Buscar:pest

Violet Black Splatter Vinyl

Der Reprint von BEHEMOTH "The satanist" erscheint als violette Doppel-LP mit schwarzem Splatter. Limitiert auf 500 Exemplare!

Ninth (2009) studio album from Polish Black Metal titans, fronted by the controversial Nergal.

Mit der Veröffentlichung des ersten Full-Length-Albums "Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel" wurde sofort deutlich, dass VoidCeremony einen Weg beschritten, den nur wenige gehen. Das Album bewies, dass Death Metal mit dem gleitenden, kontrollierten Chaos und dem geschmeidigen Fluss eines Jazz-Quartetts dargeboten werden kann und den Hörer dennoch in einem Kerker gefangen hält, mit wenig HP, ohne Zaubersprüche und umgeben von tödlichen Dämonen.

"Threads of Unknowing" ist eine Reise, die frühere Konzepte wieder aufleben lässt und immer progressivere und technischere Kompositionen hervorbringt. Mastermind und Gitarrist/Sänger Garrett Johnson sowie Gitarrenvirtuose Phil Tougas (Atramentus, Chthe'ilist, Worm, First Fragment) teilen sich hier den Gesang und die Leadgitarre, während Bass-Gott Damon Good sowohl den bundierten als auch den fretless Bass meisterhaft beherrscht und Schlagzeuger Charlie Koryn nicht nur Geschwindigkeit und Brutalität, sondern auch eine feine Mischung aus Präzision und Improvisation aus dem Jazz-Fusion einbringt. Das Endergebnis ist VoidCeremony und ihr unverkennbarer Sound: Zeitschmelzender Death Black Fusion.

Mit einem treffenden Coverbild, das die lyrische und philosophische Vision einer alten und vergessenen Zukunft darstellt, scheint VoidCeremony selbst in einer alternativen Death Metal-Zeitlinie zu operieren, die einst nur kurz präsentierte und bald für mehr kommerzielle Attraktivität zurückgelassen wurde. Doch das Portal hat sich wieder geöffnet und die Verschmelzung dieser grenzenlosen Möglichkeiten und Richtungen wird nun wieder direkt hervorgebracht.

- Das erste Album in voller Länge seit dem Debüt "Entropic Reflections Continuum" von 2020
- Die Vinyl-Version enthält eine Klappeinlage
- Cover-Gemälde von Juanjo Castellano (Majesties, The Black Dahlia Murder, etc.)
- Die Band besteht aus Mitgliedern von Atramentus, Worm, Mournful Congregation, Stargazer, Ascended Dead, Incantation, Chthe'ilist und First Fragment
- Gemischt und gemastert, mit zusätzlichen Synthies von Gabriele Gramaglia von Cosmic Putrefaction
- FFO: Stargazer, Pestilence, Chthe'ilist, Morbid Angel, Immolation, The Chasm, Aenigmatum, Atheist, Timeghoul, Liers in Wait, Innana

Mit der Veröffentlichung des ersten Full-Length-Albums "Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel" wurde sofort deutlich, dass VoidCeremony einen Weg beschritten, den nur wenige gehen. Das Album bewies, dass Death Metal mit dem gleitenden, kontrollierten Chaos und dem geschmeidigen Fluss eines Jazz-Quartetts dargeboten werden kann und den Hörer dennoch in einem Kerker gefangen hält, mit wenig HP, ohne Zaubersprüche und umgeben von tödlichen Dämonen.

"Threads of Unknowing" ist eine Reise, die frühere Konzepte wieder aufleben lässt und immer progressivere und technischere Kompositionen hervorbringt. Mastermind und Gitarrist/Sänger Garrett Johnson sowie Gitarrenvirtuose Phil Tougas (Atramentus, Chthe'ilist, Worm, First Fragment) teilen sich hier den Gesang und die Leadgitarre, während Bass-Gott Damon Good sowohl den bundierten als auch den fretless Bass meisterhaft beherrscht und Schlagzeuger Charlie Koryn nicht nur Geschwindigkeit und Brutalität, sondern auch eine feine Mischung aus Präzision und Improvisation aus dem Jazz-Fusion einbringt. Das Endergebnis ist VoidCeremony und ihr unverkennbarer Sound: Zeitschmelzender Death Black Fusion.

