WOLD Badb (Crucial Blast) cd 13.98
Originally released as a super limited cassette in 2004, Badb is one of the first releases from Canadian black metal weirdos WOLD, and if you thought the other records were noisy and demented before, this one will blow your mind (and probably your speakers too). After a quick opening intro of whipping winter wind, that ends abruptly as if someone just leaned over and pushed stop on the tape player, the record launches into the title track, the first song in what is apparently a songsuite based on a the myth of a mysterious war goddess, and is an crumbling onslaught of superdistorted buzz and while there may be drums, if there are, they're buried WAY down in the mix, the vocals however are right up front, a wild demonic shriek over the churning roiling blackness below. And so goes the rest of the record, a twisted maelstrom of sound, a sonic blizzard of black buzz and harsh vokills, the guitars less riffy and buzzy as they are practically a Merzbowian wall of blown out white noise, that white noise seeming to be in constant flux, occasionally coalescing into an almost riffy churn, before splintering again into a blast of face melting buzz. The recording is super lo-fi too, which gives even the harshest passages a strange washed out and muted vibe, the coolest parts when the sounds seem to blur into one another and become a strange sort of pulsing alien rhythm.
"Final Offering" might be our favorite, a murky monster of a track, with the most discernible riffing, and a cool murky swirl that envelops everything in its path, and when the vocals back off, the music becomes a weird audial illusion, like those paintings that reveal hidden shapes if you stare at them long enough, the wild tangle of buzz seems to unravel before your ears, the various melodic fragments and interwoven textures shifting and transforming, eventually seemingly melting into a blurry viscous pool of buzz and drone, that eventually fades to black, finishing the record the way it started, with another stretch of frosty winter winds. Awesome. And EXTREMELY noisy, fans of Wold know what to expect, and folks into other noise metal outfits like Nekrosov, Gnaw Their Tongues, Alkerdeel, Hallow and the like will definitely dig, but be warned this is less about THE RIFF and more about blown out blackness...
MPEG Stream: "Badb"
MPEG Stream: "Nine Virgins Of Badb"
MPEG Stream: "The Cold Wind's Grasp"

WOLD Freermasonry (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
Latest blast of twisted noise drenched otherworldly blackness from Moosejaw, Saskatchewan's Wold, fronted by mysterious sonic alchemist Fortress Crookedjaw, this mysterious duo offer up another slab of baffling brutality, that seems now more than ever to be almost completely loosed from the bounds of traditional metal, hell, any sort of metal at all, instead sounding like some sort of industrial / noise / power electronics blow out, the sound buzzing and hissing, looped churning squalls of white noise and grey thrum, the vokills an inhuman croak/whine, having just reviewed Sore Throat, and elsewhere on this list Anal Cunt, we'd posit that Wold's sonic orbit exists more in the realm of noise, it's not really until the third track here, "Free Goat Of Leviticus", the the sound takes on a shape even remotely resembling metal, and it remains REMOTE, the blasting and buzzing blown out completely, the sounds blurred and smeared into crumbling crusty murky swells, blistering blasts of buzz and hiss and rumble, even the vocals a garbled transmission from the depths, all wound into a churning caustic chaos.
"Inner Ire" offers a little bit of a respite, dialing back some of the distortion, letting a murky pulse surface, even some barely-there melody here and there, but over the top, is laid a Faxed Head worthy melted tape on the dashboard blast of damaged metallic noise. "Dragon Owl Didacticism" too hints at the metal that must lurk below the surface, but considering the surface is a roiling black cauldron of howl and garble, grind and shriek, all muddied and muted and twisted into dizzying blacknoise streaks, that metal remains just that, a hint.
The last four tracks though, change everything, sounding almost like a different record tacked on as a bonus, the almost cold wave sounding "Dry Love", with it's programmed beat, cold machinelike groove, buzzing clinical angular melodies and strange detached vox, or the new wave blacknoise of "Working Tools For Paris", with a bloopy electro beat buried beneath a swaggery snarly whining vocal and some hazy melodies, and when the super distorted vox drop out, what remains sounds almost like it could be some coldwave rarity unearthed. "Free Eyes" is crusty punk via black metal filth filtered through warped power electronics, with the main 'groove' downright mesmerizing, and then finally, the nearly 11 minute title track, seems to channel aQ beloved Will Over Matter, with another stretch of super distorted blackened murky electro-noize, replete with haunting spoken word vox, and another bloopy beat, one that becomes more and more blown out over the course of the track, until the whole thing is a thick undulating sprawl of rhythmic hypno-noise bliss.
As always, utterly confusing and totally whatthefuck, and as always, we can't stop listening. Baffling brilliant outsider electro-noise black metal genius for sure.
MPEG Stream: "SDL"
MPEG Stream: "Free Goat Of Leviticus"
MPEG Stream: "Freermasonry"

WOLD Imperator (Rotting Chapel) cassette 8.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Woah, didn't expect to get another round of these super limited (300 copies to be specific) cassette anthologies from Saskatchewan's favorite (only?) black metal noise terrorists, the mighty WOLD. Imperator serves as a good introduction to the truly insane sounds of WOLD, combining tracks from each of their three awesome full lengths, and more importantly, impossibly rare tracks from various cd-rs and cassettes released in tiny batches that less than 100 people would have ever gotten their hands on.
It's hard to actually describe a band like WOLD. Sure, it's black. You could call it "metal", but these boys whip up some of the noisiest, most out of control sounds ever committed to tape, seeming to owe more of a significant debt to industrial noise merchants like Whitehouse and Throbbing Gristle than any black metal band we could think of. Whatever you want to call it, WOLD's brand of chaos is truly unique. Sheets of uncontrollable white noise, an industrial strength throb, and the unbelievable witch-like shrieks of Fortress Crookedjaw (best black metal name ever, wethinks) all merge into a hellacious brew of unrestrained evil, with amazing lyrics (none of which are printed here, so good luck) and perhaps most surprisingly, melodies that are both beautiful and catchy. Of course, said melodies are buried under multiple layers of windy tape hiss, crumbling distortion, and overblown electronics, and what you get out of a WOLD track depends on how well you are prepared to listen, preferably under a pair of headphones at maximum volume. It's like taking a wild ride through a barren wilderness of ice and fog, both disorienting and exhilarating, and noisy as fuck.
Released as a professionally printed, smoky black cartridge on the very cool cassette label Rotting Chapel, this is probably the only chance you will ever have to get this little bastard from us. We got about 10 (yes, TEN) copies, so act fast!

WOLD L.O.T.M.P. (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Wold are an ultra mysterious outfit from the barren land to the north (Canada, Saskatchewan to be precise), who play the weirdest and most weirdly recorded black metal we've ever heard. Imagine some old radio serial, or some snippet from an old black and white film, sort of scratchy and fuzzy and otherworldly, then smother it in guitarfuzz and blown out distortion, add some keening guitar melodies and blast beats, and you've got what we can only describe as a black metal Philip Jeck. The warm and warbly keyboard melodies and timeless cinematic snatches of sound are so hypnotic and dreamily repetitive. It's almost like a black metal band doing their own blackened version of William Basinski's Disintegration Loops. Kind of hard to describe, but Wold somehow take the drone-y aspect of BM bands like Graveland and Nargaroth even further, adding a creepy and scratchy looped mesmer beneath a wash of almost My Bloody Valentine like guitars. Or an even more abstract analogy, imagine Persephone in Hades, the goddess of Spring who was kidnapped and spirited down into the depths of hell, all these little ribbons of Springtime and loveliness drifting in the cold and grim underworld, a bleak and miserable expanse of sound with brief glints of color and sunshine, glimpses of a world that once was, looped like a rotting old filmstrip, repeated over and over and over, head nodding, thoughts drifting, eyes closing, spirit shifting, soul blackening.
As if the music weren't weird enough, the band is fronted by the curiously named Fortress Crookedjaw, and backed up by his cohorts, Operationex and Obey.
And then of course there's the band's manifesto:
"Wold embraces the Mytho Poetic; the communication is expressed through our music, and theoretical as well as practical work done through our Woldclan brotherhood and our lodge, the L.O.T.M.P..
"Wold venerate our ancestors and cultures through myth and existence, and remain open and reflective to other effective metaphors.
"Wold promote awareness.
"Wold strive for honor and dignity above materialistic lies and novelty culture.
"Wold solemnly swear to adhere to the law of the Self."
It takes a lot for a record to so completely kick our ass and to so confound us musically. Definitely one of the coolest and weirdest black metal records we've heard in a long long time!!
MPEG Stream: "Invocation Of Fire"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation Of Water"
MPEG Stream: "Invocation Of Earth"

WOLD Screech Owl (Profound Lore) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Seems kind of foolish to continue to proclaim different black metal bands the "weirdest ever" or "the most fucked up we've ever heard". We're quite tempted to take that route again with this bizarre Canadian horde, but the truth is, they were barely black metal to begin with, more a sort of Jeckish, Basinskian ambient blackness that bordered on the downright dreamy. Well, if anything the band has moved even further away from traditional black metal and into a distinctly, more damaged and significantly noisier world of sound.
Fortress Crookedjaw, Obey and Opex, the trio who make up this ensemble, have taken the strange scratched, looped sepia toned smear of their first record, and torn it apart, doused it in white hot sheets of crumbling guitar and damaged feedback, offering up an even more obscured black metal, a metal turned inside out so we can see the squirming guts inside, malfunctioning electronics everywhere, coating every single riff, every growled lyric, every snatch of barely audible drums, in a crackling sparking field of sonic solar flares. Like listening to Jeck's Surf on a busted car radio, where it's mostly static, but you can -almost- hear bits of melody in there somewhere. Or more accurately, listening to some old skipping 78's on Masami Akita's custom sound system, while Malefic from Xasthur sings along.
Some tracks are almost pure noise, the riffs and drums and anything else discernible as actual music, buried beneath an avalanche of Merzbowian skree, usually the vocals hovering atop, like another harsh jagged layer of sound. But occasionally, the noise abates, and we get a glimpse of some melancholy melodic murk inside, or a brief blast of black riffing, but more often than not, those bits are quickly subsumed and the record becomes a roiling chaotic black swirl once more.
A few tracks, like "The Field Hag", harken back to the first record, with the noise reeled in, and a haunting muddy soundscape allowed to drift and shimmer ghostlike, beneath a thick layer of fuzz and grit and a glass gargling demonic screech, and theoretically, every track on Screech Owl is like that, just some are more obscured and obfuscated than others. Tracks like "Windmill" and "A Sword Becomes Red With Fury" are so distorted and blown out, that they become Pan Sonic style glitch and buzz scapes, pulsing short circuited rhythms, spare and skeletal, with almost no trace of melody, metal or otherwise. Like that busted car radio when you go through a tunnel, all distorted and choppy with only little bits and snippets able to surface through the distortion and static.
Screech Owl weaves chaotically from blown out dreamscapes doused in furious fuzz, to crumbling damaged black loopscapes, to Whitehouse style noise, to soft focus looped ambience to ultra lo-fi black metal buzz, often in the same song. Distortion, noise, processed feedback, every track a delicate balance between huge pulsing flows of fuzzed out electronics, buzzing black metal madness and dreamy fuzzy drone and whir. Baffling and fucking brilliant!
MPEG Stream: "Ray Of Gold"
MPEG Stream: "So That No Sword May Strike Him Down"
MPEG Stream: "The Field Hag"
MPEG Stream: "A Sword Becomes Red With Fury"

