CRUCIAL BLAST: New Mutations In Extreme Music

Since 1999, Crucial Blast has been committed to releasing and offering an eclectic array of cutting edge underground music from the nebulous regions between extreme metal, indie rock, and avant-noise. As a label, Crucial Blast has released cassettes, 7" EPs and compact discs from such artists as Weedeater, Totimoshi, Merzbow, Charalambides, Rune, Jumbos KillCrane, Skullflower, Floor, Dataclast, All Is Suffering, Lockweld, K.K. Null, Troum, Clutch, Earthride, The Mass, Suzukiton, Genghis Tron, Infidel?/Castro!, Burmese, The Hidden Hand, Fistula, Unholy Grave, Orthrelm, The Goslings, Behold...The Arctopus, and many many more. As a mailorder and online webstore, Crucial Blast offers an eclective and diverse catalog with hundreds of titles, many hard-to-find and out-of-print, from the worldwide heavy avant/extreme experimental/noisy indie underground, including Japanese psychedelia and noise, French noise rock, popular US labels like Southern Lord, Hydra Head, Relapse, and Troubleman, heavy/abrasive indie rock, heavy drones and ambient drift, all sorts of Doom Metal and Sludgecore, rare powerviolence/fastcore 7"s, avant-grind and experimental pop, brutal jazz, and much MUCH more!  

ORTHRELM / BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS split CDEP available now!

The killer new split CD-single from avant-shred heads ORTHRELM and BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS is now available direct from Crucial Blast. This CDEP features a new, exclusive song each from New York tech/prog metal wizards BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS and shred meltdown duo ORTHRELM, overdosing the listener on spastic complexity and insane instrumental prowess that will liquify your grey matter. Adorned in eye-blazing original artwork from VOIVOD's Away. ORTHRELM just blasted the US with a national tour in support of their OV full-length released last year on Ipecac, and BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS will be heading out this spring on tour with Dysrythmia.
Here's a review of the ORTHRELM/BEHOLD...THE ARCTOPUS split CDEP from Decibel Magazine:
"There something inherently destructive and careless in music like this. Both Beholdthe Arctopus and Orthrelm stake their reputations on disciplined improvisation, but the work itself necessitates auto-destructive imperatives. Their elusive, dizzying sound evokes Zorn work with Painkiller and Masada and is equally reminiscent of Coltrane abandonment first of bebop, then the matrix he developed with Giant Steps before venturing outward into the spiritual impossibilities of modal jazz. Behold AINcavebegins a dialogue between guitar and drums that culminates in a regurgitation of what just been digested. Unlike Orthrelm, their use of viscous sounds lubricates and combusts, taking a circuitous route through dialogical syncopation, call and response, and load noise intensity. Like Zorn work, it moody and agitated, at once brooding and decisive, storming and wailing with purpose between chromatic tantrums. Conversely, Orthrelm ithot 1abbreviates their 2005 ode to concentration, OV. A series of profound declensions and cartoonish riffs, it scrawls a Mike Patton caricature, then burns it in effigy. As much a song as a trigonometry lesson, Orthrelm guitars and drums chase a parabolic rollercoaster, cascading down asymptotic peaks with fearless elegance. Orthrelm draw a smiley face on repetition, the hallmark of nightmare logic allowing cat and mouse to lose meaning only to become a chicken or egg proposition in which the cat left chasing its tail. Each generation is more distorted, violent, and funny: as Tweety is to Sylvester and as Tom is to Jerry is to Itchy is to Scratchy ad infinitum; or as Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf? playwright Edward Albee once put it, ood, better, best, bested.

