Congratulations to Portland, Oregon, weirdo duo Wizard Rifle on their signing to Seventh Rule Recordings for the release of their upcoming album. Witch Mountain drummer Nathan Carson sent me an email a while back telling me I should check them out, and I did, and they ruled, so good for Sam Ford and Max Dameron, being the latest in the seemingly continuous streak of worthy bands out of the Pacific Northwest. Kudos.

Here’s the news off the PR wire:

Seventh Rule, home of such forward-thinking amplifier destroyers as Indian, Kongh, Sweet Cobra, Atriarch, and Batillus, is pleased to announce the signing of Portland‘s most wonderfully weird two-piece, Wizard Rifle. The label will be releasing the young band’s debut record, Speak Loud Say Nothing, on CD/digitally on March 13, 2012, with a special edition vinyl version to follow.

In the meantime, Wizard Rifle have posted the first song from their upcoming album, “Tears Won’t Soften Steel,” on their Bandcamp page, as well as ordering info for a brand-new T-shirt (designed by drummer/vocalist and visionary artist Sam Ford). Head on over and prepare to have your mind blown to bits: http://wizardrifle.bandcamp.com/

The two-man wrecking crew known collectively as Wizard Rifle first came together in the autumn of 2009. Based in Portland, OR, and drawing influences from Black Sabbath, Lightning Bolt, High on Fire, Karp, Sleep, Sonic Youth, Nomeansno, The Stooges, and Danava, Wizard Rifle are as difficult to describe as they are to ignore. Eclectic, innovative, and all-around out there, their sound is a constantly-evolving, always-adapting entity that changes with their moods. Frantic, chaotic, noise rock tempered with dredges of doom, swinging rock’n’roll, grimy grunge, and a heady dose of AmRep skronk — that‘s what Wizard Rifle are made of! The band is comprised of drummer Sam Ford and guitarist Max Dameron, who share vocal duties and down right mesmerize in a live setting.

The interplay between the two is fluid, jarring, mechanical and organic – a jumble of impressions, and a captivating spectacle. Wizard Rifle have done their best to spread their tapestry of noise across the entire continent, completing a full US/Canada tour with Norwegian noiseniks Arabrot alongside festival appearances at SXSW, Fall into Darkness, and PDX Pop Now and gigs supporting the likes of Lightning Bolt, Valient Thorr, Black Cobra, YOB, Agalloch, Witch Mountain, Chinese Stars, Thrones, Atriarch, Rabbits, and more. Be sure to catch them when they come crashing through your burgh, and look out for the release of their debut LP from Seventh Rule!

…Sort of. They’re not exactly sharing a van — or, if they are, it has escape pods out the sides or something (which would rule). What seems to be the case for this run of shows is that The Atlas Moth have two-weeks booked across the US and Kowloon Walled City and Batillus are meeting up with them along the way. It’s a killer package if you have to live somewhere where you can catch all three, but even if not, any of the above makes for some pretty solid destruction.

This came in on the PR wire:

The Atlas Moth have released the album of their careers with An Ache for the Distance, their Profound Lore debut, and Batillus kicked off the year in rare form with their visceral effort Furnace. These bands are undoubtedly some of the most ferocious in today’s metal scene and now they have joined forces for a tour that is sure to leave your city devastated this fall. Joined by Kowloon Walled City, the trek will be one of the most impressive live attacks of the year and you will not want to miss the epic performances of this trio.

The Atlas Moth, Batillus & Kowloon Walled City:
11/09 Minneapolis, MN 7th Street Entry NO KWC
11/10 Fargo, ND The New Direction NO KWC
11/12 Portland, OR East End No Batillus
11/13 Seattle, WA Highline No Batillus
11/14 Boise, ID The Shredder No Batillus
11/15 Las Vegas, NV Yayo Tacos No Batillus
11/16 Phoenix, AZ Yucca Tap Room No Batillus
11/17 Capistrano Beach, CA Coconuts 
11/18 Los Angeles, CA Bow & Sparrow 
11/19 San Francisco, CA Hemlock Tavern No Batillus
11/20 Salt Lake City, UT Burt’s Tiki Lounge NO KWC
11/21 Denver, CO Moe’s NO KWC
11/22 Kansas City, MO Riot Room NO KWC
11/23 Chicago, IL Subterranean NO KWC

