Beautiful guitar melodies and intricate finger-picking rampant over layered and treated recordings... this stuff is great! Something about the quality that is really awesome, the feel the recordings have is a unique and personal one. Side one offers the guitar, with occasional processed urban sounds accenting the mood. The ending offers great kid sounds, soothing guitar, all giving way to backwards tape come-down. A glorious trip from a musician constantly proving his versatility. [Dillon Tulk] What I wanna know is, what's up with the Vietnam fixation? The band appears to be in their twenties, young enough to have not even been born until after the war, but a large chunk of the album sure sounds like it's about the Vietnam war. Just check out some of the titles -- "Young Men Dead," "The First Vietnamese War," "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven," and "Call to Arms" are just the most obvious signs of this intriguing fixation. I don't know what that's all about, but I know that the band is really good, and very much a band (they played live shows in Austin and anywhere else that would have them for two years or so before putting out the self-titled EP that came out last fall, and it shows). Drums, guitar, and bass (three of the members are bass players) combine with the "drone machine" operated by Jennifer Raines for a long series of droning, groove-laden songs built on hypnotic beats and swank riffs on repeat and hold. Drugged-out tempos plus reverb worthy of an early 70s Hawkwind album plus singers who can actually sing (and with psychedelic soul!) plus clever and insightful lyrics plus swank songs and equally swank execution equals an album you need to hear. The best tracks are still the three best ones ("The First Vietnamese War," "Black Grease," and "Manipulation") held over from the initial four-track EP, but "Young Men Dead," "Empire," and "The Sniper at the Gates of Heaven" aren't far behind in the quality department, and the rest of the tracks are hardly filler. The band's sound isn't too far from stoner rock (in some places they vaguely resemble a more tripped-out Pharoah Overlord, for instance), but their songs are far more structured and complex than the average stoner rock ditty about muscle cars, dig? Strong, strong stuff, and the best American psych album I've heard in a while. Despite the name and old-school blackmetal connotations (the band, formed in 1991 and put on hiatus a couple of years later before reforming in 2005, originally contained the rhythm section of Beherit), this is not raw, primitive blackness by any means, and the vocals are most definitely not blackened and screechy-like. The band, back now with some personnel changes, makes their Celtic Frost worship no secret, but they really have more in common with symphonic dark metal (think Tiamat, Bethlehem, etc.) than anything else. The album opens with "Faustian Dream," an introduction with pretty guitar arpeggios, slo-mo depth charge bass, and piano that segues into symphonic keyboards in a progressive vein... until everything fades away to nothing but a piano, playing a melodic figure that gets faster... and faster... and faster... before finally seguing into "As Black As the Roses (As Weak As My Smile)." The songs that follow have a definite Bathory and Celtic Frost influence (especially in the vocals), but the diabolical riffs, melancholy melodies, and moods that shift abruptly and completely in the space of seconds -- aaaaaah, these are why blackmetal kollektorscum have spent so much time over the years trying to acquire the band's limited (and incredibly obscure, not to mention out of print) meager early output, like this album, for instance. The album was started in 1993 and shelved, incomplete, when band went on hiatus for its own reasons; they returned to it in 2005, reworking it substantially. I have no idea how much of it was completed prior the Great Shelving (or how much of that they kept, for that matter), but it doesn't sound dated at all, in spite of being stamped with obvious hallmarks of dark metal sounds circa 1993. I suspect a lot has been added since they returned, and certainly this is more hi-fi than anything I've ever heard by anything associated with Beherit (the rewritten album was recorded at Tico Tico Studios (where Impaled Nazarene and Sentenced have recorded recently) The guitar sound and riffs sometimes remind me of early Bethlehem, especially on tracks like "Wrath Without Hate," but often the guitar sounds like nothing you've ever heard in a metal context, and while the overall sound (keyboards, ambience, symphonic and operatic moments) has much in common with "lighter" metal fare, the classic distortoblur guitar and twisted ideas about structure, beats, and riffs owe their allegiance to nothing less than the first (and best, if you ask me) wave of true black metal. It's probably too "commercial" (whatever that means in the context of a genre that's willfully obscure by mainstream standards) for the purists, but fans of all the bands given props here (and especially of EMPEROR'S RETURN-era Celtic Frost) should give this a listen. This obscure entity is the harsh noise project of Greh Holger, the guy behind Hive Mind and Chondritic Sound. Apparently it is preceded by a number of rare limited cassettes and cd-rs. I can understand why people would be hunting the early stuff down, because this is good shit -- giant, cyclonic vistas of jagged white noise, junk noise, screeching, overamplification, snippets of conversation, sonic ugliness, CHAOS! Two long tracks worth, in fact, recorded and mastered at a ridiculously high volume for your speaker stress-testing needs. The first track is just a continuous onslaught of efx-addled noise frenzy, mostly centered on enormous machine-drone and stuttering power-electronic haze. The second track is even harsher, a wild ride through jumbled noise textures, like listening to the transmission of a cheap microphone in a steel barrel going over Niagara Falls and tumbling down the whitewater rapids below. This is sinus-cleaning stuff, blinding walls of sonic filth the way good noise should be... yes... yes... YES!!! Whoah! Starts off proper with The Rita's low-end feeding frenzy. Transitioning to the first Bone Awl song, "I Feel Tension"... a killer song with lyrics we can all relate to regarding teeth escaping to eat flesh... then The Rita starts eating divers again. This tape seems to just get sicker... Bone Awl's next song "Black Beasts" is an appropriately ferocious number about people being attacked by black beasts! Setting up for another attack from The Rita...this one is particularly unforgiving on the low. "Ill Break your arms/legs/ribs, with my hands!" screams Bone Awl on their next track, repeating into submission, a simple and excellent thrasher to close side one. B opens with another Rita bombardment... I'm really digging the unrelenting low on all these, makes my speakers shake and it sounds like flames. Bone Awl delivers another simple murder anthem, giving way to more Rita madness. This one sneaks some highs in, like more teeth. The final Bone Awl track is about lapping blood, it's sick, it's HEAVY dude! Of course, The Rita's closer is gruesome, low, crackling pain. This tape would be really good in the car! [Dillon Tulk] This CD absolutely rules! Ravesploitation... seriously, this entire thing sounds like some happy hardcore junior-high girldream. It's fucked up. Two dudes and a bunch of electronics take you on a (totally serious) journey on the back of a unicorn and beyond! "Girls Gone Wild" is a particularly awesome track, current favorite...hilarious. Some of the moments on the album just make you LAUGH, not just from the lyrics just how the music is presented... it really all comes together in an awesome way. When the vocoder accents the word 'shit' you can't help it. Every song is unique and rad and about some topic regarding girl troubles, from girl's perspectives... sang by two guys, get it? From Deathbomb, go get it! [Dillon Tulk] More whole-grain goodness from this new drone-oriented label. Cel presents six tracks of electronic frippery enshrouded in brooding mechanical drones, and while the tracks are capable of standing alone, listening to the cd-r without stopping is sure to