Who is Dante Augustus Scarlatti? The visionary behind Auris Apothecary, a label that pushes the boundaries of music but also has changed the way I view music packaging. When I receive music from this label, I’m always in awe of the way he presents the tape or cd he’s sent. Hands down, if there was an award for the label with the most artistic product packaging, Auris Apothecary & Dante Augustus Scarlatti would be top contenders. What I recognize about him is his passion for creating something special for the band and the customer. Honestly I’m almost speechless, because my mind melts when I look at this collection of Auris Apothecary releases! Make sure to support him for giving something to the universe, and mad respect to all of the bands that work with him!

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DAY THREE
The third day was probably one of the heaviest of the fest. The place is packed, it’s Saturday, and something heavy’s cooking!

COUGH
So here I start my super sonic marathon with Cough. It was probably one of the performances that many people were most excited to see after their cancellation last year. I had the chance to see them in Copenhagen a couple of years ago, shortly after they released the brilliant Ritual Abuse. That show was rad, so my expectations were high. The set mostly included tracks from their recent split with Windhand, Reflection of the Negative, which I hadn’t time to give a spin yet so I felt a bit blindfolded, but it was cool to discover their new songs live. Kind of disappointed they didn’t leave more room for some of their bigger “hits” like “Crooked Spine” or “Killing Fields,” but the atmosphere they conveyed was definitely as obscure and suffocating as I remembered…

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On April 26th it all went down at our 2nd Anniversary show that featured some of the most amazing bands in California. Honestly, the event was a huge success with truck loads of positive energy. All of the bands performed to the highest levels of gnarlyness and you could hear their passion in every note! Just as important as the bands that took the stage, CVLT Nation would like to salute everyone who came out and showed support. We would like to shout out Gehenna, Seven Sisters of Sleep, Youth Code, Children of God, Stoic Violence, Whip Hand and Unit B for an awesome fucking night. The night’s festivities were caught on film by our comrade in photography Adam Murray – good looking out homie! Without Crash the Clubs and Lace Pickups we would not have been able to pull this off, thank you for you support and hard work. It was cool to be able to connect with people outside of the internet. That being said, we really appreciate everyone who makes this webzine a destination every day! Now it’s time for the pictures to do the talking – check out these unreal flicks from CVLT Nation’s 2nd Anniversary and SSOS record release party (they fucking killed it – make sure to check them out on their upcoming tour with Full of Hell).

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Now this is just totally fucking AWESOME…some of my favorite musical heros have been given a superhero make over! Brazilian designer Butcher Billy re-works the images of Siouxsie Sioux, Mark Mothersbaugh, Ian Curtis, John Lydon, Morrissey, Robert Smith and Billy Idol as comic book superheros. His series is entitled The Post Punk/New Wave Super Friends! Jump on a dirty bassline and check it out!

In Grade Five, we watched a documentary about microscopic bugs that live with and on the human body. The one I remember most vividly and with the most horror are the “eyelash worms” that curl up all snug n’ cozy in our eyelash follicles. My mom told me that I had made it up, but in fact Demodex parasitic mites do indeed inhabit our faces. It’s kind of creepy to think about what creatures live on us, in our pores and mouths, and that we suck in with each breath. After that elementary school day of awakening, I never looked at my mite-infested pillow the same again. Each night I rested my face on it, I thought of the millions of hungry little bugs munching away on my sloughing skin. Pretty fucking nasty, and Nature thought of it! Everything has its use. And then there are the “cute” little insects – the ants and caterpillars – that seem so tiny and harmless and fuzzy; when you look at any of these things face to face, blown up by a microscope, you see it’s true ghastly visage. I think my favorite one is the maggot’s face, it looks just like what I would imagine these fat, dumb white worms to look like, with a kind of “duh” expression. Check out a bunch of little monsters below…

