AYYUR: Tunisian Black Metal Trio Unleash Tenebrous Comeback MLP: Tracks Premiered at Decibel Magazine and Metal Injection.

Sentient Ruin is honored to release the long awaited comeback effort by enigmatic North African black metal unit AYYUR. The Lunatic Creature MLP is scheduled for a US vinyl/tape release through Sentient Ruin, and a CD/EU vinyl release through Vendetta Records.

Birthed at the very edge of the Mediterranean where the Western world and Europe die and dissolve leaving pace to an ancient and inscrutable frontier land of lost history and arcane mystery, Tunisian black metal enigma AYYUR re-surface after a lengthily slumber with The Lunatic Creature, a new MLP of soul-tearing atmospheric black metal shrouded in malevolent mysticism and superbly impenetrable atmospheres.

On this new offering the North African band is aided on drums by former Deathspell Omega vocalist Shaxul as they channel the remote and most unspeakable lore and darkest history of their land to summon a black metal specter of distant and magnificently wretched esotericism. With soaring mid-tempo progressions reminiscent of MGLA or Drudkh, dense and haunting atmospheres akin to those found in the most mystical fringe of atmospheric USBM, and moods of unparalleled hermetism and isolationism, Ayyur have distilled the very essence of their fringe and cast away existence cut away from the familiarity of the Western world to create a black metal construct of ghastly remoteness and of entrancing mysticism.

Vendetta Records and Sentient Ruin release The Lunatic Creature on November 30 2018 and introductory samples of the work have been already provided by Decibel Magazine and Metal Injection.

AYYUR - The Lunatic Creature

1. Lugubrious Fields
2. The Outcast
3. The Lunatic Creature
4. He Who Dwells in the Trenches

Ayyur started as a one man concept in 2007 by the will of Angra Mainyu in Tunsia, and several session members have taken part in the project over the years, but the band's true nature remains elusive, its exotic and remote existence shrouded in mystery, and its essence to this day an ominous enigma which has faded in and out of human memory. Although exact information about the project cannot be found, Mainyu appears to be the only certain constant member throughout the project's history, and 2018 has been chosen by Mainyu as the year of AYYUR's return. To this end, he has summoned the aid of mysterious entity Dagon, and obtained the alliance of former Deathspell Omega member Shaxul to incarnate his vision as a recording three piece and complete AYYUR's return, embodied as an unholy blood oath to serve and nurture black metal in its most uncompromising and feral form.

The result of AYYUR's long in the works awakening is a dark, solemn, and twisted work which glorifies black metal's most tumultuous and ravenous traits, while allowing its exotic and remote nature to leave its mark on the music and make it one with its birthplace, blessing a blood-soaked alliance made in equal parts of traditional and cold black metal nihilism, obscure spiritualism, and remote and isolationist hermitism.

CAVICVLA: Italian Dark Ambient Demon Readies Release of Incredible Debut Album “sermons” - Tracks Premiered at Invisible Oranges and Indy Metal Vault.

Sentient Ruin is absolutely ECSTATIC to unveil the debut offering by Italian Dark Ambient enigma CLAVICVLA, with all formats officially dropping on November 23 2018 and pre-ordeable now on our store and Bandcamp.

We’re honored and proud to bring you an aural and sensorially devastating experience like nothing else. A masterpiece of infernal aural terror which expands the mind - stretching it to its inevitable death and dissolution - and which paralyses the flesh. Italian one-man dark ambient/death industrial demon Clavicvla seamlessly blends the obsidian immensity of Lustmord and the wretched mantras of Trepaneringsritualen to unleash forty minutes of dismal and infernal atmospherics, drowning the listener into a formless and hallucinatory sonic void of utter dread and of unparalleled darkness. With inhuman and monstrous sub-bass frequencies, diabolical atmospheres, and black hole-sized drones, throughout these five tracks the listener will be transported to an otherwordly and remote realm lost somewhere at the edge of existence, where the boundaries between nightmare and reality begin to blur and dissolve, revealing a world beyond of absolutely omnipotent and boundless demonic enormity.

Indy Metal Vault has premiered the track μισανθρωπία και διαστροφή (“Misanthropy and Perversion”) with their writer calling Sermons “one of the most genuinely unsettling albums I’ve ever heard”. You can checkout their feature HERE.

Shortly after Invisible Oranges premiered the diabolical cut Ma stating that “on his upcoming full-length Sermons, Clavicvla aims at channelling abstract (and, to these ears, abject) horror. This isn’t Lovecraft’s cosmic horror; what awaits listeners on Sermons isn’t tentacles and psychological torment, but something entirely unknowable and altogether more frightening.” You can read their feature and hear the track HERE.

