Category Archives: New Releases

Sacri Suoni – Time to Harvest (2026)

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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?)

 

Sacri Suoni – Time to Harvest (Electric Valley Records, 23 January 2026)

 

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Nomadic Rituals – Fust (2025) || Cursed Monk Records – Year IX Compilation (2026)

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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.

 

Cursed Monk Records – Year IX Compilation (03 January 2026)

 

Nomadic Rituals – Fust (digital: self-released, CD/vinyl: Cursed Monk Records, 14 March 2025 | cassette: Fiadh Productions, 11 July 2025)

 

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Aint Pancakes – Love Your Neighbors (2025)

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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.

 

Aint Pancakes – Love Your Neighbors (Philip K. Discs, 15 November 2025)

 

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New Cathedral Release! || Bandcamp Friday Merch

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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.

  • They’ve got super-limited mystery bundles, packed in custom-designed cereal boxes and filled with tons of label-related goodness, but there are only TWO sets available!
  • “This Vending Machine is a Compilation” full-color poster-sized prints as companion pieces to last year’s compilation of the same name.
  • From Chaos to Ambiguity: A Theology of Noise Rock – the guidebook to noise rock written by the label’s owner (spoiler alert: not Philip), now available signed by the author.
  • And there’s lots more where these came from, from printed ‘zines to sculpted mini-figurines to hot sauce bottles to a special edition Touching Grass CD bundled with an actual packet of grass seed — check it all out right here!

 

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…

 

Cathedral – Society’s Pact With Satan (Rise Above Records, 03 October 2025)

 

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T4T Productions – T4T2! (2025 Compilation) || The Great Pottery Throw Down

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Happy Bandcamp Friday!

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…

 

Various Artists – T4T2!: A Mutual Aid Compilation by Trans People for Trans People (T4T Productions, 15 August 2025)

 

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Hell – Submersus (2025), S/T (2017)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

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…

 

Hell – Submersus (physical: Sentient Ruin / digital: Lower Your Head, 11 July 2025)

 

Hell – Hell (Sentient Ruin, 11 April 2017)

 

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Coffin Womb – Godless (2024), The Trauma Process (2025)

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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.”

 

Coffin Womb – Godless (Syrup Moose Records, 23 February 2024)

 

Coffin Womb – The Trauma Process (self-released, 10 January 2025)

 

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Orme – No Serpents, No Saviours; The Weir – Grasping (2024/2025)

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Just announced: This Friday is Bandcamp Friday for the first time in 2025. So if you have been planning to make any music purchases, tomorrow would be a great time to do it, because 100% of the funds end up in the pocket of the band or record label (and not the corporate overlords who own Bandcamp).

However, if you have dollars (or euros, francs, dinars, whatever) burning a hole in your pocket and you don’t have anything in particular to spend it on — please feel free to browse the archives here at Valley of Steel for recommendations. And here are two more worth checking out, each a lengthy chunk of heavy doom, each originally released by the respective band last year, and each recently re-released as cassette tapes by our Dutch friends at Breathe Plastic Records.

 

Orme – No Serpents, No Saviours (self-released 23 August 2024 / cassette reissue by Breathe Plastic, 31 January 2025)

 

The Weir – Grasping (self-released 04 October 2024 / cassette reissue by Breathe Plastic, 31 January 2025)

 

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Love Songs (2024 Compilation)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

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)

 

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All Birds Return (2024 Compilation)

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It is Bandcamp Friday. It’ll be the last one until after summer vacation, so make it count!

One item I’d like to share with you was just released today by Dutch label Rope or Guillotine: a cassette compilation of exclusive tracks to benefit people of Gaza.

 

Various Artists – All Birds Return: a benefit compilation for Gaza (Rope or Guillotine, 03 May 2024)

 

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