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marvellous reissue 2018 by high roller records
comes in slipcase

marvellous reissue 2018 by high roller records
comes in slipcase

Comes in a 4-panel digipack with a 12-page booklet. First batch comes in black polycarbonate CD.

The sublime 4th full length from UK avant-Black/Death Metal band LYCHGATE advances the kinetic potency of their 2020 DMP-debut EP, "Also sprach Futura", to a frightening level of mind-mangling intensity.

"Precipice" is progressive Extreme Metal plummeting inside a black hole: scorching, twisted and transfixing. The band have upped both the dystopic prog-Death quotient and their sense of experimentation, moving with formidable, mechanised poise and a surrealist’s sense of dread.

Five paeans of hypnotic, metamorphic and dangerously addictive Black Metal. A perfect juxtaposition of meticulous craftsmanship and frightening pandemonium.

Comes in a 6-panel digipack with an 8-page booklet

Comes in a 4-panel digipack with a 16-page booklet.

The wonderful 16th album from legendary Avant Black Metal paragons BLUT AUS NORD is the culmination of a 30-year vision - as mainman Vindsval connects each element of the band's history to launch yet another intrepid exploratory evolution.

"Ethereal Horizons" is BLUT AUS NORD fully realised: richer, deeper, grander, more enigmatic and simultaneously more human than ever. Intermeshing the earthen and the futuristic as a vessel for the dark dreamer, soaring and ascending to vivid realms.

Digipack

"Hallucinogen" begins a new era for BLUT AUS NORD, ending the cycle of clandestine industrialised dissonance that culminated with previous transmission Deus Salutis Meae and moving skyward into freshly melodic territories of progressive clarity. Interweaving dreamlike choirs, inimitable harmonic developments, reflective clean guitars, palpable organic drumming and a welcome rock and roll swagger, Hallucinogen is a spacious, emotionally wide-ranging record that finds BLUT AUS NORD more open than ever, full of life and revelling in the element of surprise. "Hallucinogen" is yet another coherent universe from a band who have moved away from familiar tropes, aesthetics and comfort zones to unite - with Dionysian spirit - under/overland, surface/void, metropolis/mountain and the vastness of the mind’s eye into an indispensable addition to their unparalleled body of work.
Recommended if you like: ENSLAVED, EMPEROR / IHSAHN, ULVER (Bergtatt era), KING CRIMSON.

Comes in a 6-panel digipack. First batch comes in black polycarbonate CD.

"Nahab" - the second part of the Disharmonium cycle - finds BLUT AUS NORD returning, as if by compulsion, to the Weird nightmarish otherworlds of H.P. Lovecraft to reflect them through a new mirror of terrifying Black Metal lunacy.

In the dead-eyed trance of one demonically summoned, the band has once again channelled esoteric folklore and modern violence into another phenomenal slice of outsider art which befits its own Mythos and monstrosity. A Crowning Horror indeed.

Comes in a 6-panel digipack. First batch comes in black polycarbonate CD.

A continuation of preceding EP "The Forlorn Soldier", 3^rd full-length "Hymn to the Woeful Hearts" is a wounded, epically emotive exploration of timeless grief which ascends to the next level - simmering down past symphonics and ramping up the bitterness, aggression, textural dynamism and melancholic conviction.

Again featuring skilled and energetic guest drumwork from Yurii Kononov (ex-WHITE WARD), PURE WRATH have here produced their deepest, darkest, most organic and engaging work to date: perfectly balancing howls of primal rage with tear-stained, hymnal sung passages, simultaneously vicious and yearning guitar-work, poignant synth, evocative acoustics and heartfelt thematic realism.

Comes in a 4-panel digipack w/ an 8-page booklet. First batch comes in black polycarbonate CD.

After triumphantly casting off the shackles of claustrophobic dissonance on 2020’s lauded "Stare Into Death and Be Still", New Zealand unorthodox Death Metal legends ULCERATE up the ante even further with mind-bending 7th album "Cutting the Throat of God".

An acknowledgement that the band's most powerful and affecting material leans to the melodic side, this refined and hook-laden new record is a self-sufficient universe unto itself, a conflagration of inventively visceral Death/Black Metal where dizzying experimentation meets head-nodding abandon - obscenely twisted and addictive, heart-stopping in its depth of feeling.

Averaging an album per year since their 2018 formation, this latest expression from the rightly-revered Swiss Atmospheric Black Metal band AARA shows no drop in quality, nor let-up in their perpetually questing sense of purpose.

In follow up to 2023's "Triade III: Nyx" - the climatic installment of the 'Melmoth' trilogy based on Charles Robert Maturin's classic Gothic novel - the band now break away from the literary and apply their stunning musicality to real-world events.

"Eiger" is conceptually focused on the 3967 meters mountain of the same name in the Bernese Alps. Since 1935, at least 64 climbers have died attempting to conquer the Eiger’s sheer, ice-covered north face which has earned it the nickname of 'Mordwand' ('murder wall'). The album specifically examines an attempt to climb the Mordwand in July 1936 which ended in tragedy, as four young mountaineers succumbed to treacherous conditions and disappeared, presumed caught in an avalanche.

AARA's music has evolved dynamically in tandem with the subject matter, becoming more visceral, tangible and hauntingly powerful. An organic and spacious production allows the trademark elegiac, spirited leads and reverberant acoustic guitars of main-composer Berg to give increased emotional weight to a performance of on-the-edge savagery from vocalist/lyricist Fluss. The icy melodies, pensive moods, vibrant plummets and shifts/drifts contrast the wonderment of the natural world with a heightened sense of existential malaise and ultimately horror.

Comes in a 4-panel digipack.

"I I", the aptly-titled and comprehensively majestic second album from BLOOD ABSCISSION fortifies the veiled project as a major new player in the increasingly overcrowded field of contemporary Black Metal.

While the sense of perpetual forward motion and cascades of opulent melodies from outstanding 2023 debut "I" remain, the band here raise their compositional acumen: balancing out eruptions of chaotic rage with mystical transcendent calm, increasing push/pull dynamics to elevate the physical and emotional weight of each piece, and delivering upgraded songcraft to pack an ever more affecting punch.

The five tracks comprising "I I" are a showcase for first-rate symphonic layering, riffing of multifaceted power, steamrolling rhythms, and sublimated vocal fury with a wider sweep of feelings than before. Produced with crystalline clarity for the ultimate drive, this is an elegiac, intoxicating and compulsive odyssey through unseen inner/outer universes.