Elegant and heavy are a combination that very few have done right. Tiger Lily is one of those few. Hailing from Fresno, California, Tiger Lily plays their own brand of sludgy hardcore. Their sound refuses to reserve itself to just that though, as bits of crust, doom and black metal are industriously distributed throughout. The whole EP is one long sinking boom that shudders through you, never relenting until the final second. Annabeth is a monster. This three song masterpiece is one of the best records I’ve heard so far this year. I don’t see Annabeth being shown up anytime soon either. It’s that good, seriously.

Annabeth is a mere three songs, but each packs a wallop that is never under five minutes in length. The music is equal in its rage and thoughtfulness. This is no mere amalgam of screams and heavy riffs, this is a damn special piece of work. Annabeth has a knack for dazzling with tender melodies and delicate string work, only to take you off guard by dropping the sonic equivalent of a meteor on you. “Heaven/Plagues” is aptly titled. A beautiful, feminine chorus opens the song and is allowed to continue for almost a minute before guitar and drums all but destroy any notion of tranquility. “In heaven everything is fine” is roared like a sorrowful curse, letting us know that everything is not so fine here on this gangrene earth. The second track, “Gold Tongue II” makes use of its status as the EP’s longest track by opening with some excellent doom passages before switching speed into deep-tuned hardcore. Roughly the last minute of “Gold Tongue II” borders on shoegaze as its riffs dance circles between thunder claps. “The Devil” opens up on a much gentler note and slowly builds itself with dueling riffs that trudge and wail. Following a wisely inserted quote from The Devil’s Rejects, Annabeth opens its floodgates to drown us in one last maelstrom.

With Annabeth being a product of skillful artists, Tiger Lily is worth keeping both eyes on and I look forward to seeing what else they have in store for us.

Every day is a great day at CVLT Nation, and a big part of that comes from the support we receive from the community, ie:labels, bands and especially our readers. We see this webzine as platform for creative, like-minded humans. So when we got an email from Jan from Germany saying he took sick photos of the SLEEP & A Storm of Light gig on 05/10/12 at Conne Island in Leipzig, we were stoked to check them out. I must say, the dude totally blew my mind with the quality of his flicks – the lighting is on point! What a year for doom heads: SLEEP re-releases Dopesmoker on Southern Lord, plus they go on tour tomorrow – the weed gods are blowing our way! Light your bong and have a look at this stonerdelic photo essay…Euro tour dates after the jump!

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This has been an amazing week in heavy music! On of my favorite bands, OLD MAN GLOOM, released a new album entitled NO via Hydra Head, pre-order HERE plus they played a sold out show at Club Europa in Brooklyn. Our comrades in radness, photographer Samantha Marble and videographer (((unartig))), were both on hand to capture this excerxise in audio magic. Samantha’s photo are fucking unreal, and we are so stoked that she took flicks for CVLT Nation on this killer night. Also, as usual, (((unartig))) did his thing with his video camera that only he can do! I’m going to let this beyond awesome photo gallery and video do the rest of the talking! So after the jump, peep OLD MAN GLOOM!

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Someone pass me my bong, I can enjoy this Saturnalia Temple full set’s worth of footage. This is why I love writing for CVLT Nation, I got a message the other day from one of our readers in Sweden that I should check this footage out. Damn, it is so awesome that it’s a must that we share it with the nation. Fresh from a killer show at Roadburn, Saturnalia Temple set the Debaser ablaze in Stockholm with a resin-drenched set. Now it’s time to light my bong, so should you peep this killer footage after the jump!

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Portland’s Aldebaran have had quite the prolific career thus far, in what has been a fairly short amount of time. Having formed in 2004 Aldebaran have consistently produced some of the most intoxicating and downtrodden funeral death doom this side of diSEMBOWELMENT and Asunder, yet they have only released one full length in their time together. Besides the many splits the band have to their name and a lauded EP from last year (Buried Beneath Aeons), Aldebaran now stand on the precipice of a new release. Embracing The Lightless Depths is wondrously majestic and the two twenty five minute plus tracks committed to this record are surrounded by three graceful passages which envelope the album in a sheen of mystical splendour.

