Back in stock

B6 Baby Blue/Olive Green Merge

B3 Silver / Kelly Green Merge

Storming out of the frozen North, Minnesota’s Obsequiae released their debut album Suspended in the Brume of Eos on CD in 2011 via Bindrune Recordings. Obsequiae crafts meticulous, beautifully harmonic odes to times now passed into legend, conjuring images of a medieval Europe upon which modern life has yet to infringe. The album harkens back to the pre-wimp-out melodic Scandinavian death metal of the mid 1990s; dark, aggressive, conscious of songcraft foremost and unintimidated by complexity. The band’s deep knowledge of European traditional music and instrumentation is evident throughout, particularly in the ornate, colorful interludes that tie the album together like tapestries in a ruined castle. Had John Renbourn started a project with Quorthon, something like Obsequiae might be the result. As the album remains a favorite at 20 Buck Spin HQ and had yet to surface on vinyl, the label offered to release this one-of-a-kind work on the greatest audio format for the first time. Repackaged with new artwork, the LP reintroduces Obsequiae in advance of the band’s much-anticipated second album, which will surface on 20 Buck Spin later in 2014. Live performances are planned for later in the year.

There’s a sick irony to how a country that extols rhetoric of individual freedom, in the same gasp, has no problem commodifying human life as if it were meat to feed the insatiable hunger of capitalism. If this is American nihilism taken to its absolute zenith, then God’s Country, the first full length record from Oklahoma City noise rock quartet Chat Pile is the aural embodiment of such a concept.

Having lived alongside the heaps of toxic refuse that the band derives its name from, the fatalism of daily life in the American Midwest permeates throughout the works of Chat Pile, and especially so on its debut album. Exasperated by the pandemic, the hopelessness of climate change, the cattle shoot of global capitalism, and fueled by “...lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of THC,” God’s Country is as much of an acknowledgement of the Earth’s most assured demise as it is a snarling violent act of defiance against it. Within its over forty minute runtime, the album displays both Chat Pile’s most aggressively unhinged and contemplatively nuanced moments to date, drawing from its preceding two EPs and its score for the 2021 film, Tenkiller. In the band’s own words, the album is, at its heart, “Oklahoma’s specific brand of misery.” A misery intent on taking all down with it and its cacophonous chaos on its own terms as opposed to idly accepting its otherwise assured fall. This is what the end of the world sounds like.

Oklahoma’s Chat Pile have had an exciting 2022; they released their album God’s Country, toured the midwest and east coast in support of the album, announced their appearance at Roadburn Festival 2023, and while the band is working on LP2, they’re revealing details for their score for the indie film Tenkiller. While not a proper full-length album, the Tenkiller score was written and recorded in the winter of 2020, and it waxes and wanes from the signature Chat Pile sound but also ventures into new ones— including arena country music. The band comments, “The music we made for Tenkiller is quite a bit different than what you may come to expect from us. We were given the freedom to really experiment and explore territories that we’ve never done before.” They continue, “It’s not going to be for everyone, but we hope some of you connect with what we set out to do.” “Chat Pile bring a sense of dirt and squalor to the table.” —The FADER “Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile are the perfect people to expose the dark, seedy underbelly of American life.” —Paste Magazine “Cleansingly punishing.” —Stereogum “Harrowing.” —Pitchfork

The most prominent and significant American death/funeral doom emissaries EVOKEN succeed their 2018 landmark Hypnagogia album with their seventh full-length opus Mendacium set for release on Oct 17. A work that will reveal itself as one of the darkest and most oppressive EVOKEN albums among their unparalleled repertoire.

Where 2018’s Hypnagogia would see the band capture and focus on a more melancholic, tangible, and even more of an accessible sonic design, Mendacium takes that acute shift back to the monumental dirge-like dread and woeful catacombic and disharmonious heaviness reminiscent of the band’s Quietus and Antitheses of Light masterworks. All while still encapsulating the tectonic-shifting nature of their Caress of the Void and Atra Mors releases while venturing more through classic gothic audial textures and even treading a little down experimental mire as well, reminiscing an aura seeping from such luminary artists as Dead Can Dance, Monumentum, and Disembowelment.