Batillus Off Dates:
10/26 Brooklyn, NY Acheron w/ Inter Arma, Belus
11/07 Indianapolis, IN The Vollrath w/ Late August, Chinaski
11/08 Madison, WI Wisco
11/12 Seattle, WA Highline w/ Natür
11/13 Portland, OR The Know w/ Diesto, Natür
11/15 Eugene, OR or Chico, CA TBA
11/16 San Francisco, CA Elbo Room w/ Prizehog
11/19 Las Vegas, NV Yayo Taco

Oppressive in its atmosphere and crafted with an unrelenting darkness of aesthetic, Forever the End, the Seventh Rule Recordings debut from Portland, Oregon’s Atriarch is an intelligent masterwork that harkens to a very particular sense of drama. In listening to the record, it’s hard to believe the album is only 36 minutes long, because when you’re in it, the sound is so open, so sparse, and the spaces the guitar, bass, drums and vocals occupy so overwhelming, that it seems hard for a band to affect such a mood in so short a time. It’s a grieving, sorrowful atmosphere, playing modern doom tonality off depressive ‘90s-style guitar weeping that’s more Gothic than “gothic,” but owes something to drunken teenage late nights spent hanging out in cemeteries nonetheless. The four mostly-extended tracks of Forever the End keep to linear structures, and the result is they flow together almost as one larger piece. That they’re wrapped around a central and pervasive sonic misanthropy only enhances this feel, and through all of “Plague,” “Shadows,” “Fracture” and “Downfall,” Atriarch balance doomed heaviness with black metal’s cultish sensibility, vocalist Lenny resting far back in the mix for vicious cavern screams or cutting through with a sort of monotonic clean singing.

“Plague,” the tone-setting opener from which no light can escape, does bleed right into “Shadows,” with Brooks’ guitar emitting patient, cyclical patterns that set the stage for Maxamillion’s drums, which have the solemn duty of holding together material that’s both intricate and slow. The production on the whole of Forever the End is raw – the guitar sounds raw, Nick’s bass, though about the only show of warmth Atriarch have on offer, is raw, the vocals are raw – but the drums sound crisp and clear nonetheless. Maxamillion’s snare seems far back as “Shadows” moves into its lumbering heavier section after three minutes in, but the bass drum and toms come across well, and as the song once again shifts to a quieter movement to set up a solo section from Brooks, the hi-hat is bright, but not at all lacking in presence. That helps as the cacophony builds to the track’s apex – some rare double-kick and killer fills there amid Nick’s bass leading the groove – but it’s still the guitar that leaves the most lasting impression as it and some sampled throat singing close out. Atriarch don’t feel too concerned with “the ending” as an essential piece of the structure of their songs (this too helps the “take it as a whole” vibe of Forever the End), but “Shadows” satisfies on that level nonetheless, and as “Fracture” seems to start with a minimalist sparing of guitar and bass, most striking of all about it is the gradualness, the patience with which Atriarch execute the slow march to dominating heaviness.

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Big on atmosphere, big on time and big on tone, the first album from Brooklyn doomers Batillus is a bleak, oppressive six-song outing that’s bound to ring their name out among the underground converted. Doom heads, be aware. The band, which formed as an instrumental trio and later added be-dreadlocked vocalist Fade Kainer (Inswarm, Jarboe, occasionally Man’s Gin), have unleashed a monster in Furnace, their Seventh Rule Recordings debut. With one guitar, one bass, one set of drums, one vocalist and a host of effects and synths, they set up posts along a range of heavy-footed doomscapes — which, contrary to the album’s title, actually sound quite cold — managing to incorporate some of post-metal’s progressive ideology while almost completely avoiding the now-clichéd traps of that genre. Fans of Suma, Unearthly Trance, Ufomammut and other drone-conscious neo-doomers will want to take note of the four-piece’s methodology, impressive and punishing in equal measure as it is.

Guitarist Greg Peterson establishes dominance almost immediately with the beginnings of opener “…And the World is as Night to Them,” while Kainer’s tortured vocals – far off, screamed, caked in reverb – slowly unfurl a sort of wretched lyrical poetry. Drummer Geoff Summers and bassist Will Stabenau keep the song grounded through an ambient section, the latter especially and rightly present in the mix throughout most of Furnace. When the song breaks to Summers alone keeping the slow beat, you know it won’t be long before the rest of the band kicks back in, but it’s no less satisfying when they do so, and though “…And the World is as Night to Them” is among the lengthier tracks at 8:53 (only the closer is longer), it nonetheless manages to set the darkened, depressed tone of Furnace well, moving into and out of its heaviest moments with graceful transitions and brutal sonics. “Deadweight,” which follows, begins with synth and the bassline from Stabenau, moving quickly into one of Furnace’s most memorable riffs. At no point is the album really accessible in the sense of being an easy listen or wanting to make friends, but the somewhat quicker pacing of “Deadweight” and the groove Batillus elicit are undeniable.