Crucial Blast welcomes ACROSS TUNDRAS, debut full length coming in 2006
We're stoked to announce that we will be working with Denver's ACROSS TUNDRAS on their first full length,Dark Songs Of The Prairie, the follow up to last years Divides EP on Feeling Faint that we were rabidly raving about a few months ago. Featuring former members of Sioux Falls, SD post-hardcore outfits Spirit Of Versailles and Examination Of The... , ACROSS TUNDRAS creates imposing, majestic rock from massive syrupy heaviness, spacious melodies, and rustic hooks that makes us think of Neil Young and Neurosis, spacey psychedelia and massive doomy crush, super emotional and super loud, like a mysterious 70's country rock outfit thawed out and refitted with mighty amplification, sludgecore tempos, and shoegazey shimmer that effortlessly conjures images of the wide open prairies and looming mountains of the band's territory. As weighty as current melodic heaviness from Pelican,Isis,Mouth Of The Architect,etc, but coming from a different place altogether. These guys are f***ing awesome, Divides was one of our favorite non-Crucial Blast releases of 2005, and we CANNOT WAIT to get this full length out! The band will begin recording the album at the end of February. Expect to see it a little later on this year, to be supported with lots of touring from ACROSS TUNDRAS. In the meantime, check out the bands MySpace page.

Crucial Blast welcomes GEISHA, Mondo Dell'Orrore full length coming May 2006
Crucial Blast will be fragmenting skulls in May with the Stateside release of Mondo Dell'Orrore, the new full length from UK noise rock trogs GEISHA. We've had our hands on the master for a little while now, so we can say with full certainty that this album F***ING SMOKES, devouring and rebirthing the concept of "noise pop" into something frighteningly beautiful and brutally heavy. GEISHA deliver crushing blasts of impossibly catchy hyperdistorted rock baked in massive frequency overload, huge pop hooks and beautiful melodies and sinister crushing riffs slathered in filthy throbbing feedback and white noise holocaust, like Isn't Anything-era MY BLOODY VALENTINE and UNSANE and DINOSAUR JR. gone sludgy and metallic, jamming with a small army of pedal-smashing harsh noise artists, playing awesomely catchy and heavy pop songs buried beneath a thick fog of skree and fuzz. Mondo Dell'Orrore is a fucking AMAZING album, and we can't wait to turn people here in the US onto this incredible band. The album will be released through Crucial Blast for North America in May 2006, and the UK/European release will be through Super Fi/Blood Red Sounds. CHeck out the bands MySpace page for some songs from Mondo as well as their older EPs.

NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT 2xCD COMPILATION RE-ISSUE: AVAILABLE NOW
Originally released in 1999, the NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT double-CD compilation was one of our first releases, a crude feast of brutal grindcrust, raw hardcore, and all-out noise warfare packed inside of a 64 page 7"x7" newsprint fanzine-style booklet loaded with rants, essays, poetry, artwork, and band info. It's been out of print for about two years now, but we've re-released it in this second edition of 1,000 copies, never to be repressed. In select stores now, and as always, available direct from Crucial Blast.
This limited-edition re-issue of the 1999 double CD compilation NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT is Crucial Blast's homage to the scuzz-caked grindcore/noise/sludge/speedpunk underground of the mid/late 1990's embodied in cheap cassette compilations and xerox-sleeved split 7" EPs. One of Crucial Blast's first ever releases, we grabbed exclusive outbursts from an array of subterranean sonic abusers, including BASTARD NOISE, AGATHOCLES, DAHMER, CRIPPLE BASTARDS, MACRONYMPHA, UNHOLY GRAVE, and loads of other purveyors of damaged, anti-social grind and noisecore, free noise and power electronics, spoken word, brutal fastcore, blazing D-beat driven crustcore, and lysergic psych-sludge. NOT WITHOUT A FIGHT is packaged in a DVD style plastic double-disc case that holds both CDs and a mega-thick, 64 page fanzine-style newsprint booklet loaded with band info, art, stories and rants. ARTIST LISTING: Mark Bruback, Cruel Face, Strong Intention, Bastard Noise, RPOD, SoIHadToShootHim, Katastrofialue, Unfound, Dark Skies Fallen, Retribution, Global Holocaust, Flammable Child, Depressor, John Bender, Aural Torture Mechanism, The Last Day No Human Voice, Agathocles, Daybreak, Puncture Wound, None Of Your Fucking Business, Dahmer, Samus, Mizuko, Cripple Bastards, Miseries AD, A Death Between Seasons, Macronymhpha, Unholy Grave, Falsies, Final Exit, JDog, Bloodstains & Bulletholes.