VERWOED: Dutch Black Metal Heathens To Release Haunting Sophomore LP - Tracks Premiered at Decibel Magazine & Invisible Oranges.

Sentient Ruin is proud to bring you De Val, the magnificent new album by Dutch one-man black metal entity Verwoed. On this haunting sophomore offering the Dutch black metal specter peels back even more layers from its hideous amalgamation of atmospheric black metal bedlam, to expose incredibly dense and much more psychedelic and hallucinogenic cosmic textures than ever before, while remaining yielding in its nihilistic and violent tactics. At times twisted and disorienting, at times meditative and defiant, De Val is a sprawling demonstration of superb abstract black metal intransigence which confirms Verwoed as one of European black metal's most daring and visionary acts.

Leading up to the release Decibel Magazine has premiered the track De Kwelling van het Bestaan remarking on the album’s majestic atmospheres and uncompromising darkness, you can read the feature and hear the track HERE. Today Invisible Oranges has likewise unveiled the track Verder Van Het Licht calling De Val black metal that “will send you spiraling into the night“. You can read their feature and listen to the track HERE.

Verwoed is the brainchild Utrecht-based solo black metal artist Erik B., whom began the project as “Woudloper” in 2014. The debut Woudloper demo tape was released by Breathe Plastic to critical acclaim, showcasing the project’s dense and enveloping brand of shadow-torn black metal already fully formed and in total control of its shape and destiny. The success of the release pushed Erik B. to reconsider some aspects of his creation, and a name change to “Verwoed” soon followed to symbolize the more experimental and exploratory approach the project would undertake thereafter. The maiden official Verwoed release, Bodemloos, was released by Argento Records and brought forth three massive new movements of dense and majestic black metal that was met with even more praise than its predecessor, revealing a much more refined and layered production quality and an approach toward songwriting much more focused on atmospheres and unpredictability. With its imposing atmospheres and towering songwriting Bodemloos instantly projected Verwoed to the forefront of European black metal, and the show offers began pouring in, the interest in the band spiraling upward day after day. Assembling a live lineup, the band then took to the stage to bring Bodemloos songs live to various large European cities and playing a handful of high profile shows which included stints at the Eindhoven Metal meeting along the likes of Venom, Blasphemy, Coroner, Master's Hammer, Carpathian Forrest, and more, and then closing their staggering 2018 with an acclaimed performance at the Roadburn Festival.

De Val is slated for release on black and colored vinyl as well as digital on May 24 2019 once again through Argento Records in the EU, but with Sentient Ruin also involved finally being Verwoed’s gateway to the North American market. A tape version is also going to be available from Dutch boutique label Tartarus Tapes. You can now re-order vinyl on our store or digital/vinyl on our Bandcamp.





SUSPIRAL: Galician Black/Death Metal Destroyers Set To Unleash Mind-Altering Sophmore LP - Track Premiered at No Clean Singing.

Sentient Ruin is honored and proud to partake in the release of Suspiral's sophomore full-length LP Chasm, set to be released on tape, vinyl and digital on May 10 2019.

Featuring members coming from Spanish extreme underground bastions like Black Earth, Sheidim and beyond, Galician black/death metal entity Suspiral coerce crushing black and death metal into repetitive, trance-inducing song structures designed to consume and annihilate the psyche. Drawing influence from extra-corporal states of consciousness and fringe extreme metal on one end, and from kraut/psycheelic experimentalism on the other, Suspiral have manipulated the darkest and most twisted strains of black/death metal to create a psychedelic aberration of unseen magnificence. A true embodiment of chaos an entropy distilled into sonic form to obliterate the mind and torment the flesh.

You can stream the track Crown of Chaos and read a great introduction to the release from No Clean Singing at this link, where they call the track a “paranormal manifestation of madness and majesty”.

Suspiral were formed in 2014 by A.T. (Sheidim, Black Earth, Krossfyre) and M.S. (Arkaik Excruciation, Sudaria, Scythe), after the duo had envisioned a black/death entity of otherworldly and alien traits dominated by two opposite but coexisting souls: on one side the raw and unforgiving darkness and aggression of bands like Thou Shalt Suffer, Necrovore, early Emperor and Satyricon, Katharsis, Sadistik Exekution, Beherit, Samael, along with the repetitive, vorticose and abstract patterns of more ritualistic, trance inducing, and meditative entities like Ash Ra Tempel and other Kraut and drone bands on the other. The improbable sonic design was meticulously planned and executed by the duo and that same year their debut EP Dawn of Kezef saw the light spawned in a wake of ruinous black/death destruction set against a chasm of disorienting and sensorially devastating psychedelic patterns and repetitions. The rawer sound of this debut EP soon evolved into what became their mind-alterating debut album Delve into the Mysteries of Transcendence, released in 2016 on famed Italian extreme metal label I Voidhanger Records. While maintaining its devastating black/death metal assault, Delve into the Mysteries of Transcendence, was an album cloaked in otherworldly and enveloping atmospheres and drenched in mystery and alien psychedelic mysticism, conceptually rooted in experiences with psychoactive drugs as a means of transcendence, and more specifically with experiences obtained under the influence of DMT.

