CRYPTAE: Dutch Experimental Death Metal Freaks Unleash Sophomore Mini-Album "Vestigial" - Entire Work Premiered at CVLT Nation.

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Sentient Ruin is honored to be a part again in the growing legacy of Cryptae. Our dutch experimental death metal brethren continue their insane artistic trajectory with a brand new mini-album - Vestigial - which is now shipping everywhere and officially released to the world.

The deranged dutch experimentalists return with yet another enigmatic mess of malformed and deviant experimental raw death metal, after having bent minds with their debut self-fitled tape in 2017, this time unfolding a single staggering eighteen-plus-minute track of complete aural delirium that somehow has managed to elevate their experimental bar even higher while keeping their crude death metal assault untouched and possibly even rawer and more hideous than ever. Within the mammoth headfuck of a song the duo cover an enormous amount of ground, letting lose on literally all of their most demented musical delusions and tapping into a monstrous pool of influences to unleash an aural pandemonium of absolutely unseen lunacy. Extremely cerebral and sophisticated, yet raw, repulsive, visceral and mercilessly unforgiving, on Vestigial Cryptae blur the lines between improvisation and deliberate erraticism and draw influence from a surreal array of seemingly antithetic influences ranging from Morbid Angel, Immolation, and Incantation, to Magma, John Coltrane, Macabre and beyond, to construct an hallucinatory sonic maze of utmost brutality, where shapeshifting tempos, vertigo-inducing repetitions, and demented song structures are meticulously designed to disorient the listener and annihilate their last shred of sanity.

Vestigial was officially released on August 16 with no prior teasing or previews and was premiered by CVLT Nation, the site calling the work “the most undecipherable, fucked in the head, and completely demented death metal release of the year“ - you can read the feature and listen to the work HERE.

The mini album will come in a snow white single sided LP with an etched B-side, released in North America by Sentient Ruin, and in the EU by Tartarus Records.

CONSUMMATION: Australian Black Metal Plague Issues "Fires of Calcination" Retrospective Vinyl Comp Through Sentient Ruin - Stream and Pre-Orders Posted.

On the heels of the band issuing a debut album on Profound Lore Records earlier this year, Sentient Ruin and Australian extreme metal tormentors Consummation seal an unholy blood pact to re-release their first two debut EPs through an exhaustive and extremely curated vinyl release. A decade-spanning retrospective, The Fires of Calcination is a limited edition 12" LP compilation containing every track ever released by the band (taken from their 2012 debut demo tape and from the "Ritual Severance" CD EP released in 2017 by Invictus Productions) leading up to their 2019 Profound Lore debut album - The Great Solar Hunter - all of which also see their first ever release on the vinyl format. The four tracks present on the comp testify with harrowing vehemence the birth and evolution of one of the most defiant and predatory black metal entities to ever tread Australian soil, and documents the band's feral quest for complete aural domination/annihilation over the span of a decade, as they meticulously and malignantly forged their black metal craft to become a mortal weapon of unyielding violence and negativity.

Begotten of a dark flame and malefic premonitions, Consummation spawned from the Brisbane extreme metal scene like a chaos-wielding plague, swollen with torment and pestilence, its primal driving force the darkness of one's own nature which always seeks triumph, and the re-imagination of ancient forces in the heavy metal craft as the tool chosen to achieve this wicked design. The project began of the will of guitarist/vocalist Craig Young back in 2009 while he was still a member of Australian black/death abomination Impetuous Ritual. Joel Rademaker then joined Craig to handle guitar and bass duties and round out the project as a two-piece right before their debut self titled demo was released in 2009. The debut self-titled two song demo tape first showcased Consummation's horrific alloy of tumefying and otherworldly black metal, as it rose from the dark flame which had spawned it with the vigor and maleficence of a portent spewn from the most torment-ridden circles of hell. The demo-tape's monstrous aura quickly transcended its geographical boundaries and soon made its way out of Australian confines, being picked up for a digital release in 2015 by Irish extreme metal forge Invictus Productions. Around this time David Haley from Psycroptic joined the band on drums rounding out the lineup to a power trio, and this new lineup sealed a blood pact to record the band's sophomore offering, the Ritual Severance EP, which was also released on CD by Invictus in 2017 and which displayed yet another step for the band deeper into an ungodly realm of wretched and calamitous aural pandemonium of indiscernible destructiveness. This release marked Consummation's sound and vision coming into full circle, as the various influences of the band were metabolized and broken down into their core elements and recombined anew to yield something monstrous and imposing: classical and ambient experimentations, set against the vehemence and timeless magnificence of the genre's forebearers, preserved in their primordial glory but injected with new blood from the infamously wretched late 90s and 00s French black metal scene flowing blacker than ever and pulsating with the force of a cataclysm spewn from a godless dimension. Thematic and conceptual influences coming from Frederick Nietzsche, Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Thomas Karlsson and mythological texts like The Poetic Edda, Bhagavad Gita and various biblical passages were twisted like knives into the flanks of the new beast to further foment its aggression, deviance, and unwillingness to bow to anything or anyone, as ascension through violence, power through suffering, achieving individual completion through integrating the dark side of one’s nature, and death, became driving forces behind the new entity's abominable intents.