Maggot

We have been doing CVLT Nation’s Favorite Tumblrs for a while now, and it only makes sense that since I spend too much time trolling Instagram that I start a CVLT Nation’s Favorite Instagrammers feature! We don’t follow too many people because I like my feed to be quality over quantity, so today I am giving you my top 3 so far – NYC iPhone photographer Daniel Arnold, Montreal’s Ovate clothing and Philadelphia’s Bloodmilk Jewelry. These three consistently post photos that I have an emotional response to, whether it be to their latest creation, a stunning, haunting scene or a moment of hilarity. I am simply in love with whatever Bloodmilk and Ovate make, so it makes sense that I follow them to see what new items they have that I can dream about owning one day that I am not living on a tight-to-nonexistent budget. Bloodmilk often features work by other talented artists as well as curiosities and oddities which inspire my posts and makes me feel good about the endless well of creativity in the world. Ovate posts her own stunning clothes as well as beautiful shots of Montreal, her studio/loft space and recently old photos of her Quebecois family. Daniel Arnold captures the complexities and eccentricities of New York City in his candid street and subway shots. His photos make me laugh with humanity rather than at it, and there is often a deeper message underlying his images that was completely unintentional by his subjects. Check out some shots from my favorite Instagrammers below…

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Brilliant cinematographer and photographer William Lacalmontie has given us the honor of premiering his latest film venture for French band Treha Sektori, and it is a stunning piece of visual art set to a stunning new track from the band, “AH ESTEREH KOMH DERAH.” This film is actually a clip from the visuals Lacalmontie has put together for Treha Sektori’s 2013 live shows, and was premiered in full at their recent Paris show at Le Petit Bain on May 11th. From this 6-minute clip, I can only imagine the power of the full film when paired with the haunting sounds this band conjures. Sit back, and let your soul travel while watching this…

Text and photos: Astrid Tonella

On this sunny beginning of May started the second edition of Heavy Days in Doomtown in Copenhagen, Denmark. The four days DIY sludge/doom/stoner fest who made a massive impression last year is back again, with an incredible line up (five bands performed their first European show ever), bringing fans of “all things slow and heavy” from all over Europe and beyond. For those who are unfamiliar with the festival (?!), HDDT is an event organized by the “Undergrundsmusikkens Fremme” (Underground music Promotion) who has been organizing for several years the now notorious “Kill-town Death Fest”. The concept, which makes this festival so unique, is to bring the DIY principles to the doom/stoner/sludge/psych scenes that are rarely exposed to these ethics and create music and culture without having any profit involved.

Huge congrats to the organizing crew for topping last year’s event, for the top-notch organization and for making this weekend absolutely amazing. With this edition, HDDT really proved that it can compete with other renewed European festivals – so if you haven’t attended yet, this is definitely not the fest you want to miss next year!

DAY ONE
The first day started off very well at Stengade, with a sold out warm-up show enabling the public to visit the art gallery placed on the first floor of the venue. For this edition, HDDT continued in line of last year, adding even more artists to the bill. The artistic dimension is to me a great addition that provides a very unique atmosphere to this festival and showcases artists who also contribute in making the scene something more than “just” music but a culture of its own. For this day, you were able to admire the incredible works of The 13th Sign Collective (D), responsible for the fest’s artwork, Manuel Tinnemans (NL), Timo Ketola (SWE), Sami Hynninen (FIN) and assist to a book reading by Ulrike Serowy, narrated by Mat McNervey from Hexvessel.

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Text & Photos via The Heavy Mental

Scarful has an aura around him. If you know him well enough you understand what I am talking about. It’s a thick, shiny cloud floating around him probably because his odd-shaped skull is filled with wisdom nectar. Even though he is usually a very peaceful creature, if the cloud is dark and stormy, you better stay away or you can get blasted by his thunder. His knowledge on occult arts and crafts is enormous and he is constantly experimenting with them in his studio in Tor Pignattara, in the suburb of Rome. Alessandro Maida, also known as Scarful has done with inks and drawings pretty much what Sasha Shulgin has done with psychedelics. Fertile as Gengis Kahn in conceiving artwork for record covers, posters, and fanzines, he is a Belzebub of cross-media collaborations. He wears black and has asthma like Darth Vader.

02

Wrekmeister Harmonies is a project from Chicago helmed by JR Robinson, and his new album You’ve Always Meant So Much to Me is an experiment on the outer edges of heavy music. I could list all of the unreal humans that contributed to this record, but I won’t. This sonic vision into another reality will be released via Thrill Jockey Records on June 11th. Right now check out this 11 minute video of Simon Fowler drawing the cover art…Space is the Place!

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