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

2014 Best of List...

In no particular order... Missing some solid releases... It's a list. Nothing more, nothing less...

*Blut Aus Nord--Memoria Vestusta III: Saturnian Poetry
*Impetuous Ritual--Unholy Congregation of Hypocritical Ambivalence
*Falls of Rauros--Believe In No Coming Shore
*Whirr--Sway
*Taurus--No/Thing
*Agalloch--The Serpent & Sphere
*Nothing--Guilty of Everything
*Coffinworm--IV.I.VIII.
*Godflesh--A World Only Lit By Fire
*Old Man Gloom--Ape of God
*Krieg--Transient
*Wovenhand--Refactory Obdurate
*Have A Nice Life--Unnatural World
*Young Widows--Easy Pain
*Alraune--The Process of Self Immolation
*Atriarch--An Unending Pathway
*Blut Aus Nord/P.H.O.B.U.S.--Trinity
*Waldgefluster--Meine Fesseln
*Horseback--Piedmont Apocrypha
*Ritual Howls--Turkish Leather
*Shellac--Dude Incredible
*Yob--Clearing the Path to Ascend
*Woman Is The Earth--Depths
*We Are Hex--Bleach Brigade
*Saor--Aura
*Swans--To Be Kind
*The Body--I Shall Die Here
*Panopticon--Roads To the North
*Fossils--Flesh Hammer
*Death Fortress--Among the Ranks of the Unconquerable
*Book of Sand--The Bees and Butterflies
*Sun Worship--Elder Giants
*Boddicker--Crime Upheaval
*Death Blues--Ensemble


Indiana bands that rule(d) in 2014:
*Scared Leather
*Boddicker
*We Are Hex
*Coffinworm
*Nuclear Hellfrost
*Conjurer
*Kvlthammer
*Black Goat of the Woods

One of the best ever... Ice Nine.

In case you are unaware, one of the greatest hardcore bands was spawned from Indianapolis' early to mid 90's hardcore punk scene. That band was Ice Nine. Blistering, pummeling, intricate. Ice Nine ripped their way through the scene with a ragged world view and intensity that has hardly been matched. They pulled no punches other than those intended for all those in their path. Less political, Ice Nine used ingenious musicianship to breath fire into hardcore as their vehicle of self expression and distaste for the environment around them. Hardly apathetic, Ice Nine pounded, hammered, and in general abused their instruments into submission as they raged with barely contained anger and chaos. Their live show was a mass release of flowing energy, both positive and negative, as the music filled all those in range with dissonance and discord. Fuck you, Ice Nine were determined to do what they wanted both musically and personally. You were either with them or against them, often the former. Noisy and chaotic, the men of Ice Nine delivered an intensity that was addictive and inscrutable. Ice Nine were less about being understood, but more so a band formed around a working knowledge of an ever-contorting and often hopeless world birthed on a local midwestern level. The band was a release from every day life and personal problems. Ice Nine were a shredding embodiment of catharsis. When they were active, Ice Nine were one of the most vital bands. They didn't have fans. They had followers. Youth slammed into a cathartic need for release and relatability, and Ice Nine delivered on all fronts. Nostalgia has it place, but when dealing with Ice Nine nostalgia has no place. Respect is all that matters. And Ice Nine, after all these years, still garners all the respect a band of their power and presence should. No band did it better during their active years than Ice Nine. And with all great bands, their music is just as relative and powerful as it was originally. Through their now rare 7 inch releases and a cd discography on Happy Couples Never Last Records, Ice Nine still continue to invade eardrums with their brand of furious hardcore. Recently, their three year discography appeared on the band's bandcamp page. It would be wise of you to spend some time listening to Ice Nine's bestial brew of hardcore punk and know nothing has really changed. Complete respect.


icenine2.bandcamp.com

Ritual Knife Records...

You like underground bands bringing forth malice and spite. You like the grime and filth of the underbelly of humanity. You like the boot to the back of the head of normals and posers. You like your blades sharp and thirsty. If this sounds appealing, then Ritual Knife Records is sure to have a release or two for your eardrum evisceration. Focusing on local Indiana bands and quality distribution of like minded bands, Ritual Knife is poised to spew some much needed sacrificial blood on the underground tape scene. With releases from Boddicker and Scared Leather out now, the future looks devastating as the label demands its collective blood lust be satiated.

ritualknife.storenvy.com

Do Yourself a Favor...

