The Sword: Details for New Album & Pre-Order Bundles On Sale Now

Posted by valleyofsteel on October 4, 2012

Hey, here’s another bit of good news for you — since you’ve all been good boys and girls (as far as I know!)…

Texan stoner metal ensemble The Sword — who saw their career really take off with the inclusion of one of their early singles as part of the Guitar Hero II video game (at least, that’s when they first popped onto my radar screen) — are now just a few weeks away from releasing their fourth full-length album!

Apocryphon will hit store shelves (as well as the iTunes equivalent of shelves, whatever that may be) on Monday, the 22nd of October. And I’ve got the cover art and tracklisting right here, in addition to a whole plethora of pre-order bundles you can choose from! Also, there will be some tour dates further down, if you keep on reading.
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Out Last Week: Pinkish Black – Self-Titled

Posted by valleyofsteel on May 23, 2012

Pinkish Black – Pinkish Black (Handmade Birds, 15 May 2012)

Okay, stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

The rest of his bandmates came back from wherever they’d been all day, and walked in to find a hellish nightmare: there lay his lifeless body, extinguished by his own hand while he’d been home alone.

It sounds like a tale from Until the Light Takes Us, I know, but this was the story of Tommy Atkins, bassist for Denton, Texas’s The Great Tyrant. Bandmates Daron Beck and Jon Teague reportedly discovered him in the bathroom. Having found their band reduced from a trio to a duo, they decided to continue on under a new name — in honor of the terrible scene they had come across, in which (they said) “the walls were pinkish black.”

With an origin such as this, it’s not at all surprising that the new musical project would seem inspired by and surrounded by death. Sometimes frightening, sometimes peaceful; sometimes horribly ugly, sometimes angelically beautiful; sometimes all of these at once. And dark. Such an intense darkness that it could almost blind anyone who gazes upon it.

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Breaking Up is Easy to Do: Averse Sefira Have Officially Disbanded

Posted by valleyofsteel on May 3, 2012

So you know that thing when you’re watching the news, and you hear that some famous person died — an actor or comedian or somebody — who was pretty old and whom you hadn’t heard anything about in years? And you don’t want to be rude or anything, but your immediate reaction is to think, “Oh, I didn’t even realize he was still alive”? Yeah, just like that.

Long-running Texan black metal band Averse Sefira have officially announced that after more than fifteen years, numerous tours across Europe and America, and four highly acclaimed albums (most recently, 2008′s Advent Parallax), they’ve decided to disband.

The two remaining founding members of the band, vocalist/guitarist Sanguine Mapsama and bassist Wrath Sathariel Diabolus have both issued a formal farewell message on the band’s blog.

Their most recent two albums, the aforementioned as well as 2005′s Tetragrammatical Astygmata are both available for purchase as digital downloads, on CD, and (for Advent Parallax, on LP) from their Bandcamp page.

The official Averse Sefira website is here.

Out Tomorrow: Kruds/Rampant Decay – Split 7″

Posted by valleyofsteel on February 2, 2012

Kruds/Rampant Decay – Split 7″ (3 February 2012, PATAC Records)

Particularly observant readers may have noticed a slight change to the layout of the blog this week. For those of you who read the mobile version, or get updates by email or RSS, or those who have just discovered the Valley, I’ll give you a hint. For the first time ever in the extensive (coming up on four months soon!) history of the VoS, I’ve added an advertisement to the sidebar of the page. Now, before you all panic, or start writing me scathing emails about how I’ve sold out or whatever, let me explain. First of all, in order to sell out, I’m pretty sure technically you have to be making some money — and I hardly have the volume of traffic where that would be very plausible. No, I’ve basically just put in a link to PATAC Records because it’s good to support small, independant companies, and in particular I have a lot of respect for their business model. Essentially, it works like this: all of their releases are available for you to listen to or download for free (or for whatever price you think they are worth), and when you find something you really like, you can buy it on CD or vinyl (or grab one of the bands’ t-shirts or whatever). Simple, but effective.

So anyway, the point of all of this is basically just to introduce the new release I am listening to today. This 9-minute, 6-track split between Kruds of San Antonio, TX, and Rampant Decay from Providence, RI, has been available for streaming or downloading since 17 August 2011, but PATAC has announced that it will be available to purchase on 7″ record starting tomorrow (3 February 2012). See below for how to grab the free download, but this one’s already worth the purchase price of the physical copy just for that awesome cover art of a hippie getting scalped by a machete, amirite??