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“The Long Defeat” unfolds over three parallel storylines told via three different mediums. Two in writing: the lyrics, as well as a fable. The third speaks through the artwork – two metres’ worth of maniacally detailed visions depicting the same premise its written content draws from. All three are fundamentally entwined but diverging in narrative, each complementing or contradicting the others.

Black vinyl, 6 panels folded booklet.
 

Comes in a 4-panel digipack w/ an 8-page booklet. First batch comes in black polycarbonate CD.

After triumphantly casting off the shackles of claustrophobic dissonance on 2020’s lauded "Stare Into Death and Be Still", New Zealand unorthodox Death Metal legends ULCERATE up the ante even further with mind-bending 7th album "Cutting the Throat of God".

An acknowledgement that the band's most powerful and affecting material leans to the melodic side, this refined and hook-laden new record is a self-sufficient universe unto itself, a conflagration of inventively visceral Death/Black Metal where dizzying experimentation meets head-nodding abandon - obscenely twisted and addictive, heart-stopping in its depth of feeling.

Ambientscapes mixed with black metal Hell from the mastermind behind the exemplary Nightbringer and Bestia Arcana.

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Averaging an album per year since their 2018 formation, this latest expression from the rightly-revered Swiss Atmospheric Black Metal band AARA shows no drop in quality, nor let-up in their perpetually questing sense of purpose.

In follow up to 2023's "Triade III: Nyx" - the climatic installment of the 'Melmoth' trilogy based on Charles Robert Maturin's classic Gothic novel - the band now break away from the literary and apply their stunning musicality to real-world events.

"Eiger" is conceptually focused on the 3967 meters mountain of the same name in the Bernese Alps. Since 1935, at least 64 climbers have died attempting to conquer the Eiger’s sheer, ice-covered north face which has earned it the nickname of 'Mordwand' ('murder wall'). The album specifically examines an attempt to climb the Mordwand in July 1936 which ended in tragedy, as four young mountaineers succumbed to treacherous conditions and disappeared, presumed caught in an avalanche.

AARA's music has evolved dynamically in tandem with the subject matter, becoming more visceral, tangible and hauntingly powerful. An organic and spacious production allows the trademark elegiac, spirited leads and reverberant acoustic guitars of main-composer Berg to give increased emotional weight to a performance of on-the-edge savagery from vocalist/lyricist Fluss. The icy melodies, pensive moods, vibrant plummets and shifts/drifts contrast the wonderment of the natural world with a heightened sense of existential malaise and ultimately horror.

Comes in a 4-panel digipack with a 12-page booklet.

The wonderfully productive Swiss atmospheric Black Metal band AARA return with urgency to unleash "Triade II: Hemera", their 4th full-length since 2019 and the second chapter of the Melmoth trilogy.

Based upon the 1820 Gothic novel 'Melmoth the Wanderer' by Charles Robert Maturin - and closely connected in style and atmosphere to 2021's initial instalment "Triade I: Eos" - each of the 6 brutally melodic tracks follows the book's chronological mid-point narrative in a dazzling critical examination of theism and scepticism through the medium of top-tier Black Metal.

Although conceptually aligned with part one of the trilogy, "Triade II: Hemera" further-advances the AARA sound into realms of progressive extremity: defined once again by the beauteous lead melodies of composer/guitarist Berg, the record combines a raw violent undertow with subtle rhythmic shifts, left-field riffs/refrains and sublimated vocal savagery - interweaving Christian choirs, the Jewish shofar horn and traditional Indian vocal samples into yet another outstanding offering from an unstoppable young band overflowing with ideas and confidence.

MYSTICUM’S NEW ALBUM, ’PLANET SATAN’. THE LONG-AWAITED & ALREADY LEGENDARY MILESTONE IN BLACK METAL SUPREMACY FROM THE NORWEGIAN PIONEERS.
CD in mediabook with 24-page booklet

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This edition of Ulver’s Vargnatt marks 30 years since the original release of this classic 1993 demo. 

CD edition with audio sourced from the original DAT. 

Contains the bonus track Vargnatt, captured live at Bootleg TV in Oslo, 1993, and sourced from the original U-matic, courtesy of the National Library of Norway.

Norway’s Coffin Storm is a new band consisting of Apollyon (Aura Noir/Lamented Souls), Bestial Tormentor (Infernö/Lamented Souls) and Darkthrone’s Fenriz.

The trio's debut album Arcana Rising offers a powerful fusion of classic heavy metal, slow thrash and doom (a torrent of rousing, accomplished titanic riffing commandeered by Fenriz’s unmistakable vocal prowess).

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Arcana Rising contains six sprawling metallic epics covering the 45 minute running time, and was recorded at a variety of studios in the band’s native Norway, with work originally commencing back to 2021. With production overseen by Apollyon himself, ‘Arcana Rising’ truly channels & encapsulates the spirit of the 80s, with inspiration from such masters of metal as Candlemass, Pentagram, Metallica & early Kreator, with musical nods to early Paradise Lost & Cathedral from the more extreme side of the doom spectrum, as well as including traces of the DNA from Apollyon & Bestial Tormentor’s own prior work together with their cult doom act Lamented Souls, to create a sensational and majestic opus.

Mastered by Jack Control at Enormous Door (Darkthrone), the cover art appears courtesy of Polish artist Maciej Kamuda.

Contains the 1994 demo "Entrance and Wandering on the Seven Zones" and the 1998 EP "A Caress of War and Wisdom". Limited edition to 250 blue vinyl.