Another drop out, this time to just Peterson’s guitar and Summers’ drums, is a high point of the record, and Kainer’s repetition of the line “Fall on your knees/Crushed by your soul/Poisoned your mind/That serves you no more” (and variants thereupon) is as close as Furnace gets to a genuine chorus. Of all the songs to stick in the mind after a few preliminary listens to the album, “Deadweight” is the most likely. Batillus follow it with the faster, shorter “Uncreator,” which finds Summers touching on some d-beat drumming in the black-metal-styled intro and Peterson making the most of his inhuman tone as the tempo scales back. That tone is again what allows the feedback-soaked hugeness of “The Division” to carry over at any volume. Kainer’s synth noises are most present here, and there’s plenty of room for them amidst the spaces between riff cycles and general languid movement of the song. Blah blah blah oceans, blah blah blah place tectonics – point is, the thing sounds fucking massive, and though Stabenau’s contribution isn’t to be discounted, for a large part of the affair, it’s Peterson carrying that across.

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If you’re in a good mood this Friday afternoon, Portland, Oregon, happiness-bashers Atriarch would like to bring you down a peg or two. The depressively ambient foursome (which features bassist Nick Phit, formerly of the much-missed Graves at Sea) have just announced signing to Seventh Rule Recordings for the release of their debut, Forever the End. You can hear the very, very sad “Shadows” on the player below.

The PR wire speaks to you — do you listen?

Hailing from Portland, OR, vocalist Lenny Smith describes Atriarch as “a living entity comprised of four parts, offering catharsis through sonic ritual where there is no god, there is no devil; there is an all encompassing force that connects all living things.”

Comprised of members from Graves at Sea, Trees, Final Conflict, and Get Hustle, Seventh Rule will release Forever the End, the first full-length by Atriarch, in the coming summer months. Forever the End was tracked in Portland with the help of William Holloway then mixed and mastered by Greg Wilkinson (Ludicra, Asunder, Saviours) at Earhammer Studios in Oakland, CA.

Atriarch‘s current tour dates are as follows:
03/23 Medford, OR Johnny B’s
03/24 San Francisco, CA El Rio w/ Dispirit, Alaric
03/25 Oakland, CA First Church of the Buzzard w/ Embers, Headless Lizzy HIP, Vastum
03/26 San Jose, CA Born Dead House
03/27 Eureka, CA Facement
04/02 Seattle, WA Highline
04/08 Portland, OR Blackwater

They’re the second band I know of to source their moniker from King Ludwig II of Bavaria — the other is the Canadian Madking Ludwig — but The Swan King are going for something entirely different musically than the progressive stonerisms the Montreal outfit emit. On Eyes Like Knives, the Chicago trio’s short Seventh Rule Recordings debut LP, they blend post-hardcore with a kind of brash heaviness, the punkish vocals of guitarist Dallas Thomas serving as the consistent line drawn across eight otherwise deceptively varied tracks. Eyes Like Knives is over in a meager 27 minutes, but feels complete in a musical sense, seems to be a full expression of an idea, rather than something that’s just trying to get the word out. So we’ll call it an album. Honestly, had The Swan King gone all out for another 20 or 25 minutes, Eyes Like Knives probably would have come out really redundant, but the energy they bring to these songs and the crispness with which they’re presented comes across on the record without sounding repetitive.

As noted above, they’re from Chicago, so of course the album was produced by – wait for it – Sanford Parker, who does the job one would expect him to do when it comes to capturing the angular peculiarities of the material on Eyes Like Knives, balancing the jagged riffs that drive the songs without losing track of bassist Jamie Drier’s contributions to the low end or drummer Zafar Musharraf’s placement at the fore. The album is structured into sides for the eight tracks following a five-second “Test Tone” intro. A two-minute song leads to two three-minute songs, then a four-minute song, and the cycle is repeated on the second half of the album. I don’t know if that’s something the trio did on purpose, or if it’s emblematic of their songwriting process or what, but it’s interesting anyway. As to the songs themselves, opening tracks like “Good Deeds” and “Cloaked into the Façade” are chunky and heavy-landing, modern and brash, reminiscent in some ways of earlier Sweet Cobra, but not as outwardly abrasive. “Peace Love Murder” proves a highlight for the subtle inclusion of melody in Thomas’ playing, the punkish side taking a back seat to something more substantial tonally but still upbeat and vibrant.

