Richpa

Tracklist and credits added in first post.

The rays of a red sun ascend across the vast seas A third star shines down upon a host of mankind Resurrected shadows once formed a black phase Dead valleys in time observe all possession Rain brought forth the tree of benediction Blessed land emanates dust of the old bones Gratitude shown deviation flows throughout Laced with forbidden fruits Gardens descend upon realities of man Authoritate disbelief 01 - Zealot (12:55) 02 - The Red Sea (13:22) 03 - Peasant of Parthia (08:12) 04 - Omen (14:08) youtube(dot)com/watch?v=vOcbEL2CT_w youtube(dot)com/watch?v=CDm4PrjSMZ4 The instrumentation is what will immediately draw you in or turn you off from Zaum's capacious aural escapism, because the space in which they operated is entirely limited from a 'riff' perspective. That is to say, the New Brunswick duo puts together incredibly simplistic bass lines with a custom sound rig, slow and flowing beats with a margin of shuffle and groove to them, and then uses synthesizers and sitar sounds to create this greater illusion of depth, which is filled in largely through the listener's imagination. They're not the most minimalistic kids on the block, perhaps, but they clearly mirror the efforts of the phonetically similar Om in crafting drawn out, atmospheric excursions into the primacy of lethargic, heavy fucking music...and if you can shut down any expectations that they're suddenly going to transition into something 'busy' or complex, you'll probably fall in with this camel-back passage to foreign shores, inspired by Middle Eastern culture and lore from thousands of years ago. Four tracks, fifty minutes...you know where this is going, that it will require a personal investment not to fall asleep, but Zaum ensure that it's not such a difficult task. Despite the comparable pacing of most of the material, they offer distinction and variation between tracks through shifting moods. For example, "Zealot" is solemn and drifting, with Kyle Alexander McDonald's vocals capturing their cleanest and most soaring range, to the slow but dreamy weight of the bass riffs. But move on to "The Red Sea", and the layered textures of the chanted vocal and the more crushing note progressions give it less of a psychedelic magnificence, and more of a claustrophobic sense of doom. "Peasant of Parthia" falls between the two, but those fat, molten bass grooves strike a more ominous, Gothic momentum. They're also not above letting the percussion drop off and the guitars ring out with a hazy, hookah-smokescreen resonance ala the intro to the finale ("Omen"), so there's always this constant sense of dramatic rise and fall. The Canadians take their sweet, sweet time, probably inhaling copious amounts of non-medical marijuana and other vices while they keep a mental clock of exactly when to just dump all that deep-rooted sorrow of centuries over your face. There are unquestionably a few moments here where the meandering tendencies trump the common sense they apply so incessantly elsewhere, but thank fuck they keep it from ever becoming so boring that I tune out...a symptom of so much modern of this trippy stoner/doom mentality where 'We Are Heavy Because 20 Minute Songs', 'You Doom Fans Are Suckers And Will Buy Anything With a 60s Fashion Sense Because Like Retro'. The songs top off around 14 minutes at most, and there's very little in any of them which feels arbitrary. The vocals are uniformly mesmerizing, excellent and I would find it hard to believe as a result that McDonald won't be vaulted into the preternatural pantheon in which such front men are harbored...in this case, a well deserved distinction, especially since he's also keeping busy with nearly all the other instruments, establishing that exotic, flavorful vision of shifting, arid sands, long aeons of tradition so rarely transcended by change, a slowly spiraling time machine into times where faith and fire alone set the paths of men. A very well constructed, convincing debut here, and it will be curious to see whether they remain loyal to this particular theme or if they'll explore other aesthetic eras and instruments as they press forward. -autothrall