Mit einem treffenden Coverbild, das die lyrische und philosophische Vision einer alten und vergessenen Zukunft darstellt, scheint VoidCeremony selbst in einer alternativen Death Metal-Zeitlinie zu operieren, die einst nur kurz präsentierte und bald für mehr kommerzielle Attraktivität zurückgelassen wurde. Doch das Portal hat sich wieder geöffnet und die Verschmelzung dieser grenzenlosen Möglichkeiten und Richtungen wird nun wieder direkt hervorgebracht.

- Das erste Album in voller Länge seit dem Debüt "Entropic Reflections Continuum" von 2020
- Die Vinyl-Version enthält eine Klappeinlage
- Cover-Gemälde von Juanjo Castellano (Majesties, The Black Dahlia Murder, etc.)
- Die Band besteht aus Mitgliedern von Atramentus, Worm, Mournful Congregation, Stargazer, Ascended Dead, Incantation, Chthe'ilist und First Fragment
- Gemischt und gemastert, mit zusätzlichen Synthies von Gabriele Gramaglia von Cosmic Putrefaction
- FFO: Stargazer, Pestilence, Chthe'ilist, Morbid Angel, Immolation, The Chasm, Aenigmatum, Atheist, Timeghoul, Liers in Wait, Innana

Porto-based trio 10 000 Russos will release their new ‘Live In Berlin’ double LP on March 24th 2023 via Rubber Duck, a new live album imprint by Fuzz Club Records. The record captures the band storming through their subterranean motorik psych-drone live at Berlin’s Astra Kulturhaus on October 16th 2021. Recorded whilst out on a European tour, ‘Live In Berlin’ finds 10 000 Russos performing their 2021 ‘Superinertia’ LP in full the album’s five songs expanded and taken to even more transfixing and hedonistic heights in a live setting. These shows were 10 000 Russos’ first with the new, more-electronic line-up and sound, with newly-recruited synth player Nils Meisel making his debut on the ‘Superinertia’ LP and completing the line-up alongside founding members João Pimenta (drums/vocals) and Pedro Pestana (guitar). Across the hour-long set, Pimenta’s deadpan sprechgesang vocal and machine-like percussion, Pestana cascading psych guitar-loops and Meisel’s repetitive synth basslines all combine on a performance that will pull you into a trance at times and get you on your feet at others.

DOUBLE BLACK LP : 2 x 140 G Black Vinyl , Sleeve & 2 x Heavy Weight Printed Inner with UV Gloss Finish

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

2 x Solid White LP, 5mm spine Sleeve UV Gloss Finish, 2x Heavy Weight Printed Inner Sleeve UV Gloss finish, marketing sticker.

Legendary electronic music duo Orbital return Early 2023 with new album “Optical Delusion”, the Hartnoll brothers first studio album since 2018’s Monster’s Exist. Recorded in Orbital’s Brighton studio, “Optical Delusion” includes contributions from Sleaford Mods, Penelope Isles, Anna B Savage, The Little Pest, Dina Ipavic, Coppe, and perhaps most surprisingly, The Medieval Baebes.
Earlier this year, Orbital celebrated their storied history with “30 Something” which, unlike other Best Of’s, contains reworks, remakes, remixes and re-imaginings of landmark Orbital tracks including “Chime”, “Belfast”, “Halcyon”, “Satan”, and “The Box”

SHORT BIOG:

“A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest of humanity – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison…”

You many have seen this quote attributed to Albert Einstein on social media, the archetypal Smartest Guy Ever apparently having an out-of-character religious epiphany. It certainly leapt out at Paul Hartnoll of Orbital who spotted it in Michael Pollan’s 2018 book How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression and Transcendence.

“As soon as I saw ‘optical delusion’ I thought Oh hey, that’s the album title,” says Paul. “It just seemed to say so much about how people construct their own realities, how we see patterns that aren’t there, how we see what we want to see.

“But it’s actually a misquote. He never quite said that. In the German original what he’s really saying is that human experience is as relative as physics. Wouldn’t it be good if we could accept that, and find a kind of universal theory of everything for the human race? Then you look at everything from history to art to your Twitter feed and you think yeah, that’s what we’re all trying to do all of the time…”

Hence ‘Optical Delusion’, the tenth original Orbital album and the latest in a burst of renewed post-pandemic creativity for two brothers who’ve stayed at the top of their game longer than anyone from the post-1988 Class of Acid House.

