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demo compilation from Chicago death metal band CONTAGION

The release compiles the 1991 and 1992 demos onto one CD, remastered by Lasse in Ballade Studios in 2021

Comes 20 page booklet with lots of old flyers, photos and info from the era around the demos in the early 1990’s

XASTHUR founder Scott Conner, an astute chronicler of the dark side of the American dream, has come to terms with the idea that his work can confuse people and be misread. He just accepts that reality now. This notion is clearly expressed in the title of his new work "Open to Misinterpretation". This insight has also firmed his resolve to neither change his artistic direction nor to attempt making his music easier for people to access. Conner is just not interested in chasing what has worked for other people or fitting neatly into a genre. This does not mean that XASTHUR are standing still. "Open to Misinterpretation" represents a deeper and more developed version of what Conner already does. He keeps honing his expression and to find new sounds and moods for his ideas. As a result, his songwriting has become equally more detailed as well as harder to predict at the same time. The production has audibly been cleared up, even though Conner still aims for the recording process to feel live, organic, and real. "Open to Misinterpretation" probably feels more complete because these songs have already been performed live on stage due to XASTHUR's prior touring activities on both sides of the Atlantic. With "Open to Misinterpretation", the American delivers a more focused and more confident album that realises the evolution and expression of Scott Conner's sound to a point that makes it harder to misunderstand this artist's intentions. Well, and if anyone does, he has come to accept it as an integral part of XASTHUR's music.

XASTHUR founder Scott Conner, an astute chronicler of the dark side of the American dream, has come to terms with the idea that his work can confuse people and be misread. He just accepts that reality now. This notion is clearly expressed in the title of his new work "Open to Misinterpretation". This insight has also firmed his resolve to neither change his artistic direction nor to attempt making his music easier for people to access. Conner is just not interested in chasing what has worked for other people or fitting neatly into a genre. This does not mean that XASTHUR are standing still. "Open to Misinterpretation" represents a deeper and more developed version of what Conner already does. He keeps honing his expression and to find new sounds and moods for his ideas. As a result, his songwriting has become equally more detailed as well as harder to predict at the same time. The production has audibly been cleared up, even though Conner still aims for the recording process to feel live, organic, and real. "Open to Misinterpretation" probably feels more complete because these songs have already been performed live on stage due to XASTHUR's prior touring activities on both sides of the Atlantic. With "Open to Misinterpretation", the American delivers a more focused and more confident album that realises the evolution and expression of Scott Conner's sound to a point that makes it harder to misunderstand this artist's intentions. Well, and if anyone does, he has come to accept it as an integral part of XASTHUR's music.

Full color picture disc in custom sleeve made of black card stock feat. hotfoil embossing and alternate artworks, heavy stock insert and a designed download card for the digital album.

FLUISTERAARS return with their sixth full-length, Jacht der Mysteriën — three towering epics centered around the pursuit of the unknown.

Drawing from local legends, mysterious lights in the woods, and close observation of their immediate surroundings, the album was conceived as a live and complete band album and captured in a single take with longtime producer T. Cochrane.

Reamped through the hollow cylinder of an abandoned water tower, the record drifts between presence and disappearance — immersive, urgent, and elusive.

Hand numbered to 5 copies

Especially released for the VINTERLAND concert at the "Avantgarde Music Festival II" on 05/09/2026 in a numbered and limited to 350 copies edition.

The copies not sold at the gig are on sale now besides a few tens (band's private copies) 
The EP includes two demo songs and comes in bone-white vinyl

Numbered to 5 copies

“And a magic dwells in each beginning”

Enthralled by occultism and the magic of Black Metal SECRETS OF THE MOON was originally brought forth by bassist and singer Daevas after his departure from MARTYRIUM in Osnabrück in 1995. Thanks to a tremendous discography – amongst a multitude of releases most notably spanning seven full-length albums – and countless shows performed domestically and abroad, SECRETS OF THE MOON – within the ensuing 27 years until its termination in 2022 – would go on to put its name on the map as one of Germany’s most revered dark Metal bands.

Prior to unleashing their first album Stronghold of the Inviolables in 2001 the mischievous collective managed to produce a body of work comprising two demos – Unearthed Arcana and Vanitas – Promotape 98, the notorious and never officially published Moondance Madness tape and the cult Split 7” EP with LUNAR AURORA. Although less known than their albums, these dusty relics from the dark past are no less significant. Naturally way rawer and unpolished than the studio albums, what these recordings may lack in sophistication is all made up for by the mystical charm pervading their every second.

All of these raw diamonds from SECRETS OF THE MOON’s formative period with many obscure recordings especially unearthed for this compilation on top, Darkness Shall Rise Productions now have the great pleasure to reissue in the shape of this marvellous compilation.

A new in-depth interview with Lars “Devas” Plegge and Phil “sG” Jonas was done especially for this release and the booklets also includes many never seen before pictures of the groups glorious past.

Over 130 minutes of pure BLACK METAL MAGIK!

200 x classic black vinyl

“And a magic dwells in each beginning”

Enthralled by occultism and the magic of Black Metal SECRETS OF THE MOON was originally brought forth by bassist and singer Daevas after his departure from MARTYRIUM in Osnabrück in 1995. Thanks to a tremendous discography – amongst a multitude of releases most notably spanning seven full-length albums – and countless shows performed domestically and abroad, SECRETS OF THE MOON – within the ensuing 27 years until its termination in 2022 – would go on to put its name on the map as one of Germany’s most revered dark Metal bands.