A little bit more psychedelic update: youtube(dot)com/watch?v=aGN0fEM6jVc Like merchants of the soil turn to green A catacoffinary blood dead dream Just like a whisper in the burning trees Onto the path we turn our heads to lead Searching the wastelands endlessly Holding the past inside yourself Travelling onward for an answer Forever exiled in this golden maze After years of fronting Orodruin and Blizaro, John Gallo is no stranger to old school doom metal. His eponymous solo debut represents his further ventures into so-called “violet doom metal”, a concept birthed by classic Italian acts such as Death SS, Black Hole, and Paul Chain. Immediately striking in its weirdness, Costin Chioreanu’s dazzling artwork sets the tone for a mystical journey through warped yet wondrous dreamscapes. Handling everything himself means complete creative control, making Violent Dreams a project that is both personal and highly eclectic. Although he wears his Italian influences on his sleeve, Violet Dreams owes as much to bands like Candlemass and Count Raven as it does to Death SS. Often building up with occult chanting and thunderous choruses, John Gallow is a many-sided concept. Largely improvised by Gallo, the twists and turns are darkly progressive, with unconventional solos and melodic touches at every bend. Traditional doom riffs, slowly and gloomily crawling along, support the Paul Chain-influenced experimental touches and funeral synths. From the heavy metal shredding of “Purple Room”, to the 70’s synthesizer-instrumentation of “Ancient Tears”, Violet Dreams stands with both legs firmly planted in the childhood years of doom. The vintage aspect is echoed by the suitably muddy production, which serves to strengthen the personal atmosphere of the album. As the sole mind behind the music, Gallo bears his cross with remarkable skill. Although his voice is somewhat lacking, the strained vocals feel like a boon to the singularity of his vision. As with Karl Simon of The Gates Of Slumber, John Gallow has no need for pitch perfect falsettos or a booming soprano. The ever-shifting harmonies sprawling the hour-long album demands more than a surface taste, but ultimately rewards those who stick with it. Truly a renaissance man, John Gallo successfully unearths a classic sound that has been slumbering mostly undisturbed for decades. If you have even a passing interest in the aforementioned Italian groups, or if you have a soft spot for those brilliant early Candlemass-albums, Violet Dreams is essential listening. A mournful monument of doom metal the way it used to be, and with the improvisational side transcending restrictive nostalgia, Violet Dreams is an occasionally bizarre yet entirely beautiful journey. - Witchfvcker