leave you enveloped in a mist of drone and muted feedback. The sound calls to mind giant robots gathering in a place long-forgotten by men, to sit around in a mechanical chill-out room drinking motor oil and tripping. This is eerie, mysterious stuff, well worth the time and attention of hardcore drone fans. At times the sound reminds me a lot of the more subdued moments from Cold Electric Fire, which is definitely a good thing. Now this is serious sonic ultraviolence -- grinding waves of metallic death mastered at a volume loud enough to sterilize roaches from fifty feet away. Don't listen to this one with headphones if you're a sissy, okay? As for those desperate to grok the backstory, listen up here -- this is the collection (on one cd-r) of the trilogy of 3" cd-rs originally released a few years ago on Chondritic Sound, Fargone Records, and Audiobot. All three tracks have been remastered, and the results are appropriately obnoxious. "Virgin Witch," the one originally released on Chondritic Sound, is a blown-out crunchfest from the word go, a thunderous slo-mo avalanche of grinding robots doing battle with mutant tanks as enormous dynamos hum in the background while bombs and missiles blow up everything in sight. It's not so much evil as it is willfully obnoxious and unrelenting, a headache-inducing masterpiece of audio torment. The Audiobot track, "Devil's Witch," is nowhere near as full-on, but the deliberately-irritating sounds, washed-out ambient noise background, and overall creeped-out "misfiring neurons in the mind of a serial killer" vibe make it a hell of a lot more unnerving. Despite the title, "Season of the Witch" (originally released on Fargone) has nothing to do with (that I can tell, anyway) with the Donovan classic from way back when the hippies were in charge of the musical hit parade. It is real diabolical-sounding, though, with swampy, burbling noise, satanic overblown hissing, and other forms of noise and musique concrete distorted beyond all recognition and blown up twice as loud as necessary. This is the kind of power electronics I like -- loud, crunchy, and completely over the top. Worth chasing down, especially if you missed out on the original versions, which were difficult to find then (to put it politely) and way beyond impossible to find (or afford) now. Bonus points for listing all their influences as horror films rather than musical or noise acts. (Yes, the movies in question are every bit as joyfully hideous as you expect, too.) Strange but oddly compelling stuff, which is hardly a surprise since it's an Austin band, right? Here we have three dudes in possession of synths, guitar, and drums who sound like a rock band with a fondness for incorporating strange noises and sounds into what would otherwise be a straightforward electrorock group. (Well, their singer has strange ideas about vocals and frequently sounds like he's singing through a bullhorn....) Taking a cue from the pop world, the fiffteen songs on the disc are generally pretty short -- only one is (barely) over four minutes, a few are less than two minutes long, and most of the rest of them hover around the three-minute mark. While their sound has its shambolic moments, the beat never wavers, and the result is a punked-out, surrealistic listening experience. Deliberately eccentric and definitely coming from out of left field, they still remain surprisingly catchy and upbeat. Lo-fi, DIY production and presentation make this the work of real underground artists, and they're coming from such a distinctive place soundwise that it's hard to even figure out who's inspired them, much less what to call them. Their mission appears to be to turn rock inside-out without making it horribly unrecognizable, and that mission is successful. Deaf Center, made up of Erik Skodvin and Otto Totland, (I've no idea who does what...) create beautifully gloomy music, perfect for dreary afternoons and lonely foggy nights. Many of the pieces have an open, cinematic vibe, with a lonely piano playing minor key melodies over lush, mostly dissonant synth pads and drones. Occasionally an unidentified creaking or clacking will work its way into the mix -- see the unnerving "Loft." A lot of acts have started to tread the cinematic/ambient waters, but very few can do it well, and even fewer can do it as well as Deaf Center. [n/a] It's too bad it's not still the 80s, because then some smart label like 4AD or Chrysalis would have snapped this band up in a jiffy. As it is, because they are not filled with angst and know how to spell their name and demonstrate no evidence whatsoever of having ever even heard of nu-metal (much less any of the other horrible forms of "music" currently clogging up the biz), they are probably having to work to get noticed. Which is too bad, because they're really, really good. Essentially a trio fronted by gorgeous (visually and vocally) singer Victoria Mazze (the other two guys, both named Chris, play percussion and synths, which should tell you a lot right there; occasionally they bring in a guest for extra accompaniment), their sound has very little to do with what's currently "hot" and everything to do with what sounds good in the world of pop music. Obvious touchstones would include the likes of Depeche Mode, Pulp, Garbage, Tori Amos, Kate Bush, Massive Attack, The Gorillaz, Blondie, Portishead, and the Cure, just for starters, but they certainly don't sound like a pastiche of various bands -- rather, they sound like a trio weaned on high-quality electropop and determined to churn out their own, new version of the same. (And it's a good version, believe me.) This five-song EP is a throwback to the days when bands like the Cocteau Twins and Lush commanded serious attention, and it's a nice reminder of what can still be done with the pop format when the instruments and gadgets are in the hands of people who know what they're doing. The songs are short and to the point, filled with interesting sounds and insistent (but not frantic) beats and synths, all topped off by amazing vocals from Victoria, who often reminds me of Siouxsie Sioux minus the eccentric vocal tics. (This is especially true of "Crawl," which reminds me of TINDERBOX-era Banshees.) All five songs are excellent and hopefully there will more, much more, to follow in the future. Strange things happen when you get sucked into the orbit of a rock icon who checks out early. Dylan Carson knows all about that, but you'd never guess from the look and sound of Earth's first album of all-new studio material in nearly a decade. Rather, it looks like Dylan went and developed himself a serious fixation on the old West and reverb (especially reverb). For the first time in Earth's history, the volume is not the main topic of consideration, and the addition of extra players (especially the drummer) makes for a far more complex sound than listeners steeped in the early releases might have imagined possible. The new sound has been compared to Morricone's soundtracks for spaghetti westerns, with good reason, but it also greatly resembles the tonally-charged polyrhythmic excursions of guitar ensemble Tone (formed by a couple of previous members of Savage Republic) and Rhys Chatham. There are interesting rhythms at work here, but the main attraction is the combination of brilliant guitar sound bathed in endless reverb and the harmonic convergence of the equally majestic chord progressions. For music that's fairly minimalist, it's also surprisingly complex, not to mention rich in tone and texture. The nine songs on here are all excellent. This may well be the band's finest album; there's no doubt it's the most readily accessible. This cassette is shocking, and wonderful. Throughout the various parts you feel each one's different texture and atmosphere. Slow moving synth textures, crumbling static and feedback smoke. A style completely his own, but reminiscient of such great, 'classic' power electronic/industrial acts. Once the monstrous static walls and feedback shrieks become the flavor of side one, you've already been hooked. It just gets better! While each Part maintains a specific mission and definite sonic identity, they never repeat themselves or feel drawn out...rather each is composed for full speaker shaking power! The second