Black Metal Ist Krieg album from 2001. So here we have Kanwulf's (the man who is Nargaroth) latest missive, and it's as bleak and miserably misanthropic as ever. Four epic tracks of brittle frosty guitars, plodding midtempos, struggling simplistic drumming, occasional fuzzed out blast beats, throat shredding howls and truly cold cold atmospheric ambience. It's all about the DRONE and the DIRGE. Ten plus minutes of the same riff, sawing away and lulling you into a trancelike state, letting the minor key melodies drift from beneath the sheets of icy guitars and and settle on your lifeless body, entranced by the endless riffage. Seriously, this is like a black metal Gore (Dutch hypno metallers who specialised in repetition). So endless and hypnotic and totally transcendent. And like most black metal we champion, just to keep you confused, there are lots of ambient forest sounds, birds, dripping water, rain, and of course didgeridoos(!). Plus inexplicably, the photo of Kanwulf on the inside of the digipak has lyrics from the Moody Blues' "Knights In White Satin" printed over it!
MPEG Stream: "Manchmal Wenn Sie Schlaft"

NARGAROTH Hervstleyd (No Colours) cd 16.98

RealAudio clip: "Hervstleyd"
RealAudio clip: "Karmageddon"

NARGAROTH Prosatanica Shooting Angels (No Colours) cd 16.98
By now, you should know what you're getting into with every new Nargaroth record. A blast of hateful, misanthropic, buzzing lo-fi black metal madness, grim and sorrowful, a Burzumic hatescape of midtempo pummel and stumbling blast beats with creepy ambient interludes of rumbling drone and gutteral vocalisations (and even a Blue Velvet sample). If that sounds like your particular blackened cup of tea then by all means, you're gonna love this. But as they say, the devil is in the details, and with Nargaroth the details are always completely baffling and brilliant. Beginning with the "band" photo in the booklet. Above the picture in huge letters: "No Dark Throne Fan!" and below it the words: "Poser picture of Kanwulf inside a barn". And the photo does indeed show Kanwulf (who is Nargaroth) wielding a rifle and posing in front of huge bales of hay! Then there's the song titles: "Love Is Always Over With Ejaculation", "Be Dead Or Satanic", "Satan Industries", "Thinking Below The Ocean". And of course there's a dedication section, divided into "Thoughts about Death Cocks" and "Thoughts About Black Spikes", both of which hail a handful of bands, specifying of course the OLD versions or DEMO versions of most of them. And finally there's a paragraph detailing an infamous shootout that Kanwulf sampled gunfire from, and his final quote pretty much says it all: "Most of melodies and riffs were created during the recording itself, by making mistakes or by playing something just to fill up some empty spaces between two different melodies. I didn't spent much time for the creation. That's the way so called "satanic art" should created! The "Satan" within us acts! He does not try!"
MPEG Stream: "Be Dead Or Satanic"
MPEG Stream: "Satan Industries"

NARGAROTH Rasluka Part II (No Colours) cd ep 13.98
Talk about cult black metal! Nargaroth's Rasluka Part II (not sure what happened to Part I...) pretty much defines it. This four song, 25 minute ep is the latest blast of hate-filled mayhem from infamous German black metal maniac Kanwulf and his hordes.
Like all true black metal, this begins with a creepy intro track, featuring someone playing a recorder along to a bunch of morosely-quacking ducks, which then gives way to Naragoth's equally morose but much louder buzzing guitar/drum pound and vocal rasping, a la Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone. Nice n' evil like it should be. But despite the almost symphonic, ambient cascades of distortion in which their music is bathed, as well as Kanwulf & Co.'s questionable ideology, this is still at heart simply rock n' roll -- which goes some way to explaining why track four is preceded by sound samples discussing the drunken death of AC/DC's original singer Bon Scott!
RealAudio clip: "...Und Ich Sah Sonn' Nimmer Heben "

NARGAROTH Rasluka Pt. 1 (No Colours) cd 13.98
With black metal's focus on Nordic pride, Satanism, anti-Christianity and EVIL, it's easy to forget how ultra personal and intense the music making process can be. A way to purge the soul, keep depression at bay, satisfy the need to create, and in the case of Nargaroth's Rasluka eps, to mourn the loss of a friend. This is Rasluka part one, not to be confused with part two which came out first, but both have been lyrically and spiritually based on Kanwulf's (the sole member of Nargaroth) experience of losing a close friend and going through the emotions of that loss, the grief and the anger and the regret. The story inside the booklet is truly heart wrenching, and the music is appropriately buzzing and snarling, a thorny sonic miasma of violent emotions laid out in sound, the usual black metal elements are present, the droning simple riffs, the relentlessly pounding drums, the demonic vocals, but coupled with the story behind the songs, they music seems imbued with just that much more intensity and brutality and hopelessness. The fact that the first two tracks are based on Chopin's "Funeral March" seems a bit hokey at first, but that too-familar melody is soon obliterated by a massive overblown black metal onslaught, that pounds away relentlessy, abating only occasionally to allow haunting heavily reverbed piano to shimmer sadly and then fade into the distance before it's quickly subsumed again by a churning, roiling wave of fierce blackness. So good.
MPEG Stream: "Rasluka Pt. 1"