WOLD Stratification (Profound Lore) cd 13.98
One of two black metal / noise hybrids on this week's list, the other, from Australian one man band Nekrasov, this one, the latest from Canadian duo WOLD, whose discs of noise drenched outsider black weirdness have held us in their thrall from the very first listen.
But much has changed since L.O.T.M.P, which was an impossible hybrid of Philip Jeck like turntable warble, and walls of blacknoise, classic black metal buzz filtered through sheets of haze and warped shimmer, well, okay, maybe not that much has changed, if anything, the biggest change is how much noisier Wold have become, and how much more they hew to traditional black metal, albeit appropriately skewed and cracked and fractured and WELL fucked.
For those new to the strange world of Wold, they are a duo (formerly a trio), from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. They are called Fortress Crookedjaw (best black metal name ever?) and Obey, there's a picture in the new cd of two really regular looking dudes, not sure if it's Wold, but if it is, never has there been more of a "but they were such nice boys" in black metal. Because the sound of Wold is anything but regular black metal. There are riffs, and harsh screeched vocals, there doesn't seem to be drums very often, none are credited in the liner notes, and you can't really hear them, except on one track, where a primitive drum machine spews out a stuttery waltz, and often even when they're NOT there, we still feel like we're hearing them, the duo unfurl sheets of white hot guitar hiss, walls of crumbling distortion, that seem locked in some sort of static sprawl, kind of looped, but also wavery and warbly, due no doubt to the recording quality, as well as the composition. Tape hiss is much of a part of their sound as the guitars, maybe more so. An array of electronics also add layers of grit and glitch, the sounds grind and scrape, piled on top of each other until often it's a seemingly impenetrable wall of sound. But the wall is cracked, and all sort of fucked up sounds ooze through the cracks. Some tracks are super abstract post industrial ambient scrape-scapes, all grinding rhythms, and swirling hiss, others get dangerously close to classic sounding super raw primitive black metal, but as you listen, they seem to change shape, the riffs, the vocals, a glancing listen reveals nothing untoward, just some killer blasting lo-fi buzz, but once you settle in, the music drags you kicking and screaming into some jagged harsh buzz drenched, off kilter chaotic noise infested blackened sonic underworld.
If we had to pick bands to compare Wold to, it might be Ildjarn, Akitsa, Bone Awl, that sort of super raw, blown out in-the-red underproduced fury, but then add some Faxed Head, for the two share a similarly skewed and totally demented aesthetic, but where Faxed Head do it for laughs, Wold twist it into something sinister and frightening. Certainly Merzbow, as NOISE is a major component, but even when Wold are spewing sheets of what appear to be white noise, the sounds are not that simple, they churn and twist, and hide layers upon layers of sonic weirdness underneath. In fact, on first listen we were a bit put off a bit by the sheer noise level of Stratification, gone were all the warped buried 78 sounds, and in their place even more hiss and buzz and skree, but headphones changed everything. Revealing amidst the harshness an incredible array of strange sonic weirdness, buried melodies, obscured loops, bits of prettiness, almost invisible through the haze and murk and blur and NOISE, but which manage to subtly change lead into gold, turning something almost too harsh and abrasive, into something impossibly mesmerizing, and for the adventurous ear-ed, a veritable sonic wonderland of noise drenched beauty.
MPEG Stream: "Sleigh Ride"
MPEG Stream: "The Frozen Field"
MPEG Stream: "The Auld Tree"

WOLD Working Together For Our Privacy (Profound Lore) cd ep 10.98
The return of Canadian black metal weirdos Wold, and another batch of completely blown out, noise drenched, abstract, lo-fi, ultra raw, frosty grim heaviness. Although with these guys, heaviness is not necessarily accurate. It is heavy, but more in the sort of Neil-from-the-Young-Ones kind of 'Heeeeeaavy', totally psychedelic and tripped out, and a blurred, washed out swirl of sounds that only really loosely approximates black metal.
Most metalheads would find themselves diving for the eject button, but for the rest of us, who are willing to dig deep into outsider sounds, Working Together For Our Privacy is as rewarding as any of the other Wold records, a hidden world of sound, melodies, and textures, riffs and beats, almost entirely obscured by swirling whirling clouds of crumbling distortion and FX drenched white noise. On the surface, this is the sound of a million TVs between channels, a symphony of AM radios out of range, broadcasting nothing but static, but like when you stare at snow on a TV screen, images surface and emerge and change and disappear, the same thing seems to happen listening to this Wold record, from the chaotic skree, all sorts of sounds and song fragments surface, revealing something almost pretty lurking beneath the violent and abrasive surface.
All three songs here, long ones, seem cut from the same cloth, each an explosion of industrial crunch, and blurry buzz, heaving and roiling, not even black so much as WHITE, white noise, white out, a cloud of particles and sonic fragments, a barrage of crunch and crush and pummel, that can almost completely block out the songs themselves. Almost. In a weird way, this stuff is hypnotic, mesmerizing, entrancing, if the conditions were right, this sort of thing could definitely lull you to sleep, but cranked through your shitty old speakers, it could also induce embolisms. Such is the magic of Wold. Another winner from these mysterious Canucks, one where the prizes remain a banged head, ringing ears, blown speakers and a head full of buzz....
MPEG Stream: "The Secret"
MPEG Stream: "Lovey Dovey"

WOLF s/t (Fire Of Fire) cd 14.98
As much as we love the cool black and white woodcuts used on the covers of probably 90% of the grim black metal records released every year, we may have finally reached our breaking point. For a while, that sort of cover actually had some significance, it gave you an idea of what sort of blackened musical evil might lurk within, you could actually pick up a record just on the basis of the cover and be fairly sure of what you were getting into. Now every bedroom black metal nerd with a book of Dore woodcuts and a scanner can have 'one of those covers'. So bands have had to dig deeper, look for more arcane images that properly capture the mood and emotion of the music, maybe even making the cover art themselves (gasp!), or just stealing from WAY more obscure sources.
We loved this Wolfe record the second we laid eyes on it. Such a beautifully creepy and fucked up cover. Strange ghost like figures all wrapped head to toe in white cloth, it looks like they are all in some sort of big bed, their heads also wrapped in cloth, the background a washed out near blackness, but the figure on the far left, his cloth wrapped head has sort of turned into some sort of beast with big horns, the cloth turning grey and displaying some animal-like tufts of hair. Euuuw. So fucked up and evil but also strangely lovely.
So what does a cover like that suggest the music will sound like? Well, it wasn't at all what we expected, not as utterly harsh and black, but it definitely does sound super buzzy and creepy and weirdly lovely, so maybe it is actually the musical equivalent of mummified and be-horned all wrapped up in a big demon bed.
Wolfe is a black metal duo, one half of which, Infestuus, is also in AQ fave Glorior Belli, whose single full length, now out of print, was a huge favorite around here, especially for folks (like us) who had been digging on stuff like Watain, Funeral Mist and Deathspell Omega. But Wolfe is a completely different proposition. No less appealing, just a whole lot different. Midtempo, super epic and melodic, these tracks aren't harsh and buzzing as much as they are almost dreamlike, with blinding bursts of Burzumic fuzz, the riffs are sort of sing songy and minor key, and even when the drums break into a blastbeat, the riffs still sort of soar and drift, thick layers of swaying high end, wrapped in a thick gauzy production like a black metal M83. The vocals are still super harsh, low and guttural, but they sort of crawl beneath the dense buzzscape of soaring riffage. And there are still plenty of nods to Watain and Deathspell, the sound definitely remains grim and kult, but the arrangements are just so massive, and grandiose, a super dramatic black pomp, that sort of Mogwai / Godspeed cinematic subtlety blasted with black buzz, underpinned by a constant blur of dense black metal psychfuzz and occasional insane flurries of bass notes that add a whole 'nother layer of throbbing low end to the mix.
The more we listen to this the more the cover art does make perfect sense: A surreal blackened dreamscape of haunting images and blurry figures, buzz drenched landscapes of grim brutality and obscured beauty. So good.
MPEG Stream: "The Wrest Of Inimical Duality"
MPEG Stream: "Foreshadowing The Hours Of Submission"

WOLFMANGLER Cooking With Wolves (Black Horizons) lp 19.98
Now available on vinyl, super limited, gorgeous hand screened covers, but the same gloriously twisted sounds inside:
The newest (circa June of 2007) slab of blackened wyrd doom-folk from the misty moors of... Texas? Poland? Mordor? Well, wherever main-mangler Smolken makes his home these days. Smolken, also the man responsible for the equally dark and fucked up Jandekian "black metal" of Dead Raven Choir, always has had a skewed take on his favorite subgenres of music, in the case of Wolfmangler entering the realm of doom metal riding a swaybacked country-folk steed, but eschewing the cinematically Western wide-open spaces that Earth has been roaming of late, to plow deeper into the muck and mire of the direst of wagonwheel-sucking mudflats... There's 14 doleful and dirgey tracks here, Smolken sawing away on some classical-sounding stringed instrument like an uber-depressed, one-man chamber music outfit. Besides those suicidal strings, this is sparse and skeletal, there's not much more here... some background ambience, clanking percussion, and creepy whispers... all of which work for us in a Dead Raven Choir like fashion. But then Smolken airs some almost-spoken, sorta-theatrical clean vocals (on tracks 12 and 13 fersinstance) and we're not quite as into it. For DRC fans surely, but maybe not doom metallers this time out (unlike Wolfmangler's earlier split with Moss).
MPEG Stream: "Track 4"
MPEG Stream: "Track 13"

WOLFMANGLER Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves (Aurora Borealis) cd 13.98
Back in print and back in stock at a slightly cheaper price. But still just as warped and wonderful and weird as before...
The return of Wolfmangler, aka Smolken, who also just so happens to be the man behind Dead Raven Choir. Hot on the heels of a split with UK ultra doomlords Moss, Wolfmangler continue to explore the dark world of doom in their own truly peculiar manner. With bass, electric bass, drum, flute, trombone and bassoon (each band member is also credited with things like umber bulk, water nymph, floating eye, tengu, trapper and of course leprechaun) the Wolfmangler ensemble create a truly unique doom, woven together from wheezing woodwinds, throbbing low end, simple occasional drum beats and weird grumbled growly vocals. The result is not so much a massive doom sound as a creepy ancient court music, plodding and funereal. You can almost imagine some black clad procession trudging along the winding cobblestone streets within some walled fortress. Kerry though it sounded like punk rock slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.
Texturally it's unlike anything we've ever heard. The closest reference might be Skepticism, the way it sounded like their music is being heard through the floor or from a building next door. Wolfmangler's sound has a similar timbre, a bit like some high school marching band dipped in tar and forced to march through a desert of black sand, or maybe like holding a stylus in one hand, and a scratched up 45 of Fleetwood Mac's tusk in the other, and trying to manually play the record by dragging the needle along each groove. Warbly and dizzyingly warped, Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves is some sort of hellish circus music, the soundtrack to a Fellini film, showed one frame at a time, a New Orleans Funeral Jazz band 78 played at 16 rpm on an old dusty victrola. So gorgeously slow, so pretty and creepy and dreamily doomy.
MPEG Stream: "Dirge For A Viking Asshole"
MPEG Stream: "The Last Elegy"

WOLFMANGLER Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves (Aurora Borealis) 2lp 25.00
Here now on vinyl, this Wolfmangler release from a few years back...
The return of Wolfmangler, aka Smolken, who also just so happens to be the man behind Dead Raven Choir. Hot on the heels of a split with UK ultra doomlords Moss, Wolfmangler continue to explore the dark world of doom in their own truly peculiar manner. With bass, electric bass, drum, flute, trombone and bassoon (each band member is also credited with things like umber bulk, water nymph, floating eye, tengu, trapper and of course leprechaun) the Wolfmangler ensemble create a truly unique doom, woven together from wheezing woodwinds, throbbing low end, simple occasional drum beats and weird grumbled growly vocals. The result is not so much a massive doom sound as a creepy ancient court music, plodding and funereal. You can almost imagine some black clad procession trudging along the winding cobblestone streets within some walled fortress. Kerry though it sounded like punk rock slowed waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay down.
Texturally it's unlike anything we've ever heard. The closest reference might be Skepticism, the way it sounded like their music is being heard through the floor or from a building next door. Wolfmangler's sound has a similar timbre, a bit like some high school marching band dipped in tar and forced to march through a desert of black sand, or maybe like holding a stylus in one hand, and a scratched up 45 of Fleetwood Mac's tusk in the other, and trying to manually play the record by dragging the needle along each groove. Warbly and dizzyingly warped, Dwelling In A Dead Raven For The Glory Of Crucified Wolves is some sort of hellish circus music, the soundtrack to a Fellini film, showed one frame at a time, a New Orleans Funeral Jazz band 78 played at 16 rpm on an old dusty victrola. So gorgeously slow, so pretty and creepy and dreamily doomy.
MPEG Stream: "Dirge For A Viking Asshole"
MPEG Stream: "The Last Elegy"

WOLFMANGLER Hungry Hungry Wolves (Short Forest) 7" 6.98
Yet another mysterious missive from the dark forests of Poland (via Texas of course) courtesy of doom folk trio Wolfmangler, featuring the one and only Smolken, aka Dead Raven Choir.
While Wolfmangler have been know to lay down some serious doom (c'mon, they shared a split with Moss!!) albeit in their own uniquely skewed fashion, these two tracks are not so much doom as they are doomy, the band embracing their foresty folk side, but shot through with a healthy dose of mourn and misery.
The sound here is some sort of funereal campfire folk, simple plodding percussion, moaning violin, fluttering flute, very tribal, and primitive, almost old timey, like some strange pirate sea shanty. Growled ghostly vocals crawl menacingly over what at times sounds like a very gnarled and twisted version of Peter And The Wolf.
The second side is a bit slower and creepier, even darker and more lugubrious, the flute, instead of flitting and fluttering is stretched into long drawn out melancholy melodies, the vocals a ragged whisper, the strings now weaving a surprisingly lush minor key backdrop.
A nice little slab of creepy crawly doom folk for sure.
Packaged in super swank silkscreened sleeves. he cover image, a wolf and what appears to be a river of blood, and a drowning body. Nice!