side is ripe with rhythmic synth pieces, from the acidic and crass to the filthy, lurking tones. All around excellent work, looking forward to hearing more! [Dillon Tulk] A slooooooow moving synth tone sets the mood for the first side. A low wave is crackled and sputtered across the length of the starting half, incredibly trance-inducing and lulling mechanic rhythyms. Barely changes until later when some strange tapes and a high pitched whistle enter, only to be cut swiftly into more slowly oscillating lowness. Really frightening sounding vocals start creeping in... it's excellent. High wails excellently placed in the mix put the listener on edge, hovering above the bed of ugly static synth tones. The B-side utilizes more of the sinister, creeping synth and cackling, spitting electronics... a bit more aggressive on the approach. It gets rather ugly a bit of the way in, only to fade away into a thump-wail kind of groove for a while, then becomes a metal clang, screech, field recording collage. It resumes pummeling low tones after this, and evolves slowly throughout the remaining time on the tape. Another fantastic Emaciator release! [Dillon Tulk] For some reason I can't write about Excepter without resorting to adjectives like "collapsed" or "crawling." Maybe it's because half the time their music reminds me of NEU! slowing down their singles to 16 rpm, the grainy and aquatic rumble of cymbals vibrating at quarter-speed as the slurred slurry of instruments exudes concealed harmonic weirdness. If you imagine the same treatment applied to the 48 minute version of "I Feel Love" but with the rhythm stumbling, the synths burning out into a smoky sheen and the vocals reduced to muttered perverse polymorphism and you have the two parts of "Jrone," some of the best stuff I've heard excepter do so far (or really some of the best stuff I've heard in the idiom of electronic music). The rest of the album consists of "The Heart Beat", which rhythmically is just that, plus two-finger keyboard riffs and incomprehensible male whispers and "The Ass" which sounds like the previous track suffering an asthma attack on the beach and gradually losing consciousness. Good but you're really buying it for the amazing "Jrone," which is like having your skull lined with mink and filled with cinnamon massage oil. [Gafne Rostow] This comes on like a drunken crawl through Sun Ra's solo synth albums and Kraftwerk's back catalogue, slurred mumbling over lazily spun synth whorls and plinked-out drum machine, and then "One More Try" is done. "Second Chances" takes the same approach to 80 WaxTrax singles and completely fails to get it together enough to get off the floor let alone properly _on_ it. It isn't cool to compare stuff to Can anymore, so "Dawn Patrol" sounds like anything but Can (maybe mixed with a little bit of Deutsche-Amerikanische Freundschaft) going crazy with cheap electronics in a googolplex of echoplexes. The jewel in this EPs navel is the semi-titular "The Sun Bomber," almost ten minutes of creepy-crawling dubby cheaptronics that sounds like a break down and rebuild of the opening track, wobbling down through some layered drones and finally falling apart anticlimactically, if that's possible for the climax of a climax to do. [Gafne Rostow] The Haunted Castle side: tentative ripples and deceptively calm cheap keyboard sounds. Then the casio-wibbling action builds to 70s horror soundtrack shrieks and the noise becomes a stand-in for a howling, ghostly wind before getting into some fairly typical but quite enjoyable noise hash with the occasional bit of yelling. Could be more distinguished/distinguishable but good. Next: got those Air Conditioning and Gerogerigegege (circa INSTRUMENTS DISORDER) albums memorized already? Grey Skull's here to piss a new ray of sunshine up you. I think they're a power trio, but who can tell. There are drums, sure, but the rest is stringed (?) instruments being pushed to the top or bottom end of their effective range, growling blood-spattered blurts and needling whistles that knock my high range hearing out for days at a time. Never really gets into a "groove" except at the end. And that one's locked. [Gafne Rostow] Since the latest Jesu release sounds like it's groping for the pert A-cups of college radio airplay and Skullflower don't sound much like Skullflower these days, may I point you at some Hjarnidaudi ("it's Icelandic for 'brain death'!")? This guy used to record under the name Hlidolf, which was sort of blackened doom/drone shit, and this continues in a similarly monochromatic line but with an almost-psychedelic edge to it. Interestingly the melodic base still sounds like later Burzum mixed with Godflesh to me, but instead of 'blackness' there's a burning sunblind glare, satori achieved through thudding drums and the searing fuzz of the guitars. Lots of bits where the music kind of stumbles to a halt and the guitars echo and return, echo and return. Three long instrumental tracks and not once did I look at my watch. [Gafne Rostow] This shit is insane! Originally released as a cassette in 1996 on Gosonic, it was recently re-released by Aaron Dilloway on his Hanson imprint...with good fucking reason! The most intense 12 minutes of screaming I have ever heard! She seriously does NOT STOP. It's just no holds-barred girly shrieks going through effects and hurting your ears. Her screaming is more shrill than any feedback! Builds and builds and eventually becomes this awesome delayed, cloudlike kind of dreamy bit with little yelps until it is all quiet. Extremely recommended and still available. All $$ goes to the Nepali Sign Language School Erika supports. [Dillon Tulk] I bought it for the cover, I admit. Some sort of being dissolving, melting, generally devolving into fibrous nastiness -- nihilistic, yet obsessively detailed, bearing a passing resemblance to old album art by slow crusties like Hellbastard, Axegrinder, Deviated Instinct. The needle dropped and fucked up vibrations began to ooze out. Sounded like metals, glass, stones, and wood abraded and disfigured through crude but imaginative distortion/filter/reverb action. Neanderthal shit, definitely, using electronics the way a caveman would beat you to death with your laptop computer. There is some delicacy in the way subtle drones are submerged beneath the scraping din but that's countered by the roaring, incoherent vocals chanting some sort of diseased rants against a diseased world as irregular waves of diseased noise erupt and subside, their decay creating more of a definition of space than their presence. Lovely. I think there's finally an antithesis to those Jewelled Antler hippies. [Gafne Rostow] Second verse pretty much same as the first. A little less breathing room on this one and the vocals are either more mangled or less present. Highlights include "Crackling Earth Crust," an exercise in onomatopoesis and iron-age noise timbres. "Thieves" surprises by backing down a little bit and getting into primitive electronics that have almost a 60s/70s radiophonic workshop/academic feel to them. And when the man tells you to "Adapt" you don't know whether you're being taunted or given warning of impending cataclysm - synapse-blanking high pitched tones vs. metal scrape don't leave the human mind a lot of wiggle room. [Gafne Rostow] "Leather Spine" provides a suitable entry point to the rest of the release...frenzied contact mic torture, extremely well composed and layered feedback and low crunches, storming and building to a messy climax. "Red Shirt" is a similar attack on the senses, hurricane-force contact mic abuse through effects, presented at full volume. Bleak, pained harsh noise. "Harness" starts the second cassette off perfect, ferocious... leads into cut-up, desolate sounding mechanic howls, then back to the sinister harshness. "Pearl", the closer, is a striking ambient piece that leaves the listener gently, and with a fleeting sense of hope for the future. Excellent counter to the hurtful, emotionally draining electronics contained on the rest of the release. [Dillon Tulk] Whoah! Really dismal sounding. Really distorted rhythyms, and howls befitting the song titles... All of which imply terminal illness and unheard cries for help. Excellent Power Electronics from Chad Wicked. "Help