夢遊病者: Multinational Avantgarde Black Metal Band Reveal Mind-altering New Album "Noč Na Krayu Sveta" - Track Preview and Exclusive Interview Available at Last Rites.

Russian/Japanese/American experimental ritualistic black metal entity 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker) emerge from slumber with "Noč Na Krayu Sveta" a two song/half-hour LP of liquefying hallucinogenic sonic alchemy and transcendental avant-garde excellence. In the vast two-song composition 夢遊病者 morph into their most abstract and defiant state yet, reaching a state of near-ethereal cinematic deconstructionism that only leaves vague traces and queues of their primordial and vast melting pot of influences. Within, black metal, kraut, noise rock, free-jazz, drone, middle-eastern incantations and ritualistic psychedelia are melted down in a lysergic kaleidoscopic frenzy of sounds and then sublimated to reach a new zenith of masterful immateriality which consecrates the band at its most ambitious and confrontational state yet. Challenging the listener's senses and perception at multiple levels, "Noč Na Krayu Sveta" pries the mind open to enter its deepest levels, defying its boundaries and expectations almost with arrogant unpredictability, crossing thresholds of experimentalism and of creative ambition we hadn't yet fathomed in the band's still short but extraordinary career, but which we can now gaze into in complete awe and wonder. The result... something standing astonishingly between Ved Buens Ende, Zeni Geva, Bohren And Der Club of Gore, Galloping Coroners, Urfaust, and The Kilimanjaro Darkjazz Ensemble.

Leading up to the release the track "Boundless Love / Resilience" was premiered by Last Rites, and the notorious metal blog also conducted and in depth interview with guitarist/vocalist PBV. In their feature Last Rites explained that “while the black metal atmosphere and undeniable heaviness of the album, drenched in jazz-laden compositions and free interpretation along with the krautrock ambition to discover new and exciting sounds, remains at the core of the band, it somehow exists outside of these boundaries” - you can check out the feature HERE.

States the band on the release:


As with much of the 夢遊病者 catalog, the root entity of inspiration for this release was a person, which then expanded out into the idea of how this person exists in the Sleepwalker universe and interacts with the world old and new. Are they open, kind, selfless, self-sacrificing and good natured—or are they cold, self-protective, brutish and menacing?

”Noč Na Krayu Sveta” (Night at the Edge of the World) plays with the notion of this dichotomy, interpolating the idea that what comes at night can be both devastating and exhilarating, driven by unsurmountable and inexplicable loss or an ecstatic revelation, an end or a new beginning. In continuing from the last release, to further magnify the self-referential and collaborative spirit of the band—other musicians, friends and fans, even family members were tapped to appear on the album. We are forever humbled and honored by them taking their time to contribute. This was a labor of love, loss, joy and disgust that we hope, in some abstract way, will make its proper connection.

LABORED BREATH: Debut Album "Dyspnea" from Crushing New USBM Entity to See the Light April 2 2021 Via Sentient Ruin - Track Unveiled at Invisible Oranges.

We’re proud to announce the release of emerging USBM entity Labored Breath’s towering debut album "Dyspnea", to be released in early April on LP, MC, and digital formats.

Thirty six minutes of soul-destroying evolved black metal, "Dyspnea" is the towering debut offering from this new Oakland CA-based one-man black metal entity, a project conceived as unapologetic devotion to the moment of reckoning of one's ultimate finality, and as a conceptual aural evisceration of mankind's minuscule and pathetic existence within the blink of an eye of an infinite, eternal void. The literal medical definition of gasping for air as the final breath appears at the horizon, and of finite stubborn existence attempting to subvert the infinity and inevitability of death, "Dyspnea" is a harrowing trip deep inside humanity's biggest fears and its all-encompassing insignificance. It is the moment of realization and the crippling instance within one’s existence in which the immensity and omnipotence of death pierces the final and most armored under layers of consciousness and denial and stares at the human being straight in the eye to make it kneel in the shadow of total unavoidability. Bridging the spellbinding atmospherics and evocative power of Icelandic black metal (Sinmara, Carpe Noctem, Misþyrming, Svartidauði) with the crushing violence and brute antagonism of French black metal (Aosoth, Drastus, Antaeus), Labored Breath has created an intimidating and majestic black metal crucible that shape-shifts and morphs in perpetual motion, stirring an immense sinister aural maelstrom of tenebrous surrealism and masterful sonic destruction as ultimate and supreme homage to the omnipotence and splendor of our endless Destroyer.