To signal this shift in sound harking back to this previous era, the band would recall the services of producer Ron “Bumblefoot” Thal who worked with EVOKEN on their Antithesis of Light and Quietus albums respectively. The result being Mendacium capturing a sepulchral heaviness saturated in ambience with even more of an emphasis on deathlike dread and anguish; an ambience reflecting the depths and catacombs of an ancient cathedral or monastery, ultimately defining Mendacium as EVOKEN’s most powerful sounding album to date.

Milky Clear/200 - deluxe silver laminate gatefold jacket w/ poster 

Comes with 12"x12" 2-page insert and a download card. Pressed on green galaxy effect heavy vinyl. Colors on final record may vary to a degree from the mockup.

Furious and intimate, exciting and intriguing, "Futility Report" stems from a thoroughly modern vision, an innovative interpretation of Extreme Music which breaks down established codes whilst simultaneously deep-rooted in the obscure history of Black Metal.

"Futility Report" - or the metallic version of ULVER’s legendary "Perdition City" - is a new form of Dark Music, a serious piece of Art far removed from usual clichés and a significant forward step.

Pressed on dark grey marble vinyl. Comes with printed innersleeve. Colors on final record may vary to a degree from the mockup.

"777 – Sects(s)" is an organic, cascading volume of deviant, dark art that exhibits BLUT AUS NORD’s natural habitat, a cleansing blade amid transitory moments of non-importance. Hypnotic guitars, discomforting beats and alienating voices clash with the ferocity of aural tectonic plates to produce horrific Black Metal decadence for an anonymous, lost, irrelevant generation.

Pressed on white marble heavy vinyl. Comes with a download card. Colors on final records may vary to a degree from the mockup.

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.

recensione di metalitalia (clicca qui)

"Il viaggio eclettico dei White Ward riprende con un secondo full-length, questa volta volto a solcare il grigiore delle strade cittadine, riprendendo il discorso dove era stato lasciato ma riscrivendolo con un tono di luce e cromature stravolti rispetto all’ottimo debutto, “Futility Report”. Il senso di disincanto resta intatto, e quello che a un primo ascolto sembra un venir meno dell’effetto sorpresa (l’afflato trip hop, il sax, il jazz, le aperture non metal già riscontrabili in precedenza) è in realtà un approccio diverso alla materia, una riscrittura del proprio nucleo, una revisione, se vogliamo, del proprio punto di arrivo. Il post black precedentemente affrontato in maniera più diretta dagli ucraini diventa qui un metal estremo sperimentale di più ampia definizione, una discussione musicale che studia se stessa e cambia i connotati di una propria opera senza volerne svilire i punti cardine ma volendo riattualizzarne i tratti di fronte ad un tema diverso. Sono assolutamente necessari ascolti ripetuti per entrare nell’ordine di idee del nuovo disco dei White Ward, un trip intriso di depressione urbana, di dissolutezza cosmopolita all’ombra delle insegne di negozi 24/7, dei casino aperti tutta la notte, di rotaie e taxi sempre disponibili; racconti di sguardi solitari affacciati a una finestra, testi esistenziali piuttosto efficaci e una resa sonora che, come già detto, all’inizio sembra lasciare un po’ di amaro per il suo non stupire come il debut faceva, e che invece giro dopo giro sul lettore porta il discorso a dilatarsi e a perdersi tra i vicoli oscuri di una metropoli. “Love Exchange Machine” parla di sfaccettature, di colori che cambiano e che si perdono e poi si confondono, di sottili confusioni, di sagome non distinguibili e che cambiano forma ad ogni passo verso di loro. Tra aperture ferocissime, giri quasi new wave, assoli di sax e strumentali di sole tastiere, i White Ward continuano a produrre della musica di non facilissima assimilazione, complessa, densa (sette brani per più di un’ora di musica), certamente non per tutti ma non per questo troppo elitaria, che alza l’asticella del genere di un’altra tacca."