Monday, January 30, 2017

bacterial mat 3


bacterial mat 2


bacterial mat 1


Drab Majesty - The Demonstration (2017)

Although I am now too old and damaged to properly test it out, I can assure you with enormous confidence that this album is as PERFECT for twirly emotive bedroom dancing as any ever made. That is to say it is lush and beautiful and aching with becoming lost, deferred, stifled and fulfilled. So lovely. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

sepsis orbit 8.6


sepsis orbit 7


sepsis orbit 6


Theoria - Mantra (2013)

Black Metal From Beyond The Stars. From Aleppo in 2013. <3 Theoria. Hail To Thee!!! <3 nathaxn

Saturday, January 28, 2017

sepsis orbit 3


sepsis orbit 2.1


sepsis orbit 1


Hierophant - Mass Grave (2016)

An absolute monster of crust-death hxcx. For when anger is not enough and everything inside of you could liquefy an spill from your eyes in viscera and muck from such overwhelming opposition. This is for those whens. Amazing. Hail Hierophant!!! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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Cemetary - An Evil Shade Of Grey (1992)

Inducing a queasy freezer-burn sort of trance state, Cemetary's early Swedish Death formations are healing my soul and my brain right now, both of which truly require it. Hail To Thee Cemetary! How I love thee!!! <3 nathaxn

Friday, January 27, 2017

Svartidaudi - Flesh Cathedral (2012)

Offering a repetitive, plague-infested fever pit of dreams gone bad and therefore ever more. What an album. <3 nathaxn

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Kreator - 'Totalitarian Terror' from Gods Of Violence (2017)

There has probably never been a better week than this one in the history of this world for a classic 80's thrash band to release a single AGAINST NAZI HUMAN EXPERIMENTATION AND MOREOVER AGAINST NAZI/FASCIST/AUTHORITARIAN RULE GENERALLY. One would have assumed at one point this would be standard thrash operations, but sadly that just isn't as true as it once was. I love all the songs I have heard off of the new Kreator album, and I LOVE KREATOR SO MUCH, but the videos have been kind of so-so, this is the best of any of them, however, and I CANNOT TELL YOU how gratifying it is to hear Mille Petrozza tell me and everyone that we will survive totalitarian terror. I am actually, like, crying right now. Hail Kreator!!! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

fog labyrinth 2


fog labyrinth 1


Depressive Silence - Mourning (1996)

I am so excited! One of the founding demo cass documents of dungeonsynth is now digitally remastered and authorized on bandcamp!!! Depressive Silence's Mourning is so so exquisitely lovely! Melancholy chorals, keyboard arpeggios, layered string sounds. It is so comforting and warm even in its sadness. How I adore! <3 nathaxn

Thursday, January 26, 2017

plasti-crystal horse and friends


Without - Elaborations II (2016)

Without make a totally awesome glacial/crystalline post-doom centered in the bodily experience of making and receiving sound and ritual. Rejecting mythification in favor of sensory immediacy, prioritizing the here and now of what is rather than predetermined metaphysical coding. Elaborations II comes with an excellent essay/manifesto which I encourage everyone who likes the musick to read as it goes beyond the above to discuss action within the metal scene itself, how those spaces are constructed by and who are they for, what voices and presences do they privilege? Right On Without! Also Hail to MPLS, a place I miss every day. <3 nathaxn

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Forn - The Departure Of Consciousness (2014)

Here it feels like the departure of consciousness is something to be hoped for but almost never achieved. Sometimes consciousness is a vestigial adaptation, focusing and distracting being into snares and loops. Forn wants to help. <3 nathaxn

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Ravencult - Morbid Blood (2011)

Ridiculously great occult black thrash from Greece. This stuff is so my jam, drenched in darkness and putridity. Hail Ravencult!!! <3 nathaxn

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Wednesday, January 25, 2017

Perturbator - The Uncanny Valley (2016)

I was and am a super big fan of Perturbator's last album, Dangerous Days, and The Uncanny Valley is at least as good, moving into serrated 90's sequencer trance territory as well as more openly emotive, widescreen romanticism. There is an aching loneliness here, however synthetic, as well as the hope that that loneliness can be overcome, probably with velocity or some kind of insane showdown. <3 nathaxn

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Traci Lords - 'Control' from 1000 Fires (1995)

Traci Lords's 1000 Fires is one of my most favorite albums of 1995, one I have been happy to own and regularly listen to since that time. Mainstream MTV Stadium-Trance-Techno never owned in the USA the way it might have which is super-lame and there is no reason why Traci's album could not have ruled the charts forever. Mostly it was too early. Had this album come out in 1997, at the height of 'electronica' hype, things may have gone differently. I also feel that although being an impeccably sequenced/composed/written album of songs, the multimedia awesomeness of Traci actually worked against the acceptance of this as a musickal document. I also include the insanely amazing although much shorter music video version of this song, which makes me LONG for a 1990's in which we had a John Waters-directed series of Traci-starring James Bond films rather than Austin Powers movies. Alas!!! <3 <3 <3 Love U Traci!!! nathaxn

