2016: a list...

Another list. Another vague opinion. No order.

*Grok--The Spineless Descent
*Auroch--Mute Books
*Oranssi Pazuzu--Varahtelija
*Aluk Todolo--Voix
*Irkallian Oracle--Apollyon
*Alaric--End of Mirrors
*Fordom--Dauora Dura
*Swans--The Glowing Man
*Ritual Howls--Into the Water
*Blood Incantation--Star Spawn
*Skuggsja--A Piece for Mind & Mirror
*Neurosis--Fires Within Fires
*Blut Aus Nord/Aevangelist--Codex Obscura Nomina
*All Your Sisters--Uncomfortable Skin
*Soft Kill--Choke
*Barst--The Western Lands
*Ash Borer--The Irrepassabble Gate
*Garden of Mary--The Agony in Memory
*Maudlin--Maudlin
*Bellicose Minds--The Creature
*Aztec Death--Machine
*Black Marble--It's Immaterial
*True Widow--Avvolgere
*Nails--You Were Never One of Us
*Uada--Devoid of Light
*Book of Sand--Occult Anarchist Propaganda
*Gevurah--Halleluah
*Altarage--Nihl
*Wardruna--Ragnarok

The Cosmos is...

Cold and dark... Fall through interstellar portals to meet the void's abyssal edge with Colorado's Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice. Blood Incantation conjure cosmic death metal from the blistered fragments of fading stars, while Spectral Voice crush with the collapsing weight of a black hole. Sharing members between both bands, Blood Incantation and Spectral Voice channel the truest forms of death metal. Ripping and a unfailing heavy, the bands seek the otherworldly realms that are still not reached by the humanity's failing and weak existence. All hail the revelations revealed in Blood Incantation's and Spectral Voice's potent death metal ruination. Look to the skies and know the cosmos is vast in ways humanity cannot comprehend. Obliteration is inevitable. Stay true. Stay death.

Blood Incantation:
bloodincantation.bandcamp.com
youtube.com/watch?v=eD_CyJowZcI

Spectral Voice:
spectralvoice.bandcamp.com
youtube.com/watch?v=XnoY9Jhx0-8

www.darkdescentrecords.com

Sacred Leather...

There are too many worthless, resource sucking humans. But the men of Sacred Leather (Indianapolis, IN) are here to stave off this putrid existence with the purest of metal. Heavy on the riffs, solos, vocal shredding wails, and throbbing rhythms, Sacred Leather provide the theatrics, grit, and sleaze to combat modernity's mindless banality. Clad in leather and drenched with sweat, Sacred Leather pulsate with all of metal's blackened heart. Harkening back to the era when metal was equal parts skill and sleaze, Sacred Leather are one powerful hip thrust away from fucking everyone in their path. Sweaty crotch grabs and banged heads are the standard. So steal your older brother's IROC Camero, and drive recklessly as possible to the next Scared Leather show. Regrets are for the weak and gutless, and Sacred Leather are capable of crushing both.

Www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF7WTYMDnck

sacredleather.bandcamp.com/releases

2015: a list...

No order. No preference. One opinion.

*Black Wing--Is Doomed
*Spectral Voice--Necrotic Doom
*Mgla--Exercises in Futility
*Grift-Syner
*Denver Broncos UK--Songs 1 through 8
*Forndom--Flykt
*False--Untitled
*Chelsea Wolfe--Abyss
*Gloam-Hex of the Nine Heads
*Ulaan Passerine--Light in Dust
*Aelter IV--Love Eternal
*Vanum--Realm of Sacrifice
*Leviathan--Scar Sighted
*Bell Witch--Four Phantoms
*Night Slug--Loathe
*Killing Joke--Pylon
*Mount Eerie--Sauna
*Noltem--Mannaz
*Hope Drone--Cloak of Ash
*Shroud of the Heretic--Unorthodox Equilibrium
*Nahtrunar--Symbolis Mus
*Ride for Revenge--Ageless Powers Arise
*Snakes--Snakes
*Blood Incantation--Interdimensional Extinction
*Failure--The Heart is a Monster
*Sapthuran--Hildegical
*Akhyls--The Dreaming I
*Panopticon--Autumn Eternal
*Fight Amp--Constantly Off
*Steven Von Till--A Life Unto Itself
*Alda--Passage
*Zebras--The City of Sun
*Abyssal--Antikatastaseis
*Predatory Light/Vorde--Split
*Vastum--Hole Below
*Zelienople--Show Us The Fire
*Lightning Bolt--Fantasy Empire
*Andrew Hock--Crystalline Privative Opulence
*Pyramids--A Northern Meadow
*One Master--Reclusive Blasphemy
*Cruciamentum--Charnel Passages
*Nostalgist--Of Loves and Days Ago
*Barghest--Into Weeping Firmament
*Dispirit--Separation
*Bosse-de-Nage--All Fours
*John Mueller--A Magnetic Center

DBUK...

