Metal Tape 147 Items

After an almost decade-long period of dwelling in the shadows, Koldbrann returned with a series of select festival appearances in 2022/23, premiering new material and proving that they're still full of cold grimness and misanthropy, and completely void of compromise. After last year’s 2-track 7” single “Den 6. Massedød (Manna fra en annen himmel)”, their long-awaited 4th album “Ingen Skånsel” is ready to be unleashed - and Koldbrann is sounding rawer, harsher and better than ever. Even though deeply rooted in the True Norwegian Black Metal tradition, Koldbrann has carved out their own sound within the genre confines and it sounds fresh, raw and different. There’s a fierce nerve running through the album, and the songs stand out from today’s typical black metal sounds. You can feel the aggression throughout the whole album. “Ingen Skånsel” is one of the most interesting, aggressive and fierce Norwegian black metal albums in modern times! 1.Ingen Skånsel2.Et Uomtvistelig Falsum3.I Unaturens Vold4.Prosesjon Under Blyhimmel5.Det Kryper Kaldt6.Maskiner av Nihil7.Forstanden Seiler Sin Egen Sjø8.Fortærer av Minne og Form9.Rykk Skaperverket Opp med Roten10.Vorde Eders Farkost en Katafalk11.Serenade til Dødens Elende12.Elevert Hinsides Tilstand (CD only track)

Perpetually out of print, much sought after and universally worshipped amongst those in the know, Winter's "Into Darkness" was a game-changing classic.

Formed in New York circa 1988, Winter played slow, deep and hard nuclear doom with a crust punk rawness, that came across like Hellhammer jamming with Amebix. Their penchant for mammoth sized and funeral-paced, wasteland droning has become a touchstone reference for bands across the whole spectrum of underground metal.

Their pre-internet infamy led to Winter demos being tape- traded in hallowed adoration by fans and bands alike, gaining notable fans such as Fenriz from Darkthrone. Deserving of their special place in the pantheon of one-off classic albums, the Swans-like noise and down-tuned Earth-like riffs of "Into Darkness" went on to spawn countless doom and sludge bands, being an influence for an entire doomed generation.

The Winter come-back show at Roadburn Festival in 2011 was massively anticipated and held a captivated audience. Packing out one of The Netherlands largest stages, that particular Winter show, after many years in obscurity is a rare event that is still highly regarded today. The band is a rare jewel amongst collectors, and audiences alike.

"Into Darkness" was a gateway drug to the dark depths of sludge metal, and now awaits a whole new throng of acolytes who bow down before the throne of heavy doom. Svart Records is proud to re-release it once more, putting the album back in print for a new generation of listeners. Eternal Winter awaits!

Sarcofago’s third album is somewhat of a departure from the band’s previous two outings. A more technical musical approach takes hold as the band builds upon the madness created by INRI and ROTTING. "The Laws of Scourge" offers some classic Sarcofago songs such as "Midnight Queen", and "Screeches from the Silence". This Greyhaze reissue features pristine dynamic mastering. For fans of Mayhem, Beherit, Black Witchery and all Metal. Side A1. THE LAWS OF SCOURGE2. PIERCINGS3. MIDNIGHT QUEENSide B1. THE BLACK VOMIT2. PRELUDE TO A SUICIDE3. SCREECHES FROM THE SILENCE4. SECRETS OF A WINDOW

Time is a slippery fish.

Loss has inspired Mamaleek’s latest full-length album, titled Vida Blue. This marks the San Francisco Bay Area metal deconstructionists’ eighth album and their third as a full lineup.

Tragedy struck in March of 2023 when the band lost a longtime friend and member, keyboardist Eric Livingston, leaving the group, which began as a duo of two brothers and later expanded to a five-piece, now with only four members. Despite this profound loss, Mamaleek persevered, performing as a quartet at various festivals, including the 2023 edition of Tilburg.