A brilliant scarlet dawn has conquered the night In elegant mystery it swallows the sky Crudely blemishing the ivory clouds Encasing daylight in savage grandeur This aurora fills my lungs and takes me to another time Into the memory of a dream never dreamed Senses blurred into a mesh of cacophonic disarray Free of mind, I am a crashing wave Into the passing of time I become The birth of aeons passes through me Heliotropic manifestations Omnipresent revelations 01 - Weaving the Thread of Transcendence (13:04) 02 - Entropic Hallucinations (08:12) 03 - Noumenon (13:07) 04 - Ephemeral Eternities (15:16) Where a band like Darkspace explores the 'cosmic' aspects of black metal through sheer nihilism and oppression, there are others who approach the subject matter with a little more elegance and dynamic range. Chief among these atmospheric astronauts is Californian Jacob Buczarski, aka Mare Cognitum, who has lain somewhere beneath the radar only in so much that he's drifting so far beyond the satellite range that it's often difficult to pick his signal out among the stars. That's not to say he's advocating the most unique or experimental brand of black metal, for a lot of his writing has traits in common with the melodic European sect that went viral in the mid 90s...but like label mate Ayloss and Spectral Lore, he gifts us with a more colorful and balanced glimpse at the universe, at the colors of fields of celestial bodies burning and inert, at the nebulas unleashing a spectrum of beauty across the universe. No wonder the two bands chose to release their split album Sol together, a recording that had me primed for Jacob's next full-length solo offering...which has arrived in the autumn of 2014. Four tracks of fulfilling, melodic black metal saturated with resonant rasps, intense drum patterns and enough tempo and rift-shifting moments to fill out their oft-staggering durations, generally beyond the 13 minute mark. At once, there is little 'new' to how he puts these progressions together: floods of tremolo picked, somber riffs layered together to create an intense, often desperate sense of beauty, like an expedition through space which encounters periods of turbulence and danger; in particular captured through the speed of "Entropic Hallucinations", the album's shorter, 8 minute piece. Against these we are presented with more solemn, introspective passages where the frenzy of the beats drops to a steadier, magnificent pace and the individual strings of the guitars are slung into lavishly picked harmonies that flesh out the slower overall rhythm ("Noumenon"), and there are also some periods of lush interstellar ambiance like the excellent intro to the 15+ minute finale "Ephemeral Eternities" which absolutely feel like one beholden to an alien landscape...a cerebral scoring that generated images of an astronaut on some lifeless moon staring unto infinity, so good that I wish there had been a higher ratio of the pure ambient tinkering measured against the metallic material. Fortunately, the songwriting is scripted well enough that Buczarski never dwells on any one riffing structure or tempo for them to ever wear out their welcome... ...some new melody is always being woven forth, and thus the album becomes much like that surreal space tunnel which bridges the two (uneven) 'halves' of 2001: A Space Odyssey, a funnel of color through which the unknown-yet-suspiciously-familiar awaits us all. Buczarski's rasps and growls remind us of the eminent, imminent hostility of the emptiness as it presses in on all of us, here on our fragile eggshell of a world, but the Phobos Monolith as a whole serves as a symbol of space's eternal beauty, regardless of how much it is touched by the manifest destiny, or 'stain' of humanity, relative to how you personally view the gradual transmigration of our species. It's not so much that the man has uncovered some entirely new form of language in the genre, which anyone with even a cursory history with black metal will tell you when listening to these riffs, but more that he's taking the quality and integrity of that 90s approach, when the style hadn't yet been victim to endless cycles of derivation, and giving it berth on a rocket ship, hurtling towards some distant galaxy where it might be shared with some other race. Like the ethereal, ascending figures on its covers, it's out of here, man, on a one way trip to the infinite. Would it have left more of an impact with me if it the theme had been imbued with a more distinctly bizarre, left of center musical approach? Absolutely, but Mare Cognitum's third album is nonetheless a thoroughly engaging, memorable sojourn beyond the sky, the product of a consistent and welcome voice in USBM. -autothrall

Geez, a lot of posts in this thread are deleted Anyway, let's keep it updated. One of the latest discoveries, pure beauty. TORTORUM - Beyond the Earth and Air and Sun (Katabasis, 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlPikahuvfM Seeking the black stone, beneath the inverted flood With claws in the wet soil, submerged fingers blind Hold me no funeral, but baptise my corpse in lightning Where is my black stone beneath the waters? Where is the illuminating light buried in the dark? Where the indestructible bolt of wisdom blazes The stone to crush phenomena, the weight upon all ephemera Only one shall know That it is knowledge, knower and known Pierce my heart with fire, and bury me in longing So swallowed be the final breath, before the ritual death Celebrate the end of the cosmos and he will turn into dust For it was already nothing but ashes... Considering black metal's reputation as one of the more 'evil' strains of music humanity has yet conceived, it's often surprisingly just how many albums fail to threaten or unnerve me in the slightest, and this is largely a symptom of the massive derivation and redundancy found within this medium. Granted, there are a lot of bands who have carved out their own identities within the expanded style, but too few can adhere to the base aesthetics and still evoke a chill. Thankfully, Norway's Tortorum, comprised of veterans from another of other acts (Aeternus, Dead to This World, Spearhead, Gorgoroth, etc) are one of this diminishing number, and their sophomore Katabasis is a fine example of malevolent black metal which capitalizes both on its conservative genre techniques and atmospheric embellishments to haunt the listener well past the midnight hour. Yes, eerie atonal guitar passages picked through both tremolo progressions, spine-tingling melodies and even cleaner guitar tones; slathered in sustained, nihilistic rasps and not exactly something you haven't heard in the past...but written well enough that I must have busted through this not-insubstantial 53+ minutes of material four times before I even thought of what I could say about it. That's not to say there isn't a little extra padding or unnecessary repetition in a few places, but Tortorum generally reign in their tunes around the 5 minute mark and really only go overboard on the closer "Beyond the Earth and Air and Sun", a tune with a more spacious construction to it that allows for some malignant night-wind segues into whispers and moonlit guitars instead of just an endless loop of content. Add to this the general quality of the riffs, which are not entirely unique sounding but generally on the more memorable side...bluesy, mourning leads...tight drums on both the more prevalent double-bass/blasting extreme and the sparser moments...and last but not least, the great grooves manifest by the bassist that bind the entire experience into one shadowy stroll into the subconscious, and you've got one opaque plunge into sinister obscurity that won't soon evade your conscience. Best of all, the production sounds absolutely ravishing, with an eloquent balance of airiness and meatiness relished with guitar lines that spring right out at you, angrier thrashing components which send the neck into strain-city, and just an overall seamless quality between tracks that takes into account a good deal of variation. There are moments where I felt the black metallic vocals could grow a little monotonous, and something even more psychotic might have made for an improvement, but Barghest is certainly adequate in terms of just meting out the traditional black metal vocal, and inserts a handful of lower pitched guttural growls so that it's not entirely one-sided. I guess I just wanted wails and screams over this shit, to enhance my own nightmarish investment in the proceedings. Otherwise, while not incredibly imaginative or too far outside the norm, Katabasis is a beast, a fully negative affirmation of its genre and just one of those black metal records which reminds you why you shunned society and started listening to the style in the first place. Fans of anything from Mayhem to Ondskapt to Shining to the members' other offerings would be wise to spend some time with this ghoulish drinking partner. Spite given musical flesh. Absinthe helpful but not required. -autothrall http://www.fromthedustreturned.com