Now with ‘Optical Delusion’ the Hartnolls dig deeper into the unquiet psyche of our increasingly surreal and disordered world. Sketched out partly during lockdown but fully recorded in the uncertain After Times, the album summons up conflicting emotions and sometimes beguiling images from years when the science fiction doomsdays that the Hartnolls watched on TV as kids finally came true. There are mesmeric tracks with names like ‘The New Abnormal’ and ‘Requiem For The Pre-Apocalypse’ and ‘Day One’. But there are also straight-up bangers and ethereal cosmic dreams, abstract sound wars and deeply human songs of separation and loss.

And it all starts with a bang. Lead single ‘Dirty Rat’, an outright Fall-meets-Front-242 class rant with vocals by Sleaford Mods mob orator Jason Williamson, harks right back to the Hartnolls’ days of politicised anarcho-squatpunk. It began as a remix swap (Orbital did the Sleafords’ ‘I Don’t Rate You’) and morphed into a comic, brutal, bass-driven harangue not so much against our rulers but at the petty, mean-spirited, frightened, Mail-reading voters who put them there: the people who are “blaming everyone in hospital/blaming everyone at the bottom of the English Channel/blaming everyone who doesn’t look like a fried animal.”

Also key to the album is opening track ‘Ringa Ringa (The Old Pandemic Folk Song)’ which returns to an Orbital truism, that time always becomes a loop. This chugging, cyclical Orbital groove gives way to an unnerving past-meets-present timeslip fit for ‘Sapphire And Steel’ as goth maenads The Mediaeval Baebes materialise to sing ‘Ring O’Roses’ – the innocent nursery rhyme whose roots are in the Black Death.

“I’ve always liked folk music and mediaeval sounds,” says Paul, himself an occasional Morris dancer. “I had the basis of that track and I wanted to spin it off somehow.” Trawling his archives he stumbled on The Mediaeval Baebes’ version of ‘Ring O’Roses’ “and my hackles just went up. I was like, my God, this is the original pandemic folk song.”

?his being Orbital, there are collaborations galore on the album, the roles once played by Alison Goldfrapp, Lady Leshurr or David Gray now filled by new talents. London singer-songwriter Anna B Savage contributes a compellingly fragile, Anohni-like vocal to ‘Home’, in which nature reclaims the scorched and vacant mega-cities. ‘Day One’ is a pulsing techno track featuring the singer Dina Ipavic. Paul got in touch with her after working on a score for a sculpture show of giant robotic installations by his friend Giles Walker during the pandemic. First Paul cut up his own score and Ipavic’s vocals on the track The Crane, which appears on the deluxe version of the album. Then he thought, Why not work with her for real? The result is school of ‘Belfast’, a bassy dreamscape with vocalised clouds billowing above.

The pensive ‘Are You ?live?’ adds to the Orbital product range of existential questions (‘Are We Here?’, ‘Where Is It Going?’) in collaboration Bella Union signings Penelope Isles, AKA brother and sister act Lily and Jack Wolter. “They’re our studio mates, they work upstairs!” says Paul happily. “And they’ve both got amazing voices.”


But Orbital are Orbital and never far from the dancefloor. “Eventually the more abrasive bits came back into the fold…” ‘You Are The Frequency’, first of two tracks to feature mysterious vocalist The Little Pest, surrounds the listener with warped voices ordering you to the dancefloor (Phil: “we wanted the idea that the music is kind of absorbing you”). And the second, the sinister ‘What A Surprise’, traps you in a paranoid electronic hall of mirrors.

In another nod to Orbital’s resurgent past the cover artwork once again comes from fine art painter John Greenwood, creator of fantastical grotesques for the covers of ‘Snivilisation’, ‘In Sides’ and Orbital’s most recent album, 2018’s ‘Monsters Exist’. Orbital had just had a slick Mark Farrow cover for ‘30 Something’ – this is a return to the overripe and bulbous techno-organic constructions that somehow express Orbital’s own uncontrollably fertile sound.

There are gaps in the future that Orbital are desperate to fill too; there will be tours and festivals and rooms and fields full of people. Those long paralysed months when we had little to look forward to but a Zoom DJ set made Paul and Phil appreciate the things that make life worth living.