Sweet and gently struck notes usher the melancholic dawn of Embracing The Lightless Depths, slowly giving way to distorted and electricity-laden strikes of guitar. “Occultation of Hali’s Gates” hits deeply with an embedded gloom, lacing the record with a knowledge of the deep-seated despair to come. Pouring into “Forever In The Dream Of Death” seamlessly, Aldebaran waste no time in pulling the atmosphere through shades of dusk and misery. Measured and processional beats cut the air, thick with dense and deliberate funereal tones. The almost fathomless vocal hits with crashing precision, striking in the hollows of the soul and each instrumental element is given space to coil and surround with a monolithic power. Moments of calm permeate the twilight offsetting the moving and commanding builds to exaltation. Rolling drum beats pound with an almost militaristic essence before sliding back to make room for husky breaths of doom.

Aldebaran take flashes of peaceful magnificence and counter them with depth and a sensation of hypnotic beauty. Horror lies veiled in echoing caverns of bass and subterranean roars and shadowy whispers. Embracing The Lightless Depths is a journey into the abyssal yawning pits of a vast universe. Aldebaran’s affecting and altogether destructive force is consistently compelling; the extended running time of each track holds natural progression and sublimely concealed chaos bleeds through the snarls of sludge and dirt during “Sentinel Of A Sunless Abyss.” Segueing into the final instrumental piece, “Occultation Of Dim Carcosa,” Embracing The Lightless Depths closes on a droning and soft pulse. Reminiscent of the opening work, the tender breeze of grief works through the tranquility opposing the depressive strength of the two colossal tracks.

In a cosmic sense, Aldebaran is one of the brightest stars in the known sky. Here the aptly named band burns through celestial clouds of devastation and ruin, seizing each lamentable instant and crushing with a potent authority.

Embrace the lightless depths.

Pre-order from Profound Lore Records.

Hold on…I’m looking for my skin, it was just peeled off by 33 minutes of apocalyptic doom that I have had on repeat for a while now. To be more specific, I have been listening to the new split by New York’s Batillus and Australia’s Whitehorse, which will be released via the German label Vendetta Records. Batillus wrecks shop with their two songs, which have multiple layers of decay surrounded by a dystopic atmosphere. Whitehorse drills a hole in your skull with the pounding dirge that starts to crack away at your bones. Anyone reading this is more than fucking lucky, because CVLT Nation is streaming the whole release below, so you can be your own judge and kill some brain cells in the process. It get sicker – Batillus & Whitehorse will be touring together this summer starting at the end of this month – peep the the tour dates after the jump! Also, stay tuned for a Sonic Cathedrals curated by Batillus, plus a special Whitehorse interview about their upcoming U.S.A tour. Fuck the dumb shit…now BLAST this stream beyond HEAVY!!!….PRE-ORDER HERE…

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So what happens when a label that you have loads of respect for creates a mind-altering compilation? The end result is HERESIES, the 2012 digital sampler from CRUCIAL BLAST. Now check out what Adam has to say about the this sonic portrait of torture himself below…It’s 23 tracks long and totally FREE Download HERE!

Crucial Blast is proud to present Heresies, our newest compilation of sound taken from a wide selection of our current and upcoming titles for 2012. This digital compilation features twenty-three tracks, many of which have not yet been released, from an array of artists that range from cult legends to newly formed purveyors of sonic extremism. The music that’s collected here presents a fairly comprehensive cross-section of the sort of music that we specialize in here at Crucial Blast, from the sounds of terrifying blackened industrial, withered cemetary folk, crude black metal, horror electronics, and apocalyptic doom-laden dub mutations, to jet-black ambience, majestic power electronics, putrid goresludge, corrosive black noise, vile death industrial, bizarre necro-electro experiments, avant-garde deathdoom, and twisted basement black psychedelia. Across these twenty-three tracks, you will find the likes of Gnaw Their Tongues, Wold, Sutcliffe Jugend, Funerary Call, Luasa Raelon, Theologian, Ehnahre, Korperschwache, T.O.M.B., Iron Forest, Husere Grav, Reclusa, Time Moth Eye (mem. of Stone Breath), Fecalove, Lucifers Foreskin, Mors Sonat (members of Gnaw Their Tongues and Nekrasov), Glass Coffin, Crown Of Bone (ex-Demonologists), Yami Kurae, Project:Void, Pusdrainer, Rotorvator, and Actuary. More than two hours of aural horror, crepuscular beauty, and bone-rattling heaviness, carefully selected for your pleasure.