WOLFMANGLER They Call Us Naughty Wolves (God Is Myth) cd 11.98
Smolken has always been a confounding personality, the man behind both Wolfmangler and Dead Raven Choir, releasing records on proper metal labels, but also on weirdo avant free folk microlabel Jewelled Antler, mixing black metal, folk music, country, bluegrass, whatever the hell he feels like really, the results sometimes brilliant, often baffling, but always weird and wonderful in their own way.
They Call Us Naughty Wolves marks the return of Smolken as Wolfmangler after more than two years of relative inactivity, and to be honest, we were approaching this with a bit of trepidation. It was after all a record called They Call Us Naughty Wolves, and according to the label was blackened burlesque chamber music, a sort of channeling of pop from yesteryear, not to mention that some of the cds come with a pair of Wolfmangler undies (really! more on that in a second). But really, conceptually and sonically, this is no stranger than past Smolken projects, so we threw it on, and were pleasantly surprised, if one can find this sort of music simply 'pleasant'.
The sound is creepy, and dark, and creaky, and mysteriously ominous, strings moan and groan, a slow lugubrious chamber music, transformed into something much blacker and creepier, the melancholic gloom and string laden dirgery accompanied by a blackened croak, vokills that gurgle and growl, although they are sometimes accompanied by an angelic female counterpoint. The guitar or bass is more a fuzzy blur, a droney rumble, that underpins the strings, cellos or violins driving the tracks, creating the muted melodies, and it's that weird guttural vocal and string combination, that can't help but remind us of those groups like Xynfonica, Shevelreq, Gluttony, Thursar, the twisted metal vox with gnarled guitar synths emulating exotic instruments. So right off the bat, if that stuff is to your twisted taste, then this will definitely hit the spot. But Smolken's vision isn't so damaged or demented, it's definitely rooted in sounds more traditional, a sort of blackened doom chamber folk, which will appeal to fans of dark slow low moody weirdness. Although some of it is definitely WAY weird. The band occasionally slipping into some strangely jaunty jig like Renn Faire folk music, but for the most part, it's just some seriously brooding, surprisingly beautiful, freaked out and fucked up outsider darkness, like Tom Waits' Black Rider blurred and muddied and blackened into some woozy warped soundtrack to a filmic fable of wolves and woods.
Two lucky aQ customers who order this, will also get a companion pair of red (riding hood), women's panties, with a screenprinted image of a wolf dressed up like grandma on the butt, They Call Us Naughty Wolves after all, it'll be totally random, so cross your fingers...
MPEG Stream: "Flying Shoes"
MPEG Stream: "Lullaby Of The Leaves"
MPEG Stream: "House On The Ocean"
MPEG Stream: "Lili Marleen"
MPEG Stream: "Carry Me Urn To Ukraine"

WOLOK Caput Mortuum (Those Opposed) cd 13.98
When we reviewed the first record from these French black metal freeks, easily one of our favorite weirdo black metal records ever, we reprinted their particularly twisted manifesto, just to help shed some light on what these guys were all about. No manifesto tucked away in record number two, but the line-up and instrumentation is somewhat revealing:
E: Abnormal guitars, odd bass, weird sounds abuse, mortuum tunes
L: Eerie and bizarre vomit parts, vaporous incantations
C: Ethereal drums, wraithlike mix tasks, noise suffocation
And the rest of the liner notes go one to describe most everyone and everything involved as repugnant. So yeah, think repugnant, abnormal, odd, weird, eerie, bizarre, ethereal, wraithlike, noisy and suffocating, and you'd definitely be close to understanding the sort of gloriously sick blackened metal damage Wolok produce.
Caput Mortuum is tighter and more well produced that the first record, while simultaneously being somehow more fucked up and warped. All it takes is a listen through the first song, and you'll know if you've got the kind of fractured and freaky constitution to withstand this sort of aural punishment. Skittery effected chants give way to woozy tangled riffage, chaotic relentless blast beats, raw sick processed vokills, the whole thing convoluted and impossibly gnarled, with lurching start stop arrangements, a moody melodic breakdown, that gives way to a chugging churning drone drenched anti-groove, which in turn gives way to a lumbering, stuttering fucked up, almost industrial sounding bit of buzzy stumbling blackness, alternatingly pounding and blasting. ALL the sounds wreathed in strange effects. Think Blut Aus Nord or Spektr's fucked up inbred offspring. It all makes a little more sense when you realize one of the three responsible for this unholy damage is also responsible for the raw primitive filth that is Zarach'Baal'Tharagh.
But Wolok, like their elder statesmen in Spektr and Blut Aus Nord, are mired in black metal, but obviously are giving it all they've got to transform regular old buzz and blast into something else entirely, and fuck if it didn't work. Warped and woozy minor key dirges give way to impossibly frenzied freakouts, noise drenched doom is gradually transformed into strangely melodic avant doom pop, before exploding into some seriously Naked City worthy stop start whatthefuck, like listening to a Lifelover record melt, while someone spins a Deathspell Omega record manually with their finger. In fact, much of this record sounds a bit warped and warbly, as if while the band was recording, someone, a band member or otherwise was constantly fiddling with the tape speed, and various other things in the control room, adding all manner of indescribable weirdness to the proceedings, but all that strange shit wouldn't mean much if the band couldn't play, and songs and riffs weren't amazing, it would be just a cool sounding mess, instead, this is in fact a cool sounding mess, but a dense, super technical, gloriously freaked out and frenzied, moody, otherworldly, twisted and seriously, geniusly fucked up mess. And while we hate to say it, this definitely joins the new Katharsis in the running for black metal record of the year!
MPEG Stream: "Bacterium Dei"
MPEG Stream: "In Vacuo"
MPEG Stream: "Transubs(a)tantiation"

