Metal 57 Items

This reissue was fully remastered in 2016.

Trouble’s classic debut album from 1984 with faithfully restored audio represents everything that Doom Metal should be.

An absolute classic: the legendary album from 1990 and the pinnacle of Trouble's impressive career. Heavy Metal was never better than this! Finally re-issued!

Swedish trio Kongh return with the follow-up to their critically acclaimed 2007 debut album "Counting Heartbeats" which established the band as a force to be reckoned with. On "Shadows of the Shapeless", the band has taken their dynamic and riff-driven thunderstorm a huge step forward, and the album will surely place Kongh at the very forefront of the european sludge/doom/metal scene.

San Francisco’s Succumb plumbs the depths of modern death metal with primitive elegance, but what sets them apart from their peers is vocalist Cheri Musrasrik. The juxtaposition of death metal riffing and propulsive drums with Musrasrik’s cavernous howl and sophisticated lyrics make a unique listening experience in today’s crowded landscape.

The band was formed in 2014 by a group of friends with diverse musical backgrounds who share a common love for Canadian death metal, war metal, and 1990s Napalm Death. That same year they released a demo under the name Cloak and played a handful of local shows, attracting the attention of The Flenser. The following year they were joined by Harry Cantwell (Bosse-de-Nage, ex-Slough Feg) on drums and got to work writing their self-titled debut album, recorded by Bay Area luminary Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Bosse-de-Nage, Botanist, Oathbreaker, etc.).

Musrasrik cites authors and poets like Yeats, Genet and Zola as her primary lyrical influences. Throughout the album she tackles themes such as human experimentation, autoerotic asphyxiation, BDSM, prostitution, opium dens and dystopias with a literary flair.

Summoned to play it the old way in a new age, Trondheim, Norway quintet Dunbarrow draws inspiration from freezing winter nights, unpolished demo tapes from the 70s and the Swedish throwback rock from the beginning of the 21st century. The result is Norwegian proto-doom with a back-to-basics sound, from Pentagram and Witchfinder General to Quicksilver Messenger Service.

Dunbarrows clean, unadorned sound shares the unpretentious brilliance of classic heavy progenitors playing basements and bans, before the big budgets and bloated habits diluted hard rock into an echo chamber awash in reverb and layered in distant, screeching hobbits. The bands 9-track self-titled album is a classic in the sense that every song becomes instantly recognizable after just one listen.

With lyrics like the clever paean to a young witch mothers birth of Lucifers Child, Dunbarrow has a wealth of gloomy sentiments: Can you understand my young mothers plight / Away from the comforts that burn at the stake / She gave birth to a venomous snake / On her great pyre she smiled / For she carried Lucifers child.


Dunbarrow is based in the far northern Norwegian city Trondheim, but is originally from Haugesund on the west coast of Norway. The band has been playing together for over 8 years through different band names and genres. In 2014, vocalist Espen Andersen joined the band upon the departure of original singer/bassist Richard Chappell. Sondre Berge went from playing drums to playing bass. Kenneth Lnning and Eirik vregrd are still on the guitars, with Pl Gunnar Dale taking over the drums permanently in 2016. Espen Andersen recorded and mixed the debut album at Stoy Studios. Dunbarrow is hitting the studio for their second album this summer.

Sentient Ruin is proud to release RUIN LUST's incinerating sophomore LP Sacrifice for the first time ever on vinyl, after a self-released tape surfaced in early 2019 bringing back under the spotlight one of America's most elusive and feral extreme metal entities. Featuring current and past members of ANICON, TRENCHGRINDER, VORDE, VILKACIS, FELL VOICES, VANUM, and YELLOW EYES, the NYC black/death/war metal horde return six years after their debut album was released on Psychic Violence Records, with their darkest and most baneful compositions to date, blending the most pestilent strains of black and death metal with the blunt force trauma of grindcore to elevate the notion of sonic warfare at unseen new extremes. While remaining true to the genre's voluntarily involved and feral approach to aural barbarism, a careful ear will not fail to notice the modern and transformative approach taken by the band to assemble their sonic war zone, utilizing a dense and suffocating sense of atmosphere and an immanent sense of dynamics and unpredictability to mercilessly blindside and destroy the listener. By all means a pinnacle in this year's war metal output, Sacrifice is a modern and defiant spasm of extreme metal terror that will find loyal proselytes amongst fans of Diocletian, Knelt Rote, Heresiarch and other contemporary black/death bands who show to be more inclined to breaking new ground and paving the genre's future than living in the past.