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Oppressive Brooklyn doomers Batillus have set an April 19 release date for their Seventh Rule Recordings debut, Furnace. The destructive, tortured six-track full-length is massive by nearly any standard you want to use to measure, and though I’ll have a full review in the coming weeks, the label was kind enough to allow me permission to premiere album opener “…And the World is as Night to Them” and and blistering third cut “Uncreator” now.

You can stream the two new songs using the player below:

Fucking heavy.

Tonight in Philadelphia, Batillus kick off a tour with fellow Brooklynites Hull that will take them south to SXSW — where they’ll play with the likes of Dark Castle and Grayceon — and back. Here are the dates:

Batillus / Hull 2011 Spring Tour
03/11 Philadelphia, PA Kung Fu Necktie w/ Ominous Black
03/12 Richmond, VA Strange Matter w/ U.S. Christmas, Balaclava
03/13 Johnson City, TN Hideaway w/ U.S. Christmas
03/14 Little Rock, AR Downtown Music w/ The Body
03/18 SXSW Austin, TX Triple Crown Tattoo w/ Pack of Wolves, Mutilation Rites
03/19 SXSW Austin, TX Lovejoy’s Brooklyn Vegan/Profound Lore Showcase w/ Tombs, Dark Castle, The Body, Castevet, Deafheaven, Grayceon, Wolvhammer, Altaar*
03/19 SXSW Austin, TX Shiner Bar w/ Pack of Wolves
03/21 New Orleans, LA Siberia w/ The Body, Mutilation Rites
03/22 Nashville, TN Little Hamilton Collective w/ Mose Giganticus, Sacaea
03/23 Chapel Hill, NC Reservoir Bar w/ Caltrop
03/24 Baltimore, MD Sidebar w/ Caltrop, Billows
03/25 Montclair, NJ The Meatlocker w/ Caltrop
03/26 New York, NY The Studio at Webster Hall w/ Caltrop
* no Hull

Next Friday, Batillus kicks off a tour with fellow Brooklynites Hull that takes both bands down to SXSW in Austin, Texas. These dates were announced before, but there were a couple changes, so if you were planning to head out to one of the shows (and well you should), make sure you take note.

The PR wire’s gory details follow:

New York doom quartet Batillus and Seventh Rule have announced the first tour in support of the upcoming release of Furnace, the band’s debut full-length effort. In March, Batillus will tour alongside Brooklyn‘s Hull to Austin, Texas for SXSW and back.

Batillus / Hull 2011 Spring Tour
03/11 Philadelphia, PA Kung Fu Necktie w/ Ominous Black
03/12 Richmond, VA Strange Matter w/ U.S. Christmas, Balaclava
03/13 Johnson City, TN Hideaway w/ U.S. Christmas
03/14 Little Rock, AR Downtown Music w/ The Body
03/18 SXSW Austin, TX Triple Crown Tattoo w/ Pack of Wolves, Mutilation Rites
03/19 SXSW Austin, TX Lovejoy’s Brooklyn Vegan/Profound Lore Showcase w/ Tombs, Dark Castle, The Body, Castevet, Deafheaven, Grayceon, Wolvehammer, Altaar*
03/19 SXSW Austin, TX Shiner Bar w/ Pack of Wolves
03/21 New Orleans, LA Siberia w/ The Body, Mutilation Rites
03/22 Nashville, TN Little Hamilton Collective w/ Mose Giganticus, Sacaea
03/23 Chapel Hill, NC Reservoir Bar w/ Caltrop
03/24 Baltimore, MD Sidebar w/ Caltrop, Billows
03/25 Montclair, NJ The Meatlocker w/ Caltrop
03/26 New York, NY The Studio at Webster Hall w/ Caltrop
* no Hull

Brooklyn heavy-hitters Batillus are set to issue their debut full-length, Furnace, on Seventh Rule Recordings on April 19. Seventh Rule has also opened up a webstore through Bandcamp where, awesomely, you can name your own price for downloads of their releases. Check that out here, and dig the Batillus news from the PR wire:

New York doom quartet Batillus and Seventh Rule Recordings have finalized details for the release of band’s debut full-length record, Furnace. The album, which was recorded at Semaphore Recording with engineer Sanford Parker (YOB, Unearthly Trance, Nachtmystium, Pelican) and mastered by Collin Jordan (Ministry, Ohgr / Skinny Puppy) at the Boiler Room, will be released on April 19 in North America, with the LP version available for Record Store Day.