Orange Vinyl
Four trax of filthy warehouse techno featuring two fast and furious bombs from Spanish underground whizz-kid Seon - "Fuck The Church" already garnering a cult following with it's cheeky sample. Co-Ax and Pest control go dark and dirty with the clanging "Saturated", whilst Technika funks it up on "It's Alive!".

Chile-born and now Germany-based scourging black metal plague Vel'Har joins Sentient Ruin for a much awaited and long anticipated vinyl release of its 2020 light-consuming debut MLP "Letanía I". On the wretched offering cryptic mastermind H.S.V.H. unfolds two monstrous black metal blades adorned by three interludes to invoke an unholy sonic siege upon the ridicule of life and the purity of christendom. Baptized under the pentagram and spewn from the unholy jaws of oblivion, these five tracks sprawl and hiss like a horrifying morass of snakes, consuming reality and devouring everything in the wake of a monstrous tide of venom. The rawness and violence of these riffs is evident, but so is the ritualistic and esoteric majesty emanating from its death-scarred aura; an infernal force summoned as a liturgy or rite of passage toward a higher meaning and other form of existence. And that form is Satan's triumph, the zenith toward which every moving part of this wretched crucible converges. His glory as beacon and conduit of pestilent krafts conceived with the malefic design of insulting life and transporting the listener deep inside twisted and inverted dimensions of infinite dissolution and complete insanity.

RUBY THE HATCHET liefern mit "Fear Is a Cruel Master" genau das siedend heiße, eingängige und doch voller roher Energie steckende Killer-Album ab, das sein gefeierter Vorgänger "Planetary Space Child" (2017) versprochen hatte. Fünf lange Jahre hat sich die amerikanische Psych Rock Truppe aus New Jersey nach der Veröffentlichung ihrer letzten Scheibe Zeit gelassen, aber das sehnsüchtige Warten hat endlich ein Ende. RUBY THE HATCHET haben in ihrem kollektiven Songwriting einen neuen Gipfel erklommen. Dies hat sich die Ausnahmetruppe durch zahlreiche Opfer sowie einen eisernen Willen, sich erneut zu steigern, hart erkämpft. Der Albumtitel "Fear Is a Cruel Master" spiegelt die Stimmung der Zeit, in der die neuen Songs geschrieben wurden, perfekt wider. Sängerin Jill Taylor, Gitarrist Johnny Scarps, Schlagzeuger Owen Stewart, Bassist Lake Muir und Organist Sean Hur hatten sich längst daran gewöhnt, als Gruppe zusammenzuarbeiten. Doch während der Arbeit am neuen Album konnten sie nur wenig Zeit miteinander verbringen. "Ich habe während der Pandemie viel gelesen und bin dabei auf den Satz 'Angst ist ein grausamer Meister' "Fear Is a Cruel Master" gestoßen", erklärt Taylor. "In dieser Zeit wurde die Angst sichtbar und wie sie die Menschen zurückhielt. Der Titel hat einen Bezug zur Musikbranche, denn alle waren verunsichert - von den Bands über die Booking-Agenten bis hin zu den Clubs. Angst lag in der Luft". "Fear Is a Cruel Master" wurde zusammen mit Paul Ritchie (THE PARLOR MOB) im New Future in New Jersey aufgenommen und war nicht so akribisch durchgeplant wie RUBYs vorherige Alben. Die Band ließ bewusst mehr Spielraum für Spontaneität und magische Momente. Das Hauptthema von "Fear Is a Cruel Master" ist letztlich die Selbstreflexion. Obwohl die neuen Songs im Schmelztiegel einer weltumspannenden Pestilenz geschmiedet wurden, besitzen sie doch eine Zeitlosigkeit, die weit über den Moment ihrer Entstehung hinausreicht. Alles, was RUBY THE HATCHET zu einem so herausragenden und selbst bei ihren Kollegen äußersten beliebten Act macht, findet sich auf diesem Album - von Jills üppigem Gesang voll rauchigem Honig, über die psychedelischen, aber dennoch knackigen Gitarren, bis hin zum Spirit der Rock'n'Roll-Orgelhelden. "Fear Is a Cruel Master" ist definitiv ein Album, das von einer Band geschrieben wurde, die nach einem Jahrzehnt ohne Bedauern auf all die Momente zurückblickt, die sie gelebt oder nicht durchlebt hat. "Fear Is a Cruel Master" ist sowohl Ergebnis als auch Zeugnis dieser Reise. Es ist Zeit, sich auf den Weg zu machen, um RUBY THE HATCHET in ihrem ebenso beeindruckenden wie mächtigen klanglichen Kielwasser zu folgen.

