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Although it had a very troubled birth, all detailed in the liner notes included with those different versions here, CRADLE OF FILTH almost-album-length 1996 EP V Empire, Or Dark Faerytales In Phallustein proved to be a superb triumph over adversity.

Despite all their legal problems, line-up changes and insane pressure after the gigantic success of their debut album, the Brits nevertheless managed to write and record a slab of new even grander songs, next to a new version of the already classic ‘The Forest Whispers My Name’, some would argue even bettering their debut in the process.

Another undeniable 90s symphonic black metal masterpiece, available again for the first time officially since 2017!

2nd pressing, limited to 500 copies.

Comes with a 12-page 12” booklet incl. new liner-notes by Olivier ‘Zoltar’ Badin, a double sided A2 poster and a download-card.

Like the towering mounds of toxic waste from which it gets its namesake, the music of Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is a suffocating, grotesque embodiment of the existential anguish that has defined the 21st Century. It figures that a band with this abrasive, unrelenting, and outlandish of a sound has stuck as strong of a chord as it has. Dread has replaced the American dream, and Chat Pile’s music is a poignant reminder of that shift—a portrait of an American rock band molded by a society defined by its cold and cruel power systems.

Though very much on-brand with Chat Pile’s signature flavor of cacophonous, sludgy noise rock, the band’s shift to a global thematic focus on Cool World not only compliments the broader experimentations it employs with their songwriting but also how they dissect the album’s core theme of violence. Melded into the band’s twisted foundational sound are traces of other eclectic genre stylings, with examples of gazy, goth-tinged dirges to abrasive yet anthemic alt/indie-esque hooks and off-kilter metal grooves only scratching the surface of what can be heard in the album’s ten tracks.

Besides stylistically stretching the boundaries of the Chat Pile sound, Cool World is also the band’s first record to have someone else handle mixing duties, with Ben Greenberg (Uniform) capturing and further amplifying the quartet’s unmistakably outsider and folk-art edge.

While Chat Pile’s debut album was plenty disturbing with its B-movie-inspired interpretation of a “real American horror story”, what the band depicts on Cool World is unsettling not just from its visceral noise rock onslaught, but from depicting how all sorts of atrocities are pretty much standard parts of modern existence. In film terms, think something like a Criterion arthouse film by way of schlocky grindhouse splatterfest: undeniably gratuitous and thrilling in the moment but leaving a looming dread in the back of one’s mind for how close the horrors depicted mirror reality.

For something to be “ecstatic,” the feelings and emotions it evokes must transcend what one tends to experience most regularly in their lives. Ecstatic joy isn’t just happiness; it’s a feeling of jubilation which impacts one emotionally and in a metaphysical, arguably spiritual sense too. Although it has long been associated with connotations of the dark and macabre, extreme music has the ability to be a powerful mode of expression for these feelings of absolute bliss, overwhelming love, and awe-inspiring sublimity. Extreme emotions no less and those which black metal quartet Agriculture evokes with its ecstatic subversion of the subgenre’s tropes.

What was initially a meeting and subsequent series of jam sessions between Kern Haug and Daniel Meyer, two musicians in the Los Angeles underground noise scene, would eventually manifest as a shared vision to portray the sublimity of the human experience through the vehicle of heavy music. Following the additions of veteran guitarist Richard Chowenhill and bassist / vocalist Leah Levinson to the band’s lineup, this idea would crystalize into the “ecstatic black metal” backbone of Agriculture’s music, first heard on the band’s 2022 debut EP, The Circle Chant.

With Agriculture’s self-titled record and first full-length LP, it’s abundantly clear that the band’s use of heavy music to showcase the most resplendent emotions and moments of the human experience has a far deeper meaning. Woven between the flurries of soaring tremolo picking, crescendoing guitar harmonies, celebratory screamed vocals, thoughtful improvisation, and meditative atmospheric passages is the record’s mission statement to experience the wonders and joys of both the esoteric and physical world.