Furnace will however, be available as a special tour-pressing LP from the band directly at shows prior to its official release. This tour pressing will feature art silk-screened by hand and will be limited to only 55 copies.

Furnace tracklisting:
1. …And the World is as Night to Them
2. Deadweight
3. Uncreator
4. The Division
5. What Heart
6. Mautaam

Congratulations are in order for Brooklyn doom bashers Batillus, whom it was announced this week have signed with the ultra-awesome Chicago imprint, Seventh Rule Recordings. Good for them. I’ll always be able to tell people I was at their first show. Or maybe it was their second. Or maybe I’m thinking of another band entirely. In any case, way to go, dudes. Best of luck.

I’ll be seeing those guys, along with Man’s Gin, Moth Eater, Evoken and some band nobody’s ever heard of, at the Bowery Electric on Sunday. It’s an early show, and I’ll be getting there even earlier, so if you’re free, in New York and want to check it out, the flier is below.

Hope you all had a great week. This is probably the first weekend in the last six that I’m not going to spend the entire thing doing homework. Long story that involves a jumbled schedule and it’s actually the reason the last five days were so hellishly short on posts (three per day? What is this crap?), but at least I don’t have to spend tomorrow and Sunday trying to get caught up. Off the hook. I plan to sleep late tomorrow.

But until then, I hope the Batillus clip helps you kick off your weekend right if you haven’t already. Stick around for next week, when one way or another, we’re going to discuss the new Electric Wizard, and I’ll be posting an interviews with Spiritual Beggars, High Watt Electrocutions, and if I have time, The Roller. That’s right, we’re going deluxe. And so help me Robot Jesus, I’m going to change the header. You won’t want to miss that.

Stay safe the next couple days, and we’ll see you back here on Monday. Here’s that flier for the Sunday show. Some band nobody’s ever heard of is on before Moth Eater. They got the shaft as far as having their logo included goes.

Heavy without being oppressive and familiar without being redundant, Portland, Oregon, post-sludgers Diesto’s second album, High as the Sun (first for Seventh Rule Recordings) is an hour of righteously brutal ambience made flesh with crunching riffs, post-metal rhythmic churn, hypnotically chanted vocals and drone just where it’s needed most. The four-piece seem modern in their influence, but as much as one could point to YOB, Kylesa and more recent A Storm of Light for comparisons, elements of Unsane, Earth, Oceanic-era Isis, Neurosis and Sleep are also audible, and the range of vocal presentation from guitarists Chris Dunn and Mark Basset helps bring to the fore the fierce dynamics on which High as the Sun is built.

Recorded by Adam Pike in the band’s hometown and mixed by Alex Newport on the other side of the country in Brooklyn, New York, High as the Sun offers glimpses of surprisingly adept melodicism. Not so much in the vocals, which despite being mostly clean are still chiefly rhythmic in their nature — Dunn and/or Basset aren’t crooning by any stretch, but they do well with what they do à la Phillip Cope — but in the guitars, and, as in the later section of opener “Beyond the Graves,” Captain John’s bass. It’s clear Diesto were reaching with this album, challenging themselves creatively. I hear hardcore or post-hardcore roots in their playing, though that could just be the Isis influence shining through. Nonetheless, although digging into High as the Sun will probably not be a challenge to sludge-heads or post-metallers checking it out — it’s worth noting I don’t completely consider Diesto post-metal, despite their focus on atmosphere — the record still has plenty of intricacies that justify the time.

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Listening back to it now, I think what I enjoy most about Swedish atmospheric doomers Kongh‘s second album, Shadows of the Shapeless (review here) is the potential it shows. The album, released last year in Europe on Trust No One and given American issue via Seventh Rule Recordings at the beginning of April, isn’t an outrageous standout from the scores of post-metal that has come up in the last half-decade or so, but the trio of David Johansson (guitar/vocals), Oscar Ryden (bass) and Tomas Salonen (drums) are able to infuse the recording with individualistic glimpses of creativity to come, and on that level, it’s a very positive record.