WOLOK Servum Pecus (Eerie Art) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
We've become a bit obsessed with French black metal. Who can blame us? France has been producing an inordinate number of furiously fucked up grim black metal outfits. Just off the top of our heads, Deathspell Omega, Spektr, Blut Aus Nord, Seth, Mutiilation, S.V.E.S.T., Eikenskaden, Ad Hominem, Glorior Belli, Arkhon Infaustus, but a quick look at Encyclopedia Metallium online shows almost 2,000 black metal hordes lurking throughout the French countryside.
And now we add to the list Wolok. Who follow in the damned and demented footsteps of their countrymen in Spektr and Blut Aus Nord, by taking a grim black metal buzz and turning it inside out, bending and distorting and tearing it apart only to put the pieces back together again, adding all sorts of non metal weirdness to come up with a truly twisted piece of black art.
The core of Wolok's sound is indeed a grim and harsh buzzing blackness. But that grimness is surrounded by a dizzying swirl of damaged drones, serene passages of dark ambience, strange choral hymns, chopped up and reassembled into stuttering vocal landscapes, everything drenched in all sorts of alien FX. But this is not just some buzzing black metal record with 'trippy' sound effects, no every single part that makes up the actual songs, is equally damaged and diseased, riffs twist and tangle, slippery and impossibly convoluted. Almost like black metal played on a slide guitar, strange notes float from within dark clouds of metallic blackness, over the top a glistening shimmer of sparkling electronics and jagged shards of feedback screech, a noisy, psychedelic sheen laid over the grim blackness below. Some riffs splinter into strange dirgey chugs, creeping doomscapes of downtuned crunch and haunting found sounds, deep drones swirl around processed vocals and mournful guitar figures. Some strange mix of Abruptum, Burzum and Blut Aus Nord, a murky, lo-fi buzzscape, peppered with cinematic ambience and caustic white noise fuzz, while buried in the mix, blurry blasting drum freakouts, and a motley collection of vocals and voices, screeching demons, gurgling monsters, rumbling spoken word, ultra distorted growls, all just more blurry swirl to mix into Wolok's chaotic black blast. Definitely a new favorite far out black metal around here.
And if the music wasn't enough, the Wolok manifesto let's you know what you're in for, in no uncertain terms:
"Wolok appeared in 2003 to unveil the truth about existence.
Wolok exclusively spreads hate and scorn towards human filth.
Wolok supports your depression and despair.
Wolok mocks your miserable way of living.
Wolok appreciates the smell of your putrefying carrion.
Wolok urges putrid scum to self-destruction.
Wolok is absurd.
Wolok never existed and will never exist.
Wolok deals with musical vermin.
Wolok is as futile as the sum of 6 billion lives.
Wolok wants you dead."
LIMITED TO 541 COPIES. Killer creepy artwork too!
MPEG Stream: "Memento Finis"
MPEG Stream: "Apex Of Mockery"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Black Cascade (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
By now, Wolves in the Throne Room have established themselves as one of America's most gifted and awesomely dependable black metal bands, and their third long player, Black Cascade, picks up right where their recent Malevolent Grain ep left off. All the elements of their expansive, blackened psychedelic approach are here: sprawling songs with a methodical attention to song structure, relentless drumming, perfectly interlocking dual guitars, tortured raspy vocals, and an ability to seamlessly merge synthy ambience with a furious but often very melancholy black metal onslaught. There seems to be a legion of haters out there, ready to label the band as a bunch of PC hippies who aren't adhering to whatever rules they assume apply to a style of music that is pretty nihilistic and iconoclastic by nature. But fuck those people. This band is great and truly deserves whatever accolades come its way.
The ever-present density of WITTR's sound is further heightened on Black Cascade, their bio proudly emphasizing the old school analog sound they have achieved through vintage recording gear and classic tube amps. While we don't want to ramble on about various pieces of musical equipment, it should be noted that these devices have certainly helped the band to capture a sound music nerds might refer to as "organic". Sure, we at aQuarius love all the homemade bedroom black metal that sounds as if it was recorded in a blender during a tornado... The sound on Black Cascade, however, is clear and upfront, though hardly refined or polished. It is quite rock n' roll in a classic sense, which works great when the band breaks out some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies on the first track "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". Mossy, ultra distorted guitars hang like a thick black cloud (or a sea of fog, if you will) in the atmosphere as the drums create the necessary propulsion that make a Wolves in the Throne Room song sound like it could, and should, carry on FOREVER. Song #2, "Ahrimanic Trance" is, true to its title, a hypnotic, trancelike black metal trip into some long forgotten wilderness. The song gives one a feeling of being transported at high speeds across the landscape while watching from the back of some primitive vehicle, a sense that is carried on in the next track, "Ex Cathedra". The final song, "Crystal Ammunition", starts life as a dizzying, hyperspeed slab of pure black metal before morphing into a beautiful lament that may (or may not) reference the melody from Malevolent Grain's "A Looming Resonance". It's seems like things will culminate in the ultimate fadeout. But, uh, what happens after the fade out? As everything gallops off into the distance, otherworldly guitar chords and tambourine are the only sounds evident. Eventually these too recede as they are overtaken by a phased out synthscape. Fucking awesome.
While this album was great from the moment we first put it on, repeated listens have been revealing more and more. To say this is a huge departure from what Wolves in the Throne Room have accomplished in the past would be inaccurate. It is, instead, the sound of a group who, with each record, becomes a more realized version of itself.
MPEG Stream: "Ex Cathedra"
MPEG Stream: "Ahrimanic Trance"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Black Cascade (Southern Lord) 2lp 27.00
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
This gorgeous slab of Cascadian black buzz, now available on ultra limited, super deluxe double vinyl...
By now, Wolves in the Throne Room have established themselves as one of America's most gifted and awesomely dependable black metal bands, and their third long player, Black Cascade, picks up right where their recent Malevolent Grain ep left off. All the elements of their expansive, blackened psychedelic approach are here: sprawling songs with a methodical attention to song structure, relentless drumming, perfectly interlocking dual guitars, tortured raspy vocals, and an ability to seamlessly merge synthy ambience with a furious but often very melancholy black metal onslaught. There seems to be a legion of haters out there, ready to label the band as a bunch of PC hippies who aren't adhering to whatever rules they assume apply to a style of music that is pretty nihilistic and iconoclastic by nature. But fuck those people. This band is great and truly deserves whatever accolades come its way.
The ever-present density of WITTR's sound is further heightened on Black Cascade, their bio proudly emphasizing the old school analog sound they have achieved through vintage recording gear and classic tube amps. While we don't want to ramble on about various pieces of musical equipment, it should be noted that these devices have certainly helped the band to capture a sound music nerds might refer to as "organic". Sure, we at aQuarius love all the homemade bedroom black metal that sounds as if it was recorded in a blender during a tornado... The sound on Black Cascade, however, is clear and upfront, though hardly refined or polished. It is quite rock n' roll in a classic sense, which works great when the band breaks out some Thin Lizzy-esque guitar harmonies on the first track "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog". Mossy, ultra distorted guitars hang like a thick black cloud (or a sea of fog, if you will) in the atmosphere as the drums create the necessary propulsion that make a Wolves in the Throne Room song sound like it could, and should, carry on FOREVER. Song #2, "Ahrimanic Trance" is, true to its title, a hypnotic, trancelike black metal trip into some long forgotten wilderness. The song gives one a feeling of being transported at high speeds across the landscape while watching from the back of some primitive vehicle, a sense that is carried on in the next track, "Ex Cathedra". The final song, "Crystal Ammunition", starts life as a dizzying, hyperspeed slab of pure black metal before morphing into a beautiful lament that may (or may not) reference the melody from Malevolent Grain's "A Looming Resonance". It's seems like things will culminate in the ultimate fadeout. But, uh, what happens after the fade out? As everything gallops off into the distance, otherworldly guitar chords and tambourine are the only sounds evident. Eventually these too recede as they are overtaken by a phased out synthscape. Fucking awesome.
While this album was great from the moment we first put it on, repeated listens have been revealing more and more. To say this is a huge departure from what Wolves in the Throne Room have accomplished in the past would be inaccurate. It is, instead, the sound of a group who, with each record, becomes a more realized version of itself.
MPEG Stream: "Ex Cathedra"
MPEG Stream: "Ahrimanic Trance"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Celestial Lineage (Southern Lord) cd 14.98
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure. Vinyl version forthcoming as well.
MPEG Stream: "Thuja Magus Imperium"
MPEG Stream: "Subterranean Initiation"
MPEG Stream: "Woodland Cathedral"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Celestial Lineage (Southern Lord) 2lp 22.00
BACK IN STOCK ON VINYL, plain black this time, and slightly more expensive, but still in a fancy gatefold jacket with obi, real nice.
The return of Cascadian black metallers Wolves In The Throne Room, introduces us to their latest epic, Celestial Lineage, with a sound that continues to move well beyond the bounds of black metal. As it was the band never shied away from augmenting their furious Weakling-beholden buzz and frantic blasts with swaths of ethereal drift and dark hushed minimalism, but here, those non black metal elements play a much bigger role, and manage to take the sound to a whole other level, positioning those non-metallic sounds less as 'interludes' and more as fully realized elements that are woven deftly into the fabric of the songs and sound. The record even opens with a hazy bit of choral drift, all tinkling chimes, shimmery synths, stately piano, and ethereal vocals, that sound more seventies British folk than black metal. Then, instead of simply exploding into some black buzz, the riffs are introduced slowly, blending into the folky drift, transforming the 'intro' into a blackened chorale, allowing the folky flutter to fade, until finally the blackness descends, the sound impossibly lush and heavy, epic and expansive, the sound thick and more lush than ever, the riffing wild and tangled, the drums mathy and intricate, and then again, the band take this grim buzz and wreath it in soaring epic almost folky melodies, some gorgeous harmonized guitars, there are even some full on psychedelic leads, the song shifting from black churn to ephemeral shimmer and back again, even dipping into some majestic doomic dirgery, but somehow the varied parts all fit together perfectly.
After a bit of chanted field recording flecked ambience, sounding like some ancient forest ritual, the band slip right back into pure transcendental blackness, with another sprawl of epic soaring blasting buzz, but again, it manages to be lush and weirdly melodic, on the surface it's a roiling churning blackness, but somehow the sound is infused with a blurred warmth, a subtle melodic core, that elevates the sound beyond simple black buzz. The sound constantly confounding, the song splintering into wide open expanses of feedback drenched, tribal drum driven abstraction, then slipping into a sort of hazy post rocky drift, before finishing off in a blaze of frantic black ferocity, but even there, the sound is wrapped in thick soaring swirls of melody.
One of our favorite tracks might be "Woodland Cathedral" which sounds exactly like the title suggests, over a bed of what sounds like forest sounds, guitars hover and shimmer and soar, the rhythm is glacial and funeral, everything is wreathed in a patina of buzz and thrum, the sound super distorted and almost shoegazey, angelic female vocals drifting over the top, tangled into strange but lovely harmonies, a doomy choral bit of blackened loveliness, which leads directly into the final movement, two 10+ minutes epics, the first, another example of Wolves' mastery of melodic blackness, grinding black heaviness wedded to delicate folky flutter, with hints of post rock, a sound that while in the past was perhaps too obviously beholden to many, now seems to belong to no other, and finally, a sprawling buzz drenched black doomdirge that sounds like Nadja and Comus and Sunroof! and WITTR all blurred into one glorious blackbuzz ur-drone doom-bliss epic. So good.
Super swank packaging too, with some of the most gorgeous artwork/photography we've seen on a black metal record for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Thuja Magus Imperium"
MPEG Stream: "Subterranean Initiation"
MPEG Stream: "Woodland Cathedral"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Diadem Of 12 Stars (Vendlus) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Back in print! New artwork, but same mind blowing epic black metal.
We'd been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys last year (2004). And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does their new record, and debut full length, blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals (courtesy Jamie Myers, ex-Hammers Of Misfortune). It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs need a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests... Yep, we're surely excited to have their "real cd" debut back in print at last!!
MPEG Stream: "(A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem Of 12 Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Face In A Night Time Mirror Pt. 1"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Diadem Of 12 Stars (Southern Lord) 2lp 17.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Finally available on vinyl! Super deluxe, double lp, extra thick colored vinyl, incredibly thick gatefold jacket, amazing layout, just the sort of epic treatment this sort of epic blackness deserves.
Here's our review of the cd from a while back:
We'd been selling Wolves In The Throne Room cd-r demos like crazy since we first discovered these guys a few years back (2004). And how could we not? You gotta love a band that unfurls massive fuzzed out epics, 10+ minute bursts of swirling droning black metal, dirging, lurching and gorgeously blown out. The obvious comparison is SF black metal legends Weakling, and you know we wouldn't make that comparison lightly. The same sort of fierce brutality and chaotic ferocity mixed with impossibly anguished emotionalism all wrapped up in a blackness that is informed as much by suffocating dark ambience and mesmerizing drones as it is grim black metal.
If you thought the WITTR demos sounded great, HOLY SHIT does their first proper release and debut full length, blow those out of the water. Which is a good thing as two of the songs here are actually from the demos, but they have been massively reworked and completely re-recorded. It's got a huge wall of guitar sound, surprisingly heavy for a black metal band, in place of more typical reedy buzzy BM mosquito guitar. There's thick snarling monster riffs, dense and multilayered, spread thick over furious pounding drumming and howled strangulated vocals (very Weakling-esque). Now you might think the world needs another Nordic style black metal band like a hole in the head, no matter how amazing they are. BUT, Wolves In The Throne Room do it SO WELL, and write amazing songs, and manage to mix it up like crazy, incorporating all sorts of un-BM elements, gorgeous folky ambience, weirdly TRUE metal riffing, even some ethereal angelic female vocals (courtesy of Jamie Myers, ex-Hammers Of Misfortune). It all somehow fits, and makes the Wolves' black metal black enough to remain true, but fucked up enough to matter. Plus they probably do think the world needs a hole in the head...
You'd never guess from listening to this record that the WITTR are a bunch of short haired, furry vested, tight panted, scruffy indie dudes from Olympia. But don't let that put you off, impossibly true metal nerds, just close your eyes, listen close, and all you'll see are grim, 10 foot tall, spike encrusted leather clad warriors of the misty, ancient northwestern forests...
MPEG Stream: "(A Shimmering Radiance) Diadem Of 12 Stars"
MPEG Stream: "Face In A Night Time Mirror Pt. 1"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Live At Roadburn 2008 (Roadburn) cd+dvd 19.98
Anyone fortunate enough to have seen Wolves In The Throne Room in a live setting will probably tell you the same thing: the band simply KILLS. Not to say that their albums aren't totally amazing - they are - but seeing these guys live is an experience that will stay with you for a while. It's probably a safe bet to assume that for many people, especially here in the states, seeing the Wolves in concert is their first exposure to live black metal. And it would certainly stand as quite an introduction to the transcendental power of true (you're goddamn right it's TRUE) black metal. While WITTR on record presents a band who really understand the importance of crafting a beautiful and well thought out collection of songs, complete with otherworldly ambience and a keen attention to production, on stage they are more inclined to rip your face off and scald your eardrums into cinders. They are unstoppable, frighteningly intense, and seriously, loud as fuck - just a few of the reasons why we are so stoked to have this new cd+dvd set chronicling the band's 2008 set at the Roadburn Festival in the Netherlands. The sound here is upfront and relentless, and even though things are surprisingly clear, none of the band's power is lost, if anything, this should be a good indication of how awesome they are and why their records are so damn great; WITTR isn't some half-assed studio project by guys who are afraid or unwilling to step into the public realm, they are a REAL band, one that rocks, shreds, and destroys everything in its path. The vocals here are pretty unbelievable, maybe even better than on record, just insane throatshredding goodness and perfect for the sonic assault the band whips up. The dvd features the concert presented in an appropriately murky setting under blue light. It will probably have you longing for the actual live experience more than anything, but we certainly have no complaints. Classic stuff for sure.
MPEG Stream: "Vastness & Sorrow"
MPEG Stream: "Cleansing"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Malevolent Grain (self-released) cd ep 9.98
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room followed up their acclaimed 2007 Two Hunters album, after a long wait, with this lengthy two song, 23+ minute ep, originally a deluxe vinyl-only release on Southern Lord in early 2009. That quickly went out of print, but now the band has pressed up a compact disc version, in a lovely digipack, which we're so glad to have, as this recording was the not only the first to feature their current guitarist, but was also the band's most focused and hypnotic creation up 'til then (foreshadowing the awesome album Black Cascades, their most recent, that followed not long after).
Here's what we said when this came out on vinyl:
The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
Like the vinyl version, this new edition comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory sleeve featuring blurry images of lush dark forest untouched by humanity, adorned with band's new candelabra-esque logo.
MPEG Stream: "A Looming Resonance"
MPEG Stream: "Hate Crystal"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Malevolent Grain (self-released) cd ep 9.98
We made this a Record Of The Week on our special Halloween in-between list last week, here it is again in case you were out trick-or-treating and missed it:
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room followed up their acclaimed 2007 Two Hunters album, after a long wait, with this lengthy two song, 23+ minute ep, originally a deluxe vinyl-only release on Southern Lord in early 2009. That quickly went out of print, but now the band has pressed up a compact disc version, in a lovely digipack, which we're so glad to have, as this recording was the not only the first to feature their current guitarist, but was also the band's most focused and hypnotic creation up 'til then (foreshadowing the awesome album Black Cascades, their most recent, that followed not long after).
Here's what we said when this came out on vinyl:
The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Myers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
Like the vinyl version, this new edition comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory sleeve featuring blurry images of lush dark forest untouched by humanity, adorned with band's new candelabra-esque logo.
MPEG Stream: "A Looming Resonance"
MPEG Stream: "Hate Crystal"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Malevolent Grain (Southern Lord) 12" 14.98
Olympia, Washington's black metal titans Wolves In The Throne Room follow up their acclaimed Two Hunters album with this lengthy two song vinyl only ep, the first to feature their new lineup, and the band's most focused and hypnotic creation to date. The formula has not changed, it's just sounding, well, better than ever before. More insular. While Wolves in the Throne Room has always possessed a talent for wrapping majestic melodies within relentless black metal riffing, Malevolent Grain most successfully blurs the distinction between blissed out beauty and brutality. The band is shrouded in an ever present haze of melancholy and despair that is just so much more genuine and effective than guys prancing around in corpse paint like some sort of old school black metal tribute act. They speak as a unique voice in an international scene where so many bands are preoccupied with their bullshit fairy tale take on satanism. All the while, they are heavy as fuck. A Wolves In The Throne Room song plays out as an expansive journey of multiple chapters before fading away into eternity. There is tons of ambience and atmosphere along the way, complete with gorgeous, clearly sung female vocals (courtesy once again of Jamie Meyers, formerly of Hammers of Misfortune), somber melodies, and warm waves of creeping distortion, but ultimately this is total BLACK METAL. Yes, all caps. "METAL" being the key word, the band never falls short on the blazing riffs, unstoppable drumming, and rasping vocals that they built their name on.
In keeping with Southern Lord's reputation for visual, as well as musical, awesomeness, Malevolent Grain comes housed in an appropriately hallucinatory jacket featuring blurry images of lush forest untouched by humanity and the band's new candelabra-esque logo embossed in stunning gold foil. Those who act quickly may be of the lucky few (er, lucky thousand, apparently) to receive the ep on cool "Dark Forest Green" vinyl. Oh, and a quick note, this record is to be played at 45 rpm. Considering how much we were digging it at the wrong speed for over six minutes, you know this comes to you highly recommended.

