Hey folks — from the record label that’s been making a reputation for itself over the past several years for your go-to spot for crazy experimental noisy sounds and truly unique merch options, perhaps we should have seen this one coming, but the latest Philip K. Discs release is here… and it’s a hand-built, fully customizable, fully modular, noise box you can use to make your OWN crazy experimental noisy sounds!
It’s Bandcamp Friday once again — hope you all are having a happy one!
Feels like a good time to check in on our Michiganian friends Bog Wizard. Back when we published a review of their 2020 and 2021 releases, there were a few specific references to the “Satanic Panic” of the late 20th century. Well, since that time, the band went and released a whole damn album named for that concept. They also put together an album with literary tie-ins, both of which are highly recommended for you to check out!
Hello, friends. Hope you’re having a pleasant Friday.
Here, we’re still slowly but surely shoveling ourselves out from last weekend’s storm, trying our best to keep ourselves warm and keep our pipes from freezing, with recent high temperatures refusing to rise above the tweens (Fahrenheit), and Alexa blinking its caution-colored yellow light at us every day with a new notification about a severe cold warning, with overnight lows hovering around zero or below (also Fahrenheit).
Meanwhile, I haven’t ventured out anywhere since last Saturday morning (to pick up groceries and library books) — in the days since, I’ve only been outside to shovel the front walkway, the driveway, and as much of the surrounding street as I could, given that the borough either felt it was unnecessary to plow all the way to the end of our road OR they were unable to get past our neighbors’ annoying arrays of vehicles parked all over the place.
Nevertheless, without leaving the house or any contact with outsiders, I’ve somehow managed to now find myself practically bedridden with some kind of dreadful sinus infection or cold or perhaps turtle flu. But there’s new music out today and I’d be derelict in my duties if I didn’t take some time out of my day to share it with you folks!
Well good morning, and happy Friday (I guess)!
After about a day and a half of reprieve during which I turned off all our auxiliary heaters in the kitchen, bathroom, and basement — because the outdoor temperatures actually had hovered just slightly above freezing for a brief while — we’ve dipped back into frigid cold and it’s projected to continue to get worse over the next day or two.
Plus the entire eastern part of the USA is bracing for the worst snowfall we’ve had in quite some time. Around here (western Pennsylvania), folks are already making comparisons to the Snowmageddon of 2010 or even the Blizzard of ’93 … and we haven’t even seen a single flake yet.
So obviously it seems like a perfect day to be listening to music that comes from a region known for its extreme cold and winter weather! Presenting the first new 2026 release we’ll be checking out: Time to Harvest by Sac—
Err, whoops. I’m being informed (pretend for a second I’m wearing an earpiece) (and that you can see me rather than just reading these words I’ve written) that I’ve apparently misread the band’s name, which is Sacri Suoni (which means “Sacred Sounds” in Italian), not Suomi, and as it turns out the band is therefore not actually Finnish as I had initially thought, but they’re from Milan, Italy. Where it’s currently — (checks notes) — in the mid-40s. (Degrees Fahrenheit, that is.) And probably significantly higher than that during harvest time.
Well since we’re all here already, let’s listen to this album anyway. Brand-new off the presses today! (Also, don’t you hate when people say “checks notes”? Isn’t that so annoying? It’s just the worst, right?)
Fucking earwigs, amiright? I watched Spike Lee‘s 2025 film Highest 2 Lowest over the weekend (which I enjoyed, by the way, despite its middling ratings — although admittedly I have not seen the Kurosawa original it was based on; I guess I probably should), and almost nonstop over the past few days I keep finding “Oh What a Beautiful Mornin’” (originally from Oklahoma, but it plays during the opening of this movie as Denzel‘s character looks down over New York City from the balcony of his probably-billion-dollar apartment.
Anyway, it is NOT a Beautiful Mornin’ here in the valley. It’s like six degrees outside (Fahrenheit, which I think is something like negative a hundred in the rest of the world), and it’s been the kind of windy that wakes you up sporadically throughout the night because it keeps rattling the windows. So I am very much dragging this morning. Fortunately I don’t actually need to go outside (thank you, remote work) so I can just throw on an extra layer or two and push through it. And anyway by this afternoon I heard it’s supposed to go up to like 15F (aka minus 50C or something).
