There?s little doubt everything about San Francisco freak rockers SubArachnoid Space?s ninth full-length, Eight Bells (Crucial Blast) is meant to provoke a reaction. The Stephen Kasner cover art is at once horrific and beautiful — we see a severed arm but also several other phantom limbs from the figure in Venus-like repose and the image is undoubtedly bleak in nature but still somehow triumphant — and the music that spreads across the five tracks that comprise the album follow a similar course of leading listeners in with engulfing sounds before repelling them again with complex changes and other sonic experiments.

It?s a battle of accessibility, and maybe that?s the intent all along. If so, then it?s most fully realized on the second of the five pieces, ?Akathesia.? The title a reference to the inner restlessness keeping one from standing still, this is almost certainly evoked in the music, which follows a gradually building structure across its 13-plus minutes to an insistent and pulsating start-stop conclusion that is not only the most aggressive moment on Eight Bells, but also the most satisfying. It does what closing duo ?Haruspex? and ?Bird Signs? try to do all on its own.

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Trafficking in pure audio oppression, French post-doom outfit Overmars are the heavy?s heavy. Their second full-length, Born Again, follows a path of bleak sludge, painting an atmosphere of horror and violence and inner turmoil with multiple vocals, male and female, screamed and clean, and a sonic reach that goes well beyond the usual smartypants would-be artistry. Into somewhere that hurts.

Born Again, manifesting aurally all the pains of the process as it happens the first time in its natural state, was originally released in 2007 by Appease Me Records, the label founded by avant black metallers Blut Aus Nord. There isn?t much sound-wise to link the two bands, but Overmars? capacity for unnervingly doomed ambience is clear from the outset, and as the different movements of the album?s lone, 39-minute track come and go, the crush they provide is obviously hewn from a variety of styles, from industrial to death to post-metal and so on. They mostly play slow, though, so for lack of a better word, we?ll call it ?doom.?

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Set your calendars for the heart of the sun, because blissful Oregonian psych trippers SubArachnoid Space (MySpace here) have a new album due out Sept. 22 on Crucial Blast. Here’s the news from the ol’ PR wire:

SubArachnoid Space shall return with Eight Bells on September 22, 2009, via Crucial Blast. The band’s first new release since 2005′s The Red Veil,? Eight Bells is the newest chapter in their continually evolving vision of music as ecstatic ritual. The recording features a new lineup of Daniel Barone, Melynda Jackson, Lauren K. Newman and Daniel Osborne and was produced by Steven Wray Lobdell who also performs on the album. Eight Bells continues in a similar heavy lysergic vein as their last couple of post-Relapse albums, fusing wicked metallic crunch with celebratory sky-streaking guitar freak-outs and some of the band’s most narcotized jamming yet. The album features five songs and bears stunning new artwork from Stephen Kasner.

A full US tour is currently being locked down and will be announced shortly!