Tag Archives: Church Road Records

Armed for Apocalypse – The Earth is Breathing Beneath Me (2026); Swerve – S/T (2025)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Friends, in a conversation with some fellow music appreciators-slash-journalists about recent new releases, I offered the opinion that 2026 has thus far been one hell of a year for sludge metal.

As further evidence, I’d like to present you with this, the fourth album of filty, dirty sludgecore by Portland (Oregon)’s Armed for Apocalypse, which just came out today. As the band describe themselves: “They just play crushing songs that go from slow to slower, from muck to mire, from mosh to circle-pit. And sometimes they’ll make a left turn and end up at epic. Simply put, it’s rock ‘n’ roll music tuned way down and pissed way off.”

For an added bonus, today we’re also going to check out the debut EP, which came out almost exactly one year ago, by Dutch sludge/post-hardcore/noise duo Swerve. Their bio is far more succinct, but no less accurate: “Two guys, big noise.”

 

Armed for Apocalypse – The Earth is Breathing Beneath Me (Church Road Records, 24 April 2026)

 

Swerve – S/T (Tartarus Records, 25 April 2025)

 

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Laden – Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (2026); Wren – Black Rain Falls (2025)

Posted by valleyofsteel on

Hey there, friends. Hope you’re having a good Friday.

Nah, wait, Good Friday was last week. Hope you’re having a GREAT Friday!

I’d like to share something with you that’s just being released today — an album by single-member band Seattleite Laden which I recently discovered through the Metal Bandcamp Gift Club.

For those who may not be familiar, MBGC is essentially a mailing list — which has gone through various incarnations over the years but currently hosted on Substack — where you can share your birthday and your Bandcamp wish list, and every day (well, most days) a message goes out to let everyone know whose birthday it is that day, and a link to their wish list.

It’s a great way to give and receive the gift of music, to support independent artists, and also a great way to discover new suggested stuff to listen to: if you see someone’s list and you think, hey I like a bunch of these bands, chances are you may want to check out some of the other stuff on their list.

Speaking of which, I thought it would be fun to discuss this brand-new album alongside the most recent release from a band of Londoners who Laden have cited as one of their influences: Wren — an album which happened to sneak its way into my list of favorites from last year.

 

Laden – Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly (self-released, 10 April 2026)

 

Wren – Black Rain Falls (Church Road Records, 21 February 2025)

 

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