Leading up the album’s release, the track “Belie” has been unveiled exclusively by Invisible Oranges, with the notorious metal blog asserting that “Dyspnea forges out on a different axis to create a belligerent and intense trail to lesser-tread territory in black metal“ - you can read the full feature and check out the track HERE.

The brainchild of SF Bay Area-based solo musician JK, Labored Breath is the artist's sonic interpretation of the slow and inexorable claiming of death. The idea and concept for the project came to into JK’s mind during the time of self-seclusion imposed by the COVID pandemic, and the times of uncertainty, pessimism, fear, and death which ensued from it worldwide. As a skilled and highly proficient multi instrumentalist, the obligate isolation and lack of opportunities to make music with other people pushed JK to finally pursue a long planned and fully self-exectued solo project with no other instrumentalists involved. It is not purely coincidental that the album is titled “Dyspnea", like the condition which plagues people with difficulty breathing, as the COVID pandemic primarily resulted in widespread respiratory symptoms worldwide, as such the project is a true snapshot of the artist’s reality and of its most harrowing and demoralizing possible outcomes and developments. It is a reflection on death in a time in which death entered everyone’s consciousness and every day reality. It is the onset of reckoning, the moment in which the end comes into sight for the first time in a person's life. It is the total and unmistakeable first manifestation of death to the living, and Labored Breath explores this concept sonically via the implacable and merciless life-devourment of black metal. Aside from the aforementioned French black metal and Icelandic black metal, Labored Breath remains a purely USBM-bred entity with an almost encyclopedic yet defiant approach to the craft, and a strong penchant for unpredictability and unorthodoxy. Bands like Nightbringer, Ruins if Beverast, Blut Aus Nord, as well as certain strains of European funeral doom and death metal are also skillfully referenced or hinted at in the songwriting without ever becoming overly obvious structural identifiers, leaving the project perpetually shrouded in a profound sense of shapeshifting ambiguity.

"Dyspnea" is officially scheduled for an April 2 2021 release date on LP, MC, and digital, and can now be pre-ordered in all formats from our shop or Bandcamp.

CTHONICA: Venezuelan Necromantic Black/Death Metal Duo Release Horrific Sophomore MLP "The Lesser Incantations of Chthonic Lore" - Full Release Unveiled at CVLT Nation.

Sentient Ruin rejoins Venezuelan unholy black/death metal cult CTHONICA, to one again bring to the masses the duo’s abhorrent spell into complete aural perversion and disarray. This time the South American sonic plague re-emerges from the sepulchers and sewers of Caracas with a new chapter in their abominable saga of repulsive and sepulchral ritualistic raw black/death metal via the release of a brand new three-track sophomore MLP, officially released on March 5 2021 on limited edition 12” vinyl format, and on cassette format by Caligari Records.

The album has been unveiled progressively in the last month, first by Antichrist Magazine with an exclusive song stream of second track “The Bonds of Infernal Abhorrence“ (check out the feature HERE), and finally by CVLT Nation who in unveiling exclusively the full MLP stated that “the touches of droning noise and of dark ritual ambient that punctuates the release just add an extra layer and dimension to the utter horror this band has envisioned.“ - you can check out the feature HERE.

