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This Greeley Colorado-based wall-noise project is no stranger to long/multi disc releases. But this six-disc DVDR set/ digital release really pushes things to new & extreme limits, with just over fifty-three hours of wall-craft. The set was a joint release between the projects own label, and London based digital HNW Netlabel. And like all of this projects releases this is based around literature – and this time it’s the twenty novels in Émile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series, that focused in on France's Second Empire (1852-1870).
Despite the fact that the Slovenian sludge/doom group Leechfeast have been around for almost 10 years, I was not familiar with their work until now. Since 2010, they have released one demo, three splits and two full-length albums, the latest of which, titled Neon Crosses, has been recorded after a 3-year pause. The album was released by Dry Cough Records on vinyl and still available for order on the label's website or on the band's Bandcamp.
Masones is searing ‘n’ intensely feasting slab of euro noise that brings together walled noise, with some wall-ish harsh noise elements. This release appeared in October of last year- as either a C49 tape or digital download.
This self-titled debut release brings together gloomy-to-often doomy solo piano with atmospheric static texturing/more subdued wall- making. It takes in ten tracks- coming as either a physical cassette/ or a digital download on German label Geraeuschmanufaktur.
Spoken arts powerhouse Cadabra Records returns with another strong release of weird fiction with Thomas Ligotti's The Bungalow House. The award winning American author's short story is passionately read by ventriloquist and author Jon Padgett. Running behind this reading is an inventive and synthy score by musician and filmmaker Chris Bozzone. Another excellent addition to their catalog, The Bungalow House is a well done piece of spoken art horror.
'Realms of the Macabre' from Phantom Cadaver is the 427th release on Altar of Waste. It comes as a CD in a DVD case, with luscious imagery on both the outside and the inside. The outside depicts a darkly lit room in a faint reddish hue, a lone bulb swings from the ceiling as a person sits in the foreground with their arm to their chest and eyes looking upward. The inside is a bright and surreal mess of dark colours - blues, reds and purples.
The genesis of this album grew from two separate sessions recorded back in 2014. Tomas Järmyr had recorded duo sessions with both Eirik Havnes and Dirk Serries which led to discussions of the three working together on what was to become this album. Recorded in a single day in 2015 at Olavshallen, Trondheim, Norway on May 16th 2015. The album, a 55 minute improvised piece of jazzy, kraut/space/drone rock, was mixed & mastered by Dirk Serries.
Heart 2 Heart is the harsh noise / static noise project of the spouses Rossi, Mariela and Sisto (his most famous projects are Wallkeeper, Forecast and Foxhole).
SkyDive Trio is a jazzy instrumental rock outfit that immediately conjures up thoughts of 1970's krautrock, fusion and progressive LPs with their instrumental timbres and playing style. Their 2nd album "Sun Sparkle" was released on Hubro this year in 2018.
À Travail Égal Salaire Égal is the third album from this French avant collective- originally released in 1982 on the bands own GRRR label- here it gets it first ever CD release. The album sees the project creating a surreal & often densely layered release, that drifts from & blends together modern classical composition, quirky electronics, avant jazz ‘n’ rock, and layers of radiophonic elements.
The Bloodthirsty Trilogy where a series of Japanese horror films from the 1970’s, which whole-hearted embraced gothic horror, with a 70’s setting. Here from Arrow Video, we have first ever Blu ray release of the films, presenting all three films in ghoulish & vibrate 1080p presentation.
Death metal fans have been thrashing to Skinless for years, and will be pleased to know that Relapse once again has their latest release. Savagery is 10 tracks of the kind of pummeling, death metal fury that fans have come to expect from the NY veterans. With a US tour hot on the heels of this new release, fans both new and old can hit the town and experience Savagery in all its loud, punishing glory.
As well as having a successful solo career, and playing in the greatest Irish rock bands of all time(Thin Lizzy). Gary Moore was also part of this lesser known four-piece fusion band- here’s a recent release of the band's final album from 1977, and it really is a rewardingly energetic & virtuoso affair focusing more on the rock side of the fusion coin.
Hailing from the home of the Bay Area funk scene Oakland, California, Malditos are a fairly unique sounding quartet, that describe themselves as “dark-zone desert psych”. They came together in 2011, releasing their self-titled debut album a year later on their own “Alchemy Coffin” label. Since then they’ve had a couple of single or EP releases, but this is only their second full length album.