Make ever attempt to see Sacred Leather. Indy's newest and trvest rippers are here to punish your ear canals with a knife wound metal assault. Dripping venom and blood soaked, Sacred Leather scour gutters and desecrate altars of the false on their conquest of ultimate metallic supremacy. Be ready. Be warned. But don't sleep on a band prepared to extract your soul via a blood bath of aural shrapnel and whetstone honed machetes of ripping sound.

Catch them at their next show:

November 7, Melody Inn, Indianapolis, Coffinworm, Conjurer, and Scared Leather.

sacredleather.bandcamp.com

The Goat is Dripping Blood...

From the death of Indianapolis' Casque arises Sacred Leather, and they are here to remind you what metal is. Sacred Leather drop Night Hunger ( a two song banger of scorched venom) to bludgeon ear canals with a stripped down and ripping riff drenched vehicle of the damned and doomed. All the greats are smashed together in a blood soaked amalgam conjuring elements of thrash, d-beat, doom, and early black metal. The guitar is a writhing serpent of chaos of straight ahead face smashing riffs and blast furnace solos. The drums are the collective galloping of the four horse men: unabashedly caving in the weak's skulls and furious in the pursuit of the apocalypse. The bass is the undercurrent of torture seeping from the depths of the abyss. The vocals are gruff and wailing, spreading the seed of the damned and sinfully indulgent. Sin fueled and casting their collective spell over listeners, Sacred Leather have conjured a two songs peek into the fiery hunger of all woebegone sinners with Night Hunger. Indulgent and armed by the beast, Sacred Leather are coming for the souls of the willing and unwilling alike. Burn all the temples and run wild with Sacred Leather. Bleed the goat and fornicate in its spilled blood. Sacred Leather would be proud.

*Good luck finding Night Hunger... Be prepared to catch Sacred Leather whenever or wherever live as the live show is the only way you're liable to hear their songs anytime soon.

New Kvlthammer Song...

Here's a fresh jam from the men of Kvlthammer. Kvlthammer drop a four minute assault very much akin to a Craft-ian jam of fuck you with Hate is Not Enough. Downtrodden and mid-tempo at its fastest, Hate is Not Enough is an early taste of the forthcoming full length from these Indy veterans. Plodding drums and those collective down strokes... The song is dragged through the gutter and slowed to a crawling pace at its midpoint from a tolling bell. Kvlthammer is a band that's served their collective time in multiple established bands: Demiricous, Coffinworm, Skeletonwitch, Lair of the Minotaur, Suicide Note, and Deadmen to name a few. With this much dirt and grime under their nails and on the soles of their boots, Kvlthammer will surely produce a molten slab of hate and venom on a full length release. Hate is Not Enough is a black bile teaser of the bands potential.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5iKwNv0U-g

Overpower 7"...

It's been almost two years, but Indianapolis' Overpower still provide a churning boot to the head. You need a brief foray into violence summoned through hardcore, well this is it. Overpower weren't around long at all, but a beat down is usually finished quickly. This 7" is three songs of hate, spite, and vengeance rolled into a bare knuckle brawl manifested aurally. Fast, aggressive, angry, and austere: Overpower were bent on devastation via social unbalance and a raw hardcore fuck you attitude. There are only so many ways to accept an ass kicking, but once upon a time Overpower were willing to find how many there were. Dead and gone, these three songs bash skulls and bloody knuckles.

overpowerxxx.bandcamp.com/

Old Detroit Falls...

And so will you. Boddicker--False Flag...

You want violence. You need violence. You sustain your shit-stained existence on indignity and conflict. Your life is the pursuit and actualization of criminal intent and endeavoring. Your psyche is eroded by a crumbling civilization and a social disconnect that leads to a lawless reality of self awareness. The streets and back alleys are your home. You are the rusted blade in the side of a society of normals and squares--all sheep. Their rules are your toilet paper. Their laws are meant to fall in a hail of bullets, and you're the leading edge of the impending firestorm. You grind and shift effortlessly in your attempts at subjugating the status quo. Everything is a weapon. Every loose brick or rock is hurtled towards the nearest target. Every cocktail is Molotov. Your knuckles are a cycle of healing scabs as they become your personal wrecking balls. Smashed faces and collapsed chests are they're primary goals. You feed on the carnage. Your targets will fall. Flesh is weak, and your amorality is of the highest value. The down beat of your steps signals the arrival of death's accomplice. Run for the hills, crash the borders; it will not save the false or your intended targets. You are a war party of destruction and disaster, willingly taking and pillaging whatever you desire. Raise the False Flag, and set your senses and enemies aflame.


boddicker13.bandcamp.com

Boddicker will be on tour this June. Their next show in Indianapolis is 6-12-2014 with Eyehategod at Birdy's.