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM s/t (2005) (self-released) 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.
We've been wanting to list something from this band forever, ever since a mysterious cd-r wrapped in fur (!) arrived at our doorstep. Already thinking it might be good just 'cause of their cool name, we threw it on and were floored by the Wolves' take on grim and majestic black metal. Punk rockers embracing their darksides and spewing forth a relentless torrent of buzzing blasting blackened thrash. Wow. We pestered the band to get copies of that first demo but for some reason could never get more than a few at a time. Well, the Wolves finally showed up in the shop this last week, bearing gifts! Copies of their brand new cd-r, LOTS of copies, so we got a bunch and can finally give everyone a chance to check out Wolves In The Throne Room!
This second cd-r featues a new lineup, longer songs (three songs, 13 minute, 12 minute and 24 minutes) and a sound much closer to what the band had been shooting for all along, according to Wolves drummer Aaron. That sound is a galloping grim black metal not that unlike Leviathan, Burzum, Mayhem, Darkthrone and the like. In fact it sounds quite a bit like a more lo-fi version of SF black metal legends Weakling. Haunting minor key melodies, relentlessly blasting double kick drumming and repetitive riffs that become hypnotic almost-drones. The Wolves add plenty of their own flavor with plenty of weird folk interludes, creepy swirling melodies, stretches of plodding doom, mathy rhythms and moaning ambience. These guys have been playing around here this last couple weeks, and admitedly it was pretty weird seeing a bunch of raggedy indie punk rockers, curly hair, fur vests, tight pants, t-shirts and tennis shoes, blasting out such a torrent of howling blackened fury. But what these guys lack in spiked armbands, windmilling long hair, and corpsepaint, they make up for in sheer, gloriously grim black metal pummel! These are limited of course. In cool black cardboard sleeves and silkscreened in silver metallic ink. Nice.
By the way, the band will be recording a proper cd, to be released in early 2006 on Vendlus Records!
MPEG Stream: "Queen Of The Borrowed Light"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Two Hunters (Southern Lord) cd 13.98
Southern Lord snagged 'em. Good call, since Olympia, WA's Wolves In The Throne Room are one of the absolute best things that US Black Metal has got going right now. Sure there's lots of awesome, oxymoronically one-man "hordes" (Leviathan, Xasthur, Draugar) but no offense meant, this is an actual band, one that you can go see live, y'know? And they slay. Firmly (and intentionally and worshipfully) in the tradition of the now legendary San Francisco epic black metal act Weakling, WITTR build the same sort of trance-inducing, technically tight, extended compositions (here, up to over 18 minutes in length) of unending grimness and sheer majestic, melancholic beauty.
Post-rock dynamics, classical-sounding female vocals, newagey synth drone, acoustic intros, and other more-prog-than-metal elements are utilized with ease, while the music, in all its ambient-stormclouds-pregnant-with-ominous-doom glory, is such that would waft and wail through the tall trees of the dark forest of black metal myth exclusively... a forest that these dwellers of the Pacific Northwest can easily conjure, living amidst dark primeval woods for real.
AQ customers of the black metal persuasion won't need much persuading, WITTR's previous record Diadem Of 12 Stars is one of our biggest black metal sellers already and this new album has been eagerly anticipated. And it's good. As if there was much doubt of that.
Packaged in a handsome and very sinister looking miniature lp-style gatefold sleeve, this cd is another stellar offering showing that these Wolves are in the Throne Room not as interlopers, but by divine (or, rather, diabolical) right of rule. Along with Bay Area bands like Ludicra, Leviathan, Asunder, and Hammers Of Misfortune, WITTR are leading the pack in putting the West Coast on the map as the home of avant-metal artistry, Nordically blackened or otherwise opposed to the norm.
MPEG Stream: "Cleansing"
MPEG Stream: "I Will Lay Down My Bones Among The Rocks And Roots"

WOLVES IN THE THRONE ROOM Two Hunters (Daymare) 2cd 30.00

WOLVES OF AVALON, THE Carrion Crows Over Camlan (Godreah) cd 13.98
Metatron, one of the masterminds behind UK black metal weirdos Meads Of Asphodel, strikes out on his own (sort of), to craft this twisted slab of Celtic pagan black metal, rooted in the history of the British Celtic Arthurian age, which apparently has historically been misrepresented by erroneous histories and manufactured mythologies. Probably better to let the band themselves describe the lyrical content:
"The album reflects a period around 500AD, that existed after the Romans were recalled to defend their homeland from the Barbarian migrations, the same land hungry hordes that were to engulf the warriors and tribes of Britain. This wasÊ the era of the Germanic and British wars, and the Arthurian defence of our sacred soil that was to end in defeat at Camlan. The main essence of the lyrical concept is the great victory over the Germanic invaders, at The Battle of Baddon Hill around 500 AD, (also known as Mons Badonicus) Baddon Hill was the great Victory that this album surmounts [sic]."
Metatron has recruited a whole gaggle of musical kindred spirits, British and otherwise, including members of Hawkwind, Graveland (!!), Yggdrasil and others, to craft this pagan epic, which definitely has all the stuff you love about pagan black metal (you do love pagan BM don't you?), sure there's plenty of blast and buzz, chug and crunch, but there's even MORE flutes and fiddles, clean chanted vox, gypsy folk sounding melodies, swirling synths, long stretches of fluttery folkiness, swirling almost psychedelic post rock sounding crescendos, there's a bunch of sax too (?!), acoustic guitars, with most of the songs tending toward a seriously seventies British folk sound (albeit often with growled vokills), but all of that pagan / renn faire style swoosh and shimmer, strum and soar, is definitely somewhat balanced by occasional bursts of fantastically dramatic triumphant metal majesty and churning, chugging murky blackened buzz, which are also coincidentally infused with plenty of pomp and majesty, and still more folky flutter.
Meads fans will freak for sure, but anyone into pagan blackness, or metallic folk, or just strange high concept folk infused heaviness, would do well to dig into The Wolves Of Avalon's sonic history of olde Britain.
MPEG Stream: "The Wolves Of Avalon"
MPEG Stream: "Lost Gods We Call On You"
MPEG Stream: "Carrion Crows Over Camlan"

WOLVSERPENT Gathering Strengths / Blood Seed (Crucial Blast) 2cd 14.98
We made Wolvserpent's Blood Seed lp our Record Of The Week on list #358 back in November of last year, Wolvserpent being the group previously known as Pussygutt, a male/female duo from Idaho capable of crafting grimly powerful blackened folk flecked dronescapes that defy easy categorization. And as we mentioned then, the name Pussygutt probably put off plenty of people, thus the shift to Wolvserpent, and while that name definitely better captures the group's ominous tone and black metal leanings, it still leaves much about the music, and its makers, quite mysterious.
This compact disc reissue combines both Blood Seed AND Gathering Strengths, an lp released under the name Pussygutt back in 2009, into a handsome double disc compendium, with BOTH lps appearing on cd for the very first time.
Blood Seed is two epic sprawls, the first a haunting bit of dirgey folk, laid over lush shimmery drones, a gorgeous funeral lament, that only hints at the abject brutality these two are capable of, instead, simply invoking a darkly melancholic mood, eventually guitars drift in, plucking out simple sad melodies, while the strings continue to swirl and soar, gorgeously tense and intense, cinematic and soundtracky. It's not until nearly the nine minute mark that the drums come in, as do the electric guitars, laying down a sort of skeletal doom framework, a different kind of downtuned slowbuild creep, pounding drums, muted riffage, the strings and Sunroof!-like drones growing in intensity, a super intense bit of droney tribal drift, but with an odd start stop arrangement, peppering the lush droning plod with little bits of more traditionally metallic riffage. Eventually some shrieked vocals swoop in, and the song stretches out into a strangley psychedelic epic, a bastardized mix of Godspeed like post rock, avant ur-drone drift, funeral doom, and glacial black metal buzz, all muted and blurred as if mixed by Tim Hecker.
The second 'movement' takes up right where the first left off, long layered high end tones, a lush undulating upper register dronescape, haunting and hypnotically shimmery, before finally lurching into some seriously metallic crunch, a lumbering doomy dirge, buzzing riffs, caveman drums, all wrapped in swirling swaths of reverbed vocals and superdistorted streaks of ambient melody, erupting into occasional blasts of uptempo chuggery, but always slipping back into that stuttery creep, and constantly wreathed in a lush otherworldly sonic haze.
Gathering Strengths, originally released on lp by Olde English Spelling Bee, like Blood Seed, is a single track split into two epic parts, the first, subtitled "Silence Within", begin with the chirping of crickets, which is soon joined by some haunting distant low end thrum, a dreamlike swell, which is soon joined by a more intense layer of buzzing tones, overlapping woodwinds, rife with mysterious overtones, a creepy harmony, the buzz and shimmer drifting in and out, the minimal drift gradually coalescing into an intense bit of dronemusic, like a blackened Phil Niblock, while off in the distance, barely there percussion surfaces, fragmented slo-mo rhythms, while more and more layers are piled on top, super intense and trancelike, until the woodwinds drift off, leaving a feedback laced stretch of blackdronedrift, softly clattery and corrosive, A wolf Eyes-ian industrial sprawl, that transforms into some hauntingly lovely gypsy like folk, driven by a mournful fiddle melody, the sound swells and smolders, all lilting melodies, and cinematic atmosphere, the vibe like a doom folk Astor Piazolla, that is until a MASSIVE avalanche of washed out downtuned doomcrush rolls in, that gorgeous fiddle now all tangled up in a heaving SUNNO)))-like churn, which manages to be both brutal and blackened, dreamy and so totally lovely. Impossibly pretty heaviness, this whole double disc worth it for that 5 or 6 minute stretch alone.
But there's still the second part, that one subtitled "Spirit Walker", this one starts off in seriously gorgeous drone-folk mode, the band laying down a lush, mesmerizing, hauntingly tense layered drone backdrop, over which the violin keens and cries, accompanied by simple shamanistic drumming, the result a darkly mesmerizing glimpse into some lost forest glade, where some shadowy priest like visages are gathered around dancing black flames, conjuring up spirits from another realm, but like the first track, this one too gradually grows heavier, with the addition of a slow thick dirge-y doomy riff, not super distorted or grumbly, but more softly buzzy, the chords ringing out and fading until they seem to bleed into the sounds around them, only to have the next chord take over, what we said about the last few minutes of the first track, well, we could say it about this whole track, worth the price of admission all on its own, a hazy tranced out chunk of heavy, heady, forest folk drone drift bliss.
Both records are incredible, and work amazingly well together, and like Pussygutt before, Wolvserpent continue to hone their unclassifiable sound, a melding together of dark hushed folk, minimal drone music, and blackened dooooooom. Their name change probably won't really make 'em much more commercially appealing, but who needs that, when you're ruling the darkened otherworld of psychedelic avant heaviness???
MPEG Stream: "Gathering Strengths (Silence Within)"
MPEG Stream: "Gathering Strengths (Spirit Walker)"
MPEG Stream: "Wolv"
MPEG Stream: "Serpent"