Now this is a special interview, being that it was conducted by someone I respect, for a band that I really dig. haarp are super sick and their album The Filth still gets spins in our hq. Mike IX Williams did us the honor of asking the band some questions that allowed haarp to open up about their creative process. Enough of me talking, let’s get down to the nitty gritty – check out this interview below and after the jump!

Mike IX of Eyehategod interviews Keith Sierra of haarp

Your full length LP ‘The Filth’ is out now on Housecore Records. Are you happy with the finished album? When’s the next LP coming out? You are now back in the studio again recording new material, correct?

Yes, we are happy with the final result. It was a nice change to have the time to focus on all of the aspects of the album that we had to rush in the past, including art, music, sequencing, layout etc. We created the album we were hearing in our head. It’s far from perfect but we learned a little more this time and will be able to apply that knowledge to our future releases.

Everything is recorded for the new album, just waiting on mixing and mastering. The art and layout is in the works as well, everything is falling into place.

As for differences between The Filth and the new record, one thing is art. Last time the art for the album focused on one story from the songs, The Glutton King, and this time we’ll have artwork to represent all 3 of the songs as a whole. We are also working with photography this time instead of drawn art. Musically, these songs are different in a few ways. We’ve upped the tempo in certain areas and added some more aggressive parts to the songs.

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Rote Hexe’s newest release is like the feeling of being slowly bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe, directly across the face. The LA duo has found the prefect concoction of sludgey doom, blood splatters of 90′s post-punk, and a healthy dose of raw hatred. There is no shoegazey downtempo guitar, and no passages of misanthropic pondering here, just the better parts of every Buzzov*en, and Acid Bath album mixed with tincture droplets of Hot Snakes, here and there, to make one ferocious record, fit for the not-so-chill beard set. Elizabeth Gordon’s drumming keeps the stereotypical doom plod, but always to drive the pace forward, and never to fall back against it. Meanwhile, Aaron D.C. Edge’s guitar falls somewhere beneath the dungeons of drop D, and has all the fury of a buzzsaw gnashing bones. All of which is sewn together by Aaron’s glass hammered, fury ignited vokills.

The four tracks on,”Red Witch,” ease deceptively in with a phonograph laden sample from Alfred Hitchcock’s,”Music to Be Murdered By,” before punching you straight in the face with the full force of, “The Brightest Decaying Star.” More samples lead the way for the sophomorial, “Journey of the Forsaken Monk,” which creeps in, but keeps the unrelenting brutality prevalent throughout the album, especially when it comes the meat cleaving vocals. The record’s, “Red Witch,” namesake has a definite metal-cum-90′s-post-hxc feel to it, but that only adds to the dynamic and variation of Rote Hexe, who are clearly making excellent music based on their own wants and needs. Even when the track breaks down, it never gives way, with the drums and guitar still beating a bloody pulse under Aaron’s feral voice. We leave the witches to burn with a sludge-merchants southern-riffed wet dream, in the twisted body of, “Through Bramble, Thorn, and Thistle,” which happens to be the very hole I dwell in. All in all, it’s an eclectic, organic, and unified sound that the duo of Rote Hexe has thrown down on the, “Red Witch,” album. It is most definitely worth taking your time to wrap your fingers around this bleak treasure, which is soon to be released on Cricket Cemetery out of DC.

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From the planet of doom the riffs rained down onto Roadburn. This year SLEEP and Bongripper performed mind altering sets.The word in the smoking universe of heavy is that these bands torn a hole in the atmosphere with tones of their bass.So for those humans around the world that could not make to Roadburn this year.CVLT Nation is stoked to bring you mammoth video footage of both performances.Nuff respect to Walter and his whole crew for exciting another great event! Pack that bong load right now peep how SLEEP and Bongripper melted minds after the jump!

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