Heavy music’s evolution has always been a murky swamp of sub-genres. So, combining Thin Lizzy’s glistening twin guitar harmonies with Melvins-grade sludge and a hearty dose of proto-metal psych probably shouldn’t sound so revolutionary as it does in the hands of L.A. quartet Deathchant. But theirs is a special, transcendent sound. Waste, the band’s sophomore album and first for Riding Easy Records, is anything but. The thirty three-minute, seven-song blast flows seamlessly from song to song, aided by droning segues, while simultaneously slithering between genres and moods. Rumbling noise, chiming guitar melodies, bluesy boogie, Nwobhm thrash, COC grunge and punk fury all rear their head at times, sometimes all at once. Though one wouldn’t be able to tell by the concise structures and well-crafted songs, a lot of Deathchant’s music is improvised, both in the studio and live. That’s not to suggest their songs are jammy— they’re very tightly organized compositions. But the four musicians have that special musical telepathy that allows them to keep the song structures open-ended. “Improv is a huge things for us and always has been,” singer / guitarist T.J. Lemieux says. “The musical freedom to look at the other dudes in the band and be able to take things wherever we want to go is magical. I like the feel of flying off the hinges.” Likewise, the band itself is similarly amorphous in its membership. “We run the band with an open door. No lineup is definitive,” Lemieux explains. On Waste, the lineup is: Lemieux, George Camacho on bass, Colin Fahrner on drums, and John Belino on second guitar. Waste was recorded live in a rented cabin in the mountains of Big Bear, CA. “We packed a big-ass van and set up in the living room and kitchen,” Lemieux says. “Tracked it live, with overdubs after.” The whole album was recorded over two separate weekends, engineered by Steve Schroeder, who also recorded the band’s 2019 self-titled debut album. “I’d say it has sort of a DIY LA punk aesthetic,” he adds. “Very ironically going hand in hand with a classic metal vibe: Thin Lizzy, Judas Priest, classic Deep Purple, Uriah Heep and other melodic heavy rock bands.”

By now listeners are probably familiar with Riding Easy’s wildly popular Brown Acid series of rare, lost and unreleased proto-metal and stoner rock singles from the ’60s-’70s. In the endless pursuit of those glorious gems, the label often uncovers equally brilliant rarities from the late-’70s to late-’80s Golden Age of Heavy Metal that also just must be heard, but they don’t fit the series’ aesthetic. Scrap Metal Volume 1 collects some of the greatest unknown and lost heavy metal tracks, long buried beneath the avalanche of the era’s classic output. Everyone knows the old adage that history is told by the winners. But sometimes the losers tell the best stories. And while none of these bands found fame and fortune, this artifact and the volumes to come are testament to the enduring power of heavy music. One can hear the blood, sweat and beers that went into each of these singles. The recordings may be low budget, but the inspiration and talent is immutable. Not only are the amps turned up to 11, the boyish sexual innuendo is cranked to 69. One can hear the convergence of influences—NWOBHM, thrash, glam metal, doom, etc—colliding at once as the era birthed a wellspring of subgenres. Many of these singles are self-released and were thus limited to a small run of copies. Those that remain are hoarded by collectors and sold for exorbitant amounts. Riding Easy has collected the best of the best for the listener here. As with Brown Acid, all of these tracks are licensed legitimately and the artists all get paid. Because it’s the right thing to do.

“Hisingen Blues” skillfully combines a 70’s vibe with a more powerful modern sound.