Kvlthammer rehearsal demo...

Mid-tempo-y... Reminiscent of Fuck the Universe era Craft... It sure sounds promising from the vets (Coffinworm, Skeletonwitch, Demiricous, Deadmen, Whiskeytits...) in Kvlthammer. Catch them live, if you can, before they drop anymore music on the pit of the internet. Otherwise, let this vocal-less song demo wet your appetite for further destruction.

soundcloud.com/carlbodies/kvlthammer-track-02-practice

New Year, New Casque...

2014 has commenced with a polar leveling of the midwaste of the U.S. How appropriate for Casque (black metal rippers from Indianapolis, Indiana) to drop Furious Machine of Perpetual Disgust. This fucker is a no nonsense blast of spiraling chaos hacked up from the void in the form of pissed off cave dweller black metal. The goat is indeed damned. The death machine is unleashed. It's a filthy ten minute excursion in to the depraved head space of Casque's members. Ever punishing and wretched, the guitar work is swarming with tremolo speed to wailing solos. The mid-tempo parts are still furious but held in check by the hammer forged drumming. The bass is the ever distorted low thunder of an invading horde. And those vocals... The trills and wails of the tortured and haunted are channeled and captured as throat decimation spewed forth from the fleeing souls of annihilation. Casque conjure the cold isolation that is harbored in the disgust of a decaying society populated by a viral and parasitic species. Carl Byers of Clandestine Arts Recording effectually seizes Casque's unbridled brutally, as the mastering work of Geoff Montgomery of The Ensomberoom polishes the frost covered peaks and valleys in the most suitable sub-zero haze. Casque are relentless with their venom and filth. It's the only way. And if Furious Machine of Perpetual Disgust is any indication, then Casque are sure to commit aural genocide of all the false and weak standing before them.

casquescum.bandcamp.com/album/furious-machine-of-perpetual-disgust

Best of 2013...

Best of 2013 or something like that... Here is a list of albums that The Cracked Skull listened to more often than not in 2013. There are probably some albums left off this list for various reasons. Feel free to venture a guess as to which release saw the most spins. All in all, not a terrible year in heavy music... In no order...

Grave Upheaval--Untitled
Portal--Vexivoid
Lux Interna--There is Light in the Body, There is Blood in the Sun
Merkstave--Merkstave
The Body--Master We Perish
Altar of Plagues--Teethed Glory and Injury
Kinit Her--The Poet and the Blue Flower
Ruin Lust--Tethered and Lashed
Oranssi Pazuzu--Valonielu
Clandestine Blaze--Harmony of Struggle
Pissed Jeans--Honeys
Wormlust--The Feral Wisdom
True Widow--Circumambulation
Mouth of the Architect--Dawning
Sacriphyx--The Western Front
Nails--Abandon All Life
I Shalt Become--Louisiana Voodoo
Cloud Rat--Moksha
The Haxan Cloak--Excavation
Lycus--Tempest
Vastum-- Patricidal Lust
Fell Voices--Regnum Saturni
Rote Hexe--Red Witch
Chelsea Wolfe--Pain is Beauty
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats--Mind Control
Bolzer--Aura
Sigur Ros--Kveikur
Malthusian--MMXIII
The Sterling Sisters--Hale
My Bloody Valentine--MVB
Castevet--Obsian
Wardruna--Yggdrasil

Indiana bands that ruled in 2013...
Kata Sarka
Boddiker
Casque
Conjurer
We Are Hex
Black Goat of the Woods
Parasitic Twins
Nakay
Torturess
Kvlthammer
Coffinworm
Nuclear Hellfrost

Of Planetary and Stellar decimation...

Hailing from Bloomington Indiana, Kiasuth is a project of bleak soundscapes forged in the cold vastness of space and the crushing enormity of infinity. On their five song album, Divine Celestial Famine, Kiasuth summon ambient drones and dirges that are without human soul. The song titles are the only clues into Kiasuth's collective conscience on universal armageddon. The droning doom the band produces is laced with the nihilism associated with the frostiest of black metal, but retains the harshness that comes from witnessing a failing industrial society. The songs on Divine Celestial Famine are constructed from layers upon layers of buzzing and droning effects, minimal garbled and howled vocals, tortured synths, and fractured bass and guitar. The occasional percussion is a mere blip on their space-time continuum. Often there are long passages of muted and minimal sounds, but the effect levies a sense of heft and gradual building of destruction. With this release, Kiasuth are seemingly conjuring some ancient wisdom gone insane. Take Divine Celestial Famine as a whole, and let it consume you. Kiasuth have crossed the event horizon and returned as a vessel for transmitting oblivion. Their music is a product of looking beyond our earthly realm, but it is an intermediary to some manner of ancient darkness that came before us all. All hail the never ending abyss.

kiasuth.bandcamp.com

The hammer is soon to fall...