Hideous beyond comprehension and utterly horrific, "The Lesser Incantations of Chthonic Lore" was conceived as some kind of perverse telepathic link to the underworld and it reconfirms the Venezuelan necromancers as an absolute horror of creation. Across its three mammoth spells of slithering cacophony and ritualized horrors, on the horrific new MLP Cthonica regurgitate another stomach-churning thirty-minute subterranean emanation of death ridden incantations and complete aural deformities, rummaging the depths of total perversion and abandon to unearth one of the most nauseating, primitive, and hallucinatory rituals of aural blasphemies to have been vomited out of South America in recent years. The monstrous twelve-minute closing track features lead guest vocals from US black doom band Abstracter’s vocalist MA.

The three-track MLP was released on March 5 2021 on limited edition 12” vinyl format and digitally via Sentient Ruin, and on cassette format by Caligari Records and can now be obtained and streamed in full via all of both labels’ channels.

Raw blackened death metal plague Cthonica began in Caracas, Venezuela, back in 2016 (formed by D.V. on Guitars, Bass, and Drums, and H.K. handling Vocals, noise and electronics, lyrics and concepts), rising from the ashes of a previous incarnation of the project called Okkvlt. Cthonica is, and likely always will be, a proudly home-recorded project. Both for necessity due to the precarious access to resources in the tumultuous Venezuelan society and general lack of most things out there, and for the complete refusal by the core duo behind the project to compromise or embrace standardized and commonly acceptable creation processes. As such Cthonica's existence will likely always be one of near complete lack and isolation, a state and condition which has perhaps made certain aspects of their art even more violent, defiant, and abominable. That of Chtonica appears to be an existence of evolved regression, where a state of isolation, lack, and primitivism has evolved aberrantly, and created fertile conditions for the development of deviant and feral art forms. Regarding this aspect of their creation process the band has stated that “we are a home-made recording project because we are oblivious to so-called professional hi-fi techniques and firmly believe that the approach of basic and primitive resources keeps us on the line of what we want“. Lyrically, musically, and conceptually Cthonica are focused on expressing the abyss within every human life, not (only) through the classic but overused Nietzschean cliché, but also and mostly as a Tehomic-Typhonian metamorphosis of every man's reason through what they call, "spiritual putrefaction”, or the progressive human corruption through the guidelines of opprobrious disciplines and their teachings, a concept which has shaped and defined the band’s abhorrent 2018 debut 2XLP Typhomanteia: Sacred Triarchy of Spiritual Putrefaction.

HALLUCINATION: Philly-Based Hardcore/Noise Punks To Reissue Pulverizing Debut Demo Tape Via Sentient Ruin.

Philly raw hardcore hallucination. We’re honored and proud to announce an official reissue of the unparalleled ear-splitting debut demo tape from rising Philly-based d-beat noise-punk demolition unit Hallucination, first self-released in 2020, and now available again as an exclusive label-curated re-edition with new artwork from Canadian xerox/collage visual master Paul Van Trigt.

With its desolate atmospheres and unforgiving intensity, the pulverizing demo comes packed with splinters of raw punk, d-beat, and off the rails Japanese-styled noise crust whipped into an unyielding and caustic raw hardcore assault that will demolish you in its wake.

Iconic bands in the genre like Deathside, Disclose, Raw Nerve, Krömosom, Cult Ritual, and Crude SS are all more or less referenced in one way or another throughout the tape’s meager eight minutes of unforgiving aural abandon, but far from being a simple self-referencing stylistic exercise, this astonishing demo brings a darkness and desperation to the plate that we’d rarely before seen in the genre, signaling the possible birth of a game-changing act whose full power and vision we’re not yet fully aware of.

Formed in the year 2020 amid global panic and state terror, the group pays homage to the tradition of D-beat raw punk (especially the aforementioned Japanese one) with mind-altering sonics and an unrelenting contempt for reality. Their caustic and hallucinatory sound is a relentless sonic assault of extreme raw guitars, dizzying repetition, and violent stylistic commitment.

Featuring a Poison Idea cover, the self-titled Hallucination demo tape reissue is slated for a March 5 2021 official release date along with digital formats, and the work can now be pre-ordered and streamed in full on our Bandcamp and webshop.

