NEWS FOR WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 3RD 2008

UPCOMING SKULLFLOWER LIVE ACTIONS
Skullflower has been confirmed for the upcoming Colour Out Of Space festival in Brighton, UK. Sponsored in part by Rock A Rolla Magazine, this festival is taking place from September 5th through the 7th, and is being curated by Dylan Nyoukis. The event will feature over thirty acts, films and more incuding: Thurston Moore & Chris Corsano, Limpe Fuchs, Aaron Dilloway & Joseph Hammer, Leslie Keffer, Adam Bohman, Ghedalia Tazartes, Skaters, Lionel Marchetti & Yoko Gami, Astral Social Club & Axolotl, Charlie Drahiem, and many more. For more info and updates see www.colouroutofspace.org
Skullflower has also just been announced as part of the upcoming UK debut of Secret Chiefs 3 (featuring ex-Mr Bungle guitarist and one time Faith No More member Trey Spruance) that is taking place on Tuesday September 16th at Cargo in London. This even is sponsored by Rock-A-Rolla Magazine and Last.FM, and Skullflower and Secret Chiefs 3 will also be joined by Italian avant hardcore jazz rippers (and longtime C-Blast faves) Zu along with Rock-A-Rolla and Last.fm DJ sets. This event will run from 7pm till midnight. For more info on the event check out www.last.fm/presents, www.ticketweb.co.uk and www.cargo-london.com/event/secret-chiefs-3-zu-skullflower .

NOISM ± CD OUT NOW
Noism was formed by guitarist Yoshiro Hamazaki and programmer Tomoyuki Akiyama in 1999 in Tokyo, Japan, and from the beginning the band has focused on creating intensely complex and crushing death/grind using programmed drums, ridiculously complicated brain-melting riffs and dissonant mach-10 shredding, which is then chopped up and processed into abstract death blasts that defy physics. Early on, Noism utilized vocals and bass guitar but as the band continued to develop their unique, glitched-out chop shop of Planet Mu-style beats delivered at truly meth'd levels of chaos fused with sweeping technical death metal, those more "organic" elements were phased out. The band self released a few demos, like 2000's Brutality And Complexity, released songs digitally through the Net, and appeared on the 2006 compilation Drum Machine Gun from Relapse Records, but until 2008, they had yet to put out an official release of their own. When Tomoyuki relocated to the US in 2002, the members of Noism began to compose new music long-distance through file sharing, and finally created their first CD ±. This twelve-song, twenty-one minute disc is an onslaught of insane, hyper-tech shred/grind/death chaos from Noism, highly recommended to fans of extreme avant-guitar spazz and absurdly technical deathgrind. No hooks, no songs, no linear form for you to latch your mind onto...this is psychotic ultra-shred/blastbeat/glitch annihilation, Orthrelm colliding with Morbid Angel while a stereo playing Venetian Snares and Agoraphobic Nosebleed CDs violently malfunctions.
± is presented in a heavy 4-panel gatefold jacket with strange industrial/sheet metal artwork designed by Yoshiro Hamazaki.
::Click here for more information and online ordering::.

NEW CRUCIAL BLISS DISCS: MARAX's Black Veil Of The Sanguinarian and WETHER's Uncertain Ritual
We have two new discs out this week from the Crucial Bliss series from Wether and Marax, and both bring the caustic blackened goatdrone in spades, pal...each one of these has been manufactured and assembled in an edition of 300 copies and presented in our signature Bliss style full color foldover sleeve with the disc attached to the interior, with original artwork from yours truly at C-Blast.
Wether is the blackened noise project from Mike Haley, the beardo that runs the classy Electric Human Project label and who is also half of Big China & Little Trouble...this entity has released an assload of cassettes and splits and even a wee bot if vinyl over the past couple of years, and all of it which I've heard has been excellent, a kind of formless, ganrled industrial blackness, usually very dirgey and crushing, possessed by the occasional blast of snarling black metal screams buried in distortion and awesomely malevolent synthesizer drones that, when they really get going, sound like the tarblack afterbirth of Wolf Eyes jamming on cues from John Carpenter's The Fog OST from '94. We finally hooked up with Mike to bring you this new full length of infernal hypnosis Uncertain Ritual, a collection of hellish mechanical atmospheres, meditative trance-loops constructed from machine clatter and blocks of white noise, torrents of bellowing distortion goo and black ambience that's creepy as fuck. This is super-high quality fx pedal/circuit-bent generated deathscape action, brutally heavy in spots with massive creeping industrial rhythms and whirlpools of ultra-distorted metal-like crunch, and tranquil and beautiful in others when Wether moves into placid drones and subdued underground vibrations. This is terminally evil shit though, and it falls somewhere in between the black ambient/industrial chaos of artists like Nordvargr and Abruptum, and the grinding electronic skum of Wolf Eyes and Anenzephalia. Very satisfying.
Then we have the first new release from Marax since 2005...this is electronic/harsh noise by Eric Crowe, who in the past served as throat for the cult Southern grindcore band Social Infestation, who also featured future members of Mastodon and Withered. This full length has been in the works for several years and is only now crawling out into the light, but the wait has sure been worth it. This'll incite some serious zoneouts from anyone who dipped their skulls in the molten deathdrone of Marax's ultra-limited Love Of Death series...Black Veil has four lengthy tracks of heavy liquid nightmare distilled from the catacombs. The disc opens with the fuzzy muted swirl and distant percussive clang of "Returning To Rust", which moves through soft gauzy layers of crackling distortion until exploding in a churning wall of concrete-mixer crunch with heavily modulated, howling demonic vocals. "Inside The Inner Voice" is a seven minute exercise in pitch black ambience and malignant incantations, and "Bleeding Black" stretches out across a vast abyss of distant reverberations and ambient fuzz, filled with far-off sonic flutterings, metallic scraping and screaming voices that just barely heard, an intensely creepy ambient dronescape. And the final track "Nod" is a twenty-two minute headphone epic...this is one of my favorite Marax tracks, a threatening ambient film score piece that stretches way out and moves from huge slabs of growling black ambient drift and buzzing black metal guitar through epic celestial synthesizer riffs. Simple synth melodies are repeated over swathes of droning amp rumble, the low-end sometimes swelling up in huge waves that threaten to overwhelm the entire piece, and a beautiful little melody begins to take shape later in the track that sounds like it's being played on a heavily processed piano, repeating over and over. Later, the buzzing, fuzz-drenched sheets of blackened guitar and droning distortion come back in and the sound becomes a massive muted fuzzdrone that reaches out forever, finally fading off into the ether as the track comes to a close. I'd normally never describe any of Marax's material as beautiful since most of his works either suggest feelings of isolation and dread or simply shear your fuckin' dome off with extreme electronic skree violence, but with "Nod" Marax gives us one of the most mesmeric pieces of music I've ever heard from him, a sprawling, subtly beautiful narco-scape that's like hearing the mystical krautrock orchestrations of Florian Fricke and Popol Vuh faded and filtered through the deformed, dank dungeon atmosphere of Abruptum.
We'll have brand new Bliss titles from Sorc'henn, Korperschwache, and Exploding Meth Lab/Jesus Of Nazareth coming in next weeks update!
::Click here:: for more information and online ordering for Wether's Uncertain Ritual.
::Click here:: for more information and online ordering for Marax's Black Veil Of The Sanguinarian.

WEBSTORE UPDATE: WEDNESDAY SEPTEMBER 3RD 2008
We're back this week with some cool new releases from Anduin, Endless Boogie, Coffins, Mute Socialite, Raxinasky, plus a bunch of older out of print Japanese noise and heavy psych titles from Endorphine Factory, Charnel Music and Nux Organization that we just found through one of our suppliers...most of this stuff is WAY out of print and we were able to get the last copies. And there are the usual older titles that we are stocking for the first time included in this week's list...
The featured release for this week is the debut from Anduin, the new solo project from Jonathan Lee of Richmond instrumental prog rockers Souvenirs Young America. One of the things about Souvenirs Young America that has drawn me into their music is the spacey, textural electronics and deep, celestial drones that the band infuses into their atmosperic "big sky" Western hypno-marches, a prominent space rock quality that always set SYA apart from most of their vocal-free peers. But with Anduin, Jonathan plunges even deeper into the drone with a full length album of amazing, shadowy ambience that incorporates drifting fuzzy synthesizers, huge distorted guitar rumblings, sheets of heavenly electronic FX, and gorgeous distorted melodies that veer into Fennesz territory. He's hooked up with a couple of other artists who contribute remix work and musical contributions to the album like Xela, Jaspar TX and Caustic Castle, and the result is one of my favorite heavy drone/cosmic soundscape albums of '08. Highly recommended!

Some of the other new, new-ish, and older titles that are on this weeks list:

Allegory Chapel Ltd. When Angels Fall...classic blackened drone/noise from this early American noise artist.
The most recent disc of crushing prog-thrash from American Heritage.
The new third album from Annihilation Time, awesome ripping hardcore punk colliding with 70's rock and dual guitar harmonies!
Some older 90's discs of skull shattering psychedelic harsh noise from Aube and Dead Body Love from RRRecords.
Black Engine Ku Klux Klowns...Italian jazz/prog trio Zu and some other folks join up for some brutal Painkiller style death jazz!
The new vinyl version of dope-death geniuses Cannibis Corpse, Tube Of The Resinated.
A beautiful new limited edition LP of Coalesce's Functioning On Impatience in die-cut packaging.
Coffins latest slab of sludgy Japanese doom death metal on CD and gatefold LP.
The heavily grooving new album from Endless Boogie on CD and 2xLP...heavy duty motorik blues rock, Neu! meets Canned Heat.
The long out-of-print LP vinyl of the Japanese ultra-psych classic Mellow Out from Mainliner.
Mute Socialite...a new band from Moe! Staiano and company, panic inducing no wave meets Last Exit meets thrash skronk prog insanity.
Nekrasov...the newest slab of psychedelic black metal/industrial/drone tapestries from the Aussie avant-BM beast.
Sunn O))) offshoot Pentemple's killer improv-sludge opium cloud on limited edition CD.
Insane techno/drum n' bass/industrial with ridiculous pitchshifted goregrind gurglings from Womb Goo Gai Pan.
Zozobra...the second album from this Cave In member, ultra heavy desert rock meets apocalyptic metal.

Head over to the new and improved Crucial Blast Webstore to check out all of the new stuff.