Now, the band’s second full length entitled Chasm is slated for a May 10 2019 release on Sentient Ruin in the USA handling LP/tape/digital and Clavis Secretorvm in Europe handling LP/CD/digital, and is yet another sensorially devastating work which further dramatizes the band’s innate and ever-evolving duality of unrelenting and lawless black/death sonic annihilation juxtaposed to its deeply mystical and entrancing atmospheres.

All Chasm formats from Sentient Ruin are now pre-ordreable in our shop and or on Bandcamp.

夢遊病者: Psychedelic Black Metal Alchemists Issue Brand New 12" EP - Track Unveiled at Invisible Oranges

Sentient Ruin is honored to renew our alliance with multinational experimental black metal alchemists 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker). Now a world-renowned phenomenon in the extreme/experimental underground, 夢遊病者 return with another catastrophic mindfuck of shapeshifting and disorienting psychedelic black metal mastery that will shatter your synapses. 

Ѫ ("Yus") represents a crossing of worlds between the old and the new, the passing of power and skill from ancestor to youth and their successes and failures, the portal between distinct cultures, the obsolete alphabets and their new acquired meanings and the evolution of language and it’s proxy disciplines like music. While in Buddhism, the zen concept of 無 signifies “nothingness”, “not having” and the “absence of something”, it’s obsolete variant Yus (Ѫ) or modern “У” in Cyrillic, implies “to be near” or to be “in possession of”. In Traditional Chinese, the symbol denotes “shaman” or “sorcerer”, while in Eastern Mari “У” connotes the idea of the “new”. This sometimes contradictory cross-cultural phenomenon of dying language and obsolete literary systems taking on new meaning and symbolism was the inspiration for this short EP. Can a creation live on—if even in other forms— like offspring, or will it simply perish with time?

Invisible Oranges has premiered the track First Utterance starting that “pure nightmare fuel with a folksy crunch“ - you can listen and read their feature HERE.

As per tradition Ѫ, is yet another work in which 夢遊病者 leave the listener blindsided and stranded in a place of utter disbelief, marvel, and complete implausibility. 夢遊病者 are able to distill black metal and ritualistic psychedelia unlike anyone has ever done or even ever fathomed before. A meticulous distillation of styles, a breadth of musical knowledge and expertise in the most experimental realms of abstract music that has few rivals around, and finally, the vision, dare we say insanity, to ponder the impossible as feasible and execute it flawlessly against all skepticism. On paper, 夢遊病者’s formula seems impossible and unlikely, yet it exists, its essence ungraspable and far out of reach, its mystery and marvel oppressing in their unquestionable enormity.

Ѫ is scheduled for release on April 26 2019 through Sentient Ruin in North America and Babylon Doom cult Records in the EU, and will be issued as a single-sided etched black 12" LP housed in a custom black heavy cardstock fold-over cover and insert screenptined with metallic silver ink. A limited run of long sleeve shirts has also been made available from Sentient Ruin exclusively to celebrate what is perhaps the most insane chapter in the 夢遊病者 saga so far.

SUTEKH HEXEN: American Undisputed Icons of Ritualistic Black Noise Prepare Release of Massive Brand New 2XLP - Tracks Premiered at Indy Metal Vault and Heathen Harvest.

We’re truly honored to welcome the comeback of US Black Ambient veterans Sutekh Hexen. Both defiant and meditative, their latest self-titled full-length and first proper studio album furthers the project’s inquiry into opposition, endurance, and paradox. Both hypnotic and cruel, these ten highly charged tracks transgress yet again any previously imposed boundaries while upholding their raw ethos at its root, and at times defying the listener's expectations altogether. Though tempestuous as ever, with this work, Sutekh Hexen reaches across thresholds and thrusts longtime listeners into redefined spaces: haunted disorientation, surreal agony, the distress of buried forces surfacing, a revelation of black tongues. Each track is a rite of clandestine horror through a distillation of power-ambient, industrial, and black metal deconstructionism. This is a new era of Sutekh Hexen, and it is a sharpening of their blade, a merciless lucidity.

