Life of Dreams (1986)

Listeners familiar with the East Coast thrash/hardcore crossover scene of the ’80s generally agree that Crumbsuckers played an important role in defining their subgenre’s reckless, metallic sound. The guitar histrionics and similar thrash ticks prevented astute fans from taking the band’s hardcore affiliation very seriously. The group’s 16-track Combat Records debut, Life of Dreams, is the more aggressive of Crumbsuckers’ two albums. Despite the Metallica-like “Trapped” and hyper-polka-beat novelty of songs like “Super Tuesday” that would fit on any S.O.D. recording, there are some defining moments on Life of Dreams that extend beyond Crumbsuckers’ thrash predilections. The freewheeling title cut is a career highlight, with its shifting time signatures that relay a feeling of manic angst — not just technical metal ambition. – AllMusic

Beast on my Back (1988)

With the release of Beast on My Back, New York’s Crumbsuckers tossed aside their hardcore associations, choosing instead to fully commit to metal. The term thrash doesn’t fully describe the tone of this 1988 sophomore full-length. The dense guitar harmonies and rapid-fire power chords combine with an unceasing vocal croak that brings to mind Florida’s burgeoning death metal scene of the time. Some technically challenging double-kick drum performances — about ten times faster than “Rejuvenate” — are all that is needed to complete this offering’s genre shift away from hardcore. When compared to the precise guitar parts, the drumming on Beast on My Back lacks definition. This gives the otherwise-impressive metal disc an unbalanced feel. There is no such problem on highlights like “Jimmies Dream,” with its straight-up thrash, or the dynamic “Remembering Tomorrow.” – AllMusic

Caravans was originally released on Moonfog in December 1994 and is the first of the two-chapter Empire Algol series which was completed with Transmissions From Empire Algol in 1995.

Tatir – Cave of Ephyras… To the Infernal Fields CD
Cave of Ephyras… To the Infernal Fields (an unreleased EP recorded in 1996), Dark Autumn Nights (1995), and Fons Acheroni (1996)

Mortify – The Way of All Flesh CD
Dizziness of the Occult (1990), …And Darkness was Upon (1993), and Promo 96

Tatir and Mortify recorded at Storm Studio which was owned and operated by George Zacharopoulos. George is bassist and vocalist in Necromantia and Thou Art Lord, he was also keyboardist (Morbid) with Rotting Christ during their best period.

Varathron

His production work at Storm Studio helped form the instantly recognisable ‘Greek Black Metal’ sound of the early-mid 1990′s. Bands like Thou Art Lord, Varathron, and Rotting Christ created some of the most enduring black metal at Storm Studio.

Other bands that recorded at Storm Studio include:

• Agatus for their debut LP in 1994
• Kawir‘s early recordings, up until their first album
• Nergal for some of their early demos and debut album The Wizard of Nerath
• Rotting Christ‘s Classic Non Serviam
• Varathron recorded several classics at Storm including His Majesty at the Swamp, and Walpurgisnacht

There are samples in most of the above links, here are some more:

Rotting Christ – The Fifth Illusion
Thou Art Lord – The Era of Satan Rising (demo version)
Varathron – Son Of The Moon (Act II)

Vrolok/Emit - Pestilence 1440 / The Divine Eye LP Edition (CD version here)

Emit – The Dark Gods tape

Emit – …A Vision of 1682 tape

Emit – A Sword of Death for the Prince CD

Related to Emit, an Ante Cryst (lineup included MM) demo has been made available exclusively from Hammemit. Youtube Sample. To purchase: contact_emit(at)hotmail(dot)com

Long-awaited 7″ EP from this cult English band. Vicious, obscure and tormented Black Metal recorded in 2006. Limited to 300 hand-numbered copies.

Aura Noir – Out to Die
Ugliest trio in the world is back! March 2012 sees the release of the fifth Aura Noir album, “Out to Die”, their first album with Indie recordings, with Blasphemer permanently back in the fold and several tours in Europe, North and South America under their belt since 2008′s ‘Hades Rise’. It is bound to cement the band’s reputation as a black thrash attack more ugly, brutal and merciless than ever.
CD version available

Nekromantheon – Rise Vulcan Spectre
Nekromantheon started out in early 2005 with only one goal in mind: To play fast, evil and dirty thrash metal in the way of the old gods. Influenced by the classics of Slayer, Sadus, Kreator, Dark Angel and Sepultura, they unleashed their attack on modern metal. Now, this powerful trio has regressed even further back to the glorious days of real metal, breaking the chains to all that is plastic. Their second full-length is even faster, filthier, and more evil than ever! With “Rise, Vulcan Spectre”, Nekromantheon have truly summoned the ancient Greek gods of havoc, and will let nothing stand in the way of this unholy blood offering. Worship the beast!
CD version available

Macabre Noize Royale is currently unavailable but we still have:

• T.O.M.B. – Xesse
• T.O.M.B. – Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy II
• T.O.M.B. – Penn Hurst
• T.O.M.B. – Sacrilegium

Uncovered Ancient Gateways was completed at the end of 2009, and we reviewed it in early 2010. Click here for the full T.O.M.B. – UAG review.

