"Sumerian Cry" is the debut album by Swedish gothic metal veterans TIAMAT, originally released in 1990.

The album was recorded at Sunlight Studio, Stockholm, Sweden, in 1989, when the band was known under the original name Treblinka.  The track "Sumerian Cry, Pt. 1" is a re-interpretation of the intro melody from "Crawling in Vomit", the first track off Treblinka's first demo.  Since the mid-90's Tiamat has been employing a live keyboard player for all of their concerts, hiring them from well-known metal acts such as Opeth, Dark Tranquillity, Cradle of Filth and Evergrey.

For fans of MOONSPELL, PARADISE LOST and ANATHEMA

THE VISION BLEAK return in grand style: The German duo's seventh full-length "Weird Tales" constitutes a monumental tribute to the eponymous American pulp magazine and other tales of mystery and dark imagination. The album consists of a single track that is divided into internal chapters, which are each inspired by weird tales, poems, and other literature of horror and the macabre. On "Weird Tales", THE VISION BLEAK are referring to eminent writers of the legendary magazine such as H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, but also allude to authors that were never featured in the magazine, for example Edgar Allen Poe and Lafcadio Hearn, whose "Fantastics and Other Fancies" was very influential for this album. THE VISION BLEAK are pulling every register of their enormous musical prowess. The chapters range stylistically from flamboyant gothic rock via dark doom to harsh black and death metal parts – and about everything in between. All the thrilling elements that the following of the duo has come to expect and love is present on this record: the dramatic and theatrical, the harsh and heavy, the melancholic and eerie, and also catchy and symphonic moments. All of this is woven into a dense sonic tapestry, which is held together by a recurring ebb and flow that is reminiscent of classical composition. THE VISION BLEAK were born out of the friendship between guitarist, bass-player and harsh vocalist Markus Stock aka Ulf Theodor Schwadorf and drummer and singer Tobias Schönemann alias Allen B. Konstanz. After first experimenting with a more gothic rock formula, THE VISION BLEAK shaped up when the duo began to involve their mutual love for the horror genre. Already their debut album, "The Deathship Has a New Captain" (2004) became an instant success in both gothic and metal circles and is by now regarded as a classic. As the debut album's theme was based on classical horror movies, the Germans aptly dubbed their style: horror metal. With the following albums, THE VISION BLEAK cemented their reputation as purveyors of classy and quality music. Each full-length revolves around themes from the horror genre that can easily be deduced from their respective titles. "Carpathia" (2005) was followed by "The Wolves Go Hunt Their Prey (2007) and "Set Sail to Mystery (2010), "Witching Hour" (2013), and "The Unknown" (2016). THE VISION BLEAK, the masters of horror metal, are finally ready to gift the world their most ambitious song so far: "Weird Tales" is a beautiful and heartfelt homage to a poetic golden age of horror and mystery literature. Listen with care, but always be wary of the eldritch and forbidding sounds that lurk within this song!

In the early 90s, Cannibal Corpse set new standards with albums like Eaten Back To Life 1990 and Tomb Of The Mutilated 1992 and paved the way for death metal.

Includes lyric sheet, poster with album artwork  

Red 12" LP, Insert + Bloodcard included
 

Fourth studio album by Dutch Death Metal machine SINISTER. Originally released by Nuclear Blast in 1998. Here’s the official and limited 2022 CD re-issue in a solid super jewel box on Cosmic Key Creations

Super Jewel Box, 12 page booklet

No longer one of the metal underground's best-kept secrets, VALDRIN began picking up momentum with the 2018 BLOOD HARVEST release of their second album, Two Carrion Talismans - epic, shapeshifting blackened death that was both timeless and fresh - and then eclipsed that achievement two years later with third album Effigy of Nightmares, also released by BLOOD HARVEST, whereby the band dove deeply into the bluish purple depths of '90s melodic black metal. To hear comparisons to Vinterland, Sacramentum, and Sweden's Dawn wasn't mere hyperbole; it was assertive truth, as commanding as VALDRIN's songwriting mastery. Which is to say nothing of the band's ongoing Ausadjur Mythos, a fantastical tale begun with their Beyond the Forest debut album and which forms the lyrical basis of all since.

Switzerland's practitioners of alchemical madness return with their sophomore full-length, "Blut, Milch und Thränen", presenting a concoction of truly mesmerizing sonic movements.

The music contained on "Blut, Milch und Thränen" was recorded somewhat unconventionally as two separate tracks, which were subdivided into several movements to correspond with the album's gripping narrative. With regard to this narrative, Kvelgeyst recounts the tale of an alchemist, beset by visions that leads him to search for an adept who in turn shall serve as the victim in a sinister ritual, hoping to achieve unio mystica. Initially, he is pleased, as he discovers an adept soon enough in the gutters. Regrettably for him, however, he is finally confronted with the realization that he has fatally misinterpreted his visions, and it is not he who sacrifices the adept in his pursuit of revelation, but rather he must serve as the sacrificial lamb in ritual slaughter, thus enabling the adept to achieve unio mystica. This, in turn, drives the adept into utter madness, rendering him free of all his senses and forcing him to the gutters from whence he emerged.

Suffering can be a borderline experience, opening doors to the divine. Canadian black-metal-outfit GIVRE has dedicated its fourth album to this concept. On “Le Cloître” (engl. “The Cloister”) the band continues its exploration of the atoning side of pain and the austere aspects of faith through music that goes all the way from elegiac elegance to disturbing outbursts.

This time, the lyrics are taken from the hagiographies of six saint women and explores freely their relation to god through suffering, from the symbolic poetry of Hildegard Von Bingen (1098-1179) to the disturbing and factual depictions of Marthe Robin (1902-1981). Musically, this album explores a variety of extreme genres while maintaining a suffocating and tormented Black Metal atmosphere.

CD in classic jewel case with 12-page booklet incl. all lyrics, plus a designed album download card.

Fourth press: "black on beer color" vinyl, galaxy effect

With their sophomore album Imperative Imperceptible Impulse, Ad Nauseam took a step forward in terms of composition, musical structures and sound. Music is not intended as a mere sequence of riffs that sounds well one after the other, but is now a naturally ordered structure where almost every musical event refers to the past and/or predicts the future, generating very layered and complex patterns dominated by polyphony and polyrhythms and where each instrument has its own role and is essential in the whole. The music represents a merging of many different styles, the most prominent ones being extreme death/black metal, avantgarde, jazz, post-core, doom/sludge and ambient. 

The composition process of Imperative Imperceptible Impulse has been heavily influenced by 20th century classical composers like Stravinsky, Šostakóvič, Xenakis, Scelsi, Penderecki and Ligeti, to name a few. Both the concepts of harmony and melody have been put into discussion to get a music where harmony is obtained by means of disharmony and melody by dissonances. To push this method even further, a unique tuning system has been conceived, to allow a new harmonic vocabulary and to eradicate the players from the comfort zone of the usual melodic patterns every guitar/bass player is used to.