INCANTATION celebrates 30 years as one of the most influential and iconic underground Death Metal bands with the new Tricennial of Blasphemy collection! A triple LP set that catalogs rarities and unreleased tracks, Tricennial of Blasphemy traces all eras of the band's infamous history. From a previously unavailable demo version of the band's classic "Impending Diabolical Conquest" featuring Will Rahmer (Moritican) on vocals, to never-before-heard tracks like "Pest Savagery" - Tricennial of Blasphemy is another crucial part of INCANTATION's legacy. Tricennial of Blasphemy was mastered by Dan Swano, and features art by Wes Benscoter!

WADDUP Tricksters? Pandemics,WW111, or government disclosure of UIA’s stressing ya out? Come find refuge in the void, shut off your brain and let the rapture sweep you into the body zone. Get ready to peer behind the curtains in primordial Bataillen punk rock eletronix-esque sort of way. What are you waiting for download the wav files and get void surfing!

200 limited press black and orange vinyl no repress

One of the most violent thrash metal albums ever! Raging riffs, outraging drums, screaming solos and totally pissed vocals. Total aggression! Death metal wouldn’t sound like it does without that album. Then the 10 tracks on this legendary album... Let’s start with Side A: The opener “Malleus Maleficarum/Anthropomorphia” sets the tone and remains a classic to this day, with a switch after 50 seconds and then a full on thrash attack only comparable to the best and most intense moments on “Pleasure to Kill”. The mid-tempo part and the solo’s/leads are haunting still and hint at more melodies to come in the future. “Parricide” is brutal Thrash, surely echoing a bit of Slayer/Infernal Majesty as well, but just very intense and brutal. Next up is “Subordinate to the Domination”, another bulldozer song, that simply pounds you into ashes, very thrashy, but also brutal. As a short intermezzo we get “Extreme Unction”, which with it’s one and a half minute echoes a bit the crossover/thrash metal attitude of the late 80’s, and it is in its intensity and compactness a strange, yet fitting track that leads us to the closing song on Side A of the LP (yep, bands did think on closers on album sides when vinyl was the standard)... “Commandments” that is, starting with its acoustic intro, fully bursting out after 35 seconds into one of the standout songs of this album, to some possibly the best song on the album (who am I to disagree) because it is one of those brutal thrash songs that is among the best ever recorded, and a song that everyone knew back then, because of the “Stars on Thrash” compilation.

An iconic landmark album within Death Metal. “Testinomy of the Ancients” gets the well-deserved reissue! Two years after releasing one of the best death metal albums ever to surface from The Netherlands, Pestilence hit jackpot again with their 1991 album “Testimony Of The Ancients”. The biggest differences with their previous effort “Consuming Impulse” are simple: The production is more clean, short intermezzos between all the songs, the average pace is lower and Patrick Mameli has taken over lead vocals. Pestilence has had a well-deserved place in the first wave death metal elite, mentioned in one breath with the likes of Death, Sepultura, Cynic, Atheist and the likes. Rightly so, because their progression up untill this album is comparable to, say, Carcass. With every album they developed their sound so no release sounds alike but still stays Pestilence undeniably. Their previous album “Consuming Impulse” was unprecedented in brutality and morbidness. ‘Testimony of the Ancients” is less relentless, but it makes up for that with an onimous dose of morbid melodies, great lyrics and an all out Lovecraftian atmosphere. The highlight of this album is definately the guitars. Patrick Mameli and Patrick Uterwijk are a great tandem, combining melodic (twin) soloing with screeches and crashes of tremolo filled chaos. Take for example the song “Land Of Tears”. The guitar solo starts out very emotional, almost ballad like and then switches into high gear, so that all listeners who were dreaming away immediately abbandon all hope for solution of the saddening first guitar part. Noteworthy also are the supportive keyboard samples, never obnoxious, always morbid. Other album highlights are the title track (with truly frightening and insane lyrics), ‘Twisted Truth’ with its catchy dynamics, ‘Profetic Revelations’ (excellent chorus) and basically the whole album is perfect. Special attention to the final track (the album sticks together with samples, which are all great by the way) ‘Stigmatized’. This is death metal perfection, combining Slayer, Death and even Iron Maiden to create a masterpiece of metal.

The Best Old School Death Metal album from the Netherlands gets a well-deserved re-issue! Crushing, aggressive, abrasive, pounding, bone crunching... In an age when blast speed drums were still mostly used by grindcore acts (and some pioneers such as Morbid Angel) and now classic bands such as Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Deicide were still tiny demo acts, Dutch masters Pestilence released one of the best old school Dutch death metal classics ever to be unleashed upon mankind, the album that made a huge impact upon its release. “Consuming Impulse” is one intense album. one could say this album is definitely up there with classic death metal albums such as Death’s “Leprosy”, Obituary’s “Slowly We Rot”, and Morbid Angel’s “Altars of Madness”. With “Consuming Impulse”, Pestilence created their greatest, most complete album, successfully marrying the primitive brutality of their previous effort ‘Maleus Maleficarum’ with the technicality of their later releases. Whereas their debut album “Malleus Maleficarum” had some hints of thrash metal, this was gone on “Consuming Impulse” although the up tempo beat was still of course very much present. The production was heavy yet remarkably transparent. The riffs of Patrick Mameli on “Consuming Impulse” are simply mind-blowing. Even though quite simple at times they still prove extremely deadly. Try the main riffs in the verses of ‘Process of Suffocation’ and ‘The Trauma’ for starters. Speed monsters like ‘Dehydrated’ and ‘Reduced To Ashes’ were simple compositions but the intensity of this material just oozes out of your speakers. The presence of these straight forward raging death metal tracks was perfect to balance the dynamics and variety of the album. Songs such as ‘Chronic Infection’ and the classic ‘Out Of The Body’ incorporated some great interacting differentiating guitars and much more diversity in pace and riffing.

New label Golden Ape Records kick off their journey with some raw Electro-Funk chic from the Funk Messiahs with their brilliant debut single, 'Save Me' Vocalist Lucy (Veeresh's Humaniversity Sound), whose deep sultry understated vocals soothe the soul; the amazing Pest trio (Ninja Tune) of Matt on guitar, Vinny on sticks and Tom on Trombone to provide the rhythm and driving funk. Super talented Kitty (Kitty, Daisy & Lewis) moving booties with the bass, and A-Lo adding Electro vibes with his vintage synths. Remixes from Crazy P's Jim Baron, who delivers a seductive percussive Disco vibe under his Ron Basejam moniker; 'Dark Wobble' (aka Michel Williams), who injects some Scouse street style flavas; and Ben Pest amps up the electro filth with a gritty electronic outing.

Nearly 20 years ago, Karl Sanders – the founder, principal songwriter, and driving creative force behind the exotic, devastatingly heavy stylings of American extreme death metal icons Nile – forayed from his metallic leanings to serve listeners with a transfixing dose of the cinematic, meditative, world music-driven Saurian Meditation (2004). The album explores highly original compositions of hypnotizing, primarily Middle Eastern inspired music, featuring the unique inclusion of instruments such as the balagma saz (Turkish lute) and Glissentar, often blended with dark electronic ambience and deft electric guitar work. Saurian Meditation marked the beginning of Sanders’ Saurian journey, being the first of now three Saurian releases. From the haunting first notes of “Awaiting the Vultures”, which dreamily conjures images of traversing through the dark, mysterious halls of an abandoned ancient temple, to the slithering, percussion-driven pulses and searing electric solos on the ominous album closer “Beckon the Sick Winds of Pestilence” – Saurian Meditation provides a diverse escape for both fans of Nile and the outer realms beyond. Thematically centered around its acoustically-driven, spellbinding seventh track, “Dreaming Through the Eyes of Serpents”, the album ebbs and flows from a higher, rhythmic consciousness to a darker, hypnotic inner balance, achieving a Reptilian Theta State of deep meditation. Saurian Meditation launches the multi-dimensional Saurian universe – witness the very first, transcendental solo output by Karl Sanders, available for the very first time on vinyl, as well as in CD and digital formats, via Napalm Records!