For nearly a decade now, the shadowy collective known as T.O.M.B. (or Total Occultic Mechanical Blasphemy) have been creating a particular brand of industrial death worship with some of creepiest recordings that I’ve heard out of this realm. I discovered the band through their 2007 album Macabre Noize Royale on Todestrieb, whose grating industrial rhythms, blasts of blackened noise and malformed black metal left my skull a charred husk, and I’ve been following their clandestine electro-acoustic experiments and rituals of corpse-abuse ever since. Now, T.O.M.B. have brought us their latest album (and first for Crucial Blast) UAG (or Undercovered Ancient Gateways, and it follows the group of crypt-crawlers through eleven tracks of suffocating black ambience and lifeless industrial pummel that strips away most of the black metal elements of previous releases, crafting a more abstract, ambient sound this time around.
The band has largely distinguished their approach to black industrial because of the sound sources they use; making their way into abandoned sanitariums, morgues, decaying crypts, and other sites of psychological and spiritual distress (such as the Pennhurst State Hospital in Pennsylvania, and Kentucky’s infamous Waverly Hills), the members of T.O.M.B. capture the natural ambience of these locations with field recorded sounds, and engage in pounding percussive workouts by banging and hammering on the very walls and structures of these sites. These rumbling industrial rituals result is a mix of Neubauten-esque bashing and rhythmic forms combined with crushing harsh industrial noise and lightless black ambient voids, sculpted into a uniquely haunted industrial ambience on UAG. As far as references go, I hear traces of death industrial (a la Atrax Morgue / Subklinik / Mauthausen Orchestra / Brighter Death Now) here, as well as the black industrial weirdness of bands like Abruptum, MZ412, and Stalagggh, but there’s also echoes of Lustmord’s early work here as well in the cavernous black spaces that T.O.M.B. explores.
There is no narrative here, nothing resembling “mood music”; each track flows directly into the next, the album crawling and breathing as a single malevolent organism. The title track opens the album with massive metallic reverberations rumble through vast cavernous realms of darkness and roaring subterranean maelstrom, corrosive distorted noise washing over the pounding sheet-metal percussion and almost tribal-like rhythms, like the howling of the dead emanating from the bowels of the earth. Then “Torment” creeps in, layering agonized distorted howls and monstrous moaning vocalizations over sweeping noise and a pulsating distorted synth, the whole sound drifting through an echo-chamber of hallucinatory horror, then slipping into the swelling subterranean rumblings, juddering machine rhythms and pounding cemetery gate rhythms of “Mausoleum Witchcraft”. The subsequent depths of the Underground Ancient Gateways are further infested with these rattling infernal engines and massive rumbling dronescapes, violent metal percussion, ghostly effects and mysterious sounds drifting across the abyssal emptiness, various nightmarish vocalizations, the pounding drums and other hammered objects a constant presence.
Some of the album’s more disturbing moments appear on the psychedelic noise eruption “Blood Vortex” that resembles one of CCCC’s extreme synth-noise meltdowns, a mass of swarming electronic glitch whirling over smeared drones and distant machine noise that apparently used actual blood as a sound source; the snarling, teeth-gnashing blood ritual chaos of the “Tribe Of The Corpse” gives way to the dank Lustmordian depths of “Graveyard Requiem”; and the twelve-minute “EMPLEH”, where the cavernous ambience transforms into twisted atonal guitar noise, distant cries, and eerie howls cloaked in thick black fog, later revealing warped, quasi-black-metal shapes as it drifts deeper and deeper into the pit. The closest that the album ever approaches anything resembling black metal, though, is on the psychotic blastscape “Leech”, where those faint, programmed blastbeats drift up out of a hazy dungeon ambience amid snarling demonic vocals and reverb-soaked synthesizers. The one piece on UAG that really gets under my skin though is “Cadaver Transmissions”, a recording of contact mic scrapings across the rotting flesh of an actual corpse, backed by echoing black drift, creating the blackest of ambient soundscapes on what is already a supremely unsettling listening experience.
Highly recommended to fans of blackened industrial and black ambience. Comes in a full-color digipack.