Me" is really spacious sounding and suffocating in it's approach. Dense synth squalls. "Terminally Ill" is another rhythmic howler, slightly more laid back in approach this time. "Clinical" is slow moving and hallucinatory synth exploration... then "Reach Out" is delayed, creeping banging sounds and shouts. [Dillon Tulk] The cover features the band's name rendered in some inscrutable death metal script under a picture of a guy with a steer skull in place of a head. That sort of thing sets up certain expectations when it comes to the nature of a band's music. When I see that sort of logo combined with artwork featuring animal skulls, I expect some nasty shit and in that regard, Job For A Cowboy don't disappoint. JFAC play a crusty mix of old-school death metal, grind, and hardcore. It's the perfect thing to throw on next time one of your "avant metal" friends tries to inflict Isis' "Panopticon" on you. [n/a] I'm still not sure exactly what the hell Kites are all about, but I know this: When they bring the sonic hammer at last on "Flag Torn Apart," after wading through rippling waters of trancelike hypnonoise, they do so with grotesque displays of emotion and sheer gut-wrenching violence in their sound. This is noise, yeah, but it's noise with a strategy in mind, a series of juxtapositions of sound, a talent for creating mantra-like noise textures that hypnotize the listener into submission before dropping the sonic bombs one after another, exploding through the speakers in a chaotic burst of physical drama. Kites are way more dynamic that most of the efx-pedal noise bands, which is a huge point in their favor. It doesn't hurt that when they peg out at the peak of their dynamic, their dynamic is PRETTY GODDAMN LOUD (in a very dynamic sort of way, natch). Some of the clusterfuck pure-overkill crunch they get on "Exploded Face" is the kind of stuff old-school nightmares are made of, while the crashing and bashing on "Downward / Creepy Crawl" has an amusing sort of predictably unpredictable theme of needless chaos. My favorite moment must be the hypnotic and catchy riff that introduces "True," only to be hidden and maybe even destroyed by truly ugly glitch tones. Some of the material hovers occasionally hovers in the neighborhood of sounding like an actual song (a very disturbed and structurually perverse song, but a song) as opposed to jagged bursts of noise and sonic thunder; the best of them is the title track, which closes the album. When you talk about Knurl, you're automatically going back to the old school -- noise fiend Alan Bloor has been plying his singular aesthetic (the joys of making noise with amplified and distorted sounds of scrap metal) since 1994, and while he's not always the most prolific or well-known of the first wave of post-Whitehouse / Merzbow noisemakers, his works are generally among the most intense. He shares with Aube a fascination not only for metal as a sound source and blinding, harsh noise / feedback for textures, but also an attention to detail and developing structure sometimes reminiscent of Contagious Orgasm's sprawling soundscapes. The seven tracks on this disc were recorded October 29, 2005 (as one studio session or as a live appearance, possibly from the 2005 San Francisco Harsh Noise Festival, is unclear), and none are for the faint of heart. This is eardrum-piercing, bone-snapping, fried-neuron NOISE, like a high-volume acid bath for your ears. A couple of the later tracks ease into the gut-blowing action rather than tossing it in your face from the word go, but that's just to give your ears a chance to recover for a moment before starting another wave of indecent sonic assault. Trust me, this is savage metallic junk noise for the discerning noisehead. Hear for yourself why the man continues to be worthy of serious props in the noise world. Maim offers spacious, cut-up muck and low-end panic. Sound drops out momentarily only to crash back in more chaotic than ever, tornadic in execution but finely composed. Sick skipping enters at one point briefly, but the game here is dense fucking great harsh walls! Pedestrian Deposit offers an interesting piece on this split, with thick, frantic ugliness giving away to simple, repetitive piano melodies. This changes textures throughout, but retains the goal of switching from meticulously executed noise and melodic piano moments. [Dillon Tulk] This is kind of interesting -- power electronics with the same kind of absurdist presentation as irr. app. (ext)., but with a sense of humor in the titles (my favorite is "i figured power electronics would be a good way to meet girls"). The opening track, "something terrible is about to happen," is filled with shuddering drone, sweeping waves of resonant sound, and various kinds of forbidding electronic edginess. There's some serious crunch at work on "despite what you may have read on the internet, iowa is not the new michigan" (along with piercing tones and various scraping, rumbling sounds), and a lot of high-pitched painfulness nearly (but not quite) drowning out the samples from television and elsewhere on "the great hum goddess in the sky is trying to tell you something," which metasizes into a howling screechfest like a whirling hall of knives processed through an enormous echo chamber. The final track, "you are my sunshine," is a trip through the land of droning, dying machines -- more subtle than some of the tracks, but definitely still dedicated to the Big Hum (and noise). The insert beseeches the listener to donate to the Heresee Recovery Project (a worthy cause, indeed), leading me to suspect this is a side-project of something else, not that it matters. Strange, cryptic, yet ultimately interesting stuff, about as much drone as it is power electronics. What we have here is nothing less than seven tracks of fractured noise terror, in which Metalux attempts to sound like an actual band (sort of) while Weise uses jagged waves of noise to bury them from time to time. The sounds they come up with are bizarre, sometimes even unnerving, especially when Wiese starts turning everything up to 11 on his pile of gadgets and the sound becomes utterly disemboweled. This is actually not as violently full-on harsh noise as I expected it would be, but due to the eccentric vision shared by all the artists involved, it's far more unsettling than I would have imagined -- there's a level of strangeness at work here that far exceeds the reach of most harsh-noise albums (which are generally fixated less on weirdness than on drilling holes in your eardrums). There's something actually approaching a real beat (provided by glitches, natch) on the fourth track, but it eventually starts to get lost in a growing infusion of scratches, bleeps, and other eccentric sonic effluvia. The unholy union of glitch electronics and harsh noise yields startling fruit, to say the least.... Absolutely slamming guitar and drum abuse from two kids out of Seattle. The music is very much in the same vein as other, more well known drum/guitar or drum/bass duos, godheadsilo, Big Business, Lightning Bolt, The Pope, etc.... What's scary is that the guys are so young (both are in their late teens) and like fellow Washingtonians Lozen, are already giving their influences a run for their money. [n/a] This is the sound of music made by psychotic people -- dissonant, fractured, unpredictable, a flowing series of art-damaged audio dramas in which nothing is possible and everything is permitted. Chaos theory as music, if you will. Na are three people -- Kazu Nomura (guitar, voice), Shin Yamada (percussion, electronics, voice), and Noriaki Watanabe (keyboards, percussion) -- all students from Japan who met while attending Shoreline Community College in Seattle. Bonding over pink shoes and John Cage led to fooling around with gadgets and instruments, which in turn led to this bizarre but playful album, which sounds very much like what you might get if you went to a school for precocious, gifted children and just handed out instruments at random and told everybody to play at once and see what happens. Some of the songs almost (but not quite) approach what "normal" people might recognize as music, but most of it is a sonic potpourri of dizzying proportions. If there are rules to music, these players