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| Sabbat “The Dwelling” CD Out Now |
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Sabbat “The Dwelling” CD
ANTI-GOTH 514 |  | | The 5th Sabbatical album and the final album released by Gezol’s Evil Records in 1996. The Dwelling is a massive 60 minute one track concept album about a witches sabbath. This album is by far the most ambitious recording by Sabbat and possibly by any band in the black metal genre. As with all previous Sabbat reissues on NWN, the layout and general aesthetics have been kept 100% authentic to Gezol’s original vision. | | Click here to order. |
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| StarGazer “Psychic Secretions” LP/CD/MC/Digital Coming Soon |
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StarGazer “Psychic Secretions” LP/CD/MC/Digital
ANTI-GOTH 539 | 
Psychic Secretions by StarGazer | (Description by J. Campbell)
After 25 years of activity, StarGazer has firmly established itself as one of the most enduring Black/Death bands in the Australian extreme metal scene. And although they have remained continuously productive during the last quarter-century, their output is sparse, owing to the band’s meticulous approach to writing and recording. Consequently, the release of every StarGazer album is a momentous event. Recorded during the early stages of the Great Reset, “Psychic Secretions” is just the fourth full-length album in the StarGazer catalog and comes six years after their last album, the brilliant “A Merging to the Boundless.” As guitarist and vocalist The Serpent Inquisitor explains, with every album, StarGazer tries “to produce something forward thinking without breaking our traditional sound too much, or treading on our own toes.” Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify a band with a more diverse, yet consistently impressive catalog. On this album, StarGazer embraces the more aggressive aspects of its sound, harkening back, in a sense, to the band’s earlier era. But instead of the raw, bestial attack that characterized its earliest work, “Psychic Secretions” is refined and chiseled to perfection. The so-called “progressive” or “avant garde” elements that the band has folded into its sound over the years are on full display, even as the overall intensity of the songs is amplified. With the exception of the poignant lament in the first half of the monumental album-closer, “Pilgram Age,” the album is primarily forceful and direct. The astonishing fretless bass work by The Great Righteous Destroyer is of particular significance. Undistorted and pushed to the forefront of the mix, it is a gilded filigree threaded through the songs. The album’s composition is characteristically confounding, featuring reckless temporal shifts, idiosyncratic melodies, and the unpredictable fusion of wildly disparate riffs, all to astounding effect. “Psychic Secretions” is arguably the most fully realized StarGazer album to date, a sublime synthesis of the band’s strengths. The performances are precise and tightly wound, yet the songs themselves evolve in serpentine dimensions, blurred and warped in a masterful display of some of the most spectacular songwriting in metal. The abstruse themes and compositional intricacy of StarGazer’s koanlike music are such that the album demands repeated, concentrated listens before it can be adequately deciphered, and even then, it remains mystifying and obscure. | | ETA: Feb. 2021 |
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| Vulpecula “Fons Immortalis” LP Coming Soon |
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Vulpecula “Fons Immortalis” LP
ANTI-GOTH 510 | 
Fons Immortalis by Vulpecula | (Description by J. Campbell)
Chuck Keller’s name should be familiar to anyone involved in extreme metal. A true veteran, for more than 30 years he has dedicated himself to the underground scene. His guitar playing and songwriting for Order From Chaos long ago established him as a pioneer, and, since 1997, Keller has been at the helm of Midwest deathrash stalwart Ares Kingdom. Less commonly spoken of, however, is Vulpecula, a project that occupies the liminal region between those two pillars of Keller’s career. Toward the end of Order From Chaos, Keller began exploring celestial themes with an eye toward fusing black metal with ambient, space-oriented sounds (see, for example, “Nucleosynthesis/De Stella Nova/An Ending in Fire”). After the dissolution of Order From Chaos, Keller reached out to drummer Chris Overton (Nepenthe/Legia) with an idea for a new project, and Vulpecula was born. Drawing the band name from a well-known constellation (the “little fox” which holds a goose in its jaws), the duo focused on creating an atmosphere that conjured the endless desolation of space. In 1995, Vulpecula released the “Phoenix of the Creation” demo on the Eternal Darkness label from Arizona (which had previously put out recordings by both Order From Chaos and Nepenthe), and the label re-released it as a 7” soon thereafter. Opening the three-song demo is the title track, an instrumental keyboard piece based on a piano composition Keller wrote several years earlier. On the tracks that followed, “The First Point of Aries” and “Seven Layers of Light,” Vulpecula played a completely unique style of black metal, perfectly evoking the ethereal transcendence of the astral domain. While there is no direct antecedent to the Vulpecula sound, the most prominent influences are demo-era Katatonia, Mortem (Nor), early Samael, and Bathory. (Anyone who is familiar with Keller and his work will know that all of his compositions bear, to some extent, the influence of his close friend Quorthon.) In June of 1996, Vulpecula entered the studio to record the monumental “Fons Immortalis” MLP. Originally released as a 10” by Merciless Records, “Fons Immortalis” is the undeniable zenith of the band’s concise catalog. Like the demo, the 10” opens with an instrumental track, “Astride the Darklands,” written by Overton, followed two new tracks, “Fons Immortalis” and “Down Among Them.” The second side of the MLP featured a remixed and partially re-recorded version of the demo. Few, if any bands, have proven capable of achieving such an evocative atmosphere as Vulpecula attained on the “Fons Immortalis” MLP. “It just sounded like darkness,” Keller explained. But this is not the sort of “darkness” associated with Satan or evil; rather, it is an opaque existential darkness derived from the limitless solitude and vast emptiness of the universe. “Darkness is a vehicle through which you come to know yourself,” Keller suggested before quickly qualifying his observation, “if you’re brave enough.” In 1998, Vulpecula recorded five more songs intended for a full-length called “Down Among Them,” but, feeling the experiment had reached its conclusion, Keller and Overton disbanded the next year, and the completed songs remained unreleased until 2006, when Invictus Productions released the “In Dusk Apparition” MCD. While working on new material, Keller wrote a song that piqued his interest did not feel quite right for Vulpecula. The song marked a change in direction for Keller, after which he began pursuing the style that would come to define Ares Kingdom, and the song later emerged as “Ashen Glory” on the band’s second album. Relegated to obscurity for too long, NWN! is honored to present this reissue of the” Fons Immortalis” and “Phoenix of the Creation” recordings, which have been unavailable for over 20 years. Additionally, in gathering the material for this release, Keller uncovered an unreleased alternate studio recording of “The First Point of Aries.” | | ETA: Winter 2020 |
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| Kraken Duumvirate “The Stars Below, The Seas Above” CD In Stock Now |
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| Released by Nordvis/Silent Future Recordings and officially distributed in the USA by NWN: | Kraken Duumvirate “The Stars Below, The Seas Above” Digipak CD
SFR002 | 
The Stars Below, The Seas Above by Kraken Duumvirate | | Continuing the grimy Finnish doom metal tradition, KRAKEN DUUMVIRATE fathom the unfathomable, where the stars shine beneath the ocean and horrendous tentacles envelop galaxies. With crushing weight their occult craft descends, darkening the heavens and conjuring the waves of the mother sea. Aeons pass while the strange might from afar sweeps this world away. | | A rugged force filled with unnatural and peculiar energy, “The Stars Below, the Seas Above”‘s despair and inevitability hypnotizes and mesmerizes. With pulverizing riffs, mystical whispers and persistently unshakable arrangements, KRAKEN DUUMVIRATE reach the pulsating voids below and shatter the insignificant minds of the uninitiated. Mix the massive melancholy of SHAPE OF DESPAIR with the murky mystery of BEHERIT, add a healthy dose of cosmic horror, and you may glimpse what lies beneath the waves. | | Click here to order. |
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| Tudor “Spalovna” 7″ Repress Out Now |
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Tudor “Spalovna” 7″
ANTI-GOTH 027 | 
Ultra Black Metal by Tudor | | Limited to 300 copies on black red splatter vinyl. | | Review of the original “Ultra Black Metal” Double LP + “Spalovna” 7″ taken from The Corroseum. | | Well, the days when we still marveled in wonder of how recordings like these could ever reach our ears are long gone, but I’m not bloody complaining. Still, the state of current Metal affairs begs the question: Is this particular “kvlt-reissue” warranted? Yes, it is. With only 2 tracks off their debut 7″ to go by, you can’t really scream “underrated gods!”-bloody-murder to the world and wonder why no-one listens. We – need – MORE, and who to give it to us but the highly revered Nuclear War Now label? NWNs releases has so far had the stamp of total dedication and professionalism and “Ultra Black Metal” is hardly an exception. Thank doG they got here first! The packaging is of course of pristine NWN-class. A beautiful fold-out cover with linernotes/bio and original demotape covers, innersleeves chock-full of awesome, east-euro-misery-oozing band pix and of course a lyric sheet for those awake at the high-school Czech class. This particular Die-hard edition comes on marbled vinyl, including a red vinyl reprint of the “Spalovna” 7″, a killer looking patch, obi and a Rock Idol poster to nail up next to Dee Snider and Blackie Lawless above your bed. “Ultra Black Metal” contains the band’s second and third full-length demos, “Zombie” from ‘90 and “Skeletor” from ‘91. Now, if you found your way to this review I’m guessing you’re not entirely unfamiliar with late 80’s/early 90’s East-Euro Black Thrash-sound. It’s stale, crude & awkward, just the way we want it, although the “Zombie” recordings may lean a tad too much in the crude direction. It’s hard to pick any particular standout moments, but thanks to the originality of those insane, oversimplistic