CLAVICVLA - Sermons

1. Beelzebub Invocat
2. Ma
3. Invertio Trasfiguratio
4. μισανθρωπία και διαστροφή
5. Abstratio Diaboli

Sentient Ruin kindly asks you on behalf of its creator to experience Clavicvla’s music in its intended and most appropriate setting: in total darkness, and at maximum volume possible, ideally through an audiophile sound source. Total darkness and volume are the only two external factors necessary to complete Ittiel’s design, the other being the music he created, so to dismantle your mind and will. Together, they are one, and you are the only vessel to the whole. Let it lead you to the whole.

Vinyl: pitch black black vinyl housed in a custom fold-over cover + insert silkscreened with metallic golden and silver Pantone on heavy charcoal black cardstock. Only 200 made, download card inside.

Tapes: Come with a custom j-card silkscreened with metallic gold and silver Pantones on heavy charcoal black cardstock, and black shells printed with dual metallic gold/silver imprint. The case is housed in a custom silkscreened slipcase also printed with silver and gold metallic pantones, with a flood of metallic silver satanic writing inside. Only 150 made, a Sentient Ruin online shop exclusive - will not be distroed or available anywhere else. Download card inside.

Conceived by Italian black metal artist Ittiel, unholy dark ambient / death industrial abomination Clavicvla represents the artist's moral, spiritual, corporal, and human dissolution, and his transition from his initial artistic earthly form into immaterial and full-fledged abstract horror, to mirror the newly acquired reflection of himself - the transition itself triggered by Ittiel's morbid and sanity-defying fascination with satanism, acosmism, and the cult of death. Clavicvla as such was formed as a ritual vessel, to disintegrate and transition Ittiel's physical existence itself from the corporal world to pure dread and emptiness. Ittiel has stated that he puts together the sounds of Clavicvla to dismantle and annihilate his corporal self in an attempt to embrace, and become one with, the absolute void, and break the endless loop of life and death by instead derailing existence into senseless chaos and entropy. As such Clavicvla is for Ittiel liberation of consciousness, to assume his true and perceived form, bound by nothing and shaped solely by his own unbeing.

BLACK EARTH: Debut LP from Spanish Black Noise Sorcerers Sees First Ever Vinyl Release.

We’re proud to finally announce the release of Black Earth’s incredible debut LP A Cryptic Howl of Morbid Truth for the first time ever on vinyl. The limited edition black LP will be officially released on November 9 2018 in collaboration with cult extreme experimental Spanish label Bestiarie and is now pre-ordeable on our store and Bandcamp.

Spanish ritual black ambience/terror electronics sorcerers Black Earth originally released A Cryptic Howl of Morbid Truth in 2015 on tape through US underground tape label Graceless Recordings, long before Sentient Ruin issued their most recent second MLP Diagrams of a Hidden Order. Now this monstrous behemoth of sublime ritualistic aural cacophony finally assumes its ultimate form as a 12” LP of black vinyl housed in a single pocket jacket with printed inner sleeves. On a A Cryptic Howl of Morbid Truth Black Earth unravel over forty minutes of shapeshifting, ghastly, and colossal sound sculpting, constructing before the listener an hallucinatory and blood freezing chasm of slithering drones, spectral orchestrations and wretched electronics that ravage the senses. Weaving black metal, drone, dark ambient, harsh noise, and ritual atmospherics, with this monstrous debut album Black Earth have crossed thresholds unknown in ritual ambient invocations, laying the foundations for a new realm of sensorial sonic abuse and instantly proving themselves as being one of the most visionary and striking entities in modern dark metal and ritual ambience electronics.

Featuring a coalition of members both coming from the Spanish black/death underground, (specifically from bands like Suspiral and Sheidim) and from the Spanish noise/soundscaping and electronic ambient scene, Black Earth are perhaps the absolute leaders in Spain when it comes to metallic ambient noise electronics. Their backgrounds collide in black earth with the vigor and apocalyptic force of a collapsing star, birthing audial entities of a ghastly, inhuman, and otherworldly form. Deeply rooted both in ritual noise and in the most deformed and twisted strains of black metal, these Spanish audial terrorism shamans have unified the worlds of extreme metal and experimental electronics with unseen mastery and glorious perfectionism.

NOOSE ROT: Minnesota-based Primitive Death Metal Butchers release Acclaimed Debut MLP on Vinyl.

After two represses of NOOSE ROT’s debut MLP went sold out in record time, the time has inevitably come for its unholy incarnation on 12” classic black vinyl, and today we’re honored to finally announce its release in collaboration with Me Saco Un Ojo Records in the UK handling the European release of this putrid piece of crypt-spawned death.