seem to be either unaware or uninterested in them -- which is not to say they're bad or amateurish (although I'm sure the average listener not hep to experimental stuff might think so), just that they prefer to make the rules up as they go. The results are frequently disorienting, but more "together" than you might think. Strange, strange stuff that should appeal to fans of chaotic and disorganized music. This is apparently state of the art USBM or something like that, released on Battle Kommand and given a more proper distribution by Southern Lord. I don't know much more than that, but this sure sounds old-school and kult enough for me -- it's very much influenced by Immortal, Krieg, first-wave Norwegian black metal, etc. In other words, all the good stuff. They sound good and classically melodious on the ambient and orchestral passages, but when they blaze, they really blaze. There's an interesting progressive-rock influence happening as well, one that surfaces mainly in the harmonies and rhythmic drift of the lengthy instrumental jam sections. What I like about this album is that it quickly establishes a certain dark and morose mood that never really changes, but the texture, flow, and dynamics of the music remain in constant flux. Their sound is stripped-down and not unnecessarily cluttered, but it is more complex as well than it might sound to the casual listener. They get bonus bonus for the bass-heavy Burzum feel of "chosen by no one," which manages to work in some European-influenced thrash worship as well. They give notice of their capacity for speed and unbridled ferocity on "circumvention" and "eternal ground" (actually, it's not like anything here is exactly slow), with the rest of the album moving along at more or less the same velocity, if not always the same level of heaviness. The songs are separated by strange noise interludes every bit as weird, complex, and mysterious as the songs themselves. One of the better USBM releases I've heard in a while now. They're back, and the saucy cover has nothing in particular to do with the cd's contents, but it does suggest a certain level of cheekiness that's matched by song titles like "histronix," "satin vengeance," and "the impious one." The sound is more of what we've come to expect from this restless free-jazz / avant-noise trio, on this release playing drums, bass, and baritone -- swirling shards of revved-up freedeathjazzmetal that occasionally coalesce into passages of beyond-heavy swagger and ball-crushing low end. With chops and willfully eccentric vision on par with bands like Last Exit, Blind Idiot God, and early Funkadelic, a clanging warehouse kitchen-sink sound worthy of Unsane, Prong, or early Swans, and an aggressive fondness for circling around industrialized tribal grooves like Gore (the one from Holland, not Brazil) drunk on bad tequila, the whole enterprise comes across as the work of frightened, desperate men armed with heavy amplification and fighting off the puzzling cognitive dissonance brought on by, say, ingesting equally copious quantities of methamphetamines and downers. Or maybe it's all just a knowing in-joke on that legendary too-hot-to-use Metallica album title, METAL UP YOUR ASS. Hell, maybe they're just pining for a Painkiller reunion. Whatever it is, they're hopped-up and not shy about working through their angst at high volume. If you're already down with the crown you'll welcome this with open arms; if it didn't make sense before, well, it sure as hell won't make any more sense now. (But it will crush you like a bug, so watch your step.) Opens with some interesting and lovely ambient sounds, eventually erupting into harsh noise. GWA terrorizes the room with great big walls of painful, frightening noise. Side B has another nice ambient break, then quickly returns to the walls, real freak-out captured... screaming and clanging through plenty of thick distortion. Ends abrubtly, applause. Excellent. [Dillon Tulk] What a goddamn fucked up, delicious headache of a record -- like an unholy mishmash of Yoko Ono, no wave via Harry Pussy and the kind of bassy sludge-rock pioneered by various US bands in the 90s, Ovo's sound is a chaos of playful fuckedness, fluttery vocal and drum duets giving way to surging, ugly bass grooves of speaker-powdering intensity and Stefania's disharmonic growling. "CoCo," fr'instance centers around a swing beat, simple sing-song lyrics and muted guitar scrapes -- it's cute in a way -- and then "Mammut" sounds almost like Melt-Banana covering Man Is The Bastard, all gnashing bass chords and crazed monkey war drums. For me the highlight's gotta be the title track, where they go widescreen epic in 20 minutes of flatlining rhythm section with the vocals taking center stage as an example of all the things you shouldn't do with the human throat. [Gafne Rostow] Opens with some disturbing high pitches and grating, strained rumbles. Begins to loop and enchant, then becomes full-on maddening fury about a minute and a half in. Excruciatingly edited, every tiny detail of the sound is composed and constructed into frenzied, bleak electronic reflections of life...maintains interest through the entire album. Pieced together from years of recordings, this is a triumph in Pedestrian Deposit's growing amount of releases, and is surely a gem for any harsh noise enthusiast, period. Extremely well-presented barrages of harsh-noise decadence, interspersed with the most beautiful and dynamic 'ambient' portions, to give the listener a bit of breathing room. Music for punching a mirror. [Dillon Tulk] Like, OW, dude. Anybody with even passing knowledge of Dominick F's infernal noise activities under the name Prurient knows what to expect now -- that's right, ear-splitting, screech-addled, high-pitched feedback and frequently lots of screaming. In a weird way Prurient is really the concept of primal scream therapy applied to sound and taken to its logical (and pathologically unbearable, especially at high volume) extreme. Dominick's detractors have opined from time to time that his sound is kind of one-dimensional, and I suppose to the average traditional music fan it probably is, but there's plenty of emotion in those squealing frequencies and the man's truly harrowing screams. On this particular release, which incorporates large, tubby noise drums on some tracks in addition to the usual efx-induced noise-hate, the themes seem to revolve mainly around incoherent rage, sadomasochism, perverted / rough sex, and other unsavory subjects. The sound of the individual tracks range from pure, screaming white noise feedback to a wild mess o' hollering amid soul-crushing distortion, feedback, and fucked-up drums, with plenty of different combinations in between. This disc's sound was designed to present a serious challenge to your hearing, to say the least -- you may or may not buy into the whole sordid darkness trip (I thought it was all right, especially the part about the dirty pictures in the artwork), but there's no question that the sound is pure aggressive violence bent on breaking your soul, and if it can't achieve that, then at least your eardrums. The scary part is that I don't think this is his loudest release (that would probably be either his side of the split with Kites or FOSSIL, I'm sure). They're goth and not afraid to say so -- like you would have really mistaken them for a metal band or something after actually seeing what they look like (two women in full-on goth gear and a guy who looks like one of the bad guys in THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN). Suriel's upfront bass work is straight from the New Order / Joy Division / Siouxsie and the Banshees / Cure tip, Kara has the dreamy and ethereal voice so familiar to the goth genre, and Loki provides guitars and beats that are very much in line with old-school goth territory. They throw some amusing curve balls with the opening "Prelude" and the intro to "Undone," but mostly they stick to pure wholesome goth moves, with most of the emphasis on Kara's soaring, dreamy vocals and songs designed to keep moving without distracting from the singing. Within the goth framework, they employ a number of interesting sounds and moods to keep things fresh (the fat beats and fuzzy keyboards on "Winter World" are a particularly swell touch), without ever moving out of recognizably goth territory. If you grew up on the first wave of goth, especially bands like October Project, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and the like, you'll find much to like here. Thick speaker terror. Rumbling bassy crackling harsh ugly noise. Like being set aflame. 