From 2015 Death-Scort Service is sleaze saturated & tourniquet tight slasher, which revels in near non-stop leering shots of female flesh, an often queasy atmosphere, and some truly grueling moments of torture/ mutilation. Here from Gator Blade/ Sleaze box is region 1 DVDR of the film.
As part of the celebrations for Vinegar Syndrome's firth anniversary here’s a two-disc Blu Ray set offering up a fairly varied selection of weird, wacky, and at times wonderful exploitation & horror fare. All five films originally appeared on VS, as DVD releases- and here the films get their debut on Blu Ray- with both 2k & 4K scans. Vol #1 of this series takes in five hard-core & soft-core titles.
Returning to Malignant for their second release, American duo Shock Frontier's Tumult mixes the grim soundscapes of dark industrial with the menacing doom of death industrial. Over nine, cold tracks, Shock Frontier reveals a bleak soundscape for the listener, rife with post-apocalyptic furor. For those days when one is feeling that the sun is too bright, and the air is too warm, Tumult will remind him or her that it won't last for long, and a grim end is still within reach.
Waiting For Life To Get Better... is a two-way walled-noise split, bringing together Austria based Bruising Pattern & US/ Texas-based No123noise. Each party offers up a single twenty-minute track, and the releases comes in the form of a CDR in a slim DVD case.
Untitled 00001 is the debut release from this Florida based project. It comes in the form of a 3inc CDR, which offers up a single twenty-minute slice of buffeting, grinding, and battering wall-matter.
This rather strangely named walled noise project is from Columbia, Missouri- and here we have a 3inc CDR that is seemingly the projects first ever physical release. The disc offers up a single twenty one minute slice of wall-matter, that’s both bluntly bothersome & barrenly muffled.
Satanic warmaster are a one-man black metal band from Lappeenranta in Finland. The project was instigated in 1998 by “Werewolf” the band’s only mainstay during their 20 years of existence. Other musicians have dropped in to help him out during that time, but he remains the only actual member of the band. The band’s lyrical content focuses heavily on folklore and Satanism, and despite claims from some quarters Werewolf maintains that his beliefs are not in line with those of the NSBM. The band have had an incredible amount of success in their native Finland even reaching the top ten in the album charts. Five full length albums and a slew of EPs means the band have a huge back catalogue from which to draw, and this particular album as can be seen from its subtitle is A Compendium of Past Crimes, or a compilation of material from the band’s split EPs.
The organicist metaphor of society as like that of bees has a long history in Western thought, predating the better known bodily metaphor - which is the foundation of modern corporational doctrine - by several centuries. Originating in Antiquity, the notion that human society should imitate nature as best it can slowly came into question during the later European middle ages, under pressure from developing mercantile economy and advances in legal and political organisation. In the modern era the hive metaphor was increasing viewed as anti-democratic, suppressive of the individual and hive-like societies almost inevitably malevolent; think of the Borg in Star Trek or caricatures of Communism (particularly Chinese) during the Cold War. Nevertheless the beehive society metaphor never entirely vanished and in the Modern period was most often invoked as an embellishment to holistic economic thought. George Cruikshank's remarkable British Beehive image is paradigmatic in this respect, not least in its overall schematic similarity to medieval overviews of the hierarchical world such as those of Honorius of Autun. Tobias Schmitt's intriguing Parvenu appears to be an attempt to capture something of these ideas and their continuing relevance for modernity. Schmitt has form for this kind of leftfield enterprise with his previous Gruenrekorder release being the suitably labyrinthine Fauna and Flora of the Vatican City , put out in 2008 under his Suspicion Breeds Confidence moniker.
Shurayuki-hime's "Mori" is the third release from the project on the Minneapolis label Altar of Waste. The release comes as a c20 cassette, the casing is a nice pastel lavender and it was released in an edition of twenty, presumably long-sold-out, copies. This will be the second time I've reviewed the project for this site and, where as with other projects I might feel that it is unwarranted to return to a project when I could be devoting review time to so many other amazing artists who are yet to be given proper attention, this project has proven itself to be a powerhouse of mindblowing HNW that deserves all of the spotlight thrown its way.
Goatkraft are newcomers to Norwegian black metal scene. They have one demo and this mini-album to their name thus far. Released by the German label Iron Bonehead Productions, Angel Slaughter comes as either an MCD, 12"MLP, or digital download.