Category Archives: Videos

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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See You On The Other Side.

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See You On The Other Side.

 

End of an era: John “Ozzy” Osbourne (3 December 1948 – 22 July 2025), Rest in Peace.

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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Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Worlds Within Live (2021); Jason Blake feat. RWB – Candles Burn (2024)

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Good afternoon, y’all. Last time, we talked about the most recent release by Canadian neofolk trio Musk Ox and the news that their music was being featured in the CBS medical/mystery drama Watson. (In case you missed it, episode 2, which broadcast about two weeks ago, set their song “Weightless” against a montage wrapping up the various storylines near the end of the show.)

Anyway, at that time I had promised more music from Musk Ox members would be forthcoming, and so here we are. The group’s cellist (and co-writer/arranger) Raphael Weinroth-Browne put out his first solo record back in 2020, which at the time was met with plenty of acclaim on this website. But the following year, he released a brand new version of the whole thing re-recorded live, which we’ll take a look at here. And to cap things off, we’ll also check out an EP the cellist created in collaboration with Chicago-based Warr guitarist Jason Blake, just about eleven months ago.

 

Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Worlds Within Live (self-released, 02 July 2021)

 

Jason Blake featuring Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Candles Burn (7d Media, 05 April 2024)

 

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Musk Ox – Inheritance (2021); Nathanael Larochette – Old Growth (2023)

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Good afternoon! If you’ve been a longtime visitor around these parts, you’ll remember Musk Ox, from all the times we’ve previously discussed that Canadian folk trio as well as some of its members’ numerous other musical pursuits.

Well, yesterday I received an interesting bit of news from the group:

 

Hi Everyone!

We hope you are all well, safe, thriving and taking time to nurture whatever endeavours bring you fulfillment.

We just wanted to share some exciting news. After years of people telling us that our music would be great for tv/film we are thrilled to announce that several of our songs will appear in the new medical/mystery series Watson on CBS! The second episode airs tonight (Sun Feb 16th) at 9pm EST and features our song “Weightless.” We’re honoured to have been asked to provide songs for this series and are grateful for the opportunity to reach new audiences with our music. If you happen to catch the episode tonight, take a video while our song plays and tag us @muskoxofficial.

 

Musk Ox – Inheritance (self-released, 09 July 2021)

 

Nathanael Larochette – Old Growth (self-released, 21 July 2023)

 

For the uninitiated, Watson is a brand-new show (the pilot episode premiered on CBS and Paramount+ last month, with regular weekly episodes scheduled to begin as of last night) which stars Morris Chestnut as the titular doctor. In this modernized adaptation, Watson is moving on from the canonical death of his former partner in crime-solving, Sherlock Holmes, whereupon he has started a medical facility — a fictional foundation set right here in Pittsburgh, PA — that appears (based on the one episode that has aired thus far) to specialize in rare and unusual ailments, thus calling upon the doctor’s famed investigative skills.

While I don’t usually find myself drawn toward medical dramas, I’ve always been a connoisseur of all things Holmes-related, so I decided to investigate that pilot when it aired and have been looking forward to the continuation of the story for these past couple weeks. The series can be found streaming here, where I was already planning to check out the second episode tonight, but now I’ll also have my ears attuned to catch the inclusion of the Musk Ox material mentioned above.

As I’ll be stuck at work for another few hours still, in the meantime it seemed like a perfect time to revisit the 2021 album on which the song in question was originally released. And while we’re at it, it never hurts to pop in to see what else these musicians have been up to lately, so I’ll toss in one member’s solo album as a bonus in this article, and then spend some time with another member’s output shortly thereafter.

 

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Riffs for Palestine (2024 Compilation)

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Good morning and HAPPY MONDAY, everyone!

I did promise recently that my Top 24 of 2024 list was nearing its completion, and I’m pleased to announce that it has finally been published.

We’re going to dive head-first into writing about some of those top releases from last year and from years past, as well as trying to catch up on some of the hits of today, as I am determined to put an end to the lengthy semi-hiatus I’ve been stuck in for roughly the past two years (and intermittently over the past dozen or so years?)…

The world is such a fucked-up place these days, and it seems it’s only getting worse, and like most of you I have no idea what the hell to do about it. But at the very least we can try to cope, and if listening to music helps in any way, then I will try to do my small part in getting the word out there.

