cassette craze chronicles X (feat. ABSTRACTER, FUOCO FATUO, VESSEL OF INIQUITY and ZAQQOEM)

Oh no, hide your eardrums! This had to happen at some point. It's that new installment of the cassette craze chronicles we all dreaded: Sonic warfare! It's a Sentient Ruin Laboratories special!

ABSTRACTER - Abominion (2021)

When radioactive mutant zombie rats fight over the remains of our post-apocalyptic wasteland, they better not lay into my tape collection, because Abstracter's "Abominion" will fucking devour them from the inside! This monstrous bastard of Triptykon, Godflesh, blackest death and destructive dissonance might survive when everything else is gone, just to laugh and growl "Told you so!" over the rotting remains of civilization and life on this poisoned planet. Fuck yeah, this shit is so enormously cataclysmic! I love it.
And damn, what a packaging of the cassette, with the long j-card, slipcase and even an obi strip! That's how you do it!
AND IF YOU WANT TO READ SOMETHING A LITTLE MORE TANGIBLE ABOUT THE MUSICAL CONTENT, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CHECK OUT MY REVIEW OF THE ALBUM ON VEIL OF SOUND!  

FUOCO FATUO - Backwater (2017/2021)

FUOCO FATUO - Obsidian Katabasis (2021)

Bell Witch, Loss... There's no doubt that Profound Lore Records know their funeral doom. And Sentient Ruin prove their formidable taste by re-releasing these two albums of the abysmal Italian funeral doomers Fuoco Fatuo as a box set. This band truly really plays to the trademarks of both labels. While being mostly slow and majestically mournful they also know how to wreak horrifying havoc, conjuring a permanent sense of existential dread and being swallowed by an inescapable nightmare.

Both albums for sure are masterpieces of the genre. "Backwater" with its four longtracks is more straightforward in its approach and deserves your attention for the closer "Nemesis" alone.

Their recent work "Obsidian Katabasis" pairs only three longtracks with shorter interludes, experiments a lot more with sound and songwriting ideas and thus gets more abstract and difficult to get into. But once you are over a certain threshold, you can only bow down in awe before this towering portent of decay, this frightening colossus of blackened doom. If you want your metal to make you feel small like a toddler with a cup of water fighting the lava stream of a volcanic eruption - this is for you. It most definitely is for me. Artistically on a level close to 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker), yet also just one of the most crushing and humbling metal experiences of 2021, Fuoco Fatuo's "Obsidian Katabasis" leaves nothing to be desired. And a song title like "Thresholds Of Nonexistence Through Eerie Aeon" rivals Mournful Congregation in its cosmic funeralism.

VESSEL OF INIQUITY - The Doorway (2021)

As a reviewer it's inevitable to face one problem after a couple of Sentient Ruin releases: How many words are there for total nihilistic annihilation and obliberation? In truth most of these artist actually sound very different, with a wide range of individual concepts and unique strengths. But how can you possibly do that justice, especially when the label's own hype texts always take the most poignant descriptions out of your mouth before you even had a chance to make up your own sonically tortured mind?
Yes, again: This album is a world-ending harbinger of humanity's downfall.
On his split EP with Thecondontion A. White, the man behind this avant-garde black metal project, already extinguished the dinosaurs. Now it's our turn! Correspondingly Vessel Of Iniquity pushes industrial influences to the forefront. The blastbeats fire like machineguns over a battlefield of chaotic multi-instrumental cacophony, infernal riffs, horror sounds and weaponized white noise. And when the Vessel hits the breaks it won't give you any chance to breathe, as it fills your lungs with the filthiest black sludge of doom. Magnificient!

ZAQQOEM - Anarchic Rapture Of Withering (2021)

Ok, now it's getting almost ridiculous! And I'm not talking about the short twelve minutes running time of this EP. Quite on the contrary that span is more than enough for Zaqqoem to get their... uhm... point across.
That point being that yes, there can always be even more bedlam! No, there's no natural limit to musical abrasiveness! Yes, this is happening! No, your ears and stereo are ok! Or at least they were until now.
What a joyfully sadistic, disharmonic mangler is this Dutch blackened death metal beast! If this doesn't suck your mind into the void through a straw - congratulations! You're obviously evil beyond salvation. Welcome to the Sentient Ruin family!

cassette craze chronicles VII (feat. CHARLIE BUTLER, PRIMITIVE MAN, THECODONTION and VESSEL OF INIQUITY)

 

In the mood for some crystal clear dream pop? Then this bunch of recent tape arrivals in my collection is probably something you should check out later.

PRIMITIVE MAN - Caustic (2017/2020)

I've tried to get into Primitive Man before, but somehow it didn't work. Maybe it was the other album not being for me, maybe they were just too much or I was just too weak. Maybe I first had to train myself with bands like Cryptae, who knows. Whatever, bygones! I'm fully converted now and can uhm... enjoy? the Tartarus Records tape edition of their 2017 masterpiece "Caustic" with all of my senses. Or better with the little rest of senses this superlative of aural punishment hasn't pulverized yet.

Primitive Man shout directly into your ear to berate you for the downfall of Earth and humanity, which is your fucking fault, while they smash your jaw on the border stone - and they do it perseveringly and in slow motion to make sure that you don't miss one nanosecond of that sweet torturous murderous pain.
Everything about this apocalyptic meteor of sludge is set to cause complete annihilation. And seldom has the shattering of all your bones at once felt so good.

CHARLIE BUTLER - Collapsing Sphere (2021)

Appearently Primitive Man have accidentally left all their gear running after their last rehearsal. And now all that crusty crunchy distortion is droning through endless loops. Feedbacks and overtones are seperating themselves from the rumbling mass, levitating. Somehow this almost sounds beautiful now.

Of course this is not Primitive Man's instruments' random transition to independence, but the deliberate work of Charlie Butler. "Collapsing Spheres" is a rather short, but all the more enthralling collection of minimalistic drone waves. Especially the two B-side tracks "Diverted Bridleway" and "Pull Down The Drawbridge" flood the room with dark Sunn O)))shine. Fanciers immediately realize that this music is ninety percent about sound. And the sound is just right.

As a low-fi film photographer myself I also dig the cover artwork of the tape, which is shot very much in the style of a lot of my shit. So that's cool too, right?

THECODONTION / VESSEL OF INIQUITY - The Permian-Triassic Extinction Event (2021)

The Italian dinosaur kids are back! All of us who have been a little boy at some point know this phase, right? Where you love dinosaurs so much that you learn all their names and every information your little children's book provides and proudly recite all your knowledge to everyone? Yeah, got you!
Thecodontion never left that phase and have made a concept out of telling us all their Wikipedia knowledge about selected dinosaur species - over a gnarly bass-guitar-only black metal soundtrack!
This weird link between earliest Sodom and modern avant-garde black metal with the lead tone of funeral doomers Bell Witch already worked extremely well on their full-length debut "Supercontinent" and continues to do so on the two tracks on this tape, where they introduce us to "Thecodontosaurus antiquus" and "Procompsognathus triassicus".

This split EP however is dedicated to the event which killed almost all species on Earth approximately 251 million years ago. And the B-side shows us exactly how that destruction sounded with the eleven minute track "The Great Dying" by Vessel Of Iniquity. The one-man project heaps up all kinds of black metal, orchestral sounds and noises in such an exorbitant amount, that it ultimately seems to be more white noise than music. Which is exactly the point and makes this low-fi blastfest a very convincing representation of its idea.
And since we are living right in the middle of the greatest extinction event since the fall of the evolutionary much more successful and long-lasting giants, we'll rather sooner than later will have to accept that this right here is also the jam of our doom.