choruses, the demo work nicely as a whole. The title track bears a haunting similarity to the DEATH SS song with the same name, although not in a rip-off kind of way. Song by song we speed up to Thrash-pace and things would have become a bit tedious if it weren’t for the immensely cool vocals. You simply cannot fail with Czech vocals in Metal! The “Skeletor”-session is where things get more interesting. The band is slowly moving upwards towards the songwriting class the of the outstanding 7″ A-side in songs like “Destrutce Mozku”, “Král Kanybal” (tango-beats!) and the pounding, must-hear “Excsorszit”, a worthy competitor to the unholiest of ROOT-compositions. There be studded leather, there be skulls, there be inverted crosses aplenty and TUDOR are more than worthy of these beastly medals. They may not have been the new old MASTER’S HAMMER, but the infernal noise engraved on these disks should be infernal enough for any and all jaded kult-metal fans. If it just sounds like poorly executed zero-budget Thrash sung in weird language to you, you were wrong to leave your comfy, western middle-class condo in the first place. This polluted concrete ghetto is not big enough for me, TUDOR and you. Look, new MEGADETH-album out now! Hurry hurry, “metal-dude”… | | Click here to order. |
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| Ohura-Mazdo “The Incarnation of Sathanas” MLP Coming Soon |
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Ohura-Mazdo “The Incarnation of Sathanas” MLP
ANTI-GOTH 527 | 
The Incarnation of Sathanas by Ohura-Mazdo | | Cult Japanese black doom metal demo from 1992 reissued for the first time on vinyl. Limited pressing of 300 copies all on purple/black marble vinyl. Audio will be sourced from the best quality tape and fully mastered for vinyl by James Plotkin (Regurgitation, OLD, Khanate, etc.). It will sound much better than what’s been posted on youtube and elsewhere. The layout features an old Chris Moyen artwork that was drawn for Ohura-Mazdo in 1992-93 as a T Shirt design. For fans of early Unholy, Xantotol, and early Samael. | | ETA: December 25th 2020 |
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| Xantotol “Thus Spake Zaratustra” LP Coming Soon |
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Xantotol “Thus Spake Zaratustra” LP
ANTI-GOTH 533 | 
Thus Spake Zaratustra by Xantotol | (Description by J. Campbell)
While their output was limited to just two demos and a single album, Xantotol have maintained a cult status in the quarter century since the band’s dissolution. Formed in 1991 by drummer Jacek “Venom” Szczepański and female guitarist and vocalist Mała, while they were still in high school, Xantotol were among the vanguard of Poland’s Satanic elite in the early days of the Polish black metal movement. Inspired by the likes of Venom, Bathory, Samael, Necromantia, and a host of other obscure metal the teenagers encountered through avid tape-trading, Xantotol developed a style of black metal that was at once primitive, brooding, and atmospheric. At first, Szczepański attempted to provide vocals, but it quickly became apparent to them both that Mała had the better voice. At the time, there were few, if any, black metal bands that featured female vocalists. The extreme economic conditions Poland experienced at that time due to the slow decay of the communist regime profoundly impacted the band’s sound. They relied on cheap equipment and could only rehearse a couple times per week in a room they rented at the local culture center. Despite or perhaps because of these limitations, the band’s first two demos—“Glory For Centuries” (1991) and “Cult of the Black Pentagram” (1993)—were primordial paeans to the particular strain of Nietzschean Satanism that deeply influenced Szczepański and Mała. It was around this same time that Szczepański founded the Satanic organization Fullmoon Foundation, which later evolved into the notorious Temple of Fullmoon. In 1995, Xantotol entered the studio to record their first proper album. Entitled “Thus Spake Zaratustra” and releasd in 1995 by Witching Hour Productions, the album displayed a fully realized expression of the sound and themes found on the demos. Stylistically, the songs on the album are more varied, with the band advancing beyond the purely mid-paced, Samael-influenced sound featured on the demos. Adding to the effect of the album are the keyboard intros and outros performed by Hermh, a project formed by Witching Hour owner Bartłomiej “Bart” Krysiuk. The album also featured a bassist named Siwy (who also appeared on the “Cult of the Black Pentagram” demo) adding greater depth to the sound. In every respect, “Thus Spake Zaratustra” is a phenomenal debut. It is proficient and possesses a distinctive and sinister character that truly sets the band apart from their peers in that era. Despite its brilliance, the album never received the praise owed It because Witching Hour only released on tape at the time. The label later reissued it on CD, in 2009, and on vinyl, in 2015, but by then, it was too late and Xantotol remained relegated to cult status. Last year, in an effort to restore some of the glory denied the band during its short existence, NWN! compiled the two demos as a single release called “Black Doom Metal.” After the overwhelmingly positive response to that release, NWN! now presents a new edition of the band’s monumental “Thus Spake Zaratustra” album. | | ETA: Jan-Feb 2021 |
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