AMERICAN: Recluse Industrial Black Metal Abusers Unveil Harrowing Sophomore LP - Track Streaming at CVLT Nation.

We’re honored and excited to bring you the second full-length album by recluse industrial black metal/harsh noise abusers american (which the band stylizes lowercase). This is especially a heartfelt release for SR as american were one of the earliest ever bands we worked with back in 2014 (our fourth ever “signing” to be exact), and their debut album we released on cassette - Coping With Loss - was a cornerstone point of no return for us, and probably the first release to make the SR name surface out of complete obscurity, and which first realistically circulated the label’s vision among total strangers for the first time ever. 

Hailing from Richmond, Virgina, american are a mysterious raw black metal/industrial/sludge duo fully committed to the torments and un-comfort of total oblivion and obscurity. No live activity and an existence at the borderline of everything have turned this band into a frightening enigma. Influenced by such revolutionary and genre-defying acts as The Body, Leviathan, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, Craft, Godlflesh, and Blut Aus Nord, american play a blown out, disembodied, torturous and completely fucking annihilated blend of delirious hardcore punk, sludge, black metal, industrial, and noise, creating songs that ooze of almost implausible negativity and bask in ruinous self-destruction. The duo write and record everything at home on their own and have thus far released a frightening debut self-titled demo and a split with the ambient band Crone to which they contributed three tracks. Noticing their diseased and self-destructive craft early on, a then embryonal and completely unknown Sentient Ruin worked with the band in 2014 to release their debut album - Coping With Loss - on cassette, the first ever release for the label to garner any press attention or recognition, and which established the imprint as a credible force. Coping With Loss was a scary and hermetic album which introduced the world to a band being literally devoured by its torments and by its own deviated emotions, and which made listeners gasp in disbelief at the sheer cruelty of the duo’s music, with the likes of Noisey claiming that american’s music “takes you into a world of pain”, and makes you “beg to whoever you believe in to kill you”, CVLT Nation explaining that their music “advocates suicide”, and Invisible Oranges further explaining that their music “is blessed with a haunting aura thick with loathing”.

Building further upon the ill foundations of their castigating and sadistic debut album, american have finally birthed - after three years spent in total seclusion - the inevitable and astonishing nightmare that it their second album. With Violate and Control american have reached a new zenith in musical depravity, and carved an even deeper wound into the American extreme metal underground with their own brand of crazed, sadistic, and raw industrial black metal. Reaching depths of emotional collapse and of musical abuse that barely seem graspable, american’s new creation will leave old fans of the band and new admirers alike horrified by the sheer cruelty reached in this new work, and disgusted by the band’s mindless and lawless evolution into complete and triumphant aural perversion. While their most iconic traits comprised of face-tearing screams, swarming black metal guitars, barbarically obsessive drum machines, and a humiliating barrage of power electronics and pedal abuse remain, with Violate and Control american have also pushed themselves and their wretched craft to often repellant absurds, leaving the listener blindsided and helpless to witness the band literally disembowel their emotions and imagination from within, with a jagged and dull blade made of delirious sonic sadism. Within Violate and Control’s blunt and soulless sonic inhumanity one will find the true distilled essence of self-loathing and of total sensorial mutilation, embodied as ten tracks of absolutely magnificent sonic abhorrence that hideously bring together the abyssal darkness of black metal bands like Leviathan and Ash Borer, the earth-shaking noise abuse of Bastard Noise and The Body, and the glacial magnificence of blackened noise sound sculptors like Sutekh Hexen, Locrian, and Wold.

CVLT Nation is now streaming the first track extrapolated from this visionary and wretched work - check out the noise-infested black metal delirium of Amorous and Subdued HERE.

Featuring disturbingly beautiful art made for the band by abstract collage visionary øjeRum, Violate and Control will see the light on June 30 2017 as LP/Cassette/Digital through Sentient Ruin in partnership with Fragile Branch Recordings (also US LP/Cassette) and Shove (EU LP) - pre-orders are now live on our Bandcamp, or store.

SHOW OF BEDLAM: Canadian Avant-doom Destroyers Unveil Mind-crushing Second Album - Track Streaming at CVLT Nation.