15 minutes of it, dense unmoving walls. Not much else to be said. Horrible walls of cruel muck with little variation. Sam lurks around the deepest parts of your stereo, consistently vicious. [Dillon Tulk] Extremely scathing harsh electronics courtesy of Impregnable + Blud Thirst. Rising and crashing waves of distorted madness. Side a end with a reverb soaked drop. The b-side is similar in it's layered walls of feedback and rhytmic hiss. Again, with plentiful waves of harsh tones and screeches rising and crashing throughout. Wonderfully orchestrated harsh noise. [Dillon Tulk] First off, I can't believe that this was recorded live. It's astonishing what Mr. Saunders can achieve with his digital set-up. Utilizing the computer (and other tools) to the most extreme depths of harsh noise and ambient realms, Anthony delivers 8 rehearsals (ah!) each varying in lengths from 4:35-14:35! Recorded over the summer of 2005, this CDR definitely delivers everything you'd want, an extremely well-rounded and finely crafted release. Some of the sounds on this thing are just HARSH... it's wonderful. The second track showcases static loops, sounds that are almost like wind, and extremely high pitches building into a monster. The third is crunchy and cut-up, looping delayed synth textures and crackles, while the 4th has a similar cut-up method but vaguely rhythmic and glitchy feel to it. This quickly evolves into looping and harsh swirling chaos, courtesy of (I believe) some circuit-bent instruments. Track 5 is all out murder, expertly composed and panned, sliced apart but continuously scathing in delivery. Following this, we have a piece consisting largly of HUGE swells in sound and heavily mechanical feeling textures. Seven is a drastic exploration in the heavily cut-up and panned method used in earlier tracks, to a disorienting extent not achieved often on noise recordings. The closing track is a beautiful, crackling ambient piece, full of frying tones and popping electronic fires. [Dillon Tulk] My, this is awfully heavy on the loud electronics tip for an Accretions release -- but it's actually more like a freejazz album overlaid with power electronics or something equally insane. What's scary is how well it works. Milton Cross (violin, piano, electronics) and Steven Dye (bass clarinet, "flubaphonics") work together to create a kind of tense, droning approach to minimalist experimental sounds, often smothering it in electronics that alternately enhance or obscure the tones coming from the more traditional instruments. Some tracks (like "radiosonde") are a bit closer to traditional improv fare, but then there are tracks like "broken element" that are actually closer in execution to traditional power electronics, only done here with more of an improv / jazz attitude as opposed to turning everything up to eleven and erasing your face -- long, droning tones from the violin are met (and merged wtih) rising electrotones, until it's hard to tell which is which (and then you discover that you don't care, because it doesn't matter). Using such a minimal number of instruments, they manage to create a wide variety of interesting tones and textures. The whole affair was mastered by Drucifer (he of the mighty Dielectric Records), so of course it sounds pretty spiffy. Interesting stuff, and not at all what I would have expected from Cross being involved. Hmmmm... long-assed songs that build to cascading crescendos, heavily delayed guitars, no singer, abstruse snippets of dialogue... I do believe this might be some sort of post-rock record. This is a bit of a problem for me as the sub-genre doesn't do a whole lot for me. It's not that I have a problem with long songs or instrumental music, it's that too often, despite the build-ups the music seems to go nowhere. Rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. Tension can be a very powerful thing when used properly, however when overused the impact is diminished, and unfortunately this is the case with Sickoakes' "Seawards". The band are all very capable players, but over the course of the disc it becomes apparent that almost every song follows the same template (see the first sentence above). If "Seawards" were and EP, it wouldn't be as noticeable, but it's an album and two or three songs in, the repetition becomes a bit grating. After all that, I know there a lot of people who really get behind this sort of thing and fans of GSYBE! and the like may want to investigate further. [n/a] As I sit here listening to ARRIVED IN GOLD my right ear may or may not have a ruptured eardrum, but it's definitely infected and everything sounds swimmy and weirdly overmodulated, with high frequencies seeming to enter a fraction of a second after low. Perfectly appropriate, I suppose, for this one. Samara Lubelski (Hall of Fame and a solo artist) does an amazing job of transubantiating the Sightings sound from their familiar cinderblocks-n-rebar to an almost intimate, living room kind of vibe. Seriously. The distortion and feedback is still there but seething quietly this time as surprisingly eloquent "actual songs" wander through, with unpredictable and alien melodies ("Sugar Sediment" sounds almost like African kalimba music) interspersed with mumbled funk laceration ("Internal Compass"), almost RAPEMANesque noiserock ("Dudes") and Pollocky scrabbles ("One Out Of Ten", "The Last Seed"). And "Arrived In Gold, Arrived In Smoke" might just cement Sightings' theoretical techno/house influence people on the internet keep talking about. Well, one guy. (Not me.) I'm still in awe of how this band can turn what seem to be minor changes in their sound into major explorations of the way they put things together. And then slowly pull them apart. [Gafne Rostow] Okay, since there's no way you can read that logo (not you either, I know you cheated!), let's get a few blackmetal facts about this KVLT!!! act out of the way right up front. Striborg is the long-running underground Tasmanian black metal band led by Sin-Nanna, and if his name sounds vaguely familiar, that's probably because Sunn O))) name-checked him in one of their titles on their new disc, BLACK ONE. (The guys in Sunn O))) apparently think Striborg is totally the shit and stuff.) This release on Southern Lord is actually a combination of new material (the EMBITTERED DARKNESS album) and old obscurities (the rare ISLE DES MORTES demo from 1997). The new stuff sounds very much like a traditional necro black metal album should -- clear and distinct, with that chilly sound and those frying-in-grease guitars drowning in reverb -- without being too fussy about things. (The tracks from the demo, of course, are beyond lo-fi; in fact, in places they make Nunslaughter look overproduced, if such a thing is even possible. I fucking defy you, seriously, to listen to all of the demo tracks from start to finish.) Described in the poop sheet as "bleak, misanthropic, despressive" black metal, all of which is certainly true, but the real selling (or breaking) point for most listeners will be Sin-Nanna's grimly embittered death-croaking, which sounds much like Gollum with a bad head cold raving from the bottom of a well -- no question, you can either hang with it or you can't, and there isn't much room for waffling, especially since the vocals are waaaaaaay upfront and helpfully swaddled in enormous amounts of reverb. The music behind all that reverb -- far, far away and bathed in its own reverb, for this is definitely blackened and lo-fi TRVE!!! production, dig -- is pretty much old-school blackmetal riffing and atmospheric fog. The dark ambient passages between the songs are actually kind of pretty and classically-influenced, which makes it a real shock when the hideous vocals come in, accompanied by those buzzing flies circling over the body (oh wait, those are guitars). Once you get used to the voice (and it's very much an acquired taste, to be sure), the entire presentation pays successful homage to the original spirit of the first wave of Norwegian black metal. The demo tracks, though, are definitely for the hardcore Striborg fans only, although I do kind of wonder what the songs would sound like properly recorded.... The first track is awesome, slowly moving, crackling harsh noise bits. The second track is REAAALLY good, starts off with tape trickery, really the kind of stuff I like... then goes with little warning into a full-blown maelstrom of harsh craziness. It wavers back and forth between more calmed down squiggly moments into loud smacks of crunch and hiss. Really great dynamics. 