One quick housekeeping note, and while we’re on the subject of how fucked-up the world is: as I was finally putting 2024 to rest I came across one more charity benefit compilation from last year that I had forgotten to share here at the time…

 

Various Artists – Riffs for Palestine (Beaver Mosh x Fiadh Productions, 29 July 2024)

 

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An Evening Redness – S/T; E-L-R – Vexier (2022)

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Hello out there! We’re back from the holiday weekend and slowly starting to emerge from the mini ice age into which we had been plunged for the past several days.

And suddenly we find ourselves swiftly approaching the end of another calendar year. Many other writers and other websites are busily publishing their year-end lists; most of the larger outlets who also have print editions have had their lists out since last month if not earlier. Here in the Valley that window stays open until the last day of the year, as always, and the year-end list will be posted in the appropriate spot on the first of January.

But given that it is nearly the end of 2022 and everyone is in just a reflective mood, let’s take a look back at a couple of releases from much earlier this year which we inadvertently hadn’t gotten around to covering yet…

 

An Evening Redness – An Evening Redness (Transylvanian Recordings, 25 February 2022)

 

E-L-R – Vexier (Prophecy Productions, 11 March 2022)

 

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S.I.D. – City of Chemistry; Private Prisons – Extrication (2022)

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Hello — and Merry Christmas Eve Eve, to those who celebrate.

What a nasty, ugly day this has turned out to be: snow, rapidly plummeting temperatures, and huge wind gusts that very nearly sent our trash cans careening down into the river. Again. That is, we lost one of them to the river during a windstorm a couple years ago; this time both of them did go flying after they were emptied this morning, but I was able to rescue one from the edge of the embankment, while the other has managed to wedge itself between two trees halfway down the hillside, just out of reach of any of the long-handled implements I have readily available so I’m hoping it will stay in place long enough for me to figure out a way to retrieve it.

Anyway, enough about that, let’s listen to some nasty, ugly music befitting such a nasty, ugly day!

 

S.I.D. – City of Chemistry (digital 15 July 2022; vinyl 14 October 2022, Gruesome Records / SFA Records / V.A.N.G.A. Records)

 

Private Prisons – Extrication (Trepanation Recordings, 16 December 2022)

 

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Ugly Kid Joe – Rad Wings of Destiny (2022)

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“Are you the guys on the beach that hate everything?”

 
Right around 30 years ago, as hair metal was in its final death throes along with most other remnants of the Reagan 80s, and the grunge movement was just starting to come into full swing in terms of global mainstream recognition, Californian hard rockers Ugly Kid Joe dropped their debut full-length, kind of bridging the gap between the dominant sounds of the previous decade and the one that had just begun.

This writer was in eighth grade at the time, and America’s Least Wanted may have been the very first cassette I ever bought for myself, or if not, at least one of the first two or three.

So when I heard that the band was releasing a brand-new album this fall — even working with the same producer they did three decades ago (Mark Dodson) — based on the nostalgia factor of course I had to check it out. But I ended up discovering that these guys (two who’ve been around since the founding days of the band and two others who’ve been on every major release in their history; only the drummer role has changed hands a few times over the years) have crafted a very good, very solid, rock record.

 

Ugly Kid Joe – Rad Wings of Destiny (Metalville Records, 21 October 2022)

 

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Escaping Aghartha – Avian (2022)

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Happy Friday! Got something brand-new for you all today…

Although North Carolinian ecology-themed band Escaping Aghartha is more often associated with the sounds of extreme death and doom metal, they’ve just dropped an album completely consisting of mellow ambiance.

 

Avian is an ambient album in which each song has been crafted around the vocalization of a specific species of bird, resulting in other-worldly and deeply immersive atmospheres. The album is a celebration of the wondrous diversity of shapes, survival strategies, vocalizations, colors, behaviors of birds and their intellectual prowess.

 

Escaping Aghartha – Avian (Hiraeth Records, 16 December 2022)

 

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