It is with immense pleasure that we announce our partnership with one of experimental metal's most promising and visionary underground acts currently in activity today. Montreal, Quebec's Show of Bedlam are about to gift humanity with an unforgettable onslaught of visionary avant-garde doom metal destruction, incarnated as their mind-crushing second full-length album titled Transfiguration.

Named after the infamous St. Mary of Bethlehem insane asylum in London, and Hailing from Montreal, Quebec, Canada, Show of Bedlam are one of those bands that become instantly recognizable upon first listen, and which are an auditive experience that even the most distracted or demanding listeners will not be able to overlook and will deem simply unforgettable. Like your worst nightmares and the scathing visions of insanity they try to evoke with their music, this band's songs nest inside your head like an unhinged fear or a repellant constant phobia, never to leave ever again. Show of Bedlam craft songs that dig and ravage deep within your subconscious, unearthing your most deviated and repressed emotions, crushing you under the weight of an inhuman barrage of angular and discordant riffs, and causing a massive sensorial surge within the deepest crevices of your soul that will make you rattle in fear and shake you to the core.

Creating an ominous, psychotic, and crazed blend of doom metal, sludge, noise rock, post-punk, no-wave, goth, and industrial, Show of Bedlam have stitched together a sonic palette of unbelievable evocative force and of sublime destructive prowess. With an insane and sprawling plethora of musical influences ranging from Swans, Godflesh, Sonic Youth, Babes in Toyland, Lydia Lunch, Melvins, and Burning Witch, to Zeni Geva, Butthole Surfers, Christian Death, The Cure, Bauhaus, Neurosis and beyond, and with cryptic and harrowing  lyrics dealing with subject matter related to mental illness, hospitals, shame, alienation, and mankind’s fate, Show of Bedlam have birthed something monstrous and unforgiving that is at times beautiful, at times hideously ugly, delicate, intimate and terribly wretched at the same time.

CVLT Nation is now premiering the first track extrapolated from the release - the annihilating Tælus and the feature and stream can be checked out HERE.

To be released on May 12 2017 on cassette, digital and 12" LP, Transfiguration takes form as a mind-crushing avantgarde doom metal monster in which the torments of madness, alienation, and mental disease coalesce into a devouring implosion of collapsing emotions and suffocating sonic obliteration. A true experimental doom colossus form for fans of Anatomy of Habit, Indian, Lord Mantis, Swans, Bodychoke, Diamanda Galas, Made Out of Babies, Battle of Mice, and mid-career Neurosis.

Transfiguration US pre-orders for tape, LP and digital are now live on our Bandcamp and store, and will be released in collaboration with Dawnbreed Records (EU vinyl and tape), Desordre Ordonee (CA vinyl), and PRC music (CD worldwide)

ABKEHR: German Black Metal duo prepare incredible debut release - track unveiled at CVLT Nation.

Abkehr_Band-1.jpg

We're very pleased to announce the release of In Asche - the debut release by German black metal specter ABKEHR. CVLT Nation has just unveiled the first track from this dark and embittered masterpiece, and you can list to II and read their feature HERE.

Slithering out from the most remote crevices of the German extreme metal underworld, Abkehr's genesis appears to have been sparked by unprecedented emotional and mental collapse and by an unfathomable pull toward absolute, devouring darkness. The band formed in 2015 in Northern Germany by sole masterminds Raash and H. with the intent of unifying under the black looming star of self-disintegration the raw misanthropic grimness of the most praised Norwegian black metal tradition with the atmosphere and desperation of depressive black metal, and the swarming majesty of US atmospheric black metal. Shaped by a diverse and sapient pletora of influences ranging from Darkthrone, Gorgoroth, and Craft, to Cornigr, Mgła, and Ash Borer, Abkehr have funneled the primordial abjection and hatred of traditional black metal through a cascading surge of the most blighted and tormented human emotions, creating something grandiose and ungraspable who’s beauty is matched solely by its own omnipotent wretchedness.

With the "mini album" In Asche Abkehr explore the many manifestations of darkness, hopelessness, evil, and annihilation - condensing them into heathen sonic form to distill their very own expression of actual hell. Hideously and relentlessly crawling across four vast movements of pure incarnated darkness, In Asche is a towering and commanding work in the current underground black metal panorama, which has managed to harness the primordial savagery of bands like Craft and Judas Iscariot, the vast and enveloping hopelessness of bands like Weakling and Ash Borer, and the visionary wretchedness of brilliant black metal anomalies like Twilight and Leviathan, to create their own personal passageway into a tormented and shadow-torn world.

