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Offers: CD, Vinyl, DVD, Merchandise and Second hand - Extreme Metal and Dark music
This is an offer to purchase the 4 tapes in bundle at 40.00€ instead of 48.00€ (if you would buy them individually)
Black Vinyl
Behind Dim Lights hides Finnish award-winning composer, producer and multi-instrumentalist Ville Pallonen, founder of Chaoswaves Composing and better known to the extreme metal world as V-Khaoz. After receiving great praise with several black metal projects, namely Vargrav and Olio Tahtien Takana, Pallonen decided to (temporarily?) put metal aside and focus on pure electronic music, and dystopic and futuristic tunes are what you should expect while making your way through Dim Lights dreamy, melancholic notes. The work of great composers and electronic producers coexist inside V-KHaoz music, the offspring of both the ‘80s cyberpunk and the ‘20s videogame culture.
please note: this vinyl is included in Circle of Wax #5 and will be sent to serial - subscribers
Stjärnfält is a musical project led by M. Originally from Australia, at some point the mysterious multi-instrumentalist relocated to Sweden, where he still lives to this day.
Lapporten is the project sophomore album and follows two years after the debut Ascension. These four, atmospheric, trancey tracks are a detail of M.'s travels through northern Sweden, and attempt to capture it's contradicting nature of isolation and expanse; bleakness and beauty.
Let Stjärnfält guide you up the “Kebnekaise”, Sweden’s highest mountain, wander with him through the green area of “Bruksleden” and behold the magnificent “Polarsken” and Séracs. Lapporten itself stands for “The Lapponian Gate”, a u-shaped valley located in Lapland.
Merging dreamy, hypnotic atmospheric metal with icy electronic trance soundscapes, M. describes Stjärnfält's music as "melancholic optimism".
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E-L-R's sophomore full-length "Vexier" oscillates elegantly between velvet darkness and flaring bursts of high energy. The style of the Swiss has been dubbed 'doomgaze' and 'post-metal' and both terms apply loosely to the trio's meandering, down-tempo doom-epics. E-L-R's hypnotic phrases that are constantly varied and warped in repeating loops are reminiscent of shamanic rituals imbued with psychedelic colours. The trio weaves a subtle tapestry with diligence and persistence that depicts a labyrinth full of intricate details and hidden treasures.
After a period of smoldering dormancy Vanum reappears, blazing and alive, with their third full length album, Legend. Continuing the triumphant march of previous works, but raising the stakes even higher, Legend finds Vanum both expanding and refining their approach, and in turn delivering their most fully realized recording to date.
Professionally duplicated tapes with vintage print, full-color cover on haptic card stock, and a designed download card for the digital album.
Shadows Call comprises a total of 37 minutes and two epic-length tracks, one each from Signal Rex‘s most striking discoveries in recent years, Nathr and Ordo Cultum Serpentis. Nathr are up first with “The Burial,” a nearly-20-minute track that duly lives up its namesake. Plaintive and placid, yet unsettlingly so, for more than half its massive duration, “The Burial” mesmerizes with a strangely beautiful aspect before exploding into a slo-mo crush akin to the cosmos crumbling away, deceptively peaceful in its resigned oblivion. Ordo Cultum Serpentis are second, with the nearly-17-minute “Filii Serpentis Nigri.” Much like their two celebrated EPs last year, the duo sonically approximate a massive boulder ritualistically opening into an impossibly vast tomb. But, like their split-mates, halfway through the track, they surprise with a jarring-yet-somehow-seamless transition into ritualistic blasting, sealing that same tomb with utter finality.
Simply put, blackened doom doesn’t get much better than this. And Nathr and Ordo Cultum Serpentis together a create a complementary work rather than a split “album” full of throwaway tracks. Feel their Shadows Crawl!
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".
Digipak CD with booklet
Five long years after their fascinating debut, Milan-based duo A Pale December deliver their sophomore album, Death Panacea. Compared to The Shrine Of Primal Fire, Death Panacea steers towards more aggressive, warring sounds. The “atmospheric black metal” label which so aptly described their debut album, is now just one of the many, partial definitions which could be used to define the band’s music.
When asked about their new opus, multi-instrumentalists Riccardo Di Bella and Ernesto Ciotola provided the following, strong statement: “While many metal albums seem to appeal to a feeling of fierceness, a call to war, an urge to fight something, we wanted to express the opposite. Death Panacea is an album about defeat and hopelessness, about the inherent futility of human strife and all our laughable attempts at masking this unescapable nature.
We wanted to praise failing and giving up, as opposed to perseverance, pride and the grinding mentality. We wanted to praise the rejects above the leaders, who naively think they can escape this race towards oblivion, and the coward above the fighting man, whose only fault was believing in the frail concept of nation and a false sense of belonging.
While distancing ourselves from these delusional sentiments, we also didn't want to fall into optimistic nihilism; the idea that the awareness of an impending void can grant any peace is simply preposterous.
Ultimately, this is the meaning that lies behind the title of the album: death is what keeps us in check and yet is the one and only panacea to all our anguishes. In all this, one could almost find a cold comfort, knowing that the top step of the podium is eventually just a springboard to the abyss”.
Digipak CD with booklet
After two decades devoted to the dark arts within obscure black metal, Wraith (Vanquished) and Luzifaust (Kaifrun, Hostium) present a new chapter, going by the name of Vastatum.
An ancient parallelled entity born into modern existence. Rich with atmospheric maturity and an emphasis on existential impermanence, Vastatum have executed the sonic experience of passing beyond life into death’s immeasurable grasp. Thus melding the elusive soundscapes of disembodiment with the haunting distinctions of absolution. Poetic, and potent, melodic and malevolent.
Vastatum is driven by the dark innate will of creativity and the seductive allure of the occult, and Mercurial States Of Revelation is the first chapter in the band's history. A chapter written in black metal and contemplations upon human existence.
Mercurial States Of Revelation reflects upon the conceptual philosophy that since time immemorial the earth, world and existence (as we comprehend it) have been in a constant state of flux and continual transformation. Thus compelling all planetary inhabitants toward perpetual states of adaptation within a world that is rapidly evolving and transcending beyond the depths of the human species.
Through mighty riffs deeply rooted in both the classic sounds of Norway in the early ‘90s and the Cascadian tradition of the ‘00s, Vastatum find a perfect balance between the old, the contemporary and the esoteric, picturing visions of growing shadows and perishing bodies.