Just like countless progressive psytrance compilations using term 'Goa' for the music that got nothing with Goa trance in the end.

Dude just want to come to live in Europe, give him a break.

So, it's basiclly a dj mix...without any edits/remixes?

Templar looks very classy, nice one

OUT NOW! FREE DOWNLOAD HERE: http://www.ektoplazm.com/free-music/dragon-twins-only-for-the-wicked Enjoy! I'm super happy to announce our next release, a 5-track EP by Belgian project DRAGON TWINS at Neogoa. This is first from the upcoming series of releases at Neogoa and Ae Records in old-school influenced Goa trance style with experimental and acidic flavour. You can stream full track at Soundcloud until 'ONLY FOR THE WICKED' comes out on Ektoplazm for free download, as usual. Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/neogoa/dragontwins 1: (entwined) (118 BPM) 2: Only For The Wicked (147 BPM) 3: Daimon - Codex (Dragon Twins Remix) (147 BPM) Original track by Daimon (VA - Temple of Chaos @ Suntrip Records) 4: Time Has A Mouth (146 BPM) 5: Inner Caveman Dub (88 BPM) All tracks w&p by Mathias Pico (Antwerp, Belgium) (https://soundcloud.com/djunasaurus) Dragons' artwork by Arne Wastyn / Ramskop (www.facebook.com/ramskp) Mastering by Stryder at Beavernest Atop Studios (Belgium) (http://www.facebook.com/stryderq) Artwork design by Richpa at Neogoa Design (http://www.facebook.com/neogoadesign)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2397535/?ref_=nv_sr_1 One of the best movies this year. It'is like mixture of Looper/Inception and Memento. Highly recommended!

You have to be one really persistent, hard-core troll to become one with Nhjo.

Isn't Psynina actually a dude?

Check your PM

You got almost 600 plays in single day Nhjo, that's very impressive, just like this remake!

Really great release!

Renato, if you retire I will start to wear Imba leggings.

Ephedra - Creation of The Moon BlackStarrFinale - Bonetti Defense Regarding YouTube videos issue, click here.

It seems YouTube videos aren't displaying (at least on my side). I'm using Firefox and Chrome.

Maybe he made it available for remixing. But I agree with you, some of his other works are much better than this one.

Link.

Ummm that's really interesting, since he's promoting hi-tech music for a long time and it honestly doesn't have anything with Goa trance. Goa?

It will be released on a new Goa Madness Rec compilation