Over whiskey and riffs four Indy veterans have come together to form Kvlthammer. Kvlthammer is drummer Dustin Boltjes (Skeletonwitch, Demiricous, The Dream is Dead), guitarist/vocalist Nate Olp (Lair of the Minotaur, Demiricous, Deadmen), guitarist/vocalist Carl Byers (Coffinworm, Deadmen, The Dream is Dead), and bassist Bob Peele (Suicide Note, Deadmen, Whiskeytits). The men of Kvlthammer are seasoned musicians and friends bound to forge a collective middle finger salute of sleaze and steel with their music. Anyone familiar with their previous and current bands will know what can be expected of Kvlthammer: detuned fury that pounds, seethes and pulsates while shredding ear canals at top volume. Though they are a young band, Kvlthammer are sure to bring forth a true blaze over the Midwestern sky that bleeds ears and crushes all false hope. Carl Byers recently spoke with The Cracked Skull to introduce Kvlthammer and provide a preview of what's to come.

Kvlthammer... How did you all get together, and how did you come up with the name? Does the band name give the middle finger to elitist sub-sub-genre wankery?

Dustin was the impetus behind the band. In winter of 2011 he talked to Nate and me about doing a project, playing a sleazy mix of early black metal (ala Venom, Bathory, Mercyful Fate, and Hellhammer/Celtic Frost) and keeping a punk/street vibe to it all. Also, we're trying to write songs with as little effort as possible to keep it fun for everyone involved. The three of us got together in December 2011 and wrote our first three songs quickly. We've chugged along after that over short intervals when Dustin is home from Skeletonwitch tours, finishing the writing and then starting the recording of our album. Roy Hayes (Black Goat of the Woods, Boddicker) was playing bass for awhile, but Bob Peele has stepped in to fill that spot now. Major thanks to Roy for playing with us!

The name was a laborious process since every fucking name has been used multiple times over anymore. Same criteria as the songwriting approach; we didn't want anything too serious, but nothing cartoon-ish either. The name Kvlthammer sounds cool and it is kind of a 'fuck you' to elitist sub-genre wankery and the self-importance that it breeds. But, we don't have a stance or whatever. We're just writing music we like.

What can the world expect Kvlthammer to sound like (very bland and obvious I know; I hate to ask it)? Does the music shift back and forth between styles and genres? Did you all have set songs going in or was the writing process more organic within the group?

There's a little variation, but this first group of songs we wrote all have a unifying feel to them: simple structures and riffs shifting between d-beat, down-picked mid-tempo fist-bangers, and some blast beats here and there. We also have a slow song with a creepy ass riff that Nate brought to the first practice. We started writing on the spot, whether that meant Nate or I had a riff or no one had anything beforehand. The idea is to start drinking whiskey and if we spend longer than 30 minutes getting a basic song structure together, we ditch it and move on to something else.


As a newly formed band, what's in the near future for Kvlthammer? Recording? Shows? Blood letting? Slashing and burning of the weak and false?

The recording is almost done, so finishing it is the first priority. It's 8 songs with an instrumental interlude. I'm planning on doing a cassette run on my Clandestine Arts imprint, but ideally I'd like to see this album end up on vinyl and/or CD. Beyond that we'll be booking more shows and writing more songs. Nothing concrete yet, but I'd like to get a few out of town shows setup once the cassettes are in hand.


Your first show is coming up with Windhand. Should we be on the lookout for any surprises?

No big surprises. We're looking forward to finally playing live, and the show with Windhand and Teenage Strange is gonna rule.

Thanks for the interview, Mark!

Kvlthammer's first show is September 10 with Windhand and Teenage Strange at the Melody Inn (Indianapolis, IN).
www.facebook.com/kvlthammerofficial

Follow the link to hear a demo version of an impending Kvlthammer song...
soundcloud.com/clandestine-arts/unnamed-band-track-01-live