3rd track is a return to the walls, with more high-end thrown in there. Tornadic... but also feels like being smothered, there's little interesting sounds buried under everything and it heightens the experience. 4th track is a quick, painful cut-up frenzy of contact mic abuse... 5th is more excellent tape mangling. I need to hear more of this aspect of the project, because she does it REALLY well... incredibly psychedelic. The remainder of the disc switches between the elements already introduced, but keeps it creative (and different enough) to keep the listener from losing interest. The closing track is a rumbling beast, and really rattles some speakers. Excellent. [Dillon Tulk] I like how this stuff sounds on tape. The first cassette's starting half is a hive of static and a constant, wavering hum hiding under it all. Second half is wiggly feedback loop sounds that quickly builds into multiple tracks of ugly, fast-paced noise. The second cassette starts off with some rumbling, then this high pitched squeal wanders around, changing shapes. Becomes a thick crackling torrent in a hurry. B side takes on the form of sputtering, electronic insect garbles and chirps while they fly around. Becomes a howling robot that wants to kill everything, and does. [Dillon Tulk] Dead Sea Liner is a new cd-r label on the other side of the ocean who apparently aim to be one of the new transmission routes for heavy drone action, celestial or otherwise. This particular cd-r is not only the debut release from the label, but (I think) the debut by Textured Bird Transmission, and I sure hope it is, because this is brilliant shit, like that live One Inch of Shadow stuff I raved about many moons ago, but darker and more forbidding without invoking any of the traditional / cliche "dark" motifs, if you get my drift. The album is one long piece that unfolds over nearly thirty minutes, like a series of icebreakers crawling slowly through deeper and thicker slabs of ice as they creep up on the mother of all glaciers. I don't know what it is they're doing or how they're getting their "motive power" (I'm guessing lots of powerful drugs, but I'll freely admit that is purely conjecture), but whatever it is, they're doing it right and we need more of it. I'll bet when they send off the flies that have been swatted, this is the music they play at the funerals. Or something like that. Buzz, buzz, buzz goes the powerful, endless drone of doom.... Creepy, tortured panning screams and nice cruddy noise throughout. Lo-fi trash, painful and wonderfully gross collaboration between the two artists. I enjoy how the tape moves around, rolling into a frenzy. Side B is even more painful, feedback plentiful, and unrelenting. Really frightening shrieks. Ends with some music in a 4-track. [Dillon Tulk] What once was a cartoony digi-grind group has transformed into a fucking violent and insane power electronics act. A force to be reckoned with. Traditional (?) PE-fare, deep bassy rhythyms and static squalls... caustic vocals. Tracks are short and sweet and full of variation... between 'ambient' breathing moments, pulling you in and hypnotizing you... then unleashing the fury of the sluts, screaming, stripping, and throwing kids into drum sets with reckless abandon and drunken wildness. Epic closer. Packaged in pornography. [Dillon Tulk] GABBER! Two ten-minute assaults on your body courtesy of each Artist. Vankmen delivers a suitable speecore killfest. Really excellent cut-up into more hip-hop feeling moments, maintaining a steady noisy "cd-skipping" freakout throughout. Love that distorted bass kick? You get plenty, kicking around your fucking skull. Realicide ups the ante with some kids repping Cincinnati and samples a-plenty from Slimer to Slipknot. Pick this up if you can, seriously the fastest thing I've ever heard. Will make you BANG YOUR HEAD. [Dillon Tulk] 15 tracks ranging from the brutal (Tralphaz) to the spacey (Anti-Ear) to the wonderful noise of Emil Beaulieau and Rubber O Cement! The opening track from Giorgio Marauder & Luz Alibi was really weird and I enjoyed the creepy voices and bells, my cat did too. The live pieces from Kevin Shields, and Brian Miller (both seperately) are really exciting and 'different' harsh noise bits... really exhilirating! The closing track is really good too, Tuly Velte with a blanket of psychedelic sounds to send you off. [Dillon Tulk] First half lurches into existence with some gross Sick Llama piece. Tape decay filth, sounds like a dude dragging metal around in a cave, and witches barfing into pitch-shifters or something. Smegma is up next with a killer live excerpt. Typical Smeg-style jamming lunacy. Rocks your brain up and down and around. Closes with an extremely trance inducing Failing Lights track... with so much panning spookiness going on I really felt out of my body. The second half rules as well, with a killer mucky opener from Oubliette that really browns it up, and gives you your dose of hiss. Tusco Terror is next with a fucking weirdo jam that goes all over the place from harsh crunches into 'musical' bits. Closes with a slow-moving (ha) Hive Mind brainwarp. Synth bugs eat your soul. [Dillon Tulk] Drone goddess Lisa Cameron returns with three longish tracks employing amplified percussion and lap steel, recorded live at the Church of the Friendly Ghost (RIP). This release is somewhat noisier than the last one, with sounds that are fuzzier and grittier. Using the most minimal equipment setup and contact mikes, she fills the air with giant, hypnotic rivers of screeching noise and repetitive ripples of droning sound. While the execution is minimalist, there's a lot of interesting stuff going on in the waves of feedback and drone, unexpected moments where everything builds to a catastrophic explosion of noise that is pulled back from the brink at the last possible moment. The third track opens with subdued feedback drone that grows louder and more insistent, accompanied by a bass-heavy drone. The sound ebbs and flows, grows and dies away... simple but effective. This is coming out on another label (if it hasn't already) and should be available from places like Volcanic Tongue, and it's something to look into if you like your endless drone noisy and unwashed. After hearing their collaboration with the Cherry Point last issue, I was expecting this to be a full-on harsh noise beatdown from the word go. Instead it's feedback and loop madness, piling on the heavy drones with guitar, vocoder, feedback, vocals, electronics, and from time to time, the relentless but fucked rhythms of a drum machine. Between the hands of GMS and Pete Swanson, they manage to set off and fiddle with a lot of noise-making gadgets in the course of these four lengthy noise workouts. "True Union" is built on a droning hum that settles into a machine-like rhythmic pulse as screaming waves of feedback hover above the drone, providing texture and nuance. "Psychic Secession" grows from muted lyrics to stuttering and rhythmic glitch electronica that eventually mutates into actual beats swaddled in even more noise. Best of all is "I Woke Up," in which apparently random but insistent snippets and riffs of noise and ambient sound eventually mutate into a multi-toned polyrhythmic landscape that, when introduced to a pounding techno beat, morphs into an apocalyptic noise rave. "Velocity of the Yolk" builds from a subdued but hypnotic presence into a thundering maelstrom of noise and rhythm punctuated by shrieking ripples of feedback and bass hum sufficient to make you levitate. Swell, swell stuff that sounds like an orchestrated series of collisions at the intersection of noise and rhythm.