WOODS OF INFINITY Hamptjarn (Supernal) cd 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Latest chunk of blackened whatthefuck from these Swedish weirdos, who most long time readers of the aQ list will already be familiar with. Their modus operandi is a twisted take on the sort of midtempo Burzumic buzz, flecked with bits of folks, strange carnivalesque filigree, and INSANE vocals, from croony clean singing, to throat shredding maniacal shrieking, to growled monster gurgle, all wrapped round some seriously bent black metal, loping and plodding, melancholy and mournful, miserable and doomy.
Woods Of Infinity are not super fucked up in the way a lot of the black metal we love is, retarded, damaged, stumbling, etc. They are however WEIRD AS FUCK, the music for sure, but especially the vocals, and apparently the lyrics, which according to one online source involves a serious love of young girls among other perversions, a truly twisted, surreal, abstract, their weirdness deftly woven into their folky blackened dirges.
This is definitely the best sounding WoI record, very loud and heavy and clear, with lots of acoustic guitars, strange keyboards, out of tune pianos, really bizarre samples, and some of the strangest songs we've heard from these guys yet.
"Lakttagen" begins with some gauzy ambient piano, the guitars come in all filthy and crumbling and gritty, the vocals a raspy cackle, that gets more and more hysterical as the track progresses, the piano plinking out a sad melody, over a buzzy wash of guitar grit. "Avgrund" is a gorgeous epic mournful doomic dirge, but the vocals are some sort of twisted dramatic top 40 croon, all soulful and emotional, almost cringeworthy, but somehow it works. How about "Stilla", another killer doomy din, with strangely orchestral flourishes, choir like background vocals, but then the main vocals join in, a sort of drunken howling, like Lemmy on a bender, caterwauling in Swedish over the dark doleful melancholia underneath.
Then there's "Forsta Augusti", maybe the weirdest of all, a strange sort of shuffling metal calypso, with still more tortured vocal mewlings, over a groovy exotic melody, and a cha cha cha sort of beat. And it just keeps getting weirder and weirder, if that were even possible, more strange fucked up vocal stylings, long stretches of creepy ambience, blasts of almost buzzing black metal, long haunting samples, epic majestic stein hoisting metal sea shanties, shimmering dark folk, and more that we could possibly list in a single review. Remember these are the guys who covered Barry Manilow on another record, so most of this madness should come as no surprise.
Definitely way too weird for the average black metaller. But metal fans into the freaky and the bizarre, the confusing and completely fucked will dig this big time, and quite possibly non metal folks might too, as long as they possess a distinct penchant for weird shit, and have no aversion to some buzzing blackness in their strange sounds...
MPEG Stream: "Elvira"
MPEG Stream: "Vasendet"

WOODSMARCH Promo '04 (Gungnir Productions) cassette 4.50
More black metal madness, in cassette form of course, this time from Brazilian one man band Woodsmarch, a buzzing, stumbling black beast, who owes much to Burzum, but makes this loping buzzing blackness his very own. Simple guitar parts, seemingly played on not entirely distorted guitars, very epic and majestic, but always seeming to struggle, the drums also simple, a midtempo pound, lurching chaotically alongside the strange gnarled guitar lines, the vocals a strangled harsh howl, the tempo very seasick and warbly, to the point that even though the sound is buzzy and black, it still feels ambient. Hypnotic and droning, the guitars smeared and blurry, black clouds of buzzing sound, the drums sprawled out over the black backdrop, with plenty of strange arrangements, acoustic interludes, bizarre moaning keyboard like low end drones, the whole thing sort of mesmerizing and dreamlike. Pretty amazing actually. Fans of off kilter black buzz like Draugurz, Varghkoghargasmal and the like will definitely dig.

WOODTEMPLE Feel The Anger Of The Wind (No Colours) cd 16.98
Eastern European evil rears its horned head once again, this time in the guise of the evocatively monickered Woodtemple. Occupying a suitably satanic space alongside the black metal elite (Graveland, Nargaroth, Burzum), Woodtemple do dabble in buzzing blazing plague of locusts riffery like their blackened brethren, but spend most of their time loping malevolently at a slow to midpaced clip, dirge-y and fuzzy, hypnotically static, stumblingly midtempo with struggling double kick drums and super simple, heavy handed buzzsaw riffs, pounding and sawing away, with distant keyboards picking out some ancient rhythm, while the drone-metal crush powers relentlessly hellward. Woodtemple are not about virtuosity or musical agility, they are all raw feeling and dark emotion, communicated through brutal and incessant metallic forcefulness, and that means it's not always smooth and slick. In fact sometimes it's just the opposite. Some of the drumming is so bad it's downright laughable, but in the context of the record it just becomes a swaying, stumbling stuttering piece of the already fuzzy, rough and damaged whole. This is one of those records that really straddles the line between brilliant ineptitude and inspired brutality. Which of course makes it one of our favorite black metal records of the year.
MPEG Stream: "The Day The Church Burnt"
MPEG Stream: "Fell The Anger Of The Wind"

WOODTEMPLE The Call From The Pagan Woods (No Colours) cd 16.98
Ahhh, the return of the Austrian black metal demons Woodtemple. Their last release was definitely one of our favorites, a blackened hornet's nest of spikey guitars, throbbing hypnotic rhythms, stumbling chaotic drumming, and fuzzy forest atmosphere. Thankfully, very little has changed in Woodtemple's black sonic world, it's still a perfectly damaged and confusional black metal thicket. Three lengthy tracks of plodding, mesmerising midtempo buzz, dirge-y and relentless, with completely arbitrary shifts in tempo and riffing. Almost like completely random parts were just butted up to each other with no regard for whether they fit together at all. The drummer is obviously struggling desperately to catch the changes but that's part of what makes this so good. It's like Black Flag or early Black Sabbath, in that it's always on the edge of collapse, stumbling and lumbering, only seconds away from letting the riff get away from them or watching the rhythm crumble before their very eyes.
Obvious reference points would be Nargaroth, Burzum and especially Graveland, but Woodtemple, whether through sheer ineptitutde, or some sort of unholy inspiration, manage to create a totally unique hypnotic black metal space, keyboards way up in the mix, over fuzzy crumbly riffs, barely held together by the drums, which seem to be marching to their own demonic rhythm, all woven together into a pulsing, throbbing, mesmerising blackened metal drone, that finds you entranced, laying on the moist leaves on the forest floor, looking at the moonlit sky through the dense canopy of trees, waiting for the end. So gorgeously bleak and brilliant.
MPEG Stream: "The Battle Of Eternal Hate"
MPEG Stream: "The Realm Of Eternal Lonliness"

WOODTEMPLE Voices Of Pagan Mountains (No Colours) cd 16.98
We've been dying for this new release forever, the latest from Austrian one man black metal horde Woodtemple for ages, from the moment we first heard whispers of a new full length. Faithful AQ-ers will no doubt be well aware of our infatuation with Woodtemple. A stumbling buzzing midtempo black metal unlike any other. Well, except maybe Graveland, who Woodtemple sound A LOT like. But they manage to be way more damaged sounding and thus somehow just that much more mysterious. They sound a little bit like Graveland's fucked up younger brother, spewing a similar buzzy droney blackness, but with more melody, more jangle, and way more weirdness.
As everyone knows by now, we're huge fans of damaged and demented, super fucked up black metal, from Benighted Leams to Dead Reptile Shrine to Furze, the weirder and the more unexplainable the better. But there's something special, and maybe even more fucked up about a band that is not so obviously and blatantly weird. A band that on first listen sound like good, somewhat traditional black metal, but closer listening reveals all sorts of subtle details and freaky fucked up sonic irregularities that lurk right there under the surface. Such is the case with Woodtemple. Whose weirdness originally stemmed mostly from a certain amount of ineptness. His insistence on playing drums, even though you could here him struggling through every track. But that uneven tempo worked to Woodtemple's favor, giving those old records a woozy, stumbling almost seasick feel. Those old records were obviously the work of someone with grand aspirations of maybe -being- a Graveland, but who fell a bit short, but in doing so, created something so much more original and appealing. Well, a strange thing happened in the years since the last Woodtemple, Aramath, the man who IS Woodtemple, has gotten a whole lot better, and a lot more creative, and more importantly has gotten himself a session drummer. Our first thought was "oh crap" thinking that this new tighter, more competent outfit wouldn't be nearly as appealing, but the exact opposite is true. Now the weirdness is part and parcel of Aramath's vision, and this new Woodtemple is fast becoming our favorite new black metal record.
The basic blueprint is the same, a loping midtempo Burzumic buzz, lurching, seasick, sort of waltzy at times, some blastbeats, but even those stretches are not all that fast, it's mostly about mood and atmosphere and texture, a grim, melancholic world of doom, death and depression, rendered in droned out black metal dirges and buzzing riffage. In addition to the new more competent drumming, the songs have gotten more complex, with plenty of keyboards, strange rhythmic breakdowns and a surprising amount of 'jangle', some of the tracks almost sound like blackened post rock, moping and moody without being ultra harsh and hateful. And there are several super dreamy (for black metal at least) loooooong stretches of repeated riffing, building into a trance like mesmer, all looped sounding and minor key, almost a little like Slint, but all under a whooshy wash of high end keyboards. Beyond that, it's just a function of WT's killer songs, and these songs are killer, catchy riffs, weird obfuscated hooks, and a thick dense ultra heavy sound. The perfect blend of head banging blackness, trippy whatthefuckness, and blissed out dronebuzz. In fact, the new Woodtemple is so fierce and so moody and so epic and so heavy and so fucking good we actually find ourselves not missing the Woodtemple of old one bit!
While they last, we have the super limited (500 copies) hand numbered digipak version, once these are gone, you'll get the normal jewelcase version.
MPEG Stream: "Voices Of Pagan Mountains"
MPEG Stream: "Strains Of Eternal Sorrow"

WORMS OF SABNOCK Dark Harmonies (Firestorm) cd 14.98
When we first heard about Worms Of Sabnock, a grim TRUE black metal band from the UK, they were being touted as sounding exactly like Nattens Madrigal-era Ulver, which it ended up was not actually all that accurate, but what they did end up sounding like was even more exciting. There are definitely some of those elements present, super brittle buzzing insect-like riffing, thrashing broken bone blast beats, but the vocals are much more over the top, a growly shriek much closer to Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth. In fact the band has quite a bit of overblown instrumental bombast also quite reminiscent of the Filthies. Big washes of keyboards, weird haunting clean vocal croon, and angelic female choral parts. But the best part would have to be the flute. That's right, the FLUTE. We almost fell out of our chairs when this flute came swooping in, fluttering and flitting over a grinding blasting black buzz, so totally unlikely, but so fucking perfect.
Farther into the record it gets even stranger, with several lilting tranquil folk interludes, rife with dreamy flute and softly strummed acoustic guitar, some blown out droney murky sort-of-post-rock with sweetly crooned clean vocals, almost chant like, mixed in with streaks of utter grim blackness. Definitely a confusional mix, but it somehow works. A tripped out, grim and frosty, psychedelic black metal journey through a world of Worms and Dark Harmonies. With flutes!!
Super over the top packaging, with the band sporting seriously gruesome corpsepaint, splattered with blood and festering wounds, one band member is even sporting horns that appear to have pushed messily through the front of his head, streams of blood pouring into his eyes. Cool.
MPEG Stream: "Black Empire"
MPEG Stream: "Demons Walk Among Us"

WORMSBLOOD In The Stars (Aurora Borealis) lp 14.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
The cd-r is long out of print, but for a limited time we've got a super deluxe vinyl version of this bizarre bit of grim, fractured blackness...
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down....