The album’s colossal aura and merciless execution is the result of a team effort of sorts with many contributors from the Bay Area and beyond lending their talents to harness a realm of sonic deconstruction of unseen force and magnitude - among them Von’s legendary vocalist/bassist Venien, BLSPHM’s Demian Johnston, and members of Lead Eater, Terror Cell Unit, and beyond.

The self titled double album will be officially released on March 29 2019 digitally, and as a stacked 2X cassette tape with two j-cards, silkscreened slipcase, and download card, limited to just 100 units. A 2LP edition pressed on black vinyl will also see the light through Sentient Ruin in the western hemisphere in a limited edition of only 150 units, while 150 more will be released in the EU by Cyclic Law along with a CD version.

Take a glimpse into the wretched and disembodied realm of aural chaos that Sutekh Hexen’s have summoned on their new album courtesy of Indy Metal Vault and Heathen Harvest, both of which have premiered a track off the album each, lauding the band’s new effort for its malevolent sonic mastery and grandiose weaving and layering of dark matter and shadows emanating from the void.

In the realm of extreme and otherworldly sounds, few entities have reached the peaks of cacophony and sonic disintegration touched by Bay Area blackened noise cult miscreants Sutekh Hexen. The ultra-prolific black noise sorcerers from Oakland have thus far amassed, in less than a decade into existence, a massive discography that touches depths of endarkenment and musical disembodiment that are almost impossible to understand. With releases being put out on cult labels like Magic Bullet, Cold Spring, Handmade Birds, Holy Terror, and Black Horizons, Sutekh Hexen have established them selves as absolute leaders in the realm of avantgarde ritualistic black metal and (un)sacred industrial/ambient/noise manifestations. Every release by the Oakland combo has been a stepping stone of sorts, showing an incredibly evolving trajecotry in their endless and ever-morphing vomiting of sublime cacophony, and displaying an array of influences and of ways of layering sound that make the band seem completely otherworldly. Like a smoldering, buzzing, hissing and screaming void of monstrous and unshackled chaos, Sutekh Hexen have been (along with their peers Gnaw Their Tongues, BLSPHM, Wold, Theologian, Murmuüre, Thisquietarmy etc.) the authors of some of the most uncompromising, scorching, spectral, and visionary ambient black metal ever put to tape.


DECOHERENCE: Haunting Debut 7" by UK Black Metal Destroyers to See the Light April 5 2019.

Sentient Ruin is honored and proud to partake in the first breath upon this world by debuting UK-based black metal enigma Decoherence. In strict adherence to black metal’s most hermetic and orthodox ways, Decoherence have stripped them selves of any human element to allow the music to solely speak for itself and come from a place of utter inhumanity devoid of any warmth or familiarity. As such biographies, social media, websites, identities, names and the such have been completely ignored in favor of the audio visual elements of the release which remain the sole focal point of the band’s craft and the only thing which the band has deemed meaningful in its hideous and isolationist attempt at communicating its wretched message. What has been disclosed to Sentient Ruin is that all music and recording is by Stroda in the UK, while vocals are by Tahazu, based in the US. 

Musically Decoherence remain firm in their homage to black metal’s proudest and most traditional roots, following in the footsteps of the forefathers of Scandinavian black metal like Marduk, Watain, Mayhem etc, while also vastly exploring uncharted and alien worlds of inhuman origin and mystique through the sapient weaving of grandiose and disorientating structures of pure sonic black matter, akin to those previously explored by bands like Darkspace, Funeral Mist, Aosoth, Leviathan, Skaphé, and Wormlust.

The result are two massive and chaotic movements of distilled and purified darkness incarnated among terrain existence to remind humanity of the darkness and unknown forces that permeate existence and constantly threaten all life, serving the will of entropy, chaos, destruction, evil, and inescapability.

As an initial offering to taste what is tome come, the band have made the first untitled track form the release available for listening over at Invisible Oranges

Symbolizing the blood of humanity being spilled every second in honor of futility and nothing, Decoherence’s debut self-tiled debut EP comes a limited run of 200 clear red vinyl 7”s housed in a custom made fold-over cover of blood red heavy stock silkscreened with black ink, and with abstract horror visual creations lent for the purpose by dark surrealism luminary Stephen Wilson.