You may not have heard of the Denver Broncos UK, but you surely should. Hailing from Denver Colorado, they are a beautifully bare American folk band comprised of members of Slim Cessna's Auto Club and Munly & the Lupercalians. Jay Munly, Rebecca Vera, Dwight Pentacost, and Slim Cessna comprise this off kilter foray into dark Americana. The instrumentation is sparse (Munly on acoustic guitar, Vera on pump organ and cello, Cessna on percussion, and Pentacost on melodica, autoharp, and banjo), but intricately woven together to form waves of gothic droning. All four members contribute vocals in some form as Munly bellows the lead vocals with all his prowess. The lyrical content is an eccentric take on gothic country storytelling. This storytelling permeates all the songs conjuring visions of a back alley alliance with the supernatural powered by dust bowl reverie. The melodies and harmonies hauntingly resonate a beauty in the esoteric nature of the crooked spine of America. Things are not always what they seem, but the Denver Broncos UK deliver their music into the light. Whether you follow or not is up to you.

Ignore the interviewer, and enjoy this brief set of live songs...
youtube.com/watch?v=LgR39ciWTko

For more on the Denver Broncos UK or their affiliated groups follow the link...
slimcessnasautoclub.com

From the Region...

Welcome to the Midwaste... The Region, as it is miserably referred to, is a part of northwestern Indiana sharing a distinct flavor for indulging in nearby Chicago's urban glut. An overflow of despair, boredom, and post industrial hopelessness permeates the area and its populace. A haze of fuck all sentiment and anywhere is better than here wafts through the mentality of the residents. Life seems jumbled and slowed to a crawl as time tries to keep pace with the ever growing din of Chicago's crumbling and failing hopes and institutions flowing south along interstate 65. There is a certain kind of gloom that hangs over the area. This gloom radiates through the music of Cloakroom.

Cloakroom is a trio of factory workers hailing from the Region. Right away the gloom of their home and lives saturates everything about Cloakroom's slowcore haze. It's the fuzz of a bad relationship drowned in bottles of industrial and farm waste. This is a never ending relationship with a place and its people, that drags one's mental and physical health down to the factured streets going nowhere. Cloakroom crafts a blur of mid to late 90's anti-pop. Mid-tempo at its fastest, Cloakroom's music swells and sways like the meandering ways of a slow moving polluted river. There is the crunch from distorted guitar and bass when needed, never more than required or seemingly misplaced. The drums pound and accent with equal measure, and make sure to hold everything together. Cloakroom provoke a wandering carelessness with their music. If you end where you did not expect, then it may just be for the best. The vocals drone with a monotone bleakness that belies any hope. Cloakroom utilized a controlled sense of noise within their songs to drive the ambient elements into a shoegaze-y territory of fuzz and despair. The songs scorch the earth with a dusting of melancholy and bare emotion. Cloakroom are not a raging wildfire, but are the necessary controlled burn of a weed infested lot on a withered city block hinting at a minor renewal.

As factory workers, Cloakroom are sure to feel the strain of the death of middle America. Their music is a direct reflection of this. There is beauty in slow pain. There is beauty in loss. There is beauty in the failings of mankind. There is life nowhere (special). Cloakroom are on the edge of the void. Deciding to fall in or hang on a little longer, Cloakroom's music hints at the possibilities of a slight resurrection: a resurrection buoyed by a fractured and bleeding hope. A little blood soaked hope is not always a bad thing.

myndfuneral.bandcamp.com

Because You Missed It...

Auris Apothecary (Bloomington, IN) released one of the best albums of 2014: Book of Sand--The Bees and the Butterflies. Like many Auris Apothecary releases, The Bees and the Butterflies was limited to fifty lathe cut ten inch records. With this the label maintained their exploritory nature when it comes to physical releases, and also continued their trend of establishing meaning and substance with physical releases in an impersonal and failing digital world. Art has meaning and purpose. Art is not always accessible. Art is where you seek it.

What Book of Sand crafts on this release is a powerful droning slab of avant black metal. Everything in its right place. The songs are not a testament to the raging fury of the void. Rather, Book of Sand seemed compelled to find a cold beauty in the abstract melancholy of the natural world. There is a swirling haze surrounding the songs that seeps into the ears of the listener. The wailing screams are buried under the swelling guitar tempest as the blasting drums find little breathing room. Everything in its right place. The use of the cello throughout the album is the siren voice that breaks you upon the rocky shore. The cello rings somber and unsettling notes that continually establish a ghostly presence, often imbuing the songs with a quaint instrumental voice as if telling an old folk tale . Walls of well spaced feedback and reverb are ever present. Subtle tempo shifts take shape as the drums slow from blasting to simple and precise. The guitars are constantly flowing with churning ambition, as the layered noisy elements of the songs combine with the other instrumentation to develop an all encompassing state of thrall. Everything in its right place...

Book of Sand are at their height when all the elements within song come together or are laid bare as in the song Wayfarring Stranger (cello only). With The Bees and the Butterflies, Book of Sand have compiled a standout album. The album is short in running time. However, it is deep with preceived power, emotion, and presence, ultimately leaving the listener wanting more. Coyly melodic, The Bees and the Butterflies is a thorough and engimatic album, bound by tradition and steeped in the overwhelming confines of failing modernity. What will come to pass will pass, and Book of Sand are primed to stand headlong in any oncoming surge.



aurisapothecary.bandcamp.com/album/aax-091-the-bees-and-the-butterflies