The band returned to the studio to create new material that appropriately reflects their journey through loss and honors their fallen comrade. The resulting album draws inspiration from the legacy of Oakland A’s baseball legend Vida Blue, whose former team coincidentally announced its relocation to Las Vegas that same year. The band members themselves describe this poignant chapter in their own words:

“Time is a slippery fish. Maybe only someone like Vida could grasp it. Although he’s left time behind, his image and that lefty heat remain in the memories of many. Eventually they’ll be forgotten, and hopefully replaced with even more exultant ones. This musical recording is a reflection on loss and its acceptance. We explore several examples for each song, including the loss of pride, of money, of glory, of country, of sanity, of a favorite sports team, of significant others, and, every day, one’s self. It also explores various associated moods—fear, panic, reverence, stoicism, and steadfastness—to arrive at a resolution: Loss is only a test, the glue that holds and erodes each memory, the connection that binds and loosens us all, pitch by pitch, inning by inning. This is your celebration.”

Vida Blue is a person, moment, and memory, together the crystallization of apocalypse: “unveiling,” “disclosure.”

The Promise Of Rain, the sophomore album of the experimental black metal band Scarcity, is an embodiment of the hard-to-believe truth that burdens are easier to bear when distributed, a realization Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble) grappled with extensively while writing this record. This is a sweat-drenched album about dispersion, about spreading, about the collective relieving of burdens through shared experience: one doesn’t have to go through everything alone.

When Scarcity’s debut album Aveilut was written in early 2020, Randall-Myers and vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Glorious Depravity, and Seputus) never expected to be able to play their songs live. The cathartic experience of playing something that came from a place of isolation out to people in a live setting is the root of the intensity in The Promise Of Rain. The Promise Of Rain begins where the craziest climaxes of Aveilut end, and is the first Scarcity record to include Tristan Kasten-Krause (Sigur Ros, Steve Reich, Leya) on bass, Dylan Dilella (Pyrrhon) on guitar and Lev Weinstein (Krallice) on drums. Rather than building density with the quasi-orchestral layering on Aveilut, Scarcity challenged themselves to document what five people in a room could do, recording most of The Promise Of Rain in one or two takes, capturing the physical effort and urgency of a live performance.

Scarcity forges a completely fresh sound in The Promise Of Rain with their alarming guitar work and melodic arpeggiating, shedding dead skin and breaking ground with sheer vulnerability. The lyrics for The Promise Of Rain were inspired by a trip Moore took to the high deserts of southern Utah in 2023. “To thrive in the desert is an act of abnegation—” he observes, “you do right by the land and receive its gifts, or it does away with you.” The necessity of adaptation is as evident in the desert as it is to the landscape of the human experience. The transformation of ideas and beliefs, the grief of losing relationships that had to end, and the fear involved in forming new ones under the grip of mental illness is conjured over and over again on this panoramic album.

New album - what we can say? I believe everyone will love it! 3rd album from project featuring original Totalitär members

2nd album from this "all-star" raw punk / d-beat band coming out from Sweden. If you miss Totalitär - you are at the right place. Why "all-star" band? Just imagine current line-up members and their experiences in bands like Warcollapse, Slutet, Totalitär (eh!), Dischange, Krigshot, Makabert Fynd, Dissekerad, Krig I Hudik, Katastrof, Institution, Brainbombs, Napalm A.D., Desperate Fix, Kvoteringen, Meanwhile, Disfear, No Security or Ääritila ... and many more. This is album of the year!

Compilation with previously released 7"ep tracks, split LP tracks and comp. tracks. Remastered by Kenko. With fresh new artwork.

Classic 90's crust massacre with Doom, Cruelty, Dirt etc. members.

