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.

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.