This ingestion of visions, themes and musical influences elaborated over the span of a near-decade set the path ablaze for Consummation, as with unseen vigor and unyielding intransigence they set about coercing all their influences and inspirations into a one hour long full-length album of calamitous black metal depredation (the monstrous The Great Solar Hunter released in mid 2019 by Profound Lore Records). Around the same time Sentient Ruin stepped forth to close the circle and create a compendium and retrospective of this sinister path which over a decade was paved by the band to achieve their ultimate and most malefic design. The songs from the 2012 debut demo and the Ritual Severance EP were unearthed from the rubble of their own ruinous existence, remastered, and repackaged with brand new artwork by Adrian Baxter to see their existence for the first time ever on vinyl, coexisting to seal into wax and preserve in a timeless format the historic beginnings of one of Australia's most defiant and intransigent black metal acts of our times.

While the planned ship date of the vinyl is set to August 30 2019, the release can be streamed in full and pre-ordered through our store and Bandcamp page.

PSEUDOCOMMNADO: Sentient Ruin Reissues L.A. Harsh Noise/Power Electronics Act's Ear-splitting Debut Tape - Pre-orders & Full Stream Available.

From Wikipedia: "In forensic psychiatry, the term 'pseudocommando' has been used to describe mass murderers who commit premeditated murder-suicide mass killings driven by revenge fantasies, typically involving the stockpiling of weapons followed by a heavily armed commando-style attack. They typically see their actions through a narcissistic lens as being morally justified in revenge against their unfair treatment by an uncaring world, and wish to "go out in a blaze of glory".

Sentient Ruin is excited to release our first proper noise release, welcoming into our abominable family the wretched sonic bedlam of Los Angels-based harsh noise/power electronics entity Pseudocommando. Years in the planning and in the making, this first noise tape release comes after having sampled and considered hundreds of manifestations in the genre without quite ever finding the right fit for the label’s unique vision. Until today, when Pseudocommando self-released its own debut tape sending a strong signal our way that the time had finally come to step forth and make this milestone of ours happen, and that the perfect entity to work with had finally materialized.

With its debut release aptly titled A Home Beneath the Floorboards Los Angeles based harsh noise/power electronics terrorist Pseudocommando takes the genre into completely uncharted waters, adding a sense of deliberate urgency and maniacal control to its scathing wall of blunt force audial trauma; a rare sight to behold in the genre, even for its most calculating and accomplished acts as a pale presence of "songwriting" can be sensed, making the release exquisitely elitarian and unique. Unusually lengthily for a release in this genre, "A Home Beneath the Floorboards" is full-fledged staggering one hour-long full-length album release (even way too long for a 12" vinyl LP) which offers a dense, enigmatic, and multi-layered listening experience, showing unusual forms of dynamics, chromatics, and progressions in its audial frontal assault on the senses, which are at times puzzling and at times horrifying in their abhorrent lucidity. Even in this self-built and self-contained chaos-sphere of lucid aural armageddon, Pseudocommando's deliberate, calculating, and meticulously orchestrated controlled demolition of the listener however does not come without a high entropic cost and severe collateral damage. Despite its maniacal control, the project itself can not in fact fully eschew its own ungovernable nature and destiny into the ultimate unravelling chaos and entropy which has birthed it and ultimately defines it. The aforementioned controlled demolition as such eventually mutates into a chain reaction which can not be stopped as the necessary, unavoidable, and absolutely ungovernable high frequency distortion pandemonium unleashed enters an unstable point of no return state and initiates a critical mass where the listener's synapses are trucidated blindly in the most brutal, chaotic, mindless, and inefficient way possible.

