Review: Returning with their heftiest and most malevolent work to date, Desolation's Flower marks the fourth full-length from the Oakland based queer blackened screamo-sludge two-piece Ragana. Their first effort upon signing with extreme purveyors of underground ugliness The Flenser (home to caustic noise-rock titans Chat Pile and ecstatic black metal newcomers Agriculture), the LP serves as a creative rebirth following their longest gap between projects yet, with their preceding third LP You Take Nothing arriving back in 2017. Continuing their grim excavation into hideous sonic malaise, yet with an expanded palette of grooving doom, frenetic screamo-violence and heaving sludge metal ripped right from the banks of the bayou, this is a thick, dense, murky gaze into a void that spits back eternal blackness.
Review: Originally released in 1984 and celebrating its 40th anniversary with this lush black & red splattered vinyl reissue, Out Of The Cellar was the debut full-length from glam metal staple Ratt, often listed in the pantheon of pioneering hair-centric rockers along with Poison and Warrant. Their highest charting album, certified triple Platinum in the US, boasts easily their biggest hit single with 'Round & Round', while also offering some equally adored fan favourites such as 'Wanted Man' and 'Lack Of Communication'. This anniversary edition also comes complete with a bonus neon orange vinyl 7" featuring the unreleased B-side bonus track 'Reach For The Sky', recorded during the band's 1983 album sessions.
Review: The Fear Is Excruciating But Therein Lies The Answer... an arresting sentiment from the band Red Sparowes. The LA-based instrumental post-rock band match the mood of this statement with their third album; yet another take on their epic, cinematic, sweeping soundworld. Just eight instrumentals, from 'Truths Arise' to 'As Each End Looms and Subsides', get at both gargantuan and close-up acoustic spaces, unifying them with a singular emotion we all know: dread.
Remnant Of Obstinate Rank (Flooding Ratholes) (4:04)
Blood & Bonemeal (5:03)
Seed The Size Of A Spider's Eye (3:25)
Harvesting The Hatchet (6:10)
A Vegetative Mush That Melts Among The Shelves Lined With Meats Of Indeterminate Origin (3:03)
Pyramid Shaped Plow/The Caretaker (6:00)
Grublust (5:34)
Review: Following on from their crushing 2020 EP, 'Beneath the Canopy of Compost', New York/New Jersey based death-doom new schoolers, Reeking Aura, deliver a punishing, pummelling blend of grandiosity and fury on their debut full-length, 'Blood & Bonemeal.' A concept album detailing the "caretaker of a desolate agricultural property and that person's struggles with morbid psychosis," this is a ferocious blend of doomscaping and death metal brutality, elevated by a three-pronged lead guitar assault. Ambitious and desolate in equal measure, with the cavernous and corrupt colliding in abrasive cacophony, this is essential metal extremity for the most hardened of audible masochists.
In The Rectory Of The Bizarre Reverend: Commentary (DVD)
Review: With its title paying homage to the seminal 1969 King Crimson album In the Court of the Crimson King, the debut full-length from Finnish doom metal maestros Reverend Bizarre has become a quintessential cornerstone of the movement in the two decades since its initial release. Clocking in at a mammoth 74 minutes with epic cuts such as 'Sodoma Sunrise' running over 13 minutes as well as the gargantuan 21 minute closer 'Cirith Ungol', this is Black Sabbath worship interspliced with moments of macabre grandiosity which have become staples of 21st century psychedelic doom revival. While the group would disband after only three LPs before working on a myriad of later projects together, In The Rectory Of The Bizarre Reverend still serves as not only an iconic debut, but a perfect entry point into the doomsphere.
Review: Modern Finnish doom metal legends Reverend Bizarre only released three full-lengths during their tenure which ran for just over a decade from 1995-2007, and how they were full to the brim, often nearly exceeding the runtime of a CD. Following on from 2002's epic debut In the Rectory of the Bizarre Reverend (yes, that is a King Crimson reference), 2005's II: Crush The Insects boasted a more upbeat approach to their fuzzed-out, psych-tinged doomgazing machinations, with original copies of the album even bearing a sticker that referred to the trio as "The Biggest Sell-Out in True Doom". Known for having its 21 minute lead single 'Slave of Satan' cut down to 13 minutes in order to fit on the LP, this marks one of the rare instances where a band's single version exceeds the length of their album version. Coming courtesy of leading metal label Svart, this translucent red 2xLP reissue offers doomers, new and old, the chance to plumb the depths of one of the most quintessential doom acts to ever rear their sludgy head.
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