WORMSBLOOD In The Stars (Skulls Of Heaven) 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.
It doesn't really get any more METAL than this. Wormsblood. Killer name. Wicked illegible logo, the band name written out in the black roots of some hellish plant. Over a black and white photocopied canyonscape. Epic and windswept, snow covered and GRIM. The man behind Wormsblood is Wyrdskull, and to the black cause he contributes "common ritual tools, heavy-handed electro-overblood, vibrations of the unsilent dark tomes and the crossing of song and siege." Guests include Crimson Maaritkitaka who delivers "cryptwyrm bloodlet and akashic magnet", Vragknacht The Two-Handed, who offers up "battle-ready bloodsong", then the song titles: "Thundercall", "The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken", "Ritual Of Bone And Horn", "Tolling Beyond Our Lunar Trance", plus they do a Manilla Road cover, "Street Jammer" and they even offer up a hearty "Hails to the fucking Mad Street Hammers".
But for all the pure troo metal action, the sound is anything but, which is most likely due to the fact that Wormsblood is very likely made up of folks from the free noise / freak folk scene, who in Wormsblood finally get the opportunity to indulge in their darker musical side, to touch that blackened part of their music soul, to unleash all those pent up demonic forces, and the result is a dizzying confusional blast of chaotic, lo-fi, muddled and muddy, freaked out and blown out, damaged what-the-fuck blackened METAL.
The closest comparison we could come up with is probably a black metal Faxed Head, which is pretty much all we'd need to hear. The vibe is definitely similar, the riffs a garbled buzzing mess, thick swaths of weird keyboard, the drums splattery and stumbling and blasting, the tape hiss, and random instrument buzz as much a part of the sound as the bands damaged black roar, then there are the vocals, hysterical shrieks, rumbling grunting moans, haunted howling, the tracks often crumbling into utter disarray, or coalescing into epic doomy pound, everything drenched in malfunctioning electronics and fried FX.
An absolutely dementedly genius fucked up black metal noiserock melt down. Packaged in a super strange fold over plastic sleeve, with multiple printed inserts, and most likely crazy limited...

WORMSBLOOD Mastery Of Creation Demos (Barbarian) cd 13.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A couple years ago we reviewed an obscure, DIY cd-r release, In The Stars, by this band Wormsblood. As you might guess from their name, they're an underground black metal free noise new weird America psych folk cd-r band... oh wait you might not guess that. But you'd get the idea this is something dark and strange and evil, right? Not some normal indie rock band that's for sure. And you know this, if you remember our review of that previous release. So, band leader Wyrdskull (an alter ego of Clay Ruby from freak folksters Davenport and psych doomsters Jex Thoth, we have reason to believe) and cohorts are back with a new release, an actual cd this time, though the music is still way DIY and lo-fi (like we like it!), consisting of three "demo" sessions recorded between 2004 and 2008. Though without that info you wouldn't know this wasn't conceived as all one album. Ten tracks total, about 38 minutes of very, very fucked up "metal". Like, if Ariel Pink did even -more- drugs and then tried to produce a black metal album. Or, imagine a black metal Faxed Head (as we said about 'em before). It's that weird, that WRONG. And thus damn right in our ears. 'Cause if we know anything, we know our fucked up black metal. Dead Reptile Shrine, Varghkogargasmal, Vorak, Dead Raven Choir's Cask Strength stuff, old Necrofrost, Wold, etc., this fits right in, not that it really fits in anywhere.
The disc starts off with the amazing/retarded "Fragments Of The Witch" which will either convince you this is the best thing you've heard since you played the Weakling album backwards through a malfunctioning Kaoss pad while screaming at the top of your lungs, or convince you to turn it off. Obviously, we're part of the former camp. A murky, palpitating admixture of primitive, clanking rhythms, truly over-the-top gargled and anguished kokills, dim distorted guitar riffs and woozy synths dealing out Skeptical doom plod. All of it mired in an echoey, almost dubby "production". The next track, "Hollow Cost Nothing", ups the ante with even more majestic, messed up melodies. It dawns on us that whomever is on guitar can really play. Somehow this makes Wormsblood sound even more insane. It also suggests that maybe one way to look at this isn't as an attempt at making tr00 cvlt black metal primitivism, but rather as simply a very, very, VERY damaged version of traditional '80s heavy metal (and we recall they did do a Manilla Road cover on the In The Stars cd-r)...
Then, there's a track that also appeared on that cd-r,"The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken)", which takes a turn into ritualistic ancient folk musick, with a military snare and Muppet-on-meth vocals. It's like Ghost meets Abruptum. Or ESP-Disk's Cromagnon gone metal. That's followed by "Sig Bind", which begins with abstract, Jewelled Antler-y atmospheres before erupting with high-end guitar neck strangle, kind of like a Kemialliset Ystavat meets Krallice mashup. By the end of this track, it's a madhouse of maniacal voices, harshing the mellow with which it began. And on it goes, this disc of demos delving backwards in time, the recordings getting boombox-ier and buzzier, the songs even less songlike and more soundscapey if possible. "Goodnight" opens a can of that Striborg-style aersol spray, a grim sonic mist of vibrating electric strings and hissing exhalations. "Obsessed By The Bloodstone" (is that shout-out to cult pulp fantasist Karl Edward Wagner?) is an ambient piece for keyboard - and barking dog! And then sometimes, they get it together for an extended spasm of, uh, song, full of high pitched singing/shrieking and chaotic drums/guitars.
Now, you might be thinking, there's other black metal releases on this week's AQ list. Yet this is the only one we chose as a Record Of The Week. Does that mean it's BETTER than those other black metal albums? Better than Ayat, or Moloch, or Nav, or the new Satyricon, for example? Well, no, not exactly. But we're not judging this purely as a black metal release. We figured this was something that AQ customers into any sort of bizarre, fucked up music (many of whom love black metal, to be sure) would find intriguing. 'Cause as metal as this is (and it IS, really metal, if you listen close) it's equally something else entirely. There's whole passages of "music" here that sound more like that fake field recordings disc Jurassic Soundscapes, but with lonely werewolves wandering around in the prehistoric swamps. And drugged up pterodactyls swooping about overhead. Wormsblood's sound is as much recognizable metallic instrumentation (guitars, drums, vocals) as it is wyrd sound FX and destroyed noise, rustlings and clankings and howlings.
As befits this music, this comes packaged in black and white and grey, bearing disturbing, fantastical, hellish yet cartoonish line drawings that look a bit like Mike Diana's notorious art... get the LP if you want to study the drawings in detail.
MPEG Stream: "Fragments Of The Witch"
MPEG Stream: "Sig Bind"
MPEG Stream: "On A Burial Of Unsilent Night Soil"

WORMSBLOOD Mastery Of Creation Demos (Barbarian) lp 10.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
A couple years ago we reviewed an obscure, DIY cd-r release, In The Stars, by this band Wormsblood. As you might guess from their name, they're an underground black metal free noise new weird America psych folk cd-r band... oh wait you might not guess that. But you'd get the idea this is something dark and strange and evil, right? Not some normal indie rock band that's for sure. And you know this, if you remember our review of that previous release. So, band leader Wyrdskull (an alter ego of Clay Ruby from freak folksters Davenport and psych doomsters Jex Thoth, we have reason to believe) and cohorts are back with a new release, an actual cd this time, though the music is still way DIY and lo-fi (like we like it!), consisting of three "demo" sessions recorded between 2004 and 2008. Though without that info you wouldn't know this wasn't conceived as all one album. Ten tracks total, about 38 minutes of very, very fucked up "metal". Like, if Ariel Pink did even -more- drugs and then tried to produce a black metal album. Or, imagine a black metal Faxed Head (as we said about 'em before). It's that weird, that WRONG. And thus damn right in our ears. 'Cause if we know anything, we know our fucked up black metal. Dead Reptile Shrine, Varghkogargasmal, Vorak, Dead Raven Choir's Cask Strength stuff, old Necrofrost, Wold, etc., this fits right in, not that it really fits in anywhere.
The disc starts off with the amazing/retarded "Fragments Of The Witch" which will either convince you this is the best thing you've heard since you played the Weakling album backwards through a malfunctioning Kaoss pad while screaming at the top of your lungs, or convince you to turn it off. Obviously, we're part of the former camp. A murky, palpitating admixture of primitive, clanking rhythms, truly over-the-top gargled and anguished kokills, dim distorted guitar riffs and woozy synths dealing out Skeptical doom plod. All of it mired in an echoey, almost dubby "production". The next track, "Hollow Cost Nothing", ups the ante with even more majestic, messed up melodies. It dawns on us that whomever is on guitar can really play. Somehow this makes Wormsblood sound even more insane. It also suggests that maybe one way to look at this isn't as an attempt at making tr00 cvlt black metal primitivism, but rather as simply a very, very, VERY damaged version of traditional '80s heavy metal (and we recall they did do a Manilla Road cover on the In The Stars cd-r)...
Then, there's a track that also appeared on that cd-r,"The First Dim Shinings (Of Those About To Awaken)", which takes a turn into ritualistic ancient folk musick, with a military snare and Muppet-on-meth vocals. It's like Ghost meets Abruptum. Or ESP-Disk's Cromagnon gone metal. That's followed by "Sig Bind", which begins with abstract, Jewelled Antler-y atmospheres before erupting with high-end guitar neck strangle, kind of like a Kemialliset Ystavat meets Krallice mashup. By the end of this track, it's a madhouse of maniacal voices, harshing the mellow with which it began. And on it goes, this disc of demos delving backwards in time, the recordings getting boombox-ier and buzzier, the songs even less songlike and more soundscapey if possible. "Goodnight" opens a can of that Striborg-style aersol spray, a grim sonic mist of vibrating electric strings and hissing exhalations. "Obsessed By The Bloodstone" (is that shout-out to cult pulp fantasist Karl Edward Wagner?) is an ambient piece for keyboard - and barking dog! And then sometimes, they get it together for an extended spasm of, uh, song, full of high pitched singing/shrieking and chaotic drums/guitars.
Now, you might be thinking, there's other black metal releases on this week's AQ list. Yet this is the only one we chose as a Record Of The Week. Does that mean it's BETTER than those other black metal albums? Better than Ayat, or Moloch, or Nav, or the new Satyricon, for example? Well, no, not exactly. But we're not judging this purely as a black metal release. We figured this was something that AQ customers into any sort of bizarre, fucked up music (many of whom love black metal, to be sure) would find intriguing. 'Cause as metal as this is (and it IS, really metal, if you listen close) it's equally something else entirely. There's whole passages of "music" here that sound more like that fake field recordings disc Jurassic Soundscapes, but with lonely werewolves wandering around in the prehistoric swamps. And drugged up pterodactyls swooping about overhead. Wormsblood's sound is as much recognizable metallic instrumentation (guitars, drums, vocals) as it is wyrd sound FX and destroyed noise, rustlings and clankings and howlings.
As befits this music, this comes packaged in black and white and grey, bearing disturbing, fantastical, hellish yet cartoonish line drawings that look a bit like Mike Diana's notorious art... get the LP if you want to study the drawings in detail.
MPEG Stream: "Fragments Of The Witch"
MPEG Stream: "Sig Bind"
MPEG Stream: "On A Burial Of Unsilent Night Soil"

WORMWOOD Behemoth (Kreation Records) 2x7" 8.98
It had been ages since we last heard from these North Western crusty doomcore punx, when suddenly out of the blue, a brand new record surfaced a few months back, and completely kicked our asses. A monstrous slab of downtuned tribal sludge falling somewhere between Eyehategod and Neurosis, but with keyboards, and lots of tribal drumming.
So here we have a brief double 7" follow up to Starvation, and it's just as great, mixing heaping doses of churning low end guitar, dense tangled drumming, throbbing bass, harsh crusty vocals and of course, tons of keyboards. The result is some impossible mix of Crash Worship, Neurosis, Eyehategod and black metal. Might sound like it wouldn't work but it does. The A side here begins with a blackened drum circle, toms everywhere, swirling rhythms underpinning crumbling slabs of distortion and wild squealing feedback, all wrapped in layers of epic keyboards, a gorgeous super cinematic crusty metallic version of Godspeed maybe. The other three sides continue in a similar fashion, albeit a bit more 'rocking', with strangely mathy rhythms, simple pounding drums, some of the filthiest and sludgiest distorted guitars, and lots of creepy creepy melodies.
Packaged in a gorgeous diecut fold out thick maroon sleeve, printed in black and metallic gold ink. So nice.