Debut full-length album from Moribund Dawn! Mystical & Imperial Swedish style black metal praising Vinterland, Dawn, & Dissection. Recorded by Zach Rippy (Power Trip, Savage Necromancy) at Sound Signal Audio. Artwork by Neil Frianeza Catangay. Shrink-wrapped jewel case CD with deluxe silver foil-stamped slipcase

Back in 2000, MYSTIC CIRCLE just reached their peak with the release of their third studio epic “Infernal Satanic Verses” and were rightly regarded as Germany's leading black metal band. In the summer after the millennium turn, MYSTIC CIRCLE followed up with the 5-track EP “Kriegsgötter II”, a compilation with cover versions of BATHORY, CELTIC FROST and ACHERON, and a new recording of their demo classic “Die Götter der Urväter”.

However, the founding line-up broke up and A. Blackwar left the band. Only his return in 2020 and the reunion with vocalist Beelzebub conjured up the spirit of that time again, resulting in the latest two new records “Mystic Circle” and “Erzdämon”. Now in 2025, “Kriegsgötter MMXXV” will be released as an extended new edition with 8 tracks, incl. the newly re-recorded IRON MAIDEN classic “Afraid To Shoot Strangers”, as well as the POSSESSED cover “Death Metal” and the soundtrack tune “Cry Little Sister” from the movie “The Lost Boys”.

On "Arete", NETHERBIRD return with their signature melodic black/death metal that has become their hallmark. It is deeply rooted in the Scandinavian underground legacy, yet delivered with a strong sense of feel and urgency, allowing these tracks to exude the confidence and songwriting prowess of a band at the peak of their craft. The album itself is the third installment of the trilogy that started on “The Grander Voyage” and continued on “Into the Vast Uncharted”. The journey has come to its completion with this album, where the very concept of Arete – the classic ideal of excellence – is scrutinized from various angles in these songs.

Sweden's black metal troll ARCKANUM return with his eighth opus, "Fenris Kindir"!! Equal parts ripping riffs and howled vocals from the edge of Ragnarok, "Fenris Kindir" expands on the darkness of "Helvitismyrkr" and finds ARCKANUM taking a battle axe to the world. Having emerged from the black metal underground, the bludgeoning brute force of the "Fenris Kindir" demands the respect and fear that plundering raiders from the North commanded centuries prior.
 

Something rises in the bleak and blackened skies of society as we know it. Vortex community GAEREA are about to bestow their Undying Sigil to the masses, with their brand-new full length album, ‘Limbo’! Are you ready for the tale of the Fallen Society and the journey to the vast Void, the only good in Life? Let us begin then. In the first hopeless circle, on too great and Undeniable Nothingness.

CD in JakeBox with 12-page booklet.
The JakeBox is an eco friendly packaging product.
Its most significant characteristic is the folded "claw" that holds the disc, and in an eye-catching way unfolds itself, presenting the disc, lifting it up and making it easily accessible.

When Gaerea emerged out of pandemic limbo, the masked band came branded with a vision of black metal that was guided not by myths or pagan beliefs but a purging of emotion. The world quickly came to share that vision, following them from the gates of Hellfest to tours through China and the U.S.
But with ‘Coma’, Gaerea are no longer strictly black metal. Though once again produced by trusted confidant Miguel Tereso, their fourth album broadens their signature sound by taking it in two seemingly opposed directions. There are more moments of intense beauty, but they only heighten the ensuing blows.
“World Ablaze” ignited this new era of Gaerea by holding a more conventional song structure over fiery tremolo picking. “Hope Shatters” upends even the loftiest of fan expectations; after the song collapses under its blistering heaviness, the melody hangs perilously in the air, like a swaying chandelier, before it’s smashed to pieces by hammering bass and concussive blast beats. “I’ve known faces within me”, their unnamed vocalist cries in the wake of a slow and somber guitar solo before “Unknown” snaps into a razor-sharp hook. “I transform with every passing moment”.
With ‘Coma’, Gaerea surface to the top of extreme metal.

For fans of MGLA, UADA, NUMENOREAN, THE GREAT OLD ONES.