While the release is, and has been for a while now, available digitally though the band’s and the label’s Bandcamp our tape reissue will begin shipping on August 9 2019 and its a much deserved format upgrade for this staggering album, as our re-issue comes on professionally dubbed and printed tapes and artwork (VS the home dubbed/printed and hand marked self-released tapes from the band’s first pressing), and will also be available in wider numbers (100 units to be exact VS the much smaller amount made available initially by the band).

NIGHTFUCKER: Canadian Sludge-Doom Terrorists Featuring Members of MOSS Prepare Debut Album Release - Tracks Premiered at The Sludgelord and Metal Injection.

We’re honored and excited to partake in the real and highly anticipated birth of Canadian sludge-doom terrorists Nightfucker, with their long awaited debut self-titled LP finally arriving on LP and cassette formats on July 12 2019.

Perhaps few people were aware that Dominic Finbow, the legendary guitarist behind the gargantuan riffs and slime-ridden feedback of the UK's malefic doom icons MOSS, had relocated to Vancouver BC in recent years. Upon relocating to Canada and laying Moss to rest for good, Finbow set out to assemble a new circle of sociopaths in his new home with which to start over and bring new life into his hideous design of stomach-churning doom.

The design was completed in the drenched months of 2008, when Nightfucker coagulated in the fetid, stagnant gutters above Vancouver’s filth-clotted stormdrains, as a reflection in primitive sludge/doom and as an exercise in the aural evisceration of the most unnameable inhumanity. The shadow was cast in the wake of the tormented legacies of forebearers Grief, Noothgrush, Eyehategod, Burning Witch, Corrupted, Goatsblood, Winter, Melvins, Leechmilk, etc., with Nick and Adam (of Vancouver’s scum cult Radioactive Vomit, Goatsblood, Deathwinds, and Ceremonial Bloodbath) rounding out the brand new power trio lineup to accomplish the wretched design. Nightfucker then etched a rotten demo titled Foul Omens onto a self-released cassette in 2010.

To follow were many years of bitterness, disconnection, dissolution, malice, injury and self-abuse. In the bleak gleam of 2016 Nightfucker entered an alcoholic fog to expunge their final demons and ended up recording several more hymns of helpless aural atavism and utmost misanthropy that would end up being recorded with Braden DeCorby in the literal black confines of their seldom-used rehearsal dungeon. The atrocities birthed in the session closed a cycle of utmost dread and self-loathing which stood as the final tracklist of their debut self titled full-length LP, set to be released July 12 2019 by Sentient Ruin on LP/CS in the US and by Rope Or Guillotine on LP only in Europe.

The Sludgelord and Metal Injection have set the expectations for the release, exclaiming that Nightfucker “have meticulously explored the deepest and most atrocious sewers of humanity”, and that on their debut LP “their bitter, reverb-drenched doom is torturous and unrelenting” respectively. You can ready the full features and hear the tracks HERE and HERE

NIGHTFUCKER
Nightfucker

  1. Temptation’s Curse

  2. Worthless Spirtit

  3. Addiction Sentence

  4. Death Beset

On their self-titled full-length album Nightfucker spew forth a churning miasma of slow moving and gut-wrenching terror conceived with the sole goal of representing in the most repulsive way possible the most degraded forms of human life, and explore themes addiction, abuse, suicide, hallucinations, delusions, mental illness, self-harm, and complete human collapse with revolting lucidity. The horrifying album is rounded out by incredible cover art painted for the band by oil painting luminary Matt Sidney (Triumvr Foul).

GOLGOTHAN REMAINS: Australian Death Metal Harbingers Release Their Monstrous 2018 Debut Album "Perverse Offerings to the Void" for First Ever on Vinyl in North America.

Spewn from a place of utter chaos and lightnesses, on their inaugural 2018 full-length offering Perverse Offerings to Void Sydney-based Australian death metal harbingers Golgothan Remains impose a previously unseen new strain of dark death metal annihilation entirely their own, stitching together the timeless brutality of bands like Incantation, Immolation, Necrovore, and Morbid Angel on one side, and the transformative sonic bedlam of visionary bands like Ulcerate, Dead Congregation, and Adversarial on the other, to create a majestic extreme metal behemoth of unseen magnitude, completely unrestrained in its famished quest for complete ruin, and magnificent in its imposing display of pure darkness.

Today, Sentient Ruin in North America, and Nuclear Winter Records in Europe are proud to bring the final and ultimate version of this immense death metal album outside of Australian confines through an exhaustive vinyl repress of 500 copies complete with a brand new layout, colored vinyl options, and finally, an accessible distribution for both the North American and European markets. The god-like and godless vinyl is now obtainable from Sentient Ruin through our Bandcamp and website and shipping everywhere immediately.

Golgothan Remains have been darkening the world with their own strain of shadow-fueled aural mayhem since at least 2016, when their self-tiled debut demo appeared in the Australian underground establishing them as masterminds of a previously unseen new lineage of dark death metal annihilation entirely their own. On their inaugural offering Golgothan Remains' wretched craft instantly revealed itself in all its apocalyptic enormity, shrouded in a monstrous aura, and unfolding massive black wings like a beast spawned from another dimension.

Upon unleashing the obliterating demo the band spent the next year crafting what would become their debut LP - Perverse Offerings to the Void, recorded at Adversary Studios in Sydney in early 2017 and mastered in 2018 at Audiosiege by Brad Boatright (Altarage, Vastum). Perverse Offerings to the Void was self-released in Australia on CD and tape by the band before being picked up for a local vinyl release by Australian label Impure Sounds (on 100 units only becoming and instant collector's item) and eventually ending up being hailed as one of 2018’s best Australian metal albums and one of the crowning achievements in death metal over all for that year worldwide.

NEGATIVA: Spanish Raw/Depressive Black Metal Wraiths Release "03" On Vinyl

We’re proud to release 03 - the third album from Spanish depressive black metal wraiths Negativa (now featuring H.V. of Wormlust/Mystískaos fame on vocals) - for the first time ever on vinyl. This new album sees the band’s signature sound perfectly preserved as they tread their staple terrain with new found grimness: total dehumanization, and disintegration of the I, through the unquenchable adoration of the void.

Tracks from the album have been premiered in the last month by No Clean Singing, Toilet ov Hell, and Indy Metal Vault, while the full album was premiered by CVLT Nation - with all outlets lauding and applauding the bands stripped down but dense and enveloping approach to raw and miserable black metal. As a result of the staggering quality of the music, the limited cassette tape released by Sentient Ruin on October 19 2018 was sold out in a mere three weeks.

Now 03 has finally seen the light on wax as 100 limited white vinyl LPs and 350 units on black vinyl from Sentient Ruin in North America and from Dead Seed Productions in the EU, both of which are now fully available in our stores and shipping everywhere.

Spanish Depressive black metal wraiths Negativa started at the end of 2011 as a solo act of DB. The idea behind the project was that of remaining coherent to the dogmas of the most hermetic and anticosmic black metal - depersonalization, dehumanization, total loss of self - while also transfiguring inner thoughts and feelings of dismal negativity, dread and insurmountable misery into some kind of outer and manifest personal nightmare which would serve as a vehicle or conduit for catharsis and purification of its creator's wretched inner torments.

As such the name Negativa was chosen, and work commenced on a black metal project which would live and exist under the iron fist of misery and dread. DR soon joined as the vocalist and the first split release with fellow Spanish depressive black metal specters Atrabilis came out in 2012. Negativa then worked on a few more splits with Atrabils and on their own proper debut EP 01, until the first Negativa full-length album titled simply 02 saw the light in early 2017. Icelandic musician HV (of Wormlust/Mystískaos fame) then joined on vocals for the second full length album titled 03, recorded in 2018 and released as a limited cassette though Sentient Ruin. A CD version was released in the USA through Nebular Carcoma Records.

As is tradition with orthodox depressive black metal, the project is completely dehumanized and depersonalized, hinting at fewest human sphere elements as possible and deliberately ignoring the personal elements of the project like band members, lyrics, etc. Thus, no other information exists about Negativa aside from what is reported herein. However, the music is highly expressive and evocative, meant to be the only voice and "carnal" manifestation of the entity which has declared its existence, and only manifestation of its wretched existence and of its undying adoration for the void.

DEPRESSOR: San Francisco Crust Punk/Death Metal Cult Issues Glorious 12" Vinyl Retrospective Comp.

Sentient Ruin is honored to release Hell Storms Over Earth, the brand new ultimate and final compendium of long lost and unreleased songs from San Francisco's legendary industrial/death metal/crust cult Depressor, remastered, re-packaged and elevated to the status of audio/visual shrine in honor of one of the heaviest and most elusive and visionary underground American punk/metal bands of our times.

Hell Storms Over Earth is the final statement in what was Depressor's glorious late 90's/early 00's "crust era", when the band abandoned the polished and well-produced Godflesh-worshiping drum machine-based industrial metal sound of its early and mid 90's beginnings (as seen in the iconic "Filth" and "Grace" demo releases) and opted to home-record everything thereafter on a four track recorder and steer their sound toward a more death metal/crust hybridized sound influenced by bands like Amebix, Celtic Frost, GISM, Voivod, Discharge and Napalm Death. This move pushed the band's sound over the edge into a void of despair and yielded a blown out low end dirty sound of utmost rawness and hatred. These are not only long lost or downright never before heard tracks from a legendary Bay Area cult band then at the forefront of change and renovation, but a priceless document of their times, a snapshot of an era long gone and forgotten, and a window opened into a time of turmoil and struggle which yielded some of the most dark, visionary and thought-provoking punk/metal hybridizations of our times.

Tracks 1-3 previously unreleased, from planned and then cancelled split 7" with Disclose (RIP Kawakami)
Tracks 4-6 from 2000 split 7" with Agathocles
Tracks 7-12 from 1998 debut Depressor 7" "打倒一切权威主义" ("Down With All Authoritarianism")
Tracks 13-15 from 2003 split 7" with Unholy Grave
Tracks 16-18 from 1999 Depressor demo tape

Hell Storms Over Earth releases officially on June 7 2019 as a limited edition 12” LP in 300 units, 200 on black classic vinyl and 100 on oxblood red vinyl, and can now be streamed in full and ordered on our Bandcamp and store.

Read the full story of Depressor here.

SUTEKH HEXEN / 夢遊病者: Limited Edition 7" Split from American Black Ambient Masters and Multinational Psychedelic Black Metal Experimentalists Out Now

Sentient Ruin, Sutekh Hexen, and 夢遊病者 have thrown their entire imaginative force into this brand new limited edition split 7": 250 black vinyl units with black and pantone metallic silver labels housed in a heavy cardstock black cover screen printed inside and out with pantone metallic silver inks, completed with a black eight-page silkscreened booklet with images and words from ancient Italian lore, black inners sleeves, hype sticker, download card.

This sanity-defying 7" split is brought to you as an audio-visual display of uncompromising artistic mastery by two of the extreme/experimental underground's most visionary and transformative entities. Short in playing time, but unlimited in its evocative scope, the release quickly unshackles itself of its physical boundaries with an ambitious and imaginative merger of sound and visuals which exponentially augments its evocative force. Within, the two bands both delve into their own respective iconic sounds with unseen vehemence: Sutekh Hexen eviscerating shadows with their staple swarm of disembodied ritualistic power-black ambient mayhem, and 夢遊病者 conjuring their signature oneiric and surreal arabesque of psychedelic black metal delirium. At the same time however, the two bands have made deliberate synergic convergences, unifying their souls to bend them to each other's respective vision, envisioning the project and each other's craft as a whole and deliberately creating contact points in their respective compositions to augment the audio-visual experience to a higher level, transcending physical boundaries, and at times, even their individual selves...

States 夢遊病者" 
"As with every 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker) release or in this case—song, the root and basis of the inspiration began with a singular person and then expanded outwards. This, at times mythical creature, acted as a connecting point between the two bands, both geographically and from the point of view of patronage. Ideas were exchanged over the course of half a year, with the final lyrics being translated to and sung in Italian. The visual identity of the album was formed as a collaboration between key members of both bands, combining field photography, calligraphy, illustration, heraldic study and archive slides to draw a geographical ode and connection between all parties involved. The cultural and historical details of each locale provided ample electricity to channel the musical whims through, however manic or chaotic they may have seemed. Once completed, the two songs were sent off to Mr. James Plotkin (Plotkinworks) for mastering, to insure the sonic values of the songs were harmonious. We are humbled, thankful and honored to be part of this release." 

Order it now from our store or Bandcamp.