WRAITHS Oriflamme (Aurora Borealis) lp 13.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
The last we heard from Scottish ambient doomlords Wraiths, was their amazing full length Plaguebearer on UK label Paradigms. That disc was a caustic collection of deep ominous black ambience, light on the ambience, heavy on the, well, heavy. If anything, Oriflamme is even moreso, as it predates Plaguebearer, originally released as a super limited cd-r, now available again, however briefly, as a limited lp.
These are the roots of Plaguebearer, in fact, it sounds like it was definitely cut from the same mouldering black cloth. There is nothing serene or soothing about this sort of ambience, it's harsh and chaotic, corrosive, roiling, ominous and thick, heavy for sure, but more than anything, it's incredibly dense.
Layer upon layer upon layer. Huge chunks of industrial grind, massive pounding, and bursts of corrosive crunch, super processed vocals, synths and streaks of feedback, deep rumbling drones, whirring and hissing, it's the sound of wandering through the pits of hell. Huge demonic machinery, massive gears and pistons, caked with black soot, and unspeakable grime, churning away endlessly, shadowy figures toiling behind the flames, the sounds of hammer on stone, of gnashing teeth, and hopeless wails, all seeming to come together into some hellish symphony. A glorious and gloriously abysmal industrial black noise drone, a sound not unfamiliar to fans of MZ412, Merzbow, Wolf Eyes and other proponents of caustic low end explorations and buzzing sonic filth.
The second half of Oriflamme is much less dense, and more spacious, as if after barely making it through the industrial wasteland of part one, the listener has emerged in a massive cavern, so high, the rock walls just disappear into blackness, the only things visible are those illuminated by the guttering flame of your lantern, your mind left to decipher the strange and mysterious soundworld lurking just out of sight. Distant moans and shimmering black murmurs, bits of glitch and crunch, smeared into swirling black shadows, heaving swells of blackness, streaks of electrical interference, billows of earth shaking rumbles, hissed voices, deep creaks and monstrous gurgles, wind like whirs, wavering electrostatic buzz, all spread out into a harrowing and bleak doomscape, as disturbingly (and impossibly) beautiful, and it is absolutely grim and brutalizing.
Gorgeous super striking covers, like some old lost dust covered tome, and don't be fooled by the frayed and tattered edges, they're printed on the sleeves. And as if we even needed to tell you, EXTREMELY LIMITED!

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

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

WRATH OF THE WEAK Perse (Luchtrat) 3" cd-r 15.98
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.
Another way too limited release from one man blackened ultra-buzz merchant Wrath Of The Weak. As we've mentioned before in the past, before we had heard a single note, WOTW came highly recommended as perhaps THEE buzziest black metal band around, which was, and is still indeed to a certain degree the case, but as other bands are piling on the buzz, and black metal seems to be moving in a more blown out and shoegazey drone drenched direction, it's a bit tougher these days to truly be the lord of buzz.
Thankfully, WOTW is about more than just buzz, the tracks are dense and dark and thick and corrosive, often like a Wolf Eyes track transformed into black metal. Plenty of crunch, and abstract industrial whir, sheets of feedback, tracks sometimes collapsing into gorgeously grinding stretches of slow motion sprawl, haunting melodies buried beneath, everything rough and ragged and raw, but blurred into soft shapes and bleary warm sonic swells. Often not remotely black metal at all. This ep is the perfect example. The opening track is just guitars, a roiling and lush soundworld, no drums, at least none that we can hear, just a massive heaving wall of crumbling distorted crunch, wreathed in hazy clouds of buzz and hiss and whir, playing out a woozy minor key melody, but very very sloooowly, a smoldering slab of mind expanding divine and blackened space drone.
And as if to further make the case that WOTW is far from just another black metal outfit, the second track is a cover (we think) of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows", less black metal, and more tripped out druggy psychedelia, those distinctive drums, long spidery streaks of sitar like buzz, all the sounds softened and smeared and stretched out into totally trippy tendrils, unfurling through swirling clouds of blissed out shimmer. A black metal band would likely be your LAST guess, we're hearing White Hills, the Heads, and other modern space psych combos. And finally, the record closes with what initially sounds like what could be the blackest track of the three, but the opening riff, instead of exploding into a frenzy of blasting and buzzing, stretches out into something much more dreamy and abstract, a sort of looped guitarscape, the initial riff becoming less and less distinct, as all sorts of other sounds and overtones surface around the main melody. WAY too brief at 2 minutes, that track definitely could have been extended to make this a full length and we would have remained happily entranced.
LIMITED TO ONLY 66 COPIES!! We got a handful, and we got every copy the label had left. The cd-r's are affixed to a block of wood, and the woods is housed in a screen printed and hand sewn fabric sleeve. So nice.
MPEG Stream: "Tomorrow Never Knows"
MPEG Stream: "Untitled #73"

WRATH OF THE WEAK s/t (Bastardized) cd 7.98
This band was originally touted to us as being THE buzziest black metal band. So obviously we were intrigued, and you know, that wasn't all that far from the truth.
This one man band from Buffalo, is indeed a master of the buzz, and the cool thing is, while this is indeed buzzing blown out black metal, it seems like he's coming at it from a non black metal background, which might be why this sounds so unique. Barring a few breakdowns, and various stretches of propulsive riffing, most of the record is indeed an intense wall of buzz, so thick and fuzzed out, it's almost impossible to discern anything else going on. Drums, vocals, they sort of blur into the overall buzz, turning this record into the ultimate blackbuzzdronedisc. Incredibly hypnotic and mesmerizing, so much so that when the band locks into a riff, and locks into a buzz drenched cyclical loop, it's easy to get totally lost, the various notes shift and blend into each other, almost like some Niblock piece composed with buzzing black metal riffs. Heavy on the drone, and the repetition, a few times writing this review I even found myself totally entranced and almost drifting off. Can't think of a much better recommendation than that.
The record has song titles like "The Snowstorm" and "The Thunderstorm", and that's pretty much what this sounds like, like some intense black clouded metal storm, relentless and furious. But be sure and stick around for the final 24 minute track "Cuniculean Rampage", which begins as another blurry buzzy blast, but near the end, the riff is locked and looped and suddenly it's less a black metal record and more some strange experimental droned out noisescape, all loops and skipping stuttering digital glitches, but still weirdly heavy. A brief blast of Autechre-ized blackness. Awesome.
MPEG Stream: "The Snowstorm"
MPEG Stream: "Journey Of Many Days"
MPEG Stream: "The Thunderstorm"

WRATHFUL PLAGUE Bitter Forest Winds (E.E.E. Recordings) cd-r 5.00
**SALE **SALE* *SALE**
Latest release from the crazy prolific E.E.E. Recordings label, home to all things unblack, as in Christian black metal. We've gone into the whole unblack thing at great length in the past. While it may seem antithetical to most, a music that was founded and is defined by its very anti-Christian bent, being subverted and appropriated to glorify the Lord, but we'll leave all that stuff to the chatrooms and message boards, all we know is this unblack stuff sounds amazing! In the past we've raved about Glaciial, Light Shall Prevail, Agathothodion, Elgibbor, Flaskavsae, Offerblod and Njiqahdda, check any of those reviews for more on the whole unblack phenomenon, in the meantime, we'll investigate the grim buzzing soundworld of Wrathful Plague.
With a name like Wrathful Plague, and the fact that these guys are on E.E.E., you might assume that this is more unblack metal, but in fact, according to the label, the band is non-religious, not the first E.E.E. band to keep their convictions on the DL (Drommer is another), thankfully, they SOUND unblack, which by now has a definite sonic connotation. Unblack artists are definitely on the fucked and freaked out end of the BM spectrum, the sounds as much a part of their music as the songs, sure there's plenty of grim buzz, and furious blast beats and harsh hellish vocals, but all performed and recorded in such a way, that they end up smeared and blurred, murky and damaged, tape hiss offering up as much buzz as the guitars, the tone changing from muddy and muffled, to tinny and brittle, but it a way that only adds to the mood and atmosphere of the music.
Wrathful Plague, for all its claims of eschewing religion, at least in the context of their music, DOES in fact feature folks from all of the above mentioned bands, Light Shall Prevail, Glaciial, etc. so we imagine there is some pro-God action going on somewhere in there, but the more important thing is, that it -sounds- as awesomely fucked up as records by those other bands.
WP are not as mathy or complex and convoluted as a lot of E.E.E. bands, instead, they traffic in raw blasting fury, and in this case, the lo-fi recording enhances the bands washed out buzz in a big way. The guitars grind and swirl, but sound looped, often blurring into near static streaks of minor key sound, the drums, programmed it sounds like, are a chaotic framework, buried miles down in the mix, offering up another crackling layer of hiss, the vocals a distorted croak, the distortion alien sounding, and blown out, so at it's most furious, various overtones begin to surface and beat wildly against each other, creating strange subtle rhythmic variations and subtle distortions and causing the sound to become even more hazy and indistinct. A blurry blast that manages to be fierce and black and grim but also warm and dizzyingly droning and intensely hypnotic. Minus the few acoustic interludes, it's a mesmerizing chunk of relentless black drone hypno-metal. And if you can read the words "black drone hypno-metal" and not buy this record, that you are made of stronger stuff than us...
MPEG Stream: "Steersman Of The Gate"
MPEG Stream: "Castrate The Sodomites"

WRATHFUL PLAGUE The Frostbitten Path (E.E.E Recordings / Gud Er Sannhet) cd 12.98

MPEG Stream: "Vdodelig Krigforing"
MPEG Stream: "The Frostbitten Path"

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

WRNLRD Death Drive Ep (Flingco Sound) 10" 15.98
It's been a while since we've heard from avant black metal weirdo Wrnlrd, and it seems a few things have changed since the last record. The band, formerly a mostly one man project, has expanded to include a handful of other players, contributing a strange selection of instruments (strange for black metal, but not necessarily for Wrnlrd, whose bluegrass roots managed to shine through no matter how buzzy and black proceeding got in the past), including accordion, piano, pedal steel, female vocals, and Dwid from legendary hardcore heavies Integrity even makes a guest appearance. And as we mentioned in the past, the Wrnlrd website offers very little in the way of proper info, but does feature a strange series of numerological sigils and strange diagrams, which would seem to indicate, that this just may be the second to last Wrnlrd record EVER. Which would be a shame, cuz this is definitely the most gloriously fucked up Wrnlrd yet.
Sonically, it's not all that far removed from the last few records, but it's somehow, just MORE. The guitars are filthier and crunchier and more distorted, the arrangements are more bizarre, stumbling and abstract and confusional, the instrumentation, as mentioned above, elevates this WAY beyond black metal, into some sort of tripped out blackened avant noise rock, or something.
Beginning with some gnarled detuned riffage, lumbering bass blur, and some monstrous gurgling vox, the record doesn't explode from the speakers so much as ooze, sounding like a death metal 45 at 16rpm, a furiously ominous creep, before slipping into more 'typical' Wrnlrd territory, which means gloomy low slung bass, big pounding drums, swirling electronics, super distorted buzz and chug, and of course super dramatic almost operatic female vocals, balancing more of those gurgling death metal grunts, the result is impossibly both beautiful and haunting, fucked up and grim, underpinned by super cinematic synths.
"Midnight Ride" is about as traditional as it gets, with some killer distorto riffing, pounding drums, keening guitar melodies, and those immediately recognizable Integrity style bellowed vox, it's doomy and dirgey knuckle dragging heaviness, that seems to mutate and morph growing more and more tripped out and psychedelic as it goes, finishing off in a cloud of lap steel shimmer.
After a stretched out bit of twisted piano ambience, the final track unfurls, a wheezing accordion sounding sinister and grim, soon swallowed up by a squall of atonal buzz and twisted guitar squiggle, finally coalescing into a woozy seasick bit of blackened lurch and stumble, the buzz caked on, the sound filthy and in the red, laced over super haunting blown out melodies, again managing to (im)perfectly merge melody and murk, until the track finally collapses into a chaos of colliding chugs over some darkly delicate fingerpicked guitar.
Incredible, and incredibly twisted stuff. Probably WAY too far out for the grim black hordes, but for everyone else, this is some beautiful and brilliantly baffling heaviness.
Housed in a cool diecut sleeve, comes with a poster and a patch and a digital download of the record.
MPEG Stream: "Precursor"
MPEG Stream: "Grave Dowser"
MPEG Stream: "Midnight Ride (w/ Dwid Hellion)"