Crucial Bliss Releases

SHADOWS INFINITUM compilation CD-R
BLISS02
$6.50

track listing
DEAD RAVEN CHOIR Sonja
ENCOMIAST Nicht
KORPERSCHWACHE Let My Knife
EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA Wolven-Elf Deer
BURNING STAR CORE Blue Sunshine Vocalwoks
FEVERDREAMS Untitled #22
NADJA Veil Of Disillusion
MARAX Coming Of Lilith
UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE Infidel

Companion piece to the RECORD OF SHADOWS INFINITE compilation CD on Crucial Blast. The wrangling of top-notch drone artists continues with this full length, extremely polished CD-r release, limited to 250 copies. Exclusive tracks from DEAD RAVEN CHOIR, ENCOMIAST, KORPERSSCHWACHE, EXISTENTIAL DILEMMA, BURNING STAR CORE, FEVERDREAMS, NADJA, MARAX, and UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE run the gamut: these further explorations of the drone touch on blackened folk creep, glacial hum and gorgeous ambient bliss, buzzsaw feedback rituals, imploding-sun droneblast, improvised clatter and drift, epic dronemetal, vampiric dronenoise, and schizophrenic kool-aid burble riots. Another exercise in intelligent, outsider droneworks from CRUCIAL BLAST.

Review from DEAD ANGEL:
This limited-run cd-r is the companion to the recent drone compilation RECORD OF SHADOWS INFINITE, featuring lesser-known but equally drone-o-rific bands. Actually, not all of the bands here are technically drone bands -- Dead Raven Choir, for instance (who open with "Sonja") are technically country death folk or something equally complicated, although here Smolken comes on like Khanate with acoustic guitars, all minimal structure, background drones and noise, and darkly hideous vocals. Encomiast's "Nicht" is closer to more traditional drone, a drifting and brooding slice of dark-ambient sound that shudders and reverberates like the sound of high-tension wires swaying in the breeze after midnight. Then comes the clanging, metallic sheets of distorted amp-death favored by Korperschwache on "Let My Knife" (truncated, for some reason, from its full title "Let My Knife Trace the Contours of Your Skull") -- ugly, dissonant screech filtered through acres of reverb and extremely hostile distortion. Existential Dilemma brings an element of rhythm into the picture on "Wolven-Elf Deer," in addition to the necessary noise floor and sonic death-drift; with Burning Star Core's entry, "Blue Sunshine Vocalworks," the territory turns decidedly hostile again with screeching noise like a garbage disposal backing up and, somewhere far in the background, drones and howling. On "Untitled # 22," Feverdreams begin with a repetitive, mantra-like feedback riff and slowly but surely build layers of resonant, ringing feedback over the top -- this song turns out to be one of the most spatially complex tracks on the compilation, one in which the initial sound grows... and grows... and grows, becoming more disturbing as it goes, while some lunatic mutters in scary fashion beneath it all. Nadja (the doom side-project of ambient-drone wunderkind Aidan Baker) introduces the first serious elements of percussion on "Veil of Disillusion," in the form of an enormously pokey beat, as monolithic and glacial guitars drone around the rhythm. On "Coming of Lilith," Marax pits a teeth-grinding high-end machine screech against a subsonic rumble, allowing them to battle it out for supremacy; then UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE brings the entire doomed disc to its unnatural and sordid conclusion with "Infidel," a gruesome exercise in tinny noise guitar and a guttural death-croak over a blind and endless bass riff. Swell, swell stuff, and a worthy companion to the official SHADOWS disc....