Decoherence s/t 7”s can now be pre-ordered from Bandcamp and our store and are scheduled for an April 5 2019 official ship/release date.

HOLD ME DOWN: Sentient Ruin To Unleash Virginia's Nihilist Industrial Act's Debut EP on Limited Edition Cassette.

Sentient Ruin is proud to bring you a straight-to digital/tape "flash release" of the debut EP by Virginia based post-industrial act Hold Me Down, a new band featuring one member of virginian industrial black metal and Sentient Ruin stalwart act AMERICAN. Digitally self-released by the band in January 2019, and now seeing its first proper pressing in physical format, the self-titled EP will come as a limited run of 100 tapes intended to be sold as an online Sentient Ruin exclusive only, and shipping on April 5 2019. These tapes will be available on our store and or at Bandcamp exclusively and nowhere else.

Worshipping directly at the dystopian altar of bands like Skinny Puppy, early Ministry, and Godlfesh, Virginia's Hold Me Down debut with an EP of mezmerising industrial metal chaos and post-modern sonic deconstructionism set to annihilate the mind and torment the flesh with no solution of continuity. Within these seven cold and baneful cuts of mechanical aural pandemonium the listener will be drawn into a lifeless and colorless world of ruin and destruction where machines and deviant technology have replaced flesh and sanity and reduced man to a pale and fading memory, annihilated by its own delusions and exterminated by its own creations and mind. Subtle touches of harsh noise, power electronics, and black metal amalgamated in the mix round out a debut of absolutely mind-defiling cruelty.

LEATHER GLOVE: Experimental Death-Doom Entity Envisioned by Renowned Sound Engineer Greg Wilkinson Readies Massive Debut LP - Track Premiered at No Clean Singing.

Sentient Ruin is proud and honored to renew the unholy pact with Greg Wilkinson after having released his debut demo tape as Leather Glove back in 2016 .

Renowned American extreme metal sound engineer Greg Wilkison (of Brainoil, Deathgrave, ex. Laudanum, ex. Graves at Sea) owner and founder/operator of the legendary Earhammer Studios in Oakland CA (Noothgrush, Necrot, Autopsy, Vastum, Acephalix, Mortuous, Undergang, countless others) brings you his first ever solo full-length effort under the Leather Glove moniker. Standing somewhere between the caveman tank-like death metal approach of Coffins and Undergang, and the hallucinogenic sonic derailment of bands like Swans and Zeni Geva, in this debut long player of deviant and shapeshifting death-doom destruction Greg is aided by drummers Chad Gailey (Necrot, Vastum, Mortuous, Atrament, etc) and Dustin Ferris (Apraxic, Pleasure Cross, Engorged, etc) to unleash thirty minutes of cerebral and disgusting aural mayhem, smashing together death metal, D beat, crust, sludge, doom, and industrial noise to summon a low end monster of deranged experimentalism and of unspeakable heaviness. Ripping guitar solos laid down by bastion Bay Area metal shredders like Sean McGrath (Ghoul, Impaled), Shelby Lermo (Vastum, Ulthar, Extremity), Eric Cutler (Autopsy), and Danny Corrales (Autopsy, Abcess) round out a debut release of absolutely incinerating intensity.

No Clean Singing have premiered the track Reflections of Despair, which you can listen to HERE, remarking on its “immense destructive power”.

Perpetual Animation drops officially on March 8 2019 on tape, digital, and US vinyl via Sentient Ruin, while an EU vinyl version will be handled by Dawnbreed Records. Pre-orders now live on our store or Bandcamp.

Listen as the oscillations rattle your ears and crawl under your skin. If life is the waiting room to hell, then this is the bellowing sounds encapsulating every molecule in the room. Conceptualized by Greg Wilkinson, owner-engineer of Eearhammer Studios in Oakland, Leather Glove is a grim sonic tapestry of pure oppression. The project spawned in Oct 2014 as a recording experiment with a goal to achieve a collection of songs that counter the common production values in modern metal recordings known for punchy, scooped, and clear tones. An antithesis being deep tones, too much mid range, B standard tuning, low vocals, big drum shells and anything else that would make death metal mixing difficult. Oppressive, grotesque, filthy, uncomfortable, and slightly sleazy while remaining intelligible and letting the music speak for itself was the end desired effect.