The uninspired official marketing text describes the music as “…not like any of the older Burzum albums, and yet similar to all of them.” It will contain “traditional metal music” and more “experimental music” possibly in addition to the intro/outro. Umskiptar will be released on CD (Jewel case and Digibook) and Vinyl Double LP (Grey and Black editions).

Tracklisting:

Blóðstokkinn – Soaked in Blood
Jóln – Deities
Alfadanz – Elven Dance
Hit helga Tré – The sacred Tree
Æra – Honour
Heiðr – Esteem
Valgaldr- Song of the Fallen
Galgviðr – Gallow Forest
Surtr Sunnan – Black from the South
Gullaldr – Golden Age
Níðhöggr – Attack from Below

The lyrics on “Umskiptar” are all taken from a Norse poem, Völuspá.
“The “Umskiptar” album is also a return-to-the-roots album for me, with a strong focus on atmosphere and wholeness rather than anything else. The vocals on this one however are more important than on any other album, with a total of 66 stanzas, some of them even repeated a few times, making up the lyrics of the album. The vocals are very important for the special atmosphere and are more important than on any other Burzum album, and more varied too – and as honest as it gets”.
The concept of the album is “Umskiptar” (English = “Metamorphoses”), a deeply rooted European (i.e. Pagan) Stoic concept of changes. This concept was chosen in a world heading for a new Ice Age, and can therefore also be seen as critique of all the popular political movements of our age of lies”. (V.V.)

Official Burzum Website Release Page with Lyrics

A strange interpretation of raw black metal, this short MLP effectively ignites the senses, especially when played over speakers at a high volume.

Edition of 321 hand-numbered copies, pressed on 180g black vinyl and cut at 45 rpm. Comes in a black poly-lined inner sleeve. It is packaged with a poster (320x640mm) which is housed in a silk screened PVC sleeve.

Review: In my opinion GGUW are a very great modern day sounding raw and primitive black metal that touches on nature and if you a fan of this style of music, you should check out this band. RECOMMENDED TRACK “Untitled 3″. RECOMMENDED BUY. – OccultBlackMetalZine

First edition includes an interview with Tangorodrim and a classy playlist of Bathory, Motorhead, Occvlta…

Okk nowwwww…

It was a frosty night in the bunker as we cracked open cans and talked trouble with the Tangorodrim boys Incinerator and Darveter via skype. A special band that has been on Salute’s radar for some time and held in maximum esteem.. PRAISE! Forgive any ass kissing but this band are the real deal, no bullshit, thrashing mad pumping fist jaw grinding fury…arrghgh….. Arghgh! So envious of their riffs and grind we had to record a tribute to these crazed maniacs in the form of ‘The Fucking Priest’…

We talked for some hours about their formation, their environment both past and present and how they became to arrive at their current point. They have just celebrated their 15th year (jubileeeHEY) with a new 7″ (see pics, oughh) and seem to be as enthused as ever about their craft. It was killer to hear some of their war stories, origins of the FUCKING CONVEEYORR.. meatlocker riffs, 5 oclock spliffs, and their pen chance for ABSOLUT(E) OUgghgH!
Lets meet for those beers brothers..!! IRON RULE NUMBER ONE!

This show contains part 1 of the interview, the rest of the show Swine and I play a selection of old and new cuts, and talk trouble !! This is the first of many shows, by all means have words, comment, recommend bands, add fuel to the flames.. open some cold ones and roll!…CREEEE..PPING AND SEAR…CHING FOR VIC….TIMS UN…KNOW….ING..OOUUSSEARGHGHH!!

…oh yea and if the quality of the sound in the interview is like they were on Sputnik, that’s how we intended it !!…roll the tape

Split (better described as a collaborative album) with Clandestine Blaze from 2004

The well received …Of the Night Ep from 2004

Black Katharsis, the third Satanic Warmaster release (2002) and follow-up to…

Strength & Honour — the debut LP from 2001, a classic from Werwolf which took the years of music from Pest, Shatargat and others integrated with a complete image and ideology, and produced a record that was both epic and DIY raw. As powerful and memorable as it was eleven years ago from the burning timber to the close.

With Hateful Abandon I want to create a paradox. The lyrics are about total strength, hate and questioning of emotions, whilst the music is quite sorrowful and bleak. This will continue throughout Hateful Abandon’s lifespan. Also, on the debut full length the lyrics will be included so that the listener can make that connection on his or her own. With Basilisk, it was varying topics. Usually with a Satanic bent, some tracks were very personal… other songs portrayed stories inspired by such twisted minds as Clive Barker, other songs inspired by true life events, such as the Black Plague.

Read the full interview.