OBSCURAE: Sentient Ruin Issues Atmospheric USBM's Immense Sophomore LP "To Walk the Path of Sorrows" for the First Time Ever on Cassette Format.

We’re proud to bring you the first and so far only cassette version ever of Obscurae’s 2020 debut LP "To Walk the Path of Sorrows". A triumphant ode to darkness and nocturnal immensity, California's one man ambient black metal entity Obscurae finally brings us its unreal sophomore full-length album "To Walk the Path of Sorrows" on cassette tape format via Sentient Ruin, after its original CD and LP release in late 2020 by American Decline Records. Years in the making, the massive album unfolds as an unyielding and immense cyclone of sound that surrounds the listener and submerges them into an otherworldly vortex of storming chaos and obfuscating shadows. An unrelenting churning maelstrom of frost, sweeping winds and cascading nightfall, "To Walk the Path of Sorrows" is an extraordinary tsunami of sound that travels at immense speeds across a massive horizon, devouring everything in its path and leaving a massive gaping void in its wake. One of the most mysterious and overlooked yet sonically imposing releases of 2020, Obscurae's "To Walk the Path of Sorrows" stands high as a grandiose and impenetrable storm of hypnotic trance-inducing ambient/atmospheric black metal with an immense consciousness-altering aura that re-evokes the majesty and sonic vastly of bans like Darkspace, Thirst, Paysage d'Hiver and Voidsphere.

The solo project of San Francisco-based multi-instrumentalist and prolific solo artist Chad Davis (also of Anu, Stench of Evil, Hour of Thirteen, Subklink, Demoncy, Set and many more), Obscurae is the mirror that reflects the darkest corners of the artist’s soul, and which reveals Davis’ most hidden and ominous creative impulses. Born as a sonic worship ritual to complete darkness, through Obscurae Davis has created an imposing black metal wall of sound that advances toward the listener like and unyielding and otherworldly storm of hypnotic and vorticose aural chaos. Handling (mostly) all instruments himself, the project’s sound is developed by Davis through a meticulous and brilliant layering of guitars, basses, synths, drum machines accompanied by a swarm of soul-tearing screams that woven together construct an immense sonic altar of worship toward the void, night, and the magnificence and immensity of total darkness.

The project started in 2016 “as an eternal homage to nightfall" in Davis’ own words and first emerged through the storming aural maelstrom of frost and ravenous winds found in the digital-only debut release “Ensomhet” a thirty minute ode to the absolute void and its all-devouring power which already presented a fully-formed and developed manifestation of Obscurae’s immense and imposing sound. Years of silence passed until Davis re-emerged in 2020 with its evolved successor and alter-ego "To Walk the Path of Sorrows", a magnum opus and revisitation of “Ensomhet” accompanied by a new title to reflect the presence of new tracks and the birth of an entirely new release destined to see the light also on physical formats for the first time ever. “To Walk the Path of Sorrows" was finally released in late 2020 on LP and CD formats via American Decline Records and then on February 5 2021 by Sentient Ruin for a limited edition cassette tape release.

SPIRE: Australian Dark Metal Futurists Unveil Immense Sophomore LP "Temple of Khronos" - Track Unveiled at Invisible Oranges.

One of the most anticipated underground extreme metal albums of the year, it is with great excitement that we can finally officially announce the release of Spire’s immense new sophomore LP "Temple of Khronos" coming on CD, tape, LP, and digital formats, five years after their genre-defying Iron Bonehead debut LP “Entropy” redefined the lineaments and identity of atmospheric black metal.

