MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE Totem One (Conspiracy)

From the Aquarius review
"Sun City Girls fans! Drone-doom freaks! Here's your unlikely crossover dream come true, kind of. A psychedelically heavy (sometimes) and always eerily exotic new album on the Conspiracy label from this band with the wiseass faux-ethnic name (if you don't know what Bukkake is, don't ask, and definitely don't Google it - if you do, be aware it's NSFW). Now including members of Earth and Burning Witch amongst their ranks, and once again boasting cameo appearances from folks belonging to the Sun City Girls and Secret Chiefs 3, this is exactly (and excellently) what we might have expected from this project. Acoustic ethnic instrument buzz and drone meets guitars-leaning-on-amps buzz and drone. There's electronic FX and analog synths alongside field recordings, bells and chimes and gamelan percussion mixed with Tibetan monkish low-end drone-chant, and let's not forget the flute and Mellotron... The seven tracks of Totem One span a wild, wide range of (moody) moods, from the heavy throbbing maelstrom that is "Schism Prism / Adamatios" to the spacey, spooky folk ramble of "Cascade Cathedral". The most Sun City Girlish moment here is probably "People Of The Drifting Houses", not surprisingly the track which features guest vocals provided by Alan Bishop of SCGs and Sublime Frequencies fame.
"In The Lightness Of The Sonoran" could be the recently reviewed Harappian Night Recordings attempting to channel SUNNO))), whilst other tracks (simultaneously) bring to mind such not-entirely-disparate artists as Angus MacLise, Blood Of The Black Owl, Six Organs Of Admittance, Ghost, and Acid Mothers Temple. The latter especially, for instance on the most freaked out parts of the aforementioned "Schism Prism / Adamatios" or during the blissful ceremony of the album-ending nine minute long "Eaglewolf". Fantastic. We're now eagerly looking forward to further Totem installments! (Totem Two is due out later this year on the SCG-related Abduction label, that released MMOB's prior album as well.)
NB. The vinyl version of this comes with a coupon for free mp3 download of the whole album.

Sons of Otis-Exiled (from aquarius)

Reliable sorts these Canadians are, aren't they? The Sons Of Otis are back, and fans of their monolithic stoner rock / blues / doom will not be disappointed. It's all here on their fifth full-length album. Lumbering fuzzed out riffs, check. Spacey electronic atmospheres, check. Glacial pace, check. Psychedelic soloing, check. Heavier than thou jamming, check. Feedback, check. Gravelly, effects-laden, echoey vocals, check. Drugs, check (we're pretty sure!). They even continue their tradition of including super stoned sounding cover versions of classic tracks by their old school influences, this time 'round giving the Sons Of Otis treatment to two faves: Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Cry For The Bad Man" (here titled "Bad Man") and Motorhead's "Iron Horse"! In both cases it's like the original has been dipped in tar, dosed with drugs, and slowed down to 16rpm, especially "Iron Horse" which segues into a billowing dense ambient drone definitely not derived from the original Motorhead composition, the whole track lasting over 18 minutes!
The Otis originals here will (slowly) kick yr ass too. "Haters" starts things off with a scowl, and they don't lighten up much... later on "Tales Of Otis" enters into almost Khanate-like ultra-doom territory, and it's hard to tell if Sons Of Otis are trying to take off into outer space or burrow deep into the earth. Definitely (as always) for fans of UFOmammut, Electric Wizard, Boris... and for folks who'd like to know what it would sound like if Monster Magnet mated with the Melvins.
It's hard to know what else to say, either you're a fan of this and every other Sons Of Otis album, or you need to take more drugs.

BONG Novum Castellum (Turgid Animal) 3cd

new over at Aquarius records. gottta get ahold of one.