ABKEHR
In Asche

1. I
2. II
3. III
4. IV

In Asche is slated for release on May 19 2017 in tape/digital formats (with an LP version to be announced soon) and is now pre-orderable on our store or Bandcamp. Keep an eye out for more tracks to be unveiled in the coming weeks.

NECROT: Bay Area Death Metal Butchers' Monstrous Debut Album "Blood Offerings" To Get Tape Treatment Through Sentient Ruin - First Track Revealed.

From Earsplit PR: This June Oakland, California-based classic death dealers NECROT will unleash the fetid fruits of their Blood Offerings full-length. Set for release on June 9th, 2017 on CD, LP, and digitally via Tankcrimes and on cassette in partnership with Sentient Ruin Laboratories, the eight-tracks comprising Blood Offerings were captured by Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer (Vastum, Graves At Sea), mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Nails, Gatecreeper), and will come sheathed in the unholy cover craftings of Marald Van Haasteren (Bolt Thrower, Baroness).
 
"Blood Offerings is the result of six years of hard work and is our first full-length record to be released by Tankcrimes," relays drummer Chad Gailey. "The songwriting and performance on these eight songs is a step up from what people have heard previously. We feel that with this album, we have accomplished what we intended to create many years ago. It is always a great experience working with Greg Wilkinson at Earhammer and Scotty Heath at Tankcrimes because of the hard work and care they both put into each project they are a part of. We are thankful to everyone who has supported NECROT to get to this point."
 
Guitarist Sonny Reinhardt agrees, "We made the best album ever made and can't wait to hit the road and kill you all." Adds guitarist Luca Indrio, "This is a death metal classic and you should fucking have it!"

NECROT
Blood Offerings

1. The Blade
2. Rather Be Dead
3. Shadow And Light
4. Blood Offerings
5. Empty Hands
6. Beneath
7. Breathing Machine
8. Layers Of Darkness
 
Forged in 2011, NECROT features current and past members of Acephalix, Vastum, Saviours, Watch Them Die, and Atrament. The band unleashed the audio bone-crush of their The Labyrinth full-length last year via Tankcrimes and Sentient Ruin. Spewing forth eight tracks amassed from three hard-to-find and long out-of-print demo tapes, the record reaped critical acclaim from fans and media alike compelled by the band's unrepentant Autopsy, Bolt Thrower, and Sacrilege worship. Decibel Magazine hailed NECROT's, "classic, bursting-at-the-seams, crawling-from-the-grave-still-decaying sound," while Invisible Oranges wrote,"NECROT are as old-school death metal as old-school death metal gets. Their songs would have been welcome presences on early classics by Master, Bolt Thrower, and Autopsy and yet, NECROT has a punk rock soul that refuses to die." Last Rites concurred noting, "Death by pitiless decimation is the principle mandate here."

Blood Offerings preorders for the tape we are releasing are currently available at our store and Bandcamp. The vinyl, CD and digital editions are available from Tankcrimes. Check out the first cut - Empty Hands - right here on the left.

MIND MOLD: Canadian Avantgarde Black/Doom Crushers Prepare Debut - Stream Track At Decibel Magazine.

Decibel Magazine is now streaming Antipath - a song extrapolated from Mind Mold’s debut EP which we will release on April 28 digitally and on cassette - you can check out their feature HERE. Decibel have described Mind Mold as a band that “sounds like a mash-up between Gorguts and Deathspell Omega if someone chopped and screwed parts of the song at random”, and that their music is “so off-kilter you'll wonder how the band plays it without tipping over - and before it's over they manage to add in a dour melody line that tries to make you forget you were on the verge of retching misery just a minute ago”.

We could not agree more, as this band’s absurd and genre-defying music truly sounds like a warping and time-dilation of some of the most discordant and technically bezerk black and death metal bands out there, just as in the case of Gorguts and Deathspell Omega - as if those bands' music was indeed subjugated to an hallucinating stasis or to a temporal collapse in which the rhythms and tempos slow down to a lucid coma. But there is more to the band’s ungraspable DNA - so much more...

