CD

This is the second chapter of the three cycle release FEUER‚ NACHT and TOD from the (DOLCH) collective...

NACHT feels like a very personal and intimate art of communication of sound and word to us. It can be read as an interpretation of a journey through the night, an urban trip we experienced while writing and recording this album in Seattle, Los Angeles and Berlin some time ago.

It can also be read as a display of the state of the mind and soul, feeling like being covered up by a dark night, floating between the spheres of euphoria and depression, between love and fear, light and darkness.

4-panel digipak with UV spot lacquer

Die-cut

Limited to 999 handnumbered copies

A CD that compiles all three demos by this obscure U.S. band. Cross Fade was formed in Mastic (Long Island, N.Y.) in March of 1991. Scot Trollan (vocals), John Tinger (guitars), Eric Rhodes (drums) and John Colucco (bass) would form one the most intense bands to ever rule a stage. Cross Fade was fortunate to have spawned and thrived in the primordial era of Long Island Death Metal, a force to be reckoned with amongst other global Metal sounds. And Cross Fade was there, absorbing it and spitting out their own unique brand of extreme music. A band with infinite potential, gaining speed and ferocity only to implode like a black star in 1994. A band whose live sound was 100 times more intense than on tape. Cross Fade looked to create fresh diverse extreme sounds, with various influences ranging from Pink Floyd and Primus to Deicide, Suffocation and Cannibal Corpse. A socially aware band, the lyrics dealt with subjects like religious falsehood, global colonialism, pollution and mental illness. A constant on the live front, Cross Fade played early backyard and legion hall shows with what would become and continue to be the core of LIDM (Internal Bleeding, Pyrexia and Suffocation), and would cut their teeth on the stages of infamous N.Y. clubs like L'Amour, Sundance, Sparks and The Roxy, sharing the large stage opening for bands such as Morbid Angel, Sorrow, Internal Bleeding and Pro-Pain. Cross Fade was prolific in the underground zine and trading scene, sending out hundreds of demos to fanzines and Metal fans at cost, as well as handing out hundreds of free demos at the many many live shows and events they did. With the release of the self-titled demo in January 1992, the band showed where both them and the extreme sounds of the next century were going. Releasing the infamous "Ruined" demo later that year, Cross Fade was quickly becoming recognized as a force in the underground. Ferocious, moving, intense, intelligent... The band had established its sound and started doing out of state shows. In 1993 the band continued to play, promote, create, write and record, but the cracks of doom started to show. Internal creative tensions, commitments to responsibilities, all the things that come with being in a real band, were starting to weigh, all the while making the sound sharper, maner, more complex, more musical. 1994 led to the very limited release of the "Untitled" demo. This one was barely promoted or handed out, and the pressures of recording were enough to drive a final wedge in the band and ultimately lead it to ruin. All songs restored and subtly remastered for a more pleasurable listening experience. Cover art and layout by Cesar Valladares. The 16-page booklet features lyrics, photos, bio and liner notes by Scot Trollan and John Colucco. Absolutely recommended to fans of spazztic yet catchy, ridiculously dynamic, highly original, fucked up Death Metal with a vocalist that sounds like a mentally deranged John Tardy on crystal meth.

Ole Alexander Halstensgård, Kristoffer Rygg, Tore Ylwizaker and Stian Westerhus – went full isolation in their studio below the haunted hill, fantasizing about bygone nights of slasher, exploitation, and giallo. Three or four months went by, the band returned to the living, and sent their radiophonic workshop experiments off to the Dogs of Doom, France, where friend and fellow film freak, Carpenter Brut did a razor-sharp mix before taking it to Thibault Chaumont (Deviant Lab) for the master.

Scary Muzak, on one hand a homage to Carpenter’s themes – five out of twelve tracks are covers whereas the rest comes from the outer realms – and on the other zooming out on the aesthetics of the late ’70s and early ’80s popular culture. It is perhaps the Norwegians’ most hauntological moment, whirling up themes and moods, horrors and mysteries hidden in the foggy back alleys of your youth. Imagine the gloomy siblings of Les Humphries, Gert Wilden, and their respective orchestras, armed to their teeth with synths, pads, FX. Sometimes classy and chilling, other times amusingly smooth and sleazy, and at times outright beautiful in its suspense-filled vigour, Scary Muzak is an inspired, goblinesque addition to the ever-expanding Ulver catalogue. Interior films, remember?

Hailing from the Basque country of Spain, the wretched entity called SEPULCHRAL crawled out of the coffin in 2016. Main composer, Dusk, gathered some ghouls to deliver an unrelentless form of putrid metal of death in the form of 2 demos and one EP. Now SEPULCHRAL arise from the tomb with their first full-length, packed with catchy, putrid, crusty death metal that will make you jump from your coffin!

With "Disguised Masters" released in 1999, ARCTURUS delivered a striking and for some even provocative afterthought to their previous works. The WHEN intro 'White Tie Black Noise' was followed by the new track 'Deception Genesis' and a re-recording of the classic 'Du Nordavind' before the Norwegians launched into an adventurous re-visiting of six "La Masquerade Infernale" tracks that got unapologetically treated with EBM, trip-hop, rap, ambient, and other musical means. Drawing up fresh angles onto their music, the re-imagined songs revealed the wide open mind of ARCTURUS.
 

On their sophomore full-length "La Masquerade Infernale" (1997), ARCTURUS took their musical experimenting three ambitious steps further. The Norwegians succeeded in wedding a devilish concept loosely based on the characters of Faust and Mephistopheles with an eclectic range of surreal sound elements into an album that is rightfully considered a prime example of what later came to be known as avant-garde metal. From quoting Edgar Allan Poe in operatic paraphrases by frontman Garm (ULVER) or the additional high notes from the unmistakable I.C.S. Vortex (BORKNAGAR) via the spaced-out electronic samples, classical instrumentation, and an even increased use of psychedelic guitar riffage alongside more "traditional" black and death metal elements. Brilliant guitarist Knut Magne Valle replaced Carl August Tideman, which brought stability to this position of the band's line-up. ARCTURUS aimed dangerously high with "La Masquerade Infernale" – but remarkably pulled off the extremely difficult feat of forging such widely differing elements into a wildly fascinating, over the top listening experience that has stood the test of time and surely deserves to be labelled a "masterpiece".