Tag Archives: United Kingdom

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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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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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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Kurokuma – Born of Obsidian; Vinterdracul – The Murnau Nocturnes (2022)

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Hello, dear readers!

Here we have two brand-new albums you might enjoy — if you do, they’re both scheduled to come out TOMORROW, which also happens to be the first Bandcamp Friday of the year!

 

Kurokuma – Born of Obsidian (self-released, 04 February 2022)

 

Vinterdracul – The Murnau Nocturnes (Canticle Throe, 04 February 2022)

 

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Venom Prison – Primeval (2020), Erebos (2022)

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Hey! Everywhere I turn, the whole internet is buzzing about Venom Prison.

So let’s talk about Venom Prison.

 

Venom Prison – Primeval (Prosthetic Records, 09 October 2020)

 

Venom Prison – Erebos (Century Media Records, 04 February 2022)

 

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Sunyata – The Great Beyond (2020); Sunnata – Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (2021)

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Hello out there! In the immortal words of the Barenaked Ladies, it’s been…

Seven days since we got together here, at which time I had shared two albums with you by bands who coincidentally had similar-sounding names, but otherwise had little in common.

Today I’ve got another pair of albums by similarly-named artists, which happened to be released in close proximity to each other — just over and just under a year ago. In this case, while both are still fairly disparate, at least they would both be found somewhere on the doom spectrum… or if nothing else, maybe doom-adjacent? Enjoy!

 

Sunyata – The Great Beyond (self-released, 11 November 2020)

 

Sunnata – Burning in Heaven, Melting on Earth (self-released, 26 February 2021)

 

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TOANWTS – Feral Blood (2019); ANTOAS – Dirges (2021)

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Hello there and Happy Friday to you all!

These albums, one nearly three years old and the other reaching its first birthday later this month, have practically nothing in common with each other besides the fact that both bands’ names are lengthy phrases about owls. But sometimes little things like that can randomly grab your attention, and then you accidentally discover that there’s some great music inside, too. I think you just might find this to be the case with either or both of these releases…

 

The Owls Are Not What They Seem – Feral Blood (Eleventh Key, 19 March 2019)

 

And Now the Owls Are Smiling – Dirges (Clobber Records, 29 January 2021)

 

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Boss Keloid – Family the Smiling Thrush (2021)

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Counting down some more of 2021’s best releases that we never quite got around to discussing earlier. Here’s one you absolutely must insert into your ears ASAP, if you haven’t already done so!

 

Boss Keloid – Family the Smiling Thrush (Ripple Music, 04 June 2021)

 

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Body Void / Keeper Split (2020); Keeper / Sea Bastard Split (2015)

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Body Void / Keeper – Split (Tridroid Records [cassette] / Roman Numeral Records [vinyl], 15 January 2020)

 

Keeper / Sea Bastard – Split (Medusa Crush Recordings [N.A.] / Dry Cough Records [U.K.], 03 February 2015)

 

Hello there! Today we’re going to take a look at a split record that’s been generating a little bit of buzz since it came out last month, but not nearly as much as it should — considering the caliber of the two bands who released it (Californians Body Void and Keeper).

The first of those is surely familiar to even occasional readers of this website, as we’ve discussed their work multiple times before — and they’ve managed to land on our Top ## of 20## lists each of the past three years.

But I realize at this point that we have never mentioned Keeper previously, which is really a shame because they were involved with another fantastic split LP that came out about five years ago, along with Brightonian band Sea Bastard. Somehow we just never got around to covering it, so to rectify that error, let’s revisit that one today as well. So you can have a little “bonus review” as a treat.

 

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Kassad – London Orbital (2020)

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Kassad – London Orbital (Hypnotic Dirge Records, 10 January 2020)

 

Hello there, readers. Was it just my imagination or did the first month of this year just totally fly by? Anyway, here we are a few days into February and finally this is the first time I’m getting around to writing about a 2020 release. I don’t feel great that it’s taken so long, but here we are. And, notwithstanding any change in the status of the creek, with regard to it rising or not, this should be the first of many.

This is also the first 2020 release from one of our favorite Canadian labels, Hypnotic Dirge. Those familiar with the record company will recall that many of their releases originate in or around the same frozen northern tundra of their homeland, and often (fittingly) fall within the umbrella of frostbitten atmospheric blackness — but today we’ll be focusing on something that strays ever-so-slightly outside of those stereotypes…

The abode of Kassad, as name-checked in their sophomore album’s title, is the capital of England (rather than the somewhat smaller city located on the Thames River in the province of Ontario); and while the record does still operate within the black metal milieu, the band has described its style as “urban” black metal.

 

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