Spawned by the minds of Calgary, Alberta-based musicians Robert LaChance (guitarist of Canadian dark grind devastators WAKE), Will Bjorndahl, and Ryan Kennedy (of Calgary-based avantgarde grind anomaly Seminary), Mind Mold’s debut self-titled EP is a morbid study, excavation, and rupturing re-incarnation of 90’s noise rock, shoegaze, hardcore, and experimental metal, embodied as five tracks of mind-shattering and flesh-ravaging blackened doom - plagued by oozing striations of noise rock, industrial, and the darkest strains of hardcore. A dark and hopeless descent into total crush depth where the aesthetics and primordial intents of bands like Neurosis, Red Harvest, Blut Aus Nord, Today Is The Day, Rorschach, Jesu/Godflesh, and Swans coexist in majestic and torturous harmony, incarnated through a surreal and suffocating kaleidoscope of sound made of haunting atmospheres, puzzling and mind-crushing guitar harmonies, blood-chilling screams, pulsating baselines and pulverizing drums. Look out for more streams to hit the airwaves soon and pre-order tapes and digital products from our Bandcamp and or store.

COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER: San Francisco Dark Ambient Sorcerers Ready New Full-Length Release - Stream Massive Ritual at Heathen Harvest.

We are honored and proud to announce the release of Shrines for the Unwanted, Respite for the Cast Aside - the triumphant reawakening of San Francisco’s masters of behemoth ritualistic blackened drone Common Eider, King Eider (band info here). Within the boundless vastness of this new work - bone, antler, and voice produce connective threads between the worlds, as guitar and percussion punctuate  shifts in mood. Voices call to the spirits, and the spirits call back in return. Recorded in 2016 during four private, collective only rituals, the pieces pull the listener through the darkest and most overgrown trails of the blackest forest, Shrines for the Unwanted, Respite for the Cast Aside is a colossal specter of monumental and horizonless ritualistic black ambience that will entrance fans of Sunn O))), Halo Manash, Wardruna, Arvo Part, and Lustmord alike. Vocal visitations have been also performed on track 3 - Litha - by by A.C. Way of Sutekh Hexen .

Shrines for the Unwanted, Respite for the Cast Aside will manifest itself incarnated as a brand new and massive sixty minute full-length album in digital and cassette tape formats. The cassette version can be now-pre-ordered as a bundle option coupled with a majestic seventy-five page book of photographs and writings, and includes in its B side a cassette version-only exclusive bonus track of a 30-minute live recording of the band performing in Vienna, Austria, during their 2016 European tour. The cassette art is rendered with a blend of black, white and golden inks, while the photos featured in the book were taken by the band members them selves during their 2016 European tour - preserved memories of various hand made shrines as objects of power and contemplation.

Heathen Harvest is now streaming Antler Tongue - the first ritual extrapolated from this towering dark ambient masterpiece, and have stated that Common Eider, King Eider are "great at evoking the mysterious, primal experience of connecting with the unknown, in the vein of Halo Manash and their label mates on Aural Hypnox". Look out for more tracks streams and a full album stream closer to release date.

Shrines for the Unwanted, Respite for the Cast Aside drops worldwide as tape, tape+book, and digital formats on April 7 2017 and can now be pre-ordered on our store and or Bandcamp.

COMMON EDIER, KING EDIER
Shrines for the Unwanted, Respite for the Cast Aside

Side A (60 min):
1. Cast Aside for the Wolves to Devour, They Were Instead Embraced
2. The Dark Winter (Sing Out Into the Night Sky!)
3. Antler Tongue
4. Litha

Side B (30 min):
5. Common Eider, King Eider Live in Vienna (Cassette Tape Only Bonus Track)

VRTRA: Colossal Debut Album by Mysterious Californian Blackened Death-Doom Behemoths Now Available On 12" 180gr vinyl.

VRTRA's monumental blackened death-doom masterpiece My Bones Hold a Stillness, finally has found its new, final, and ultimate form, on 180 gr black vinyl.

We opted for heavy black wax and a super DIY packaging presentation for this crushing record. Inserts were printed with metallic inks on black thick matte card stock, and jackets screen printed by hand by the band members them selves with metallic inks on semi-gloss black jackets. The band also folded and glued each jacket by hand one by one. The US version was printed with silver inks, while the EU version (released by Dawnbreed Records and comprising of only 20 copies available in the US through us) were printed with golden inks.

