Good afternoon // happy Friday, everyone!

It’s been an eventful month here at Valley of Steel HQ. After a full year of inactivity on the bird site, earlier this week I finally pulled the plug and deactivated my dozen-year-old Twitter account, which was pretty much the last remnant of my “social media” presence outside of lurking around a handful of Discords.

And on the subject of housekeeping-type news, the renewal for this website’s domain (valleyofsteel.net) is coming up later this month — and with the limited amount of activity I’ve had here in the past few years, I’ve been seriously considering discontinuing that registration. The website would remain, but it would revert back to its original address of https://valleyofsteel.wordpress.com. So you might want to update those bookmarks, just in case. I guess if anyone felt very strongly about the dot-net address sticking around, you could always go buy some shit through this Amazon affiliate link. I just don’t know if my heart is still in it enough, to keep dumping money just to keep a personalized domain name anymore.

But two things I can say for sure my heart IS still in — sharing good music with you folks who come here to read these words, and especially sharing things that are supposed to help other people. In a two birds / one stone situation, here’s a benefit compilation that came out last month, but which I just discovered yesterday (and which I just had to buy before I had even gotten halfway through listening)…

Mother Anxiety / Various Artists – Love Songs (26 July 2024)

From Vancouver (WA, USA) electronic musician Mother Anxiety:

This is a compilation album in support of Dr. Basil’s campaign through Operation Olive Branch to help evacuate his family from Gaza.

www.gofundme.com/f/6v6z9-help-me-to-evacuate-my-family-out-of-gaza

100% of sales from this album will be going to this campaign.

Anyone who donates at least $5 to ANY Operation Olive Branch campaign and shows me proof will be sent a free Mother Anxiety patch and some stickers while my supplies last.

Love. Forever.

The Love Songs compilation includes eleven tracks by eight artists, including the titular Mother Anxiety, as well as Adzes (whom we’ve discussed here previously), Shrieking, Global Extinction Enterprises, Territorial Pissants, Your Ancestors Knew Death, Touching Grass, and Everson Poe (whose nine-and-a-half-minute epic by itself is worth way more than the $1 minimum donation)!

Spanning from electronic beats to found-sound ambient, to post-metal, post-doom, maybe even tinges of blackgaze; a little something for everyone, all of which is accessible through the Bandcamp player below: