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.

FRIENDSHIP: Enigmatic Japanese Powerviolence Devastators to Release "I&II" on February 17 - First Track Streaming at No Clean Singing.

FRIENDSHIP - I&II

1. Jerusalem
2. T.R.Ø.Y
3. Bill Evans
4. €ompton
5. Represent
6. Bottomless Pit
7. Abuse
8. SB
9. Hype
10. Slaughterhouse
11. Law
12. El Chapo

We are extremely proud and honored to announce the release of "I&II" - a full-length release from elusive and mysterious experimental powerviolence terrorists Friendship (also known as the Friendship Collective).  "I&II" is a compilation of tracks previously self-released by the band as two separate EPs (the I EP and the II EP) now both condensed by Sentient Ruin into a single castigating long player of maximum auditive torture that will come to life as a cassette tape + digital release. The I&II compilation masterfully showcases the full extent of the band’s absurd formula: a maelstrom of bleak and punishing powerviolence/grind ferocity colliding with the suffocating weight of the most abject sludge-doom, and further enhanced by the iconic and completely mindless approach to extreme metal and punk which has always characterized Japanese bands as being the most absurd and unpredictable out there.

Hailing from the Chiba prefecture of western Japan, Friendship are one of the most vile, antagonist, and visionary grind/powerviolence acts to have ever emerged from The Land of the Rising Sun. Their absurdly devastating music comes together as a collapsing black hole that devours everything with maniacal ferocity, sparing nothing from the plain of existence. In perfect adherence to the tradition of Japanese extreme music where everything is always taken to ridiculous and mindless extremes, Friendship's music is like a chain reaction that can not be stopped - the devastating consequence of an uncontrolled nuclear fission of Japan's most praised and iconic musical extremities: the mindless chaos of bands like Endon and Zeni Geva, the pulverizing blunt force trauma of bands like Unholy Grave and Death Side, and the cataclysmic sludge-doom aberrance of bands like Corrupted and Congenital Hell. Of course this hell on earth envisioned by the band far from stops to their sole Japanese roots. Instead their sound goes beyond, encompassing and embracing the full scale auditive terror of legendary American powerviolence bands like Nails, Column of Heaven, Man Is The Bastard, Iron Lung, and Hatred Surge, and the tormented sludge dirges of masters like Swans, Godflesh, Noothgrush, and Dystopia. 

To be released on February 17 2017 Friendship's I&II comprises of twelve tracks of absolutely unfathomable violence, that will plunge the listener nt an authentic plight for survival, as they desperately try to survive the utterly senseless chaos unleashed upon them by these Japanese masters of complete sonic terror. 

No Clean Singing is now streaming the first song extrapolated from I&II called Bottomless Pit, saying that “what you’ll find on Friendship I & II is a combination of blighted, crushing, sludge-doom and vicious powerviolence and grind. It may sound like a schizophrenic combination, but you get the sense that Friendship have deployed these contrasting styles as one more particularly effective strategy in service of their main goal of unbalancing and terrorizing their listeners.” You can check out their feature and stream HERE. More track streams will soon follow at various other outlets.

Pre-orders for I&II cassettes and digital products are now live on our store and on our Bandcamp.

 

GATEWAY: Belgian One-Man Death-Doom Monstrosity Releasing "Scriptures of Grief" on February 3 - Track Streaming at CVLT Nation.

GATEWAY
Scriptures of Grief

Tracklising:
01. I
02. II
03: III

Sentient Ruin is proud to announce the release of Scriptures of Grief, the colossal new album from Belgian one-man death-doom destruction machine Gateway.

Coming as limited edition cassette tape + digital product, Scriptures of Grief is a death-doom odyssey incarnated into a single twentynine minute behemoth song, split up in three separate movements to give the listener the chance to gasp for air, and is already slated to become a cornerstone release in 2017 extreme metal and one of the most crushing and inhumanly heavy underground releases of the year. 

Over the course of a handful of 100% self-produced DIY recordings sole perpetrator Robin van Oyen has established Gateway as a true passage to the underworld, just as the project's name intelligently suggests. Every recording assembled by this visionary rot-monger has been a sonic key to unlock a new door into the kingdom of the dead. Constructed upon colossal and skull-crushing progressions of ancient and mummified death metal, Gateway's music then takes shape through a harrowing time-warp of completely doomed sonic rot. Tempos collapse to an agonizing slither, rhythms seem to stretch ad infinitum transfiguring into a lucid coma, all while the sheer tonnage of every riff is fully revealed through this slow motion decay in all its putrid glory, revealing a beast whose mass and ugliness is of unparalleled magnificence.

Masterfully re-evoking the completely doomed and rotting atmospheres of legendary death-doom masters like Disembowelment, Undergang, Coffins, Winter and Thorr's Hammer, Gateway have created an authentic omnipotent sonic underworld in which death rules everything, endlessly reaching beyond the unknown like a massive and rotting black hole, and dragging every living thing to its inevitable and tormented conclusion.

Slated for a February 3 2017 release - CVLT Nation is now streaming the opening track from the record (read the article and listen to "I" HERE), calling Scriptures of Grief as an "inhumanly toxic and devastating death-doom masterpiece". 

Pre-order Scriptures of Grief cassettes on our store and cassettes and digital products on our Bandcamp.

VERMIN WOMB: Horrifying Debut by Blackened Deathgrind Band Featuring Members of Primitive Man To See The Light on October 28th. - Track Streaming at CVLT Nation.

Vermin Womb are one of the most antagonist, hostile, and nihilistic extreme metal acts to have ever ravaged the North American extreme metal underground. Rising in Denver, CO from the ashes of local blackened grind/sludge band Clinging To The Tress of A Forest Fire, Vermin Womb have been conceived by CTTTOAFF vocalist/guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy (now also/mainly vocals/guitar in Primitive Man) and CTTTOAFF bassist Zach Harlan, to be a continuation of their past collaboration and as a cathartic conduit for their most tormented and unconceivable nightmares.

Anyone familiar with the work of Ethan Lee McCarthy and with his current main endeavor Primitive Man, should know, or at least imagine, what this "grindcore offshoot" of his could possible sound like and be be all about. While looking back on his current and past projects, one might have guessed the basics, but the actual depth of sonic inhumanity Vermin Womb can really reach is something that stretches far beyond human comprehension. Simply put, for Vermin Womb there is no end to the suffering that can be forced upon human ears. This band knows absolutely no limit in what musical decency is. Vermin Womb will just go and on, remorselessly spewing their hateful craft until the listener's own existence itself is left laying in complete ruin and torment. Nothing shall be spared, nothing is worthy of the foul gift of life or of the laughable right to exist in Vermin Womb’s unthinkable view of the world. Everything that has been put into existence shall simply be annihilated with no question or rationality.

To achieve this sonic hell on earth built by the band with the sole purpose to desecrate and annihilate the concept of "humanity”, Vermin Womb have chosen the weapons of grindcore, black and death metal and have fused them together in a bestial arsenal of auditive sonic weaponry that shall stand as one of the most inverted, wrong, and morally (and physically) unacceptable and unbearable manifestations of musical horror ever put to tape. Essentially an absolute  must for all fans of similarly abhorrent manifestations of total sonic chaos and depravity as seen from bands like Revenge, Knelt Rote, Portal, Adversarial, Pissgrave, Watchmaker, Full of Hell etc. If you liked our last releases by Altarage, Wake, VRTRA and Unyielding Love, then you will be pleasantly surprised to find yet another addition to the growing list of the most heavy and violent releases we’ve ever been involved with.

If you have any doubts on the actual extent of this band's horrific sound just head over to CVLT Nation (who have called Decline a "thick wall of hate" - stream and feature HERE) and listen to the first track released from the album - Entomb will in fact bury you under the weight of your own miserable and worthless life.

To be titled Decline, Vermin Womb's bestial and inhuman first full-length album will be released on tape by Sentient Ruin in collaboration with Hibernation Release on October 28 2016, while an LP version will see the light on the same day through Translation Loss Records (US vinyl) and Throatruiner Records (EU vinyl), while Translation Loss will also be handling the digital and CD version worldwide. Pre-orders for the tape are now available on our store and on our Bandcamp page.

CRUZ: Punishing Debut Album by Barcelona-Based Old School Death Metal/Crust Destroyers Out On October 7 - Tracks Streaming at Decibel Magazine and CVLT Nation.

After having released a monstrous and  unbelievably heavy debut demo in 2015, Barcelona's Cruz have since ascended to leaders of a pack in the European old-school death metal underground that currently finds no credible opposition, and their soon to be released debut album titled Culto Abysmal is here to reinforce this harrowing omen that a BEAST has been created and that its savage crusade of lawless sonic destruction won't cease until total and complete ruin has been harnessed.

What makes this band such a unique force to behold is their unshackled and lawless approach to old school death metal and primordial thrash metal, and the way they use (crust) punk as an extra weapon in their arsenal to take their damaging force to the next level, becoming an unstoppable force of nature that knows no boundaries and which obeys to nothing and nobody. Punk and metal live in this band's war-torn soul in seamless harmony, fueling each other's flames in an escalating and unstoppable firestorm of chaos ad destruction that knows no end.

Within its thick and cavernous texture and amongst the chaos of Culto Abismal's unchallenged aggression you will hear echoes of Wolfpack/Wolfbrigade, Bolt Thrower, Grave, Discharge, and early Entombed getting bottlenecked into an irreversible chain reaction of total punk-infested death metal chaos that will have only one possible epilogue: total fucking annihilation - a sonic siege from hell that will be impossible to repel. 

With Culto Abysmal Cruz's insane ruinous power and classic death metal destructiveness have already provoked widespread amazement, with CVLT Nation calling the album "A RIPPER from the bowels of hell - a fucking war zone in sonic form" (check out their feature + exclusive track stream of La Pitjor De Les Plagues HERE), and Decibel Magazine further elaborating that Culto Abysmal is a "vicious interpretation of a classically evil sound" (read their feature and stream the track Intruso HERE).

To be released on October 7  2016  by Sentient Ruin (vinyl and cassette tape for North America), To The Death Records (vinyl and tape for Europe), Neanderthal Stench (European vinyl co-release) and by Selfmade God Records (CD worldwide), Culto Abismal will be one of those releases that all fans of old school death metal, crust, d-beat, stenchcore etc. can not overlook for any reason in the universe.

Culto Abismal was recorded and mixed by Javi Félez between November 2015 and March 2016 at Moontower Studios, mastereded by Brad Boatright at AudioSiege in Portland, OR. and features incredible and classic artwork for the genre by César Valladares.

CRUZ
Culto Abismal

1. Mundos Disformes
2. A Cops de Destral
3. Intruso
4. Culto Abismal
5. La Caza
6. La Pitjor de les Plagues
7. Pesanta
8. Tumbas Ciclópeas