And fortunately, there is a simple doctor-recommended remedy for getting rid of earwigs: listening to something else, ANYTHING else. Especially at a high volume. And I’ve got some great candidates here.
Every day we hear about people doing shit like this and we love to see it and it fills us with joy and momentarily restores our faith in humanity, but at the same time we hate that people HAVE to do shit like this, which once again makes us wonder if the world wouldn’t be better off getting hit with another dinosaur-extinction-level asteroid.
I guess this is just the world we live in now. Happy Thanksgiving Eve, y’all.
Inbox overflowing with messages from every band and label you’ve ever heard of (and tons you don’t even remember subscribing to)? Must be Bandcamp Friday!
If you need help wading through the oceans of stuff being marketed at you all day, I’m here to help with a few selections to highlight.
First: our good friends over at Philip K. Discs have dropped some sweet exclusive merch today.
Next, get yourself ready for winter weather with a brand new pair of socks! But not just any socks, these ones come emblazoned with the logo of Italian dark-occult/doomsters Messa. Wear them in good health!
And finally…
WordPress has reminded me that this month officially marks 14 years since this website launched. So happy birthday, Valley of Steel. Meanwhile the entire world continues to circle the drain more and more rapidly, but I guess we all need to take comfort in the little things wherever we can.
Like… huge recent news I wanted to make sure to share with you folks — specifically, U.S.-based folks. There are finally new seasons of The Great Pottery Throw Down available for us to watch! If you aren’t familiar with this former BBC, now Channel 4, competition show, you need to catch up! While the rest of the world was spending the 2020 pandemic obsessing over the Tiger King documentary, HBO MAX quietly released the first few seasons of a delightful series set in a pottery factory in Stoke-on-Trent, central England — essentially the clay and porcelain sibling to the more widely-known Great British Bake Off.
I was immediately hooked on these amateur potters’ magical creations, and especially on the show’s endearingly gentle and positive vibes: the judges have been known to tear up, even more than the contestants, with pride over some of the final products. I absolutely couldn’t get enough through five whole seasons, until suddenly the well dried up. Announcements for a sixth edition came in 2023, followed by a seventh the next year, but HBO was too busy flip-flopping on what to call their streaming app to bother adding any new content. So for the past few years I’ve had a sad, pottery-shaped void in my life — that is, until just a few weeks ago when I discovered that the whole run (so far) of the Throw Down, all the episodes that were on HBO but also the two newer missing seasons, are now streaming for free on Roku Channel!
I would’ve told you all sooner, but I was too excited about bingeing my way through the new episodes to find time to write anything. But now that I’ve completed the sixth and seventh finals, I didn’t want to wait any longer to spread the news. Go check it out ASAP! We have one of these doodads plugged into our tv, but you can access Roku Channel content through other devices like Firestick or Google TV or just stream through their website.
I realize this is starting to sound like a paid advertisement for Roku, but I promise it isn’t (although if they wanted to throw me some $$ I would not turn my nose up at it!) — I’m just a really big fan of this particular competition show and I think more people need to know about it. Which is pretty much my whole shtick here, although it’s usually music I’m sharing with you. OH! Speaking of which…
Happy Friday!
I haven’t seen a lot of people talking about this (of course, having withdrawn from all major social media platforms, I don’t see a whole lot of much these days!) but a new album is coming out today that just might end up in the running for Album of the Year. At least, it’s at the top of my list of everything I’ve heard so far in 2025.
Although it wouldn’t be shocking for Hell, the Salem, Oregon-based purveyors of corrosive sludge-doom, to be flying under the radar. The single-member ensemble (though they did come together as a full band at least once, because I saw them perform in Pittsburgh approximately eleven years ago, and they absolutely killed it) have always been relatively anonymous and never seemed very big on self-promotion.
Part of the Gilead family (at least tangentially) for several years, and more recently affiliated with Sentient Ruin; over their first decade, Hell released four different albums called Hell (the most recent of which we’ll talk about here), in addition to various splits and EPs (some of which were also called Hell). And today, the next soul-crushing chapter has emerged, which for a fun change of pace, has been given a title other than Hell…
If you haven’t figured it out based on your email inbox bursting at the seams, It Is Bandcamp Friday.
Before we all head out for the weekend, real quick let me call your attention to two releases (one from early last year and one from early this year) by Pittsburgh’s Coffin Womb, self-described as “A bunch of losers who just want to ruin your day.”
Valley of Steel 