In the summer of 2019, a newly formed, Oklahoma City-based rock band called Chat Pile would release its debut four-track EP, This Dungeon Earth. Little did anyone know at the time, but this initial taste of grotesque, confronting, and visceral noise rock courtesy of four slacker Okies would kick off the story of what would soon be one of the most widely lauded underground acts in years. Like the towering mounds of toxic waste from which it gets its namesake, Chat Pile’s body of work is emblematic of a distinctly midwestern flavor of American dread, with This Dungeon Earth being no exception to the rule. While raw in presentation, Chat Pile’s debut EP comes across as anything but a rough draft. Much of the band’s hallmark traits, spanning the unhinged vocals of frontman Raygun Busch, the grotesquely contorted guitar riffage, and the industrial smack of heavily processed percussion, appear as far back as this earliest chapter. If anything, the raw, DIY-rooted origins of these uncompromising thirteen minutes of sludged-out carnage make This Dungeon Earth all the more impactful. Between its biting social commentary and gratuitous grindhouse insanity, the unfiltered brutality of Chat Pile’s debut recording has seen tracks like “Rainbow Meat”, “Face”, and “Ratboy” become mainstays in its notorious live shows. Although it depicts the band’s monstrous amalgamation of noise rock, sludge metal, hardcore, and more as it is just beginning to congeal, This Dungeon Earth comes off as the furthest thing from a simple intro and more of an essential first chapter in Chat Pile’s story.

Released only a handful of months following the band’s breakthrough debut EP, Remove Your Skin Please signaled that whatever Chat Pile was doing wasn't just a one-off novelty of Midwest metal nihilism. While the band’s foundational sound of caustic and cacophonous noise rock crystallized with its debut, the release of Remove Your Skin Please signposted the vast extent to which Chat Pile could stylistically tinker and conceptually iterate atop it. Heard in the gothy post-punk dirge of “Mask” and the dissonant extreme metal fervor of “Davis'', the more experimental ideas present on Remove Your Skin Please come off less like a selection of the band’s conceptual prototypes and more like fully realized reflections of its member's own tastes and preferences. That doesn’t mean Chat Pile’s noise rock foundation is diluted in the slightest as EP bookends “Dallas Beltway” and “Garbage Man” push its twisted take on the genre to new aural extremes in its instrumentation and subject matter spanning grisly serial murders to the slow festering death of the environment at the hands of mankind. For as ugly and unhinged as Chat Pile’s tales of 21st-century American dread are, Remove Your Skin Please asserts something that is somehow subtly even more terrifying: If a quartet of otherwise ordinary Okies can convey such apocalyptically bleak yet resonate messages in its music, that may mean we feel that same nihilism, too.

This is the third album by a Japanese death metal band that has received high praise from the international media. The first track "Conqueror", which is released with a music video, is a good blend of blast beats and old school death vibe, and there is no throwaway track until the final track, "Cold Blooded Killing". Mixed and mastered by Emanuel Salgado of the Norwegian studio Grottemann Studio, the sound is solid, clear, and heavy, making this a death metal production that can be compared to the best in worldwide scale. The artwork is by Evil Raven, a Spanish illustrator specializing in metal and horror, and the illustrations perfectly fit the band's name and album concept.

The leaders of the New School of American Death Metal, Undeath, set to release their live,Sirius XM stream, "Live...From the Grave", recorded in concert on May 27th, 2022 from Pop'sin Sauget, IL. Featuring tracks from their 2022 Album of the Year LP, "It's Time To Rise...FromThe Grave", the live album was recorded by John Wallace and Mixed/Mastered by ArthurRizk (Power Trip, Code Orange, Sacred Reich)

‘Exul’ personifies Ne Obliviscaris’ distinctive, boundary-pushing ethos. The band’s trademark blend of emotion and beauty is as towering as ever, if not even more compelling, particularly how the haunting violin lines carefully weave their way around the riffs. The duality of Charles’ clean vocals and Xenoyr’s growls remains the narrative anchor, elevating songs that emanate sophistication and are a masterclass in composition.

Sweden’s Gehennah is back to stink up the scene once again, with their fourth full length album Too Loud To Live, Too Drunk To Die. This marks the bands album-debut on Metal Blade Records, and the first full length album by Gehennah since 1997's Decibel Rebel. The album contains 13 tracks of dirty and raw street-metal, destined to please the hardcore filth hounds of the scene, and annoy the ponytailed internet-snobs who prefer their metal clean and polished.

D-beat defenders Disfear strike back with its full-length Live The Storm. The legendary Swedes, led by Tomas Lindberg's infamous vocal howl, power through 10 burners with new-found ferocity and intensity captured by engineer Kurt Ballou (converge, Coliseum, Doomriders, Animosity). As "Get It Off", "The Furnace", "Deadweight" and their ilk prove, Disfear are the undisputed kings of crust-core.