Limited re-print as OPAQUE MARBLED - ECO VINYL (see attached)

= made out of 100% recycled materials in opaque marble look in eco-friendly packaging (sugar cane, flax and hemp fibre)

American blackened electro-industrial Act 6TH Circle is back with new LP The Idle Construct, another masterful forty-minute crucible of insurgent post-industrial darkness laced with haunting atmospheres and seismic, disorienting beats. Officially licensed from Sonic Groove Records, The Idle Construct is 6th Circle's most tenebrous and atmospheric release to date, seeing its first ever proper release on a physical format worldwide via Sentient Ruin as a limited edition black vinyl pressing, after its initial and so far digital-only release in 2021. The Idle Construct sees 6th Circle further evolve and deconstruct its dark sonic canvas, pushing its foreboding atmospheres and anachronistic grooves deeper into lightless realms, and taking the listener further into a dark future dystopia of bitter disillusionment and grim alienation. The dark flame of defining acts like Skinny Puppy, Front Line Assembly, and :Wumpscut:, burns more vigorously than ever within these ten caustic tracks of industrial insurrection, but what defines 6th Circle's unrivaled approach to the craft is not so much its masterful evocation of an unrivaled past glory, rather the fearless exploration of its still unaccomplished and uncharted possibilities in the

A Tzompantli, in bygone days, was a rack used to display human skulls, often of enemies or sacrifices, in several Mesoamerican civilizations. In 2022, Tzompantli is a beyond crushing Death Doom war march built on a bedrock of Native / Indigenous themes, rituals and history, illuminating the splendor, brutality and despair within.

Nearly three years after the band’s self-released EP, Tzompantli’s debut full length presents the first smoke-conjured specter to manifest materially. ‘Tlazcaltiliztli’, a ritual ceremony that translates to; ‘nourishing the fire and sun with blood’, is imbued with the spirit of Native inspiration that dwells deep within the heart and soul of the project and is skillfully weaved into a traditional bludgeoning framework of spine-severing savagery and melancholic anguish. On the ritualistic ‘Eltequi’ (to cut the chest open and extract the heart as an offering) the band’s unification of native / folk instrumentation and heaviness becomes one in the same, opening vast new horizons for where this sound can go.

‘Tlazcaltiliztli’ is dedicated, and an offering, to the indigenous peoples, nations & tribes of the North, South, East & West of the American continents. It marks a fearsome and spirited new vision for the Death Metal underground.

Only Side 1/2, second vinyl is missing!

Only Side 1/2, Disc 2 and gatefold cover is missing.

Chicago’s Broken Hope shook up the US death metal scene with a series of transitional releases, during a time when the genre was shifting from the styles of old vanguards to themes of heavy gore, with a matching visual aesthetic. Sixth album Omen Of Disease was the sole LP to feature Gorgasm’s Tom Leski on vocals, with new drummer Mike Miczek and guitarist Chuck Wepfer of the Rise & Fall joining mainstays Jeremy Wagner and Shaun Glass for gloriously gory excursions, with high speed guitar blasts galore and a few slam elements, along with Sci-Fi synth interludes. Brutally excellent…and not for the faint-hearted!

limited transparent orange /red /black splatter vinyl LP

The Promise Of Rain, the sophomore album of the experimental black metal band Scarcity, is an embodiment of the hard-to-believe truth that burdens are easier to bear when distributed, a realization Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble) grappled with extensively while writing this record. This is a sweat-drenched album about dispersion, about spreading, about the collective relieving of burdens through shared experience: one doesn’t have to go through everything alone.

When Scarcity’s debut album Aveilut was written in early 2020, Randall-Myers and vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Glorious Depravity, and Seputus) never expected to be able to play their songs live. The cathartic experience of playing something that came from a place of isolation out to people in a live setting is the root of the intensity in The Promise Of Rain. The Promise Of Rain begins where the craziest climaxes of Aveilut end, and is the first Scarcity record to include Tristan Kasten-Krause (Sigur Ros, Steve Reich, Leya) on bass, Dylan Dilella (Pyrrhon) on guitar and Lev Weinstein (Krallice) on drums. Rather than building density with the quasi-orchestral layering on Aveilut, Scarcity challenged themselves to document what five people in a room could do, recording most of The Promise Of Rain in one or two takes, capturing the physical effort and urgency of a live performance.

