#carbonized

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

[dreamsofconsciousnessmetal]

Discord Server [Weekly Mixtape 209]

Flagelo | Gutvoid | Benothing | Sallow Moth | Veilburner | Defigurement | Mors Verum | Gorrch | Nightmarer | Diespnea | Abysmal Descent

Direct Download [hold + "Save As"]

Music On This Mixtape:

Flagelo: "Rey de nada" taken from the album "Insaciable"

Gutvoid: "Umbriel's Door" taken from the album "Liminal Shrines"

Benothing: "Deathways" taken from the Benothing / Warp Chamber Split EP

Sallow Moth: "Arcane Benthic Umbilicus" taken from the album "Arcane Benthic Umbilicus"

Veilburner: "That Which Crypts Howls Grandeur" taken from the album "Longing for Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy"

Defigurement: "We Are the Worst" taken from the album "Endbryo"

Mors Verum: "Serenade" taken from the album "Canvas"

Gorrch: "Larv" taken from the album "Stillamentum"

Nightmarer: "Crawl of Time" taken from the album "Hell Interface"

Diespnea: "Necromanteion" taken from the album "Radici"

Abysmal Descent: "Obscured Visions" taken from the album "Dismal Thoughts"

[cunt242]

Carbonized - Lord of Damnation

[stoneoferech]

Swedish Death Metal

[dustedmagazine]

Skaven — Flowers of Flesh and Blood (Carbonized Records)

Flowers of Flesh and Blood by Skaven

Likely it was inevitable that some enterprising label would reissue the only record Skaven put out under its own name. During its intermittent existence, the crust band released a couple splits with heavyweights Dystopia and Stormcrow, and the long shadows cast by those bands have kept the splits in underground circulation. Flowers of Flesh and Blood, originally released in 1996 by brief-lived Misanthropic Records, has some additional historical utility. It sounds so very much like a record of its times and its scene: check out the semi-ironized, semi-serious samples from sources like Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) (“Severed” starts with the Torrance family’s Donner Party conversation, if you’re interested); the band name filched from Warhammer’s world of steampunk geekery; the greasy, fusty odor of dense packs of white dudes with long dreads and lots of stick-n-poke tats. 924 Gilman, here we come.

But listen more closely. Skaven has its idiosyncrasies, its own intrinsic oddness. The band incorporated two basses, Michael Matusio’s standard four-string axe and Shane O’Gallagher’s five-string instrument. O’Gallagher adds something like a second, downhill-rushing lead to the opening minutes of the title track. The doubled-up bottom end imbues Skaven’s sound with a disposition toward something like groove, which you can hear reverberating through subsequent recordings like Nux Vomica’s “Choked at the Roots.” Skaven’s sonic profile also flirts with deathrock’s more goth-oriented melodramatics. Check out the opening riff of “The Swarm,” and then its brief, melodic bridge; it sounds something like Only Theater of Pain-period Christian Death attempting to cover Amebix’s “No Gods No Masters.” But tougher, and better.  

As those comparisons suggests, Flowers of Flesh and Blood is deep-catalog stuff, likely of principal interest to folks with outsized investments in the Bay Area heavy music scene. It captures a moment when weirdo bands (see Depressor’s stuff) were listening to lots of Swedish death metal and pushing the boundaries of the region’s distinctive stenchcore sound. Play it loud, and Skaven’s EP will put you in the mind of rodent-infested squats, room temperature 40-ouncers of malt liquor, clutches of kids debating the best train to hop if you need to get to Portland on the double-quick. Hey, hold on — where’d the dog go?  

Jonathan Shaw

[tormentedinsanityreignssupreme]

~Carbonized~For The Security~Paradise Lost~No Canonization~Au-to-dafe~Recarbonized~Disharmonization~

[portrait-of-the-jaded-dawn]

Carbonized - Disharmonization (1993)