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Jewel-case CD, 12-page booklet

Cult Black Metal from Czech Republic

Three essential albums – „Ritual“, „Jilemnický okultista“ and „Vracejte konve na místo“, will be reissued on vinyl and jewel-case CD in mid-November.

Their preparation required several months of work:
The band found the original production tape from 1991 fir „Ritual“ and achieved a result that sonically surpasses the original release.
„Jilemnický okultista“ and „Vracejte konve na místo“, underwent new, more sensitive re-mastering.
All titles will be released as gatefold double vinyls and jewel-case CDs.The new artwork includes original, some previously unpublished illustrations and photographs reproduced in the highest quality. The inserted double sheets of the vinyls contain not only lyrics and archival documents but also current interviews with František Štorm.

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.

***ON SEA BLUE VINYL!!! In the spring of 2019, a new rock band made up of four otherwise ordinary Okies emerged seemingly out of nowhere, swiftly turning heads with a grotesque new take on noise rock—one fueled by the existential anguish that has defined the 21st century. Taking its name from the towering mounds of toxic waste that stand as monuments to capitalism’s cruel hubris across its home state, Oklahoma City’s Chat Pile made an immediate impression. That momentum culminated in the release of its landmark 2022 debut album, God’s Country, and its expansive 2024 follow-up, Cool World.

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

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

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

Pink, White & Blue With Splatter