Initially released by Sentient Ruin on September 2 2016 as digital product + limited edition cassette tape (which sold out in record times) - My Bones Hold a Stillness has been hailed by many fans and media outlets across the globe (ranging from CVLT Nation to Invisible Oranges, to No Clean Singing to Wonderbox Metal and beyond) as an unchallenged masterpiece and one of the greatest blackened doom/death-doom albums of 2016.  The My Bones Hold a Stillness vinyl can now be ordered on our Store or on our Bandcamp.

Comprised of three colossal movements of oozing negativity for a total of over thirty minutes of completely abhorrent blackened death-doom chaos, VRTRA have crated an opera of abysmal imagination and of fathomless destructiveness that will delight the fine palates of all fans of bands like Dragged Into Sunlight, Primitive Man, Ulcerate, Altar of Plagues, Diocletian, Portal, Abyssal, Inverloch, Old Man Gloom and Lord Mantis.

In streaming the track The Cold Suffocating Dark Goes on Forever, CVLT Nation has labeled the release as "one of the strongest debuts of 2016" and "ULTRA INTENSE" - and eventually went on to put it at #3 on their best 10 death-doom releases of 2016.

BUIOINGOLA: Italian Darkwave/Neocrust Shadowdwellers To Release Final Mesmerizing Album "Il nuovo Mare" on March 31st - Track Streaming at CVLT Nation and Metalitalia.com.

Air burns like fire, entrails scream. Breathing is so difficult that any driving vital force is apparently overwhelmed by the temptation of letting oneself fall deep down in water, the same water that has enveloped, warmed and blinded us throughout our life. Through fears, conflicts, uncertainties and discomfort, Buioingola’s music tells of a journey that leads nowhere, but which finds its meaning in its own becoming. Driven by the core duo of guitarist and vocalist Diego, and drummer Thomas, and hailing from Pisa, Tuscany, central Italy, Buioingola (literally "darkness in my throat") are one of those bands that attempting to define or pin down is simply both impossible and futile. After having debuted in 2012 with an imposing three track demo that has redefined the quality and aesthetic of Italian neocrust, the band have steadily pushed their way to fore-front of Italian atmospheric metal thanks to their unusual creativity, stoic work ethic, and their completely unheard of and genre-defying music - a textured alloy of blackened doom, post-punk, darkwave, and crust. Drawing influence from legendary crust and post-punk bands like Amebix, Cocteau Twins, The Cure, Killing Joke, and Joy Division, and driving this amalgamation of goth and gloom into an icy and lifeless wall of industrial overtones, the Italian trio has then taken everything to next level of aural trauma, injecting their dark, withdrawn and inconsolable sounding darkwave and post-goth aesthetic into a devouring maelstrom of bleak, monolithic and crushing doom riffs.

Perhaps now reaching the end of their obscure but unparalleled existence, Buiongola present their swansong to the world in the form of a brand new monolith of obsidian black sonic affliction. Titled “Il nuovo mare” ("The New Sea"in Italian), this brand new - and perhaps final - full-length player by the now dissolved tuscan three-piece is an ulterior step the band has taken toward an unfathomable abyss, shaped once again by the band’s signature strain of agonizing, shoegazy crust and haunting post-punk, interwoven with dismal dark wave dirges, towering black/doom passages, and martial industrial tapestries. Over the span of thirty-five suffocating minutes of darkness-clad misery Buioingola show us once again their mastery in weaving together something unique and unlike anything else: a doomed sonic shrine of crestfallen dark punk-metal magnificence where the core essence of bands like Planks, His Hero Is Gone, Godflesh/Jesu, Sisters of Mercy, The Cure, Neurosis, Amebix, and Altar of Plagues sublimate into the arms of omnipotent gloom.

CVLT Nation and Metalitalia.com are now streaming the darkness-clad sonic affliction of second track "Latenza" - look out for more track streams to surface on other media outlets in the weeks leading up to release date.

“Il nuovo mare” will be released worldwide March 31 2017 digitally and on black and clear 12" vinyl in the US by Sentient Ruin, and in Europe by an alliance of local labels: Unquiet Records from Poland, and Shove Records and Sangue Dischi from Italy. Pre-orders are now up on our store and Bandcamp.