There really is not much to overthink or over-elaborare about NOOSE ROT. Theirs is simply just totally fucked and putrid death metal from the most rotten crevices of the underworld. NOOSE ROT hail from Minnesota and have coalesced around a shared love of members of Gatecreeper and Wolvhammer for primitive and involved death metal in the vein of Autopsy, Pungent Stench, Coffins, Nihilist, Grave, and Repugnant - deciding to join forces to birth their own unholy death metal abomination that would worship at the altar of the Finnish and Scandinavian gods of ancestral death and decay. 

Gruesomely regressed and appallingly involved, In their wretched and bludgeoning debut EP NOOSE ROT spew forth a vomited cascade of complete aural filth that engulfs the listener in a blinding deluge of chainsawing guitars, steamrolling drums, and putridly tortured vocals. At its most delicate and refined The Creeping Unknown is nothing more than a coffin-born aural stampede of complete aural rot where caveman-death metal is taken to a sickening new extreme, conjuring similar diseased atmospheres as seen in bands like Cruciamentum, Vastum, Acephalix, Disma, and Grave Miasma.

NOOSE ROT
The Creeping Unknown

1. Mass Grave Interment
2. Worship the Crypt
3. The Creeping Unknown
4. Bound in a Dark House

Sentient Ruin is proud and honored to have been made once again a part of NOOSE ROT's first putrid breath into this world, and as such we could not be happier today to announce that their debut MLP The Creeping Unknown is out now on vinyl and order-able along with digital products on our store and Bandcamp.

NEGATIVA: Spanish Raw/Depressive Black Metal Wraiths Release New Album "03" On Limited Tape - Tracks and Full Album Revealed.

We’re proud to release the third album from Spanish depressive black metal wraiths Negativa (now featuring H.V. of Wormlust/Mystískaos fame on vocals). Limited to 100 pro-dubbed white cassette tapes, 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 was sold out in a mere three weeks.

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.

ATRAMENT: Nihilistic Bay Area Crust Punks Return With Bludgeoning Sophomore Offering "Scum Sect" - Tracks Premiered at Decibel Magazine and Revolver Magazine.

Nihilistic Bay Area crust punks Atrament (who feature in their ranks current and past members of Vastum, Necrot, Mortuous, Abstracter, Moral Void, and Black September) return with Scum Sect, a thirty minute sophomore offering of sprawling hostility and of marvelously regressed sonic barbarism. Fusing together crust/anarcho punk, black and death metal with classic Swedish D-Beat, Atrament draw influence from bands like Doom, Discharge, Deviated Instinct, Skitsystem, Craft, Darkthrone and Dismember to instate widespread terror and summon total sonic warfare. A must listen and own for any true fan of Wolfpack/Wolfbrigade, Skitsystem, Gehenna, Vallenfyre, Acephalix, etc.

Atrament first appeared in 2015 with their infamously wretched two-song demo tape, following up the following year with their proper full-length album Eternal Downfall, recorded at Earhammer Studios by Greg Wilkinson (Vastum, Necrot, Acephalix, Undergang, Noothgrush, Autopsy etc.), mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Nails, Vallenfyre, Full of Hell) and released in 2016 by Argento Records in the EU and by Broken Limbs Recordings in the USA. Eternal Downfall first introduced the full spectrum of Atrament's bludgeoning sonic weapon: a maelstrom of incredibly dark, negative, and hateful crust punk driven by a barrage of crushing d-beat drumming, and laced with the deadliest strains of primal death metal and of the most cancerous raw black metal. The record met with praise by high-ranking publications like CVLT Nation, Metal Injection, Terrorizer Magazine and Invisible Oranges, with many lauding the band's clever, uncompromising, and highly lethal approach to primitive metallic punk.

Now Atrament have re-emerged with Scum Sect, their most vile and malevolent music to date. Within the total chaos and endless destruction of these harrowing thirty minutes, the listener will face a world riddled with plague and torment that appears hopeless and torn as an utter firestorm of crashing d-beats, shrapnel-infused riffs, and abhorrent atmospheres is unleashed upon them with methodical hostility.

Decibel Magazine and Revolver Magazine have both premiered a track from the album each, stating that Scum Sect is "just the latest vehicle for Atrament's black misery" a "new LP of d-beat destruction" - 

While the nightmarish artwork which graces the work was once gain crafted for the band by dark surrealism master Stephen Wilson, Scum Sect’s monstrous sound and low end crush depth was achieved once again within the walls of Earhammer Studios in Oakland CA, the famed lair of sound engineer wizard Greg Wilkinson, while the pulverizing and thick as concrete mastering was achieved once again at Audiosiege in Portland OR by mastering guru Brad Boatright. Scum Sect is slated to release on September 28 2018 through Sentient Ruin (tape/US vinyl), Caligari Records (tape co-release), and through Blood Harvest in the EU (CD/EU vinyl).

COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER: Ritual Black Drone/Dark Ambient Experimentalists Unveil Haunting New LP - Track Premiered at CVLT Nation.