The obscure Australian dark metal futurists have finally returned with their immense sophomore full-length album "Temple of Khronos", a reality-bending psychedelic/progressive extreme metal masterpiece of the highest order that will disassociate the listener and teleport them outside their own consciousness, reality, and self. Continuing their cryptic inner war against metal traditionalism and musical conventions in general, this time the Australian atmospheric black metal shapeshifters have fearlessly peeled back the hazy outer layer of their primordial black metal sound to reveal a previously unseen, massive, and glistening, architecture of cinematic sonic dark matter that elevates their imaginative and visionary power to unseen heights, opening worlds inside the listener into which be drawn, trapped and dissolved within one's own consciousness and self. Immensely evocative, and shrouded in a profound and majestic mysticism, "Temple of Khronos" is a foreboding sonic gateway that will push your imagination to its limits as it explores the concepts of time as a deity, tyrant, and as ultimate engineer and destroyer of reality to connect the listener with an obscure and distant future civilization that in facing its own inevitable demise stares back into time facing us with our own nothingness, powerlessness and finality. The album's immense atmospheres and its seemingly boundless imaginative force stem primarily from its crisp but layered and dense production quality that works as a catalyst to channel an unseen and massive sensorial overload of sound in which cinematic and multilayered vocal arrangements (the temple's "choir"), lysergic atmospheres and winding, epic instrumental constructs cyclically collapse to surround the listener and submerge them in an otherworldly ritual of consciousness-altering and space-time distorting aural immensity.

In unveiling the track “Hymn III - Harbinger”, Invisible Oranges declared that the track “is indicative as to the rest of this upcoming album's sound. Featuring an exhilaratingly varied vocal performance and a driving, monumental rhythm section, Spire's new self treads new ground comfortably for this surprisingly forward-thinking artist.“ - you can read their feature HERE.

Once described by Fenriz of Darkthrone as "brilliant" and “taking the direction black metal SHOULD have in the 90s” - Spire emerged in Brisbane Australia from the cryptic minds of MR and VS over a decade ago. Ever shrouded in gloom and obscurity they released their first self-titled EP in 2010, a suffocating piece of ambient black metal that established them as a new rising force in their scene. Since then Spire has patiently and unwaveringly moved their sound into ever-increasing madness and unpredictability with a string of subsequent releases which have defied expectations at every turn. 2011 saw the birth of Spire's “Metaphorph” EP, a short piece of nihilistic insanity tainted with simmering violence, yet still drenched in the band’s signature near-tyrannical atmosphere. “Entropy”, the band's first full-length album released in 2016 by Iron Bonehead Productions took Spire even deeper into the depths of derangement, savagery and abstraction. The album stands as a showcase of the diversity of the band's style, ranging from eerie atmospheric instrumentals, to ferocious and unconstrained modern black metal, all the while accompanied by bestial screeches and meditative throat singing. Over the course of these releases, Spire shared the live stage with extreme metal heavy weights such as Blasphemy, Inquisition, Marduk, Batushka, and Portal. Since then the Void has remained still for four long years... until now. Enter Spire's second full-length epic “The Temple of Khronos” set for release in late 2020 via Sentient Ruin: the ultimate culmination of Spire’s spasmodic push toward and into unrestrained extreme metal futurism and ever-changing artistic delirium. A liturgy to Time itself…

DSKNT: Swiss Black Metal Terror-scapers Unveil Surreal and Horrific Sophomore LP "Vacuum γ​-​Noise Transition" - Track Premiered at Antichrist Magazine.

With immense excitement and anticipation we can finally officially announce that Swiss black metal void sculptors DSKNT are back with their immense sophomore LP "Vacuum γ-Noise Transition", a devouring nightmare of omnipotent sonic annihilation conceived at the most liminal edges of sanity.

The reality-destroying album takes shape as a dark and multidimensional hallucination deep into reality's most cryptic and terrifying truths, a place where entropy and chaos assume near-corporeal and hyper-realist forms, becoming empirical laws and axioms of all manifestations therein, with the music serving as the abhorrent mathematical key that allows the listener to unlock this realm beyond and "see" the horrors that populate reality beyond the reach of the five senses and of the terrestrial dimension. Harrowingly evocative and devastating beyond comprehension, "Vacuum γ-Noise Transition" assumes its hideous form through a ravaging maze of managed guitar fractals, eviscerating compositional deconstructionism and an inhuman event horizon of decaying soundscapes and oppressive atmospheres that dismantle the listener piece by piece, forcing mind and soul apart to disintegrate in each other's reflection. Somewhat claiming the torch of absolute avant-garde violence and abhorrence from bands like Deathspell Omega and Portal, the devastating album is an all-encompassing and sensorially annihilating masterpiece that transitions this heritage of aural abominations into its most unavoidable future and inevitable conclusions, reshaping the DNA of surrealistic extreme metal as we know it and pulverizing all its known thresholds through a hideous out of body experience ritualized through total aural abandon.