Scarcity forges a completely fresh sound in The Promise Of Rain with their alarming guitar work and melodic arpeggiating, shedding dead skin and breaking ground with sheer vulnerability. The lyrics for The Promise Of Rain were inspired by a trip Moore took to the high deserts of southern Utah in 2023. “To thrive in the desert is an act of abnegation—” he observes, “you do right by the land and receive its gifts, or it does away with you.” The necessity of adaptation is as evident in the desert as it is to the landscape of the human experience. The transformation of ideas and beliefs, the grief of losing relationships that had to end, and the fear involved in forming new ones under the grip of mental illness is conjured over and over again on this panoramic album.

The Promise Of Rain, the sophomore album of the experimental black metal band Scarcity, is an embodiment of the hard-to-believe truth that burdens are easier to bear when distributed, a realization Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble) grappled with extensively while writing this record. This is a sweat-drenched album about dispersion, about spreading, about the collective relieving of burdens through shared experience: one doesn’t have to go through everything alone.

When Scarcity’s debut album Aveilut was written in early 2020, Randall-Myers and vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Glorious Depravity, and Seputus) never expected to be able to play their songs live. The cathartic experience of playing something that came from a place of isolation out to people in a live setting is the root of the intensity in The Promise Of Rain. The Promise Of Rain begins where the craziest climaxes of Aveilut end, and is the first Scarcity record to include Tristan Kasten-Krause (Sigur Ros, Steve Reich, Leya) on bass, Dylan Dilella (Pyrrhon) on guitar and Lev Weinstein (Krallice) on drums. Rather than building density with the quasi-orchestral layering on Aveilut, Scarcity challenged themselves to document what five people in a room could do, recording most of The Promise Of Rain in one or two takes, capturing the physical effort and urgency of a live performance.

Scarcity forges a completely fresh sound in The Promise Of Rain with their alarming guitar work and melodic arpeggiating, shedding dead skin and breaking ground with sheer vulnerability. The lyrics for The Promise Of Rain were inspired by a trip Moore took to the high deserts of southern Utah in 2023. “To thrive in the desert is an act of abnegation—” he observes, “you do right by the land and receive its gifts, or it does away with you.” The necessity of adaptation is as evident in the desert as it is to the landscape of the human experience. The transformation of ideas and beliefs, the grief of losing relationships that had to end, and the fear involved in forming new ones under the grip of mental illness is conjured over and over again on this panoramic album.

The Promise Of Rain, the sophomore album of the experimental black metal band Scarcity, is an embodiment of the hard-to-believe truth that burdens are easier to bear when distributed, a realization Brendon Randall-Myers (conductor of the Glenn Branca Ensemble) grappled with extensively while writing this record. This is a sweat-drenched album about dispersion, about spreading, about the collective relieving of burdens through shared experience: one doesn’t have to go through everything alone.

When Scarcity’s debut album Aveilut was written in early 2020, Randall-Myers and vocalist Doug Moore (Pyrrhon, Weeping Sores, Glorious Depravity, and Seputus) never expected to be able to play their songs live. The cathartic experience of playing something that came from a place of isolation out to people in a live setting is the root of the intensity in The Promise Of Rain. The Promise Of Rain begins where the craziest climaxes of Aveilut end, and is the first Scarcity record to include Tristan Kasten-Krause (Sigur Ros, Steve Reich, Leya) on bass, Dylan Dilella (Pyrrhon) on guitar and Lev Weinstein (Krallice) on drums. Rather than building density with the quasi-orchestral layering on Aveilut, Scarcity challenged themselves to document what five people in a room could do, recording most of The Promise Of Rain in one or two takes, capturing the physical effort and urgency of a live performance.

Scarcity forges a completely fresh sound in The Promise Of Rain with their alarming guitar work and melodic arpeggiating, shedding dead skin and breaking ground with sheer vulnerability. The lyrics for The Promise Of Rain were inspired by a trip Moore took to the high deserts of southern Utah in 2023. “To thrive in the desert is an act of abnegation—” he observes, “you do right by the land and receive its gifts, or it does away with you.” The necessity of adaptation is as evident in the desert as it is to the landscape of the human experience. The transformation of ideas and beliefs, the grief of losing relationships that had to end, and the fear involved in forming new ones under the grip of mental illness is conjured over and over again on this panoramic album.