Bravery and courage are two things that rarely go hand in hand with modern hip-hop. There is one artist named MURS who possesses both of these qualities, they are very evident in his new video for his song “Animal Style,” which tackles homophobia in American society. Being a straight male rapper and taking the stance that he has, we at CVLT Nation salute him. Watch this MURS video, not because you are a fan of his music, just watch it for the fact that you respect someone who is willing to stand up for the oppressed, and take on a genre that he holds dear. Also, tell a friend about what you have just seen, and feel free to leave a comment! Peep MURS “Animal Style” below…

When I look at art of any kind, it’s important to me to get a sense of the artist’s personality in their work. This is exactly what happens whenever I get a chance to see the tattoo work of Todd Janeczek aka Todd J., the owner of Imperial Tattoo in Portland, Oregon. His pieces are like well-written songs, because they have a clear message and deeper meanings that are alive under the vibrant colors; when you take a closer look, you know that he takes his craft very seriously. Todd’s work has a classic Americana feel to it, but it’s his dark sense of humor that takes his tattoos to a universe where freaks rule shit. Todd also works a demented Japanese energy into some of his works of art. If you have a chance to have his work on your body, I know you will always look at your tat with a smile on your face. Todd J.’s style represents a part of history, but although his work might remind you of the past, it’s well-rooted in the present and future! Now step into the world according to Todd J., and peep a huge gallery of his work after the jump!

Right now I’m having an extra heavy blast, because I’m blasting XAPHAN in my headphones. Damn, this Minneapolis band has released what might the best demo of the year! Yeah, it’s only two songs, but who cares because they both go balls out and fucking kick donkey ass! XAPHAN’s music pounds you in the skull harder than Roberto Duran’s uppercuts. Their songs have a spectacular groove to them, but at the same time they are super aggro in all the right ways. XAPHAN have the power to conjure up coffins full of sonic mayhem that will keep both the hardcore and metal heads happy. The first song on the demo is entitled “V” and is an all-out onslaught that lasts for 2:41 and will leave you wanting to beat your head against the wall in bliss. Then the next composition is called “I” and lasts for 7:38 – it’s more dirge, while still just as powerful as the first tune. So here is a message to all of my fellow webzine writers out there: spread the fucking word, because this band MUST BE HEARD!!! I know for a fact that XAPHAN will not stay unsigned for long, they are just too fucking rad. All west coast weirdos, you are in luck: XAPHAN will be performing at this year’s Power of the Riff in Los Angeles. I dig this band so much that I will make sure to get there early so I don’t miss them…One strange parting fact: this demo was recorded and mixed on the guitarist’s iPad.

OM’s Advaitic Songs, which was released on July 24th via Drag City, is streaming in full on the almighty Roadburn site – click HERE then blast off!!!

“Advaitic Songs is, quite simply, the best OM album to date and illustrates that they have achieved a level of compositional maturity that very few of their contemporaries have reached. Back in his Dopesmoker days Al Cisneros and his Sleep cohorts sounded like a band wildly veering off towards the Holy Land fuelled by a combination of weed and idealistic good intentions. More than a decade on, Advaitic Songs sounds like an older and wiser pilgrimage altogether, Al having made the most of his time in the Holy Land, soaking up the atmosphere to create something far more indicative of Nazareth and the Holy Mountains. There isn’t a heavier topic on earth to address than spirituality and with Advaitic Songs OM have proven that you don’t always need to sound heavy to be a heavy band”

— Tom McKibbin / The Sleeping Shaman.

It’s fucking on – Sonic Cathedrals Vol. LXIX curated by BAPTISTS goes live today. They have pulled out a killer song selection from their bag of madness! You know the drill: peep what they have to say about their gnarly mixtape below, then download Sonic Cathedrals Vol. LXIX and kill some braincells!

I hope the inconsistency of my musical taste doesn’t bother the listener as much as my neighbours have been bothered for the last 20 years. The older stuff in here, like I Spy, Jasemine, Chokehold, and Manner Farm was luckily (thanks to my older brother) what I grew up on. Punk had such a heavy hand in molding the blabbering idiot that I am today and I couldn’t be more grateful. All the newer stuff in here is the shit that makes me feel like I’m hearing punk again for the first time.

Here’s a little story about the Today Is The Day track – I was riding my bike, while carrying ice cream buckets filled with refried beans in each hand and blasting that song through some speakers that were built into my vest. All of a sudden, my front tire wedged into a storm drain and I flew over the handle bars and landed on top of the buckets, turning myself into a into a giant, bloody burrito. I picked up my bent-forked bike, threw it onto the sidewalk and walked home with beans dripping off of me and angriest song still just blasting away.

- Andrew Drury

Stream Sonic Cathedrals Vol. LXIX Curated by Baptists

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One of the things we love most about blogging on CVLT Nation is giving back to our readers, and today we have an awesome giveaway for you – a pair of tickets to Southern Lord‘s The Power of the Riff West! The lineup for this event is killer – SUNN 0))), OFF!, Dr.Know, Repulsion, Noothgrush, Xibalba, Eagle Twin, Power Trip, Ancestors, Alpha & Omega, Gaza, DNF, Retox, Love Below, Avon Ladies, Cops, Hordes, Xaphan, Hoax, Despise You, Nausea (CA) and Bio Crisis will all be tearing the Echo/Echoplex apart on August 11th, 2012, in Los Angeles, CA. To enter to win the pair, send us an email at contest@cvltnation.com with “TPOTR” in the subject heading. The draw will be Wednesday at noon PT.