An introduction to the album was given back in December by extreme underground music blog Antichrist Magazine, with an exclusive stream of the track “Θ-Noise - Phase Shift” - you can check out the feature HERE.

DSKNT first emerged in 2017 out of total obscurity in their native Switzerland with an unexpected and insanely crushing self-recorded/produced debut LP, “PhSPHR Entropy”, which we also released on LP/tape, a work which established the band as unprecedented beacon of aural terror, earning them much praise and respect in the underground, and raising anticipation for this followup opus to unseen levels of hype - which will not just be met, but exceeded in every possible way.

Fully conceived, recorded, produced, and mastered by the band within the confines of their own studio, the horrific album will be officially released on February 5 2021 on digital, cassette tape, CD, and vinyl formats, along with a limited edition long sleeve shirt, and all formats can now be pre-ordered on our Bandcamp and webshop.

CHAOS ECHŒS: Sentient Ruin to Issue "Ecstasy With the Nonexistents" Live Tracks for the First Time On Vinyl.

We’re honored to work again with French ritualistic ambient death metal alchemists Chaos Echœs as they have tasked us to release their professionally recorded soundboard live album "Ecstasy With the Nonexistents" for the first time ever on vinyl format. These tracks represent the final testament from the absolute gods of underground experimental death metal and their final recorded output ever before their breakup, perhaps their most ambitious, imaginative and all-encapsulating material ever.

First released as disc 1 of the 2019 2CD outtakes compilation "Remains”, (issued on double-CD by Utech Records) this massive and gloriously-sounding professionally mixed and mastered live soundboard recording captures the french masters of ritualistic death metal alchemy at the pinnacle of their transformative power as they step out of every comfort zone known to revisit familiar places and re-emerge into a new and unseen transfiguration of themselves. Profoundly moving and ungraspably visionary, "Ecstasy With the Nonexistents" sees the French alchemists metamorph and manipulate some of their most iconic tracks to subvert and transcend their own identity, creating a ritual within a ritual, where death and black metal, experimental noise and ritual ambient dissolve into a singular flow of consciousness dictated by the abstract axioms of transformation, ritual improvisation and free form deconstructionism.

In the band’s own words:


"Ecstasy with the Nonexistents, is a soundboard recording of a full live set from 2018. Assembled with great care, this set list was only performed in concert once. The concept was to reinvent the songs, re-arranging pieces from Transient and Mouvement into a continuous three-part suite. The first section is slow, more self-centered than introverted, and obsessive. The second section is atmospheric, dominated by improvisations with bells, flutes, shamanic drumming, and mantra-like vocal patterns. The final section is carnal, wild and intuitive, completing the journey from an aggressive, selfish state to one of abandonment and sharing."

Recorded live in 2018, mixed & mastered by Cyrille Gachet. Final lineup:

Kalevi Uibo: guitar+effects, vocals
Ilmar Uibo: drums, vocals
Stefan Thanneur: bass+effects, vocals
Fabien W. Furter: guitar+effects, vocals
Guillermo Gonzalez: guitar+effects, vocals

"Ecstasy With the Nonexistents" is pre-ordeable in all available formats and streamable in full now via our Bandcamp and webshop, to be officially released on February 5 2021 to coincide with Bandcamp Friday. The glorious posthumous live album will be available both digitally and as a massive limited edition 2XLP available in two vinyl colors with a gatefold sleeve designed as always by Chaos Echœs visual mastermind and bassist Stefan Thanneur.