BONG Novum Castellum (Turgid Animal) 3cd








It always seems to happen this way, we spend ages and ages trying to track down recordings from an elusive band, hearing rumors about 7"s and cd-r's and tapes, and then suddenly, BOOM. Or in the case of these guys, Booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom... the recordings come bursting forth, and again, in this case, the sounds spew from speakers and headphones like some viscous black torrent. Which can only mean one thing, the return of drugged out sludge drone mavens Bong. If ever a band was more appropriately named, Bong are ready to take them on. In fact, the only way a band could prevail monicker-wise, they'd have to be called Bong Blood Hell Froth, or Bladed Bong Skullorb, or something, and even with a name all ready for battle, it's doubtful their pathetic sounds would be any match for Bong's thick, sprawling doomscapes of sitar like buzz, churning bottom heavy crunch, and at least on one of the tracks here some serious drum pummel.
Three discs, five tracks, three hours, recorded in pubs, under bridges and in restaurants, one can only imagine the smoldering ruins these guys left in their lumbering drug-doom wake. Their live sound much more rocking then their doomed out minimal records might lead you to believe.
The opener on its own is worth the price of admission, a relentless buzzy, space-y sludgey groove, with some killer drumming, chaotic, mathy, but locked in pretty tight, the cymbals offering up a layer of warm swirling sizzle, the vocals a haunted demonic chant, the rest of the sonic space taken up by woozy washed out buzzing sitar like strings, a sort of Sleep meets Circle meets SUNNO))), a downtuned krautrock crunch, smeared into an endless drug drenched space rock groove. The second half of disc two offers up more of the same, with the drums even more frantic, the band rocking propulsively, not so sludgey as heavy and fierce, the song slipping into a tranced out sonic tarpit partway through, before exploding into a tangled doom-math outro.
The two tracks on the second disc see the drums pulling back a little, letting the guitars and vocals interlock, the result some sort of ritualistic groove, albeit wrapped around some serious percussive heft, the second of the two tracks blissing out pretty nicely, the band slipping comfortably into something a bit more meditative and slowcore sounding, but still the guitars smoke and smolder, the drums, while restrained, still sound urgent, the track seething with dark intensity, and minimal doomic menace.
The final disc, a nearly 40 minute single song set, is the heaviest and densest of the bunch, somehow fusing the blown out ur-drone of groups like Sunroof! with a fuzzed out garage doom space stomp. Think White Hills, the Heads, Monster Magnet, this is the sort of doom that's bursting with barely restrained psychedelia, like watching some black star explode, swirling red and yellow gouts of sonic fire spilling forth from a heaving black hole of sound. The sound lo-fi, lots of noise and reverb and distortion and ambient noise, the sound crumbles and breaks apart here and there, the band slipping easily from ponderous trudge to blissed out shimmer, often merging the two into some soul shearing psychedelic doom.
A few of these tracks were already released, but as a cd-r in a limited run of 50 or something crazy like that, so odds are, like us, you never even saw 'em. These are proper, real cds (NOT cd-r's), packaged in a dvd style case, with printed inserts. And is also limited, this time to 300 copies!

Blck Flag-1983

Hellhammer/Celtic Frost photo book.

"HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST Photo History Book Announced07 07 2009

Former HELLHAMMER/CELTIC FROST mainman Tom Gabriel Fischer and Bazillion Points Books have announced November 2009 as the publication date for 'Only Death Is Real: An Illustrated History of Hellhammer and Early Celtic Frost.' Authored by Fischer with cooperation from HELLHAMMER/FROST partner Martin Eric Ain, the deluxe large-format 288pp hardcover will feature over 300 astonishing high-quality photos by Csaba Kézér, Martin Kyburz, and Andreas Schwarber documenting the very dawn of death metal and black metal.

Five years in the making, this extraordinary artifact sets an audacious new historical standard in heavy metal literature. Further information and sample photos are available at THIS LOCATION:

http://www.bazillionpoints.com/?p=207

HELLHAMMER's adolescent hardships were played out in dramatic and sometimes violent episodes set in small villages around Zurich, Switzerland, during 1983 and 1984. The ultimate insider document of the earliest era of death metal and black metal, 'Only Death Is Real' documents this unique and cataclysmic moment in modern music history with hundreds of never-seen vintage images, classic artwork reprinted by kind permission of HR Giger, a full visual reference to HELLHAMMER promotional material, flyers, and memorabilia documenting the birth and evolution of extreme metal—all supported by sharp-tongued oral accounts direct from Tom G. Fischer, Martin Ain, Stephen Priestly, Steve Warrior, and other survivors of the HELLHAMMER inner circle.

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CONTACT: bazillion@bazillionpoints.com, (718) 383-7122