The Scandinavian hardcore assault of Disfear utilizes blistering distortion, nihilistic rage and a scorching metallic powerload to bleed the Earth and burn its skies. On Misanthropic Generation, detonating power chords collide with raging rhythms, while the merciless vocals of Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) explode through the heart of the band's sonic architecture.

Another pure masterwork only this time with even more symphonic elements, i.e. flutes, violines, chellos, harpsicords, etc. Another element that adds to the appeal is the outstanding opera vocals of Sue Bock, who has an amazing voice. This particular album is a concept album based on a book, also titled "Within the Ancient Forest" written by bassist/vocalist Andrew Tompkins. The story is of a young man in search of truth in a land where immortals, dragons, magic, and the powers of darkness prevail. I have never read the book, but the music is fabulous, even without the storyline. Available on limited edition cassette - only 100 units - for the first time ever!

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. Originally released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2021, Pale Swordsman goes to even greater extents in building a bold and atmospheric sonic palette, and it's now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.For the sound design of the album, Dmitry was inspired by The Stooges' Raw Power to deliver a more soft sounding album, decisively less "metal". Traditional black metal song structures still persist in songs like "Night Descends" and "In The Garden". However, their rawness and fast tempos is quickly cut through by dark ambient passages in "Amor" and "Intro" and softly played desolate ballads like "Nocturne" and "Lily".The crown jewel is the album closer "Swordsman", a track that displays a superb gothic sensibility, a poem recited over a deeply melancholic piano melody. "The Christian concept of a person ridding themselves of evil to find inner peace or to be able to leave this world safely has become the core inspiration for the song." Dmitry explains "However, this is not the only reading possible. I purposely avoid specifics in my lyrics so that the listener can always give the song their own meaning."The inspiration for the concept of the album also came from David Bowie's The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. "I really enjoy it when an album tells a story about some character so I came up with one." says Dmitry when explaining the origin of the Pale Swordsman. The character is portrayed on the striking album cover art - a figure sitting aloof with a sword and a rose in each hand - and clearly symbolises the romantic juxtaposition of belligerence and fragile beauty that permeates the album's sound and atmosphere.Pale Swordsman delivers a foreboding yet bittersweet melancholy through poetic lyrics, soft interludes, raw and distorted guitars, eerie drums and harsh vocals - a fragile yet potent mix that successfully amplifies the ambience.

Këkht Aräkh is the Ukrainian project founded in 2018 by Dmitry Marchenko. The debut album Night & Love was initially released on the Finnish label Livor Mortis in 2019 and it's now seeing a worldwide reissue via Brooklyn label Sacred Bones.Dmitry's intent to experiment with standard black metal canons previously seen at play in Through the Branches to Eternity EP (2018) solidify further on Night & Love, he mentions "back then I had an idea of combining Darkthrone's Transilvanian Hunger type of black metal with early Internazionale or Croatian Amor vibe."Described as ambient or atmospheric black metal, this debut presents Këkht Aräkh's signature dichotomy of harsh traditional early Norwegian black metal and the more ethereal and delicate melodies. On the other hand the lyrics are romantic and melancholic, clearly influenced by a stark Gothic imagery, and serve as an extra layer of mystery to the already suggestive body of work. The album beings with a soft acoustic intro in "As the Night Falls_" before descending into the raw and raucous "Elegy for the Memory of Me" and "Den Venstre Hånd På Den Hoyre", both songs that are drenched in the more traditional black metal style of raspy, high-pitched vocals, dense, tremolo- picked riffs and fast paced drums. It is however songs like "Night" and "Love" that really set this album apart. "Night" is a softly spoken word ambient track that with a beautiful piano synth work that permeates throughout it aids in the romantic delivery and conjuring of imagery of the night. "Love" is a spellbinding and melancholic song, equal in its romanticism but one that displays a deeper sorrow and tenderness supported by calming field recordings of trickling water.The intertwining of black metal, dark folk and ambient repeats itself, culminating in a quietly hummed outro "...And Never