The Soft Pink Truth - Why Pay More? (2015)

Latter 00's You-Tube-derived traxx and other early mysteries of The Soft Pink Truth excavated and released unto the world almost a decade on. This gives Why Pay More? an uncanny feeling of being an inadvertent period piece/record of an age now lost yet still here with us every day. <3 nathaxn

Dear Slayer

Dear Slayer: I have been a serious Slayer fan since 1988. I have seen you in concert several times. Your music is deeply meaningful to me and has been a source of comfort and defiance of atrocity and authoritarianism in its many forms for almost 30 years. I do not understand how on one hand Tom Araya can sing 'Angel Of Death', a fierce condemnation of Nazi Human Experimentation conducted by Josef Mengele night after night and then on the other hand make light humor out of Vice President Mike Pence's support of conversion therapy efforts to torture LBGTQIA people into straightness. As the LBGTQIA population of the United States faces an unprecedented assault on civil liberties and basic freedoms that most other Americans take for granted, directed from the highest levels of government, including President Trump, Vice President Pence, Federal and State Legislative Branches, State and Municipal governments, etc, Tom Araya's inability to see that the plight of those millions (including LGBTQIA) who suffered and died under a Nazi Regime is directly paralleled today under proposed executive order and legislation which can and will be signed into law by Donald Trump and mirrored in states and municipalities. Many loved ones, family members, as well as myself, will be targeted under these laws. All of these years I have believed in my heart and felt in my heart that Slayer were on the side of those who suffered under the exercise of force wielded by the worst of humanity. Your recent statements have made me question this. Are you really then on the side of Mengele, either positively or just through indifference? I won't stop listening to your albums but now there will always be this hesitation for me. Love, nathaxn

The Allman Brothers Band - 'In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed' Live Fillmore East 9/23/70

<3

Sophia Loizou - Singulacra (2016)

Memory, smothered and decayed by itself, having undergone change, resolution or data loss. Once there was or almost was.

skate clutch lich (breaking edge 2)


skate clutch lich (breaking edge 1)


Fis - From Patterns To Details (2016)

An enormous sound or layers of sound. One of the most absorbing ambient/noise albums I have heard in a long time. I hear what sounds like black metal approached by other means squaring off with new age until the distinction no longer applies. Absolutely beautiful. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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Tuesday, January 24, 2017

centipede heart embroidery lich 2


Gazelle Twin - Unflesh (2014)

How our bodies interwine, how they fail, how they revolt, leave us behind or never allow us to catch up. What it means to be incarnate in a field of others, even when that field is composed of what used to be us or what one day will be. <3 nathaxn

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Hellshock - Only The Dead Shall Know The End Of War (2003)

Awesome PDX thrashcrust eliding Amebix, Bolt Thrower, Sodom influences into a satisfying and organic whole. Right On! <3 nathaxn

bald eagle perches atop pile of human skulls lich 1 (after matt stikker)


Sacrilege - Behind The Realms Of Madness (1986)

I love Sacrilege like no one's business and to get such a nicely remastered Behind The Realms Of Madness as a 30-year anniversary celebration is glorious indeed. The fact that this is still not only current but more vital than ever is both amazing and amazingly sad and frightening. Hail Sacrilege!!! <3 nathaxn

Monday, January 23, 2017

dog-headed guardian with illuminatory 1


Necrovation - Necrovation (2012)

Weird-involved Swedish death carved-out into structures not unlike early 90's Death if Death ran on Classick Rock over Jazz Fusion and was used to being very very cold, like living in a frozen ocean. This stuff is really idiosyncratic and deserves a listen. <3 nathaxn

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Cadaveric Fumes - Macabre Exaltation (2012)

Grimy, smeary, classicist death from France. Huff These Fumes!!!

Urfaust - Empty Space Meditation (2016)

One of the greatest works of psychedelic trance ritual black metal ever made. This is truly astounding, and moreover it DOES THINGS. Both in-itself and FOR. Awe. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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interrupted spiral 5


Incantation - Decimate Christendom (2004)

A greatly beloved Bush II-era Incantation album for your drive time approximately! The first with John McEntee on vokills. This has a crisp/dry feeling to it for an Incantation album, but all moving parts are totally audible and operating together. Also this feels more pissed-off than a lot of Incantation albums do, like a fire was lit from below. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

interrupted spiral 4


interrupted spiral 3


YOB - Clearing The Path To Ascend (2014)

This is my favorite YOB album. It is very rarely one comes across an album so heavy with the burden of awareness of limitation of human perception, and all of that which follows. Breathtaking in its beauty, anger and sadness. <3 nathaxn

interrupted spiral 2 (finch head)


