Category Archives: New Releases

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)

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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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Know Justice, Know Peace (2024 Compilation)

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It feels like we just did this — but the goodly folks at Food Desert Recordings are at it yet again.

Released TODAY, Know Justice, Know Peace is a brand new compilation benefitting National Bail Out.

 

Various Artists – Know Justice, Know Peace: A Compilation in Support of National Bail Out (Food Desert Recordings, 26 April 2024)

 

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Sky Within Us (2024 Compilation)

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Good afternoon, Dear Reader.

I’d like to share another fundraising musical compilation with you today, one that supports a cause very near and dear to me as an avid birder. (FWIW, earlier today I hit a fun milestone, since the beautiful song of a Warbling Vireo drew me outside to spot my 100th different species of 2024!) …

Canadian label Polar Seas dropped this collection of gorgeous ambient works earlier this month, with any proceeds collected benefiting the BirdSafe.ca / FLAP Canada.

 

Various Artists – Sky Within Us (Polar Seas, 05 April 2024)

 

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Free Me from This Dungeon (2024 Compilation)

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Y’all. It’s been a minute. What’s shakin’?

Our favorite Maryland-based non-profit charity record label recently dropped the latest in their series of benefit compilations, and I wanted to make sure you hadn’t missed out on this one.

Primarily consisting of dungeon synth and other closely-related (mostly) instrumental, (almost exclusively) synth-based sounds, Free Me from This Dungeon is on sale now with proceeds supporting the Safelight organization.

 

Various Artists – Free Me from This Dungeon: A Compilation in Support of the Safelight Organization (Food Desert Recordings, 23 February 2024)

 

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Syrup Moose Records: The Year of the Moose (1st Anniversary Compilation)

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From label owner Barlovv:

As of September 1st 2023, the Moose is one. This whole thing started as a bit of a shitpost in the Noob Heavy Discord and now I’m looking at a release a week until next fucking summer. To say that I’m surprised would be an understatement and I also find myself unable to think of it as a stupid joke as it continues to morph into a real thing. At the time of writing, the Moose has reached:

Bandcamp – 48,705 plays, 650 fans
Spotify – 16,000 Streams
Twitter – 687 followers
Bluesky – 443 followers
Mastodon – 132 followers
Instagram – 746 followers
Youtube – 24 subscribers
Discord – 96 members
Newsletter – 262 subscribers

All of this across 41 releases both full releases of new albums, and physical re-releases of older ones. While I’ve not made anyone (including myself) rich, the response to the music has been tremendous. I am immensely proud of the catalogue we have collected here and stand proud behind every single one. I believe that our variety of genre and the stunning, limitless talent you all possess has helped to build one of the strongest overall catalogues out there right now.

I am truly stunned that I’m writing this to mark the one-year anniversary of Syrup Moose Records. A year marked with ups, downs, and no fucking Nazis. I won’t get too introspective here, because if you’re following me on all the sosch meeds, you’ll probably have had your fill of that.

It’s worth saying right off the bat here that it is BANDCAMP FRIDAY, which means 100% of the money you spend goes straight to the label, and in turn, half of that goes to the artists directly. Also, every single digital album on the label is, currently, Name Your Price. Today only.

 

Various Artists – The Year of the Moose (Syrup Moose Records, 01 September 2023)

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Please, Just Let Me Breathe (2023 Compilation)

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Welp, the terrible folks in positions of power across these United States (and all around the world) are still at it. Seems like every day we wake up to worse and worse news about increasingly-emboldened lawmakers coming up with more and more devious plots to take away people’s rights, especially LBGTQ+ people, and ESPECIALLY trans people.

It’s hard not to feel frustrated and helpless in the face of so much shittiness and — if we’re being honest — outright maliciousness and malevolence. But for what it’s worth, there are at least some good people out there trying to be helpful. People like Trans Lifeline, “run by and for trans people” to provide needed support for the community.

Also people like Food Desert Recordings, “supporting charities that uplift and empower maligned communities.” Today the digital label officially launches its third fundraising compilation, a gargantuan 27-track effort ranging from traditional heavy metal to post-metal, avant-garde black metal to dark ambient, harsh noise to trap metal. The artists, which include members of the trans community and allies, have donated tracks which in many cases are exclusive non-album singles or alternate versions you won’t find anywhere else. And all proceeds go to Trans Lifeline, which according to the label have totaled nearly $700 so far just from pre-orders.

Various Artists – Please, Just Let Me Breathe: A Compilation in Support of Trans Lifeline (Food Desert Recordings, 28 April 2023)

[[ Update 22 December 2023: if you’ve previously purchased and downloaded this compilation, please note that it has been altered. Unfortunately it has recently come to light that one of the contributing artists has been engaging in creepy, stalkery behaviors in their interactions with several people online. Therefore, this individual’s track has been jettisoned and replaced, as a statement that such actions are not to be tolerated. ]]

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Chat Pile – God’s Country; Lebrique – Head Trap (2022)

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Hey! As we continue inching ever-closer to the conclusion of yet another calendar year, let’s continue talking about some of the great music that has come out in 2022.

Today I’ve got two albums to share: one that was just a recent discovery for me, that I somehow missed when it came out over the summer but which has been getting SO much attention lately as all my writing peers have started publishing their own year-end lists, and then one that just came out this month, and based on that timing I’m afraid it may have inadvertently missed catching many other people’s attention.

Here we go…

 

Chat Pile – God’s Country (The Flenser, 29 July 2022)

 

Lebrique – Head Trap (Trepanation Recordings, 02 December 2022)

 

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Chloe Dancer – S/T EP; Drazen – EP (2022)

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Hello everybody…

Remember a few months back when I told you about Food Desert Recordings, the label who, since forming earlier in the year, has now put out a pair of charitable compilations?

Well anyway, today I’d like to make sure you’re also acquainted with another label that just opened up over the past few months. This one started out when an individual from British Columbia, who happens to hang around a few of the same Discord servers I sometimes frequent, was tossing around the idea of creating an explicitly anti-fascist, anti-sketch, and anti-capitalist cooperative (since unfortunately, way too many of them turn out to be far in the opposite direction). He joked that the name would have to be the most stereotypically Canadian thing anyone could think of, and came up with Syrup Moose.

The record label’s online bio clearly specify that it had just started out as a joke — which is absolutely true — but within weeks the collective found itself with an ever-growing roster and quite an unfunnily busy slate of upcoming releases, including cassette versions of each, as well as unique (and highly collectible) tarot card designs exclusively painted and printed for each new release.

Out of that already-extensive-and-rapidly-expanding catalog, I’ve selected one of the first as well as one of the most recent, to share with you this afternoon. The fact that both of these artists happen to be based in Pittsburgh is purely a coincidence — honestly!

 

Chloe Dancer – Chloe Dancer EP (Syrup Moose Records, 02 September 2022)

 

Drazen – EP (Syrup Moose Records, 09 December 2022)

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