***And the winner is…Pablo Vargas! Congrats buddy!***

Q: Vaura has been talked about as a NYC supergroup of sorts in terms of its members coming from some well known bands in the metal community including Gorguts, Kayo Dot, Dysrhythmia. It’s amazing to have so many great musicians come together like this and create something so different from any of the bands they currently play in. How did this formation come about?

A: It was pretty organic. I was searching for ways to expand on the kinds of atmospheric music I’d always loved and I found myself really excited by a lot of the ways that heavier bands seemed to be pushing everything I liked further. The darkness was darker, there was a lot of focus on intensity rather than restraint. I met Kevin through our friend Lev Weinstein (of Krallice) and we found that we had a lot of common ground both in terms of how we had developed as players and music fans over the years, and in terms of what recent music we were inspired by. He was friends with Toby who had been delving into a really creative re-invention of certain aspects of dark postpunk with the recent Kayo Dot stuff. I’m a huge fan of Mick Karn, and his sound reminded me of a non-fretless Mick Karn and I don’t think he had even listened to any Japan. Charlie and I went way back with Religious to Damn and had always talked about him playing drums if I ever got a heavier band together. So it all just fell into place, really.

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Vøid Wørship’s first release gives us the feared rat’s nest of our universe that lies beneath our syntactical everyday world. It has that real grey, of why our ‘machines are oiled in blood’, our very existance is now defined in numbers. Dystopian lyrics and harsh grieving music. Aphoristic songs about our ‘altars of concrete gray’. Melancholic feedback and bludgeoning drumming permeating throughout. This album/demo has set the tone for this bleak impoverished 2012.

Like all good bands there isn’t much information about Vøid Wørship, just stark imagery and doom ridden sounds. The track ‘Tie Sailor’s Knots with Serpents’ has set a tone to this band, which is a feeling of suffering with a gloomy detuned slowness until everything rings out towards it’s end into complete hysteria. Music like this is intensely real as it is tormenting, there’s no rocking out or any of that sort of shit. This would be nice on some weighty vinyl. But for now a name your price download from Bandcamp or free download from Mediafire.

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Hidden from the world for years, this album was recorded in 2008 but only saw the light of day at the end of 2011, with Daemon Worship Productions picking it up after the release’s original label fell apart. Bestia Arcana is a Nightbringer sideproject, and three of the evil-loving masterminds are conspiring you drive you mad with this hellish piece of blackened hyper-noise.

Those familiar with Nightbringer’s unusual sonic chaos will feel at home with To Anabainon ek tes Abyssu. It’s black metal awash in a thick fog of endlessly cyclical guitar shrieks and horrifyingly ethereal proclamations. A choir-like synth and occasional demonic spoken word passage serve to sink your psyche deeper into the pit of torment where their creation lives. The terrifying chaos is almost calming, giving the feeling that dissonant melodies pass by as you lay in a comatose state, resulting in an almost out-of-body listening experience. Never-ending blastbeats conjure up a painful hailstorm which transforms into howling winds of despair as the storm calms and the seas shift.

The third and fourth tracks take a turn into occult ambience that plays with more of the evil chanting and drone-filled guitars from previous tracks, but slowed down to the crawl of a rotting corpse. While the diversion fits with the overall schema of the release, it’s a bit of a chore to sit through 15-minutes of satanic soundscapes devoid of waking life. Luckily, the closing track is an opus of destruction, expanding on the band’s grandiose visions and turning the album into something of note, to be played during the apocalypse as hellfire rains from the sky and skeletal beasts crawl forth from below.

Bestia Arcana – To Anabainon ek tes Abyssu by Daemon Worship
This is black metal in the key of chaos.

While everyone is busy getting off on another “blackened crust band with grindcore influences” that popped up some might overlook the new – actually cool – bands that spring forth these days. VVovnds is one of them. And they’re not blackened crust, so you can stop reading this review if you’d had your hopes up.

VVovnds are from Kortrijk/Courtrai and that also means they’re from the H8000 region. People that are a bit older and followed the European/Belgian hardcore/metalcore scene in the 90′s and early 00′s know what this means. Bands like Amenra, Congress, Liar, etc saw the light of day in this once vivid scene and VVovnds – with some ex-members of some of the aforementioned bands – is trying to inject new life in it. They’ve had the pleasure of supporting bands like Trash Talk and Thou already and have just released their first demo.

Like their predecessors they play hardcore with a metallic edge, yet no swedish melodic deathmetal rip off, like you might expect. Think more of bands like mix of Rorschach, Raein, Das Oath and even Walls to some extend. It’s all quite noisy and has a punk feel to it (short songs – fuck yeah), but that can only be a good thing. The fury is there, the songs are full of energy and stick around in your head. If harsh vocals, fast and moshy bits are your thing, you like abovementioned bands and you’re not afraid of a noisy production VVovnds is your cup’o tea!

Demos are available from the band or you can check it out on the VVovnds bandcamp before you purchase it (obviously).