Sunday, January 22, 2017

interrupted spiral 1


Can - Live Cologne 4 Februrary 1972

Can in full lockdown in/out groove & with intercut Tago Mago studio footage. Incredible for all time. <3 Can <3 Jaki. How tranced-out this movie is, and how trance-inducing. I can only imagine what it would have been like to have been there in person, in or out of body. <3 nathaxn

Nine Inch Nails - 'Burning Bright (Field Of Fire)' from Not The Actual Events (2016)

This song is awesome. I dig Trent in acid-stadium-doom mode so hard. This is sludging backwards and layered all to heck. Hooray!!! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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collapsing or expanding dark 1


Horseback - Dead Ringers (2016)

Clanking, bending, reverberating, psychedelic gothicism in the mode of the doors of perception themselves being vaporized. A glorious album. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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Head Of The Demon - Sathanas Trismegistos (2016)

Trad Religious Satanic Doom from Sweden is sometimes the very thing to make a chill afternoon even more chill. <3 nathaxn

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Beldam - Still The Wretched Linger (2016)

Beldam summon from the fetid depths an entirely convincing and classicist reading of blackened death sludge, overwhelmingly composed and structured according to 'rock' templates only makes it that much more impressive and impressively terrifying. I am sorry it took me this long to get to listening to this, but I am so glad I did. It rules. Hail Beldam! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn walker

Saturday, January 21, 2017

split artichoke lich 1


Astarte - Doomed Dark Years (1998)

Glorious in Imperious Melancholy And Loss! Astarte's Second Wave Raw Symphonic Black Metal on display in Doomed Dark Years is one of my favorite sounds to come from Greece in the 1990's. I love this album so so very much. Hail Astarte Hail!!! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

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Diamanda Galas - 'O Death' from All The Way (2017)

Diamanda Galas has been one of my primary influences and role models on what it means to be an artist, how it is to render witness and respond, how to ground and transform negative energy into something which, however difficult, can be lived with and endured. That she is putting out not one but two new albums this year is for me a sign of hope amidst terror and fear. I also dig that she now has a Rolling Stone interview wherein she mentions another of my great heroes, the artist and writer Henri Michaux, as an inspiration upon her as well. I don't know what is going to happen this year, but I hope that whatever comes that I can see it for what it is and learn to channel it in and through me and turn it into a force for healing and compassion under any circumstances. Here is also another single from All The Way, the title track, 'All The Way' This seems more in keeping with the undercurrent of real love, true love, the kind of love that exists before and after death, where it never need to be seen to be felt. Love To All Of You <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

Antisect - Out From The Void (1985)

I love Antisect in all of their many forms. Knowing me, though, Antisect at their most Venomous, their most Lemmy-gone-prog/trog is just ridiculously rad. Hail!!! <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

Friday, January 20, 2017

weeping star-faced lich 1 (downward-pointing dagger)


Worm Ouroboros - What Graceless Dawn

This morning I kept trying to listen to bitter or sardonic or angry musick but it all felt not quite right. Then I decided to listen to Worm Ouroboros's What Graceless Dawn when I had tried listening to it before another day and that day was the wrong day but today of all days is the right day for it. I needed something that would embrace loss, that would comfort even as it makes no promises for a better time. Absolutely beautiful. <3 <3 <3

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Fotheringay Live 1970

This is my favorite Fotheringay performance that I have yet seen and one of my all-time favorite Sandy Denny performances. She is an icon on so many levels to me. I am actually posting this here as a reminder of what a jewel it is but also that if I could dress like Sandy in this video I would pretty much do so every day. This is inspiration for me to not only stay alive as long as I can but also to get some dope caftans 2017. Love! <3 nathaxn

Thursday, January 19, 2017

lonely boss lich 1


Skaphe - Skaphe^2 (2016)

As deep a plunge into other realms as you are to ever experience. Completely altering. I love this album. <3 <3 <3 Hail Skaphe!!! nathaxn

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Mortichnia - Heir To Scoria And Ash (2016)

If you are having the sort of day that I am, you may or may not have spent part of it impotently weeping on the toilet about the reported news that 60% percent of all primates face imminent extinction or that the Northeastern United States will heat much more rapidly than the rest of North America, which, although somewhat fitting, is like the spread of sepsis once it starts to get hot and run from a wound into everything. As a species our response is martial law, more rapid, more unrestrained extraction, and plans for the elite to escape to Mars or to orbital colonies to further this insane war against all life. If you are having one of these days, I can totally and with great surety tell you that Mortichnia's Heir To Scoria And Ash will make you feel at least a little better in the moment for having produced a fitting soundtrack to the mourning involved in the death of everything. Involved/interwoven black/doom. It is like if a blanket made out of the recently dead for the now-dying as a comfort rather than a scold. I really need to get further into contemporary Irish Black Metal offerings. This is quite beautiful. <3 <3 <3 nathaxn

void spider crab with a dead salmon for a claw lich 1


void spider crab lich 1