Prior to unleashing their first album Stronghold of the Inviolables in 2001 the mischievous collective managed to produce a body of work comprising two demos – Unearthed Arcana and Vanitas – Promotape 98, the notorious and never officially published Moondance Madness tape and the cult Split 7” EP with LUNAR AURORA. Although less known than their albums, these dusty relics from the dark past are no less significant. Naturally way rawer and unpolished than the studio albums, what these recordings may lack in sophistication is all made up for by the mystical charm pervading their every second.

All of these raw diamonds from SECRETS OF THE MOON’s formative period with many obscure recordings especially unearthed for this compilation on top, Darkness Shall Rise Productions now have the great pleasure to reissue in the shape of this marvellous compilation.

A new in-depth interview with Lars “Devas” Plegge and Phil “sG” Jonas was done especially for this release and the booklets also includes many never seen before pictures of the groups glorious past.

Over 130 minutes of pure BLACK METAL MAGIK!

200 x classic black vinyl

“And a magic dwells in each beginning”

Enthralled by occultism and the magic of Black Metal SECRETS OF THE MOON was originally brought forth by bassist and singer Daevas after his departure from MARTYRIUM in Osnabrück in 1995. Thanks to a tremendous discography – amongst a multitude of releases most notably spanning seven full-length albums – and countless shows performed domestically and abroad, SECRETS OF THE MOON – within the ensuing 27 years until its termination in 2022 – would go on to put its name on the map as one of Germany’s most revered dark Metal bands.

Prior to unleashing their first album Stronghold of the Inviolables in 2001 the mischievous collective managed to produce a body of work comprising two demos – Unearthed Arcana and Vanitas – Promotape 98, the notorious and never officially published Moondance Madness tape and the cult Split 7” EP with LUNAR AURORA. Although less known than their albums, these dusty relics from the dark past are no less significant. Naturally way rawer and unpolished than the studio albums, what these recordings may lack in sophistication is all made up for by the mystical charm pervading their every second.

All of these raw diamonds from SECRETS OF THE MOON’s formative period with many obscure recordings especially unearthed for this compilation on top, Darkness Shall Rise Productions now have the great pleasure to reissue in the shape of this marvellous compilation.

A new in-depth interview with Lars “Devas” Plegge and Phil “sG” Jonas was done especially for this release and the booklets also includes many never seen before pictures of the groups glorious past.

Over 130 minutes of pure BLACK METAL MAGIK!

2CD jewel-case CD with 32-page booklet.

Vinyl re-release of Horna's debut album, Kohti yhdeksän nousua, incl. bonus tracks on black vinyl

SAOR is Andy Marshall's one-man vehicle for what he calls Caledonian Metal: an atmospheric black metal sound built from Highland landscapes and Scottish ancestral memory. Since founding the project in Glasgow in 2013, Marshall has grown SAOR from a cult curiosity into one of the genre's most distinctive voices.
‘Caledonia’ gathers five songs first heard on ‘Roots’, ‘Aura’ and ‘Guardians’ and rebuilds them from the ground up, produced by Chris Fielding. This isn't a remaster or a victory lap. Marshall wrote these songs before he had the resources or the mileage to realise them fully, and over a decade of touring has reshaped how they live and breathe on stage. The album opens with "Aura MMXXVI", a hushed procession through forests and corries that sets the record's terms early: patience, scale, and a reverence for landscape that never tips into pastiche. "The Awakening MMXXVI" answers with something more urgent, a call to old ways and older gods dressed in Marshall's most direct lyric writing on the record, the kind of song built to be shouted back at a festival crowd. "Carved in Stone MMXXVI", the album's centrepiece and lead single, carries the clearest sense of destiny and prophecy in the track list, its widescreen production giving the song's ancestral imagery real physical weight. "Hearth MMXXVI" turns inward, trading myth for something closer to memory, a meditation on home and belonging that grounds the record before its close. "Tears of a Nation MMXXVI" ends the album on its most elegiac note, mourning loss and ruin in a way that feels earned rather than performed, closing the circle the record opened with.
Guest contributions from strings, whistle, pipes and additional vocals widen the textures throughout without diluting the atmosphere, and the sequencing across all five songs traces a clear arc from landscape to legend to loss.

SAOR is Andy Marshall's one-man vehicle for what he calls Caledonian Metal: an atmospheric black metal sound built from Highland landscapes and Scottish ancestral memory. Since founding the project in Glasgow in 2013, Marshall has grown SAOR from a cult curiosity into one of the genre's most distinctive voices.
‘Caledonia’ gathers five songs first heard on ‘Roots’, ‘Aura’ and ‘Guardians’ and rebuilds them from the ground up, produced by Chris Fielding. This isn't a remaster or a victory lap. Marshall wrote these songs before he had the resources or the mileage to realise them fully, and over a decade of touring has reshaped how they live and breathe on stage. The album opens with "Aura MMXXVI", a hushed procession through forests and corries that sets the record's terms early: patience, scale, and a reverence for landscape that never tips into pastiche. "The Awakening MMXXVI" answers with something more urgent, a call to old ways and older gods dressed in Marshall's most direct lyric writing on the record, the kind of song built to be shouted back at a festival crowd. "Carved in Stone MMXXVI", the album's centrepiece and lead single, carries the clearest sense of destiny and prophecy in the track list, its widescreen production giving the song's ancestral imagery real physical weight. "Hearth MMXXVI" turns inward, trading myth for something closer to memory, a meditation on home and belonging that grounds the record before its close. "Tears of a Nation MMXXVI" ends the album on its most elegiac note, mourning loss and ruin in a way that feels earned rather than performed, closing the circle the record opened with.
Guest contributions from strings, whistle, pipes and additional vocals widen the textures throughout without diluting the atmosphere, and the sequencing across all five songs traces a clear arc from landscape to legend to loss.