All reviews are by RKF unless noted at the end. Other reviewers are: Amanda, Gafne Rostow, Dillon Tulk, and Neddal Ayad (n/a).
GW Ashworth
Iatrogenesis
Gordon Wilson Ashworth -- HOME SONGS (C10) [Iatrogenesis]
The Black Angels
Light in the Attic
The Black Angels -- PASSOVER [Light in the Attic Records]
Black Crucifixion
Paragon Records
Black Crucifixion -- FAUSTIAN DREAM [Paragon Records]
Black Sand Desert
PacRec
Black Sand Desert -- CHOKING ON GRAVE SOIL [PacRec]
Bone Awl / The Rita -- split [Klaxon Records]
Deathbomb Arc
Captain Ahab -- AFTER THE RAIN MY HEART STILL DREAMS [Deathbomb Arc]
dead sea liner
Cel -- FUGITIVE ANGLE [dead sea liner]
PacRec
The Cherry Point -- BLACK WITCHERY [PacRec]
Cry Blood Apache
Cry Blood Apache -- PERFORMING DIVERSION ACROBATICS [Ghetto Pagoda]
Deaf Center
Type Records
Deaf Center -- PALE RAVINE [Type Records]
The Divine Madness
The Divine Madness -- PRECIOUS ep [self-released]
Earth
Southern Lord
Earth -- HEX; or PRINTING IN THE INFERNAL METHOD [Southern Lord]
Emaciator -- WHITEWASH / DAYS WITHOUT FEAR (C60) [self-released]
Emaciator -- TORMENT (C60) [self-released]
Excepter
Load Records
Excepter -- THRONE [Load Records]
Excepter
5rc
Excepter -- SUNBOMBER [5rc]
Not Not Fun
Haunted Castle / Grey Skull -- split 10" [Not Not Fun]
Paradigms
Hjarnidaudi -- PAIN: NOISE: MARCH [Paradigms]
Hanson Records
Erika Hoffman-Dilloway -- KARAAUDAAICHUU (3" cdr) [Hanson Records]
Hum of the Druid
SNSE
Hum of the Druid -- SOCIETAL [SNSE]
Hum of the Druid
Hum of the Druid -- TRIALS [Barbituarian]
Impregnable
Callow God
Impregnable -- CHERISH (2 x C12) [Callow God]
Inhalant
Inhalant -- CLINICAL (C20) [self-released]
Job For A Cowboy
King of the Monsters Records
Job For A Cowboy -- s/t [King of the Monsters Records]
Load Records
Kites -- PEACE TRIALS [Load Records]
PacRec
Knurl -- SYCAMINE [PacRec]
Iatrogenesis
Maim / Pedestrian Deposit -- split (C10) [Iatrogenesis]
Medroxy Progesterone Acetate -- THE WORM IN THE WOMB OF THE WORLD [self-released]
Load Records
Metalux & John Wiese -- EXOTERIC [Load Records]
Mikaela's Fiend
s.a.f. records
Mikaela's Fiend -- WE CAN DRIVING MACHING [s.a.f. records]
Na
Pax Recordings
Na -- NA IS NICE [Pax Recordings]
Battle Kommand
Southern Lord
Nachtmystium -- INSTINCT: DECAY [Battle Kommand / Southern Lord]
Noxagt
Load Records
Noxagt -- s/t [Load Records]
Iatrogenesis
Oscillating Innards -- LIVE IN CHAPEL HILL 06/22/06 (C10) [Iatrogenesis Records]
Load Records
Ovo -- MIASTENIA [Load Records]
Pedestrian Deposit
Hanson Records
Hospital Productions
Pedestrian Deposit -- FATALE [Hanson Records / Hospital Productions]
Load Records
Prurient -- BLACK VASE [Load Records]
Reliquary
Final Joy Records
Reliquary -- WINTER WORLD [Final Joy Records]
The Rita
Pitchphase
The Rita -- ANNA CHRISTIE (3" cdr) [Pitchphase]
Roman Torment
Callow God
Roman Torment -- BEWILDERMENT (C10) [Callow God]
Anthony Saunders -- REHEARSAL TAPES VOL. 1 [RSM]
Accretions
Santo Subito -- XAVIER [Accretions]
Sickoakes
Type Records
Sickoakes -- SEWARDS [Type Records]
Load Records
Sightings -- ARRIVED IN GOLD [Load Records]
Striborg
Southern Lord
Striborg -- EMBITTERED DARKNESS / ISLE DE MORTS [Southern Lord]
Subterrane
Subterrane -- s/t [Skeleton Dust Recordings]
Subterrane
Subterrane -- LOST CONVERSATIONS (2 x C10) [self-released]
dead sea liner
Textured Bird Transmission -- PURPLE WEIGHTED PELLETS OF DESPAIR [dead sea liner]
Swampland Noise
Treriksroset + Blud Thirst -- SHIVERS (C10) [Swampland Noise]
Twodeadslutsonegoodfuck
Kitty Play Records
Twodeadslutsonegoodfuck -- PT BARNUM'S GALLERY OF MASTURBATORIAL DISENCHANTMENT [Kitty Play Records]
Realicide Youth Records
Vankmen / Realicide -- split (3" cdr) [Realicide Youth Records]
Deathbomb Arc Records
v/a -- TWA TERROR 2005, WEST WOMB DOCUMENT [Deathbomb Arc Records]
Hanson Records
v/a -- UNDERGROUND SERIES VOL. 2 [Hanson Records]
Venison Whirled -- DEAF SPONGUE [self-released]
Yellow Swans
Load Records
Yellow Swans -- PSYCHIC SECESSION [Load Records]