Wednesday, November 30, 2016

Spaces - Border Station (1981)

It's been nothing but black metal around here, right? That's cause, aside from stuff that's too new to post (like the new Adrian Younge -- get it!) that's pretty much all I've been listening to. But here's some perfect, easy-going but energetic, space-brained instrumental fusion to help carry you to the better half of the week.

Track listing:
1. Outer Drive
2. Four of Those
3. Don't Get Any on Ya
4. Sperm Race
5. Got a Light
6. Ninety to Nothin'
7. Aerplane Glue
8. Border Station

Hear my love

You will also like:
Charles Earland -
Leaving This Planet (1974)
Grover Washington, Jr. -
Mister Magic (1975)

Tuesday, November 29, 2016

Unclean - Ten, Který Se Vyhýbá Svetlu (1997)

Czech black metal. Cult ritualistic evil.

Track listing:
1. Moudré oko Jasnozrení
2. Ten, který se vyhýbá svetlu
3. Ó Duse, Bdís?
4. Hadí Sfinga
5. U Bran Apokalypsy
6. Princ Temnot

Only silver fullmoon illuminates their path

You should also hear:
Nåstrond -
Toteslaught (1995)
Necromass -
Abyss Calls Life (1996)

Black Omen - When Pure Darkness Covers False World of Light (2005)

Turkish symphonic black metal. Dark, Satanic drama and gothic cheese interspersed with raging, thrash-y riffs, and bolstered by full, heavy production.

Track listing:
1. Nocturnal Tears (Intro)
2. Elegy of Infernal Angels
3. Under the Armageddon's Sky
4. Fall Season
5. Black Candle
6. Revenge of Vampire
7. Gothic Ceremony
8. Gate of Darkness
9. When the Sun Rises
10. Love Is Lost (Outro)

Sun risen on two embracing corpses

You'll also like:
Siebenbürgen ‎-
Loreia (1997)
Graveworm - As the Angels
Reach the Beauty

Sunday, November 27, 2016

Rundagor - Stronghold of Ruin (1996)


Track listing:
1. Unimalicious Satan Son
2. Taking Wings Away to Silence
3. Stained by Torture
4. Stronghold of Ruin
5. Reflection Through Eternal Battles
6. In Wrath of Rewarding
7. Woundprink's
8. Sowing with Sparks

Black night covers him

You'll also probably like:
Spitehowling -
Born to Die for Evil (2002)
Saatkrähe -
Of Ravens and Graves... (2009)

Saturday, November 26, 2016

Nåstrond - Toteslaught (1995)

Swedish black metal. Out-of-tune guitars that often aren't quite synced up with the drums, creepy synths, and a dude rasping and moaning about how he's going to slice you up and eat you in the name of Satan.

Track listing:
1. Xolotl
2. En Sång Från en Pestbesmittad Grav
3. Lord of the Woods
4. Akhkhauru (The Grave Dweller)
5. Neuntöter (Yo Soy El Roy!)
6. May the Rotten Bones Absorb Life Again
7. A Black Hearse Clad in Human Bones and Skulls
8. Jai Ma Kali
9. Gravestench
10. Toteslaut

I sacrifice the infant mummy soul

These are good, too:
Diabolical Masquerade -
Ravendusk in My Heart (1996)
Nocturnes Mist -
As Flames Burn (2009)

Shudder to Think - Get Your Goat (1992)

My favorite record by one of the all-time great post-hardcore bands. Angular, deceivingly melodic guitars, constantly shifting time signatures, and high-pitched, sweetly idiosyncratic, slightly unhinged vocals. Extremely underrated band.

Track listing:
1. Love Catastrophe
2. Shake Your Halo Down
3. White Page
4. Goat
5. Pebbles
6. Baby Drop
7. The Hair Pillow
8. She Swears He-Harem
9. Rain Covered Cat
10. Funny

Dip a cloth in a bowl of blood, lean your horses hide with it
Stick a fish in a tattoo gun, watch what color ink comes out

You'll also like:
Hot Snakes -
Automatic Midnight (2000)
U.S. Maple -
Purple on Time (2003)

Nathan Youngblood - Asunder (2007)

Yawning chasms of ambient drone. Like dark winds sweeping across an astral void.

Track listing:
1. Vesper Nest
2. Kanashibari
3. Umbrasphere
4. Shearwave
5. Flume
6. Underland

Realm of refraction

More like this:
Ptarkh -
Alamah (2009)
Steve Roach -
This Place to Be (2016)

Friday, November 25, 2016

Woebegone Obscured - Deathstination (2007)

Danish atmospheric blackened funeral doom. Cavernous production and haunting clean guitar lines chiming over crushingly heavy dissonance -- Woebegone Obscured, to be reductive, are blackened diSEMBOWELMENT.

Track listing:
1. A Gust of Demention
2. Maestitia
3. Coils of Inane Comatose
4. Stalactites
5. Deathscape

Mourning the loss of context
Silhouettes and figures are forming a wall

More along these lines:
Profetus - Coronation
of the Black Sun
Bosque -
Nowhere (2013)

Killah Priest - Heavy Mental (1998)

First solo album by Wu Tang affiliate/Sunz of Man member Killah Priest. As far as Wu-related releases go, Heavy Mental is on the darker side, but you could still put it on at a party and no one would be bummed.

