CRUCIAL BLISS RELEASES

BLACK ROLLER CROP ROTATION Prayers From The Rotten Soil CD-R
BLISS37
$7.98

When Ben Fleury-Steiner from Light Of Shipwreck told me a few months ago that he had a new "metal" project, I wasn't sure what the hell to expect. A much heavier version of Light Of Shipwreck's percussive dronescapes, maybe? Whatever notion had entered my mind, it sure wasn't the hideous industrial-scum hell that he unleashed on my brain with this bitching new disc from his band Black Roller Crop Rotation. Ben ( bass, guitar, drum machines, samples, and vocals) teams up with Jeffrey Bumiller (guitar, vocals) for this five track saga that evokes images of behemoth all-consuming duststorms, yellowed fields scorched by vicious drought, and towns swallowed up by monstrous clouds of swirling, obliterating blackness, a Depression-era apocalyptic nightmare scored by this heaving slow-motion industrial blackdoom monstrosity. There are parts of this disc that reminded me of a drug-blasted jam session between Abruptum and Popul Vuh, blackened wordless howls and gutteral profanity slurred across shapeless detuned riffage, mechanical, almost pneumatic percussion, and thick ropey jets of obsidian synthesizer that roar across the barren wastelands and suffocating ambience of Prayers From The Rotten Soil. Yeah, this is some intensely heavy, hopeless music, a mixture of improvised quasi-black metal slime and hints of early industrial, washes of psychedelic drift infused with melancholy guitar melodies buried under sheets of clanking machine rhythms and grinding doomy amp-drone, shrieking voices lost in a fog of endless delay way off in the distance, blasts of fragmented orchestral music scattered throughout. It's as someone unearthed a lost alternate score to There Will Be Blood composed by Abruptum. This is an impressive debut from this new project, fans of abstract noisy blackened heaviness along the lines of Gnaw Their Tongues, Emit, Khlyst, Blue Sabbath Black Cheer, Ghast, Pussygutt, Wicked King Wicker and KTL will definitely want to check this out. Released in a print run of 300 copies, and packaged inside of a full color foldout sleeve with the disc attached to the interior on a plastic hub.

REVIEW FROM JULIAN COPE/HEAD HERITAGE: These past two months, my personal choice for all night repetition, ie: the piece that helps me most easily access the Underworld, has been the Uber-haunting 22-minute track ‘Dødsdansen (Death’s Dance), Life of an Island Lad’, from the FARO album by Sorc’henn. Released on that tremendous Crucial Blast subsidiary Crucial Bliss (www.crucialblast.com), FARO is a fine fine Black Metal record and, except for the more obvious and more stylized final 26-minute ‘evil’ track ‘Enez Varv Faaro’, goes about its sinister business secretly, intoning plainsong in cloisters, invoking camp-fires, digital distortion and wolves, and dancing at the edge of total ambience, nay, ambulence! Then, two minutes from the end, some old French torch song comes in and really sealeth ye atmosphere. Su-fuckin’-perbe!