Greg's debut offering as Leather Glove, was the Skin On Glass demo from 2016, twelve plus minutes of thick textures incorporating elements from d-beat, doom, sludge, and noise rock all smashed through a death metal filter if played on a slow record player. While sounding nothing like the inspirations for this release, a few main derivatives you may detect are: tempos akin to Coffins, grossness and deep tones of Undergang, grooves of Brainoil, and repeating chromatic phrases with delayed guitars inspired by Zeni Geva and Swans. To rhythmically make this possible, Chad Galey, famed drummer for power house bands Necrot, Atrament, and Rude clobbered the skins while Greg filled all other layers, recored, mixed and mastered at Earhammer studio in 2014, while work on debut LP Perpetual Animation commenced soon after.

MISCARRIAGE: Multinational Extreme Gore-Doom Duo Set to Release Inhumanly Crushing New Album - Tracks Premiered at Decibel Magazine and Metal Injection.

Sentient Ruin is honored to be the release gateway to Imminent Horror - the new release by Swedish/American extreme sludge monstrosity Miscarriage, set to be released on February 22 2019 on digital/cassette, with a vinyl release also planned (TBA).

If you ever thought a slower and more atmospheric and cerebral “sludge version” of infamously fringe and violent extreme metal bands like Revenge or Pissgrave was just a silly pipe dream, think again... Like an acid trip that goes totally wrong just as you enter a torture dungeon of unnameable horrors and begin to allucinate before the most harrowing cruelty and inhumanity, Miscarriage’s new album and Sentient Ruin debut Imminent Horror is a work which defies logic and sanity in its insurmountable display of violence, darkness, and barely comprehensible chaos. Set to become one of the most shockingly violent, depraved, unsettling, and horrific albums of 2019, Imminent Horror seems to have crossed a new and never before seen threshold in extreme metal, taking the genre to a sickening new realm never before explored, and never before fathomed, not even by the sickest and most fucked up minds. Structured around a churning morass of hallucinatory atmospheres, derailing, discordant, and appallingly dense and downtrend guitar warfare, an illogically oppressive and unpredictable rhythm section, and a swarming haze of flesh-tearing screams, the songs on this abomination incarnated seem to want to reach out into a realm of the absurd to harness a level of hatred and destruction of unseen magnitude and plausibility. With their post-Carcass noisecore/goregrind roots firmly anchored at the base, Miscarriage have augmented the foundations of their sound and built an entire new world above it by bringing in elements of slower and more experimental and atmospheric extreme music coming from a sickening cesspool of influences as diverse as early Swans, Primitive Man, Corrupted, Ride for Revenge, Godflesh and extreme black metal, to materialize an aural abomination of near-incomprehensible horror. Classic homemade gore-drenched artwork and lyrics that can not and should not be ever unearthed for one's mental sanity and safe sleep round out a release of absolutely incinerating hatred and despondency whose sole existence is already an inexplainable mystery.

Both Metal Injection and Decibel Magazine have expressed awe and wonder at Miscarriage’s horrific craft, each premiering a track each from the album, and exclaiming that Imminent Horror is “Inconceivable“ and “an exhausting listen“. Read their features HERE and HERE.

With its two members working remotely and spread between Sweden and the USA, Miscarriage initially formed as a gorenoise/noisegrind studio project influenced by the deranged craft of goregrind bands like early Carcass, Prostitute Disfigurement, Disgorged, etc. The mysterious duo first appeared in 2017 with their Disposed Abomination full length, displaying a chaotic, aberrant, and deranged blend of goregrind and noisecore akin to the wretched craft of icons like Full of Hell, Blood, and Anal Cunt. Soon after the band unleashed three albums at once: their Homicidal Mania” I, II, and III series which later became the Homicidal Mania Trilogy comp released on CD in Belgium by BRC-30 Productions. At this stage, while the band violently and blindly plowed through it’s mindless assault of sickening noisegrind for a staggering 70+ minutes and 30 tracks of unyielding aural terror, the initial elements of the nightmare-inducing metamorphosis they were undergoing began to show, first hinting at the horror to come as song lengths increased, structures became more abstract and erratic, tempos became unpredictable, and atmospheres overall became more overbearing, violent, and hallucinatory. Soon enough, sole masterminds J.P, and U.N. had began to disfigure and abuse their own creation even more to a point of incomprehensible absurdity and beyond recognition, adding to their already defiled and depraved strain of nightmarish music music even more layers of violence, darkness, and seething depravity. This is when their appalling Sentient Ruin debut album Imminent Horror began taking shape. Seemingly losing all connections to reality or any form of self control, Miscarriage collapsed under their own impulse to destroy and steered their aberrant creation into a place of unimaginable darkness and horror from which their would be no return.