That, however, is about the only level on which it is positive. Sonically, it oppresses, seems to hold you down at the shoulders. Even in its most atmospheric moments, it crushes with abandon and is the kind of heavy that brings to mind images of giant unmanned machinations in some factory building a Babel tower to rip open the heavens. Massive, in other words. Fucking massive.

After much delay on my part (most but not all of it completely my fault), I finally got my crap together enough to fire off some questions to Johansson for an email interview. Of course, what I wanted chiefly to ask him was, “Your album sounds big,” but that’s neither a question nor a basis for discovering anything about Kongh‘s processes, so I did my best to avoid it and only failed a little bit.

Following the jump, the guitarist/vocalist fields queries about writing, recording, Shadows of the Shapeless‘ suitably bleak artwork, how the band came to play the Kuma’s Fest in Chicago and subsequently got hooked up with Seventh Rule, and whether or not more US touring is in the cards. Please enjoy.

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Why, it feels like less than a month ago, I was putting up a review of Swedish post-doomers Kongh‘s second album, Shadows of the Shapeless. Oh wait, that was less than a month ago. Well, in the time since, Kongh have hit the big time and premiered a track via our friends over at BrooklynVegan.com. The song is called “Voice of the Below,” and because BV‘s a little less tightassed with their hosting than some of their more corporatized fellow outlets, here it is, followed by some PR wire info:

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Appearing on the Swedes’ second album, Shadows of the Shapeless, “Voice of the Below” shows off the band’s intense brand of progressive doom metal. Kongh’s sound covers vast musical ground — from forward-charging sludge metal to icy doom to ambient rock — yet it is delivered seamlessly and with unstoppable momentum.

Shadows of the Shapeless sees its first official US release on March 30 via Seventh Rule Recordings. Shadows of the Shapeless was originally released in Europe by Trust No One Recordings (Isis, Khanate, Cult of Luna) in 2009.

Echoes of YOB’s The Unreal Never Lived pop up on Swedish trio Kongh’s sophomore full-length, whether it’s the driving rhythm that built tension “Quantum Mystic” transposed onto opener “Unholy Water” or the malevolent triplet riffing of “The Mental Tyrant” in the closing title track. By keeping their sound generally darker, though, and adding elements vocally and otherwise out of black metal, Kongh make it through the five tracks of Shadows of the Shapeless without sounding overly redundant or derivative.

Issued first in Europe by Trust No One, Shadows of the Shapeless finds distribution Stateside via Chicago imprint Seventh Rule Recordings. No strangers to the town, Kongh played the 2008 Kuma’s Doom Fest, which marked their first US appearance. Whether the narrative actually goes that that’s where and when they came to the attention of Seventh Rule (one imagines it was actually before), it’s impressive they’d wind up on the label nonetheless, Seventh Rule in the past having issued albums from Akimbo, Sweet Cobra, Indian and Wetnurse.

The music on Shadows of the Shapeless is bound to inspire all manner of antler-laden hyperbole and metaphor, but what it rounds out to is post-metal crunch with darker and heavier shades that set it apart from the pseudo-cerebral approach that so much of the genre has taken on these last few years. To call it progressive wouldn’t be a mistake, but guitarist/vocalist David Johansson successfully averts the Isis trap and crafts a more natural-feeling soundscape. As the press release suggests, the music is cinematic, but sitting and parsing through its ups and downs, blasts and lulls, feels like a waste of time as compared to experiencing the whole of each of these songs.

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New school extreme death/doomers Lord Mantis are from Chicago, and I mean that as much as an analysis of their sound as I do a point of simple fact. The band features guitarist/vocalist Greg Gomer, drummer Bill Bumgardner of Indian, ex-Nachtmystium guitarist Andrew Markuszewski – who also performs as half the black metal duo Avichi; Lord Mantis vocalist/bassist Charlie Fell drums as the other half – and, of course, Sanford Parker produced their first album, Spawning the Nephilim. They couldn’t be more Chicago if they had Polish sausages lodged in the lining of their blackened hearts.

If you were to leave Lair of the Minotaur in the depths of whatever cavern Khanate existed in, they might come out sounding like Lord Mantis, whose appropriation of Morbid Angel-type mythological references (I can just hear David Vincent talking about spawning some nephilim), and a black metal-type logo, underscores the varied influences playing out in Spawning the Nephilim‘s seven tracks. Look hard at the title cut and you’ll even find a little of the Neurosis-style shouting which seems to pop up everywhere these days.

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