Sentient Ruin is honored to present A Wound Of Body, the first part of Common Eider, King Eider’s "Wound" duology, two separate releases linked sonically, visually and spiritually, together forming the group’s most focused and fully realized work to date. The two releases together offer up a sprawling, audial exploration of wounds at once physical and spiritual, social and societal, natural and environmental.

Sonically, A Wound Of Body is a beautifully stark soundscape, dolorously dense, suffocatingly oppressive and utterly claustrophobic. An immersive black hole of bleak, cavernous dronemusic and disquieting, desolate ambience, each track a hushed and harrowing ritual; the surface minimalism underpinned by a churning morass of sound, a layered liturgy of blackened invocations and nebulous strings hovering in the shadows. 

Haunting melodies and disembodied voices surface throughout, A Wound Of Body’s impenetrable darkness only barely tempered by hopeful glimmers of light and subtle shades of washed out color. Shards of melody drift and dissipate, wreathed in smoldering blurs of disembodied guitar and transformed into ghostly streaks of ashen grey. Dolorous violas unfurl aching threnodies that drift on languid seas of smeared gongs and darkly devotional vocal incantations, all hymns to the spirits that animate us, a reminder of the transience of our physical form and the impermanence of our existence. But at the same time a reminder that the fleeting nature of our place in the universe does not lessen our impact on the world around us. 

COMMON EIDER, KING EIDER
A Wound Of Body

1. Remembrance - A Threnody
2. Sinew Stretched Over Crumbling Bones
3. We Sing Over These Bones So That They May Rise Up and Run Away Into the Night
4. Hélène
5. River of Blood

States the band:

"The wounds of the body, and of the spirit, are in part the result of unfettered capitalism and a patriarchy run rampant. We remain, even in a comparatively enlightened era, cogs in the capitalist machine, and beholden to a leadership and a code of ethics that seemingly remains indifferent to our humanity. We have lost our connection to our bodies, to the sacred, to our sexuality, to the primacy of what makes us human. Which in turn has seemingly severed our connections to nature and wilderness, our wounds perpetuating our relationships with the world around us via land development and resource exploitation, with both our bodies and the world we live in viewed by many simply as commodities to own, sell, exploit and destroy."

A Wound Of Body is presented on cassette in a minimal black J-card, on textured paper, and printed in silver metallic ink. The tape J-card is adorned with the CEKE sigil, while the LP comes in a duo-tone silver/black printed jacket with black flood inside and printed inner sleeve, and both the LP and tape come with images of a micro-landscape rendered in bone, a stark image of the alien, otherworldly topography that lurks beneath the skin, emblematic of the inevitable decay and disintegration of our physical forms: the ruin we become, and the ruin we leave behind.

A Wound Of Body is slated to be released on tape and vinyl for the US through Sentient Ruin and on CD and vinyl for the EU by Cyclic Law. Pre-orders are now available on our Bandcamp and store, while a track has been made available in advance exclusively through CVLT Nation.

ALTARS: San Jose CA-based Death-grind Vandals Unleash Bludgeoning Debut 7" EP - Tracks Premiered by Decibel Magazine and Metal Injection.

Sentient Ruin is honored to announce the debut 7" release by San Jose CA-based ALTARS, along with Dawnbreed Records handling the release for the EU market.

On this debut demo/EP 7" mysterious San Jose CA-based aural terrorists ALTARS spew forth a firestorm of bludgeoning grinding death metal terror which effortlessly succeeds in completely and gruesomely dismantling the listener in under ten minutes. With guitars as thick as concrete, atmospheres of utmost hatred, and a steamrolling rhythm section, Altars bring to mind the glory and hostile supremacy of historic UK death-grind like Benediction, early Carcass and Bolt Thrower while also vomiting on the listener a barrage of utter malignancy and of dark and twisted atmospheres akin to those of bands like Pseudogod and Lvcifyre.

States the band: "This 7” is the product of four friends who love old school death metal. Taking inspiration from Autopsy, Morbid Angel, Bolt Thrower, and combining it with the straightforward, no frills delivery of Napalm death and other Grindcore, this is our offering to the altar."

Tracklist:
1. Unholy Retribution
2. Conqueror
3. Ancient Plague
4. Black Magic

Decibel Magazine and Metal Injection have premiered two tracks from the release stating that this 7" is "bludgeoning death metal terror" and "raw, unfiltered death metal that is unaware of trends". You can find their features HERE and HERE.

Coming as a 45RPM vinyl 7" adorned with incredible art by Eric Radey, the self titled EP will be available in limited black or standard clear orange vinyl housed in a black heavy cardstock cover and insert printed with copper metallic spot color inks. 

Sentient Ruin (US) and Dawnbreed Records (EU), officially release the debut ALTARS 7" on August 23 2018, now pre-ordeable on our store and Bandcamp.