Track listing:
1. Intro
2. One Step
3. Blessed Are Those
4. From Then 'Til Now
5. Cross My Heart
6. Fake MC's
7. It's Over
8. Crusaids
9. Tai Chi
10. Heavy Mental
11. If You Don't Know
12. Atoms to Adam
13. High Explosives
14. Wisdom
15. B.I.B.L.E.
16. Mystic City
17. Information
18. Science Project
19. Almost There
20. The Professional

The heaviest chains cannot bind

You'll also wanna hear:
Inspectah Deck -
Uncontrolled Substance (1999)
Nujabes -
Metaphorical Music (2003)

SleepResearch_Facility - Nostromo (2001)

Deep, nocturnal drones by Scottish musician Kevin Doherty. I'll be asleep really soon, and this is going to soundtrack my dreams. Goodnight shit world.

Track listing:
1. A-Deck
2. B-Deck
3. C-Deck
4. D-Deck
5. E-Deck
6. Narcissus

I whisper in the ear of the dead

More like this:
Mirror - I Paint for the
Love of Color
Halo Manash -
Am Kha Astrie (2008)

Thursday, November 24, 2016

Necrofeast - Necrofeast (1996)

Disgusting, reprehensible, doom-inflected Dutch black metal. Happy Thanksgiving, you make me puke.

Track listing:
1. Hymn of the Hordes
2. Time for Revenge
3. The Return of Darkness and Evil [Bathory cover]
4. The Blessing
5. Doomed Christ
6. Northern Wrath
7. Outro

Gore death triumphs

If you like this, you'll like:
Acheron -
Rites of the Black Mass
Anal Vomit -
Demoniac Flagellations (2004)

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Ennui - Mze Ukunisa (2012)

Georgian epic funeral doom. Mze Ukunisa is on the more melodic side of funeral doom, and is impeccably written and performed, so expect patient riffs, gloriously mournful leads, and cathartic payoffs.

Track listing:
1. Flowers of Silence
2. Dead Desires
3. Maybe the Time Shall Come
4. The Way of My Life's End
5. Frozen Candle
6. Memento Mori

Bitterness of hope

You'll probably also enjoy:
Fallen - A Tragedy's
Bitter End
The Fall of Every Season -
Amends (2013)

Abbey Rader - The Thing (1974)

Experimental jazz led by drummer Abbey Rader. Heavy on improvisation to the point of bordering on free jazz, and colored by extensive use of mellotron and other electronic keys.

Track listing:
1. China Center
2. Three Jewels
3. Lisa
4. Funk and Wagonall
5. Duo
6. Four-Cast
7. Welfare
8. Metal

When my clay started to slide

If you like this, listen to:
Anthony Braxton -
3 Compositions of New Jazz (1968)
Doug Hammond -
Spaces (1982)

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Imber Luminis - Life as Burden (2011)

Belgian depressive black metal/doom. Five songs, each clocking in somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes, that aim to drain the life from your veins and leave you to wither in empty solitude. Are you in?? Let's fuckin' do this!!

Track listing:
1. Perfect Death
2. I Am Not
3. Sick of It All
4. Life as Burden
5. Suicidal Crisis

I can see the birds dying

More like this:
Abyssmal Sorrow -
Lament (2008)
Lyrinx -
Ending the Circle of Life (2009)

Michel Magne - Éléments Nº 1: La Terre (1978) + Éléments Nº 2: L'Eau (1980)

Two LPs of synth-y goodness from French composer Michel Magne. Unlike many synth bros, Magne has real key-playing chops, and he's happy to show them off -- check the classical piano tour de force that is "Planètes et Forêts." Éléments Nº 2: L'Eau is significantly less synth-y, and leans more heavily on piano, percussion, sitar, and the like.

Track listings:
-La Terre-
1. Signaux Codes Non Identifiés
2. Trip Psychiatrique
3. Plane Eros I
4. Planètes et Forêts
5. Terre Blessée
6. Plane Alpha II
1. Rêves de Liszt sur un Piano Mouillé
2. Tambour d'O
3. Vagues à l'Âme
4. Voyage en Eau Profonde
5. Aquatic Fonction
6. Facteur Pi en Mutation

Do deep-sea fish dream of electric moles?

You should also listen to:
Mother Mallard's Portable
Masterpiece Co. -
Like a Duck to Water
Asmus Tietchens - Nachtstücke
(Expressions et Perspectives
Sonores Intemporelles)

Sunday, November 20, 2016

Necromass - Abyss Calls Life (1996)

Italian black metal with death/doom overtones. Abyss Calls Life maintains a lysergic, midtempo pace throughout, over which the vocalist delivers death metal growls and constantly speed-picking guitars get fucking epic -- some seriously rad dual-guitar work here. Meanwhile, intermittent creepy, psychedelic sections led by clean guitars and demonic whispers help to create an unsettling, woozy counterpoint.

Track listing:
1. (An Animal) Forever
2. Vibrations of Burning Splendour
3. Into the Warmth of Darkness
4. Bloodstorm Collide
5. Unpure
6. Abyss Calls Life
7. A Serpent Is Screaming in the Abyss
8. Before to Obsess

His blood was everywhere

You will also like:
Profanum - Flowers of
Our Black Misanthropy
Ancient Wisdom - And the Physical
Shape of Light Bled

MMOTHS - EP (2012)

Gorgeous electro-dream pop from Irish producer Jack Colleran. Hazy, reverb-saturated washes of synth, sparsely propulsive beats, and floating, wordless falsetto create a pillowy musical bed for Colleran and guests' lovely, disengaged vocals.

Track listing:
2. Summer
3. If Only
4. Heart
5. Breaking Through


You should also listen to:
Child Actor -
Promise EP (2013)
tooth ache. -
Flash and Yearn (2013)