Feb 022018
 

 

Ashtabula, Ohio, is a port town located at the mouth of the Ashtabula River on Lake Erie, across from the province of Ontario, Canada, and about 60 miles outside Cleveland. According to The Font of All Human Knowledge, the name Ashtabula is derived from ashtepihəle, which means “always enough fish to be shared around” in the Lenape language. But if you were to Google search “Ashtabula”, one of the first results comes from the Urban Dictionary, who define it as, “A city in Ohio known for being more worthless than a pile of shit.”

Whoever came up with that nasty witticism obviously hasn’t been listening to the metal coming out of Ashtabula, which is powerful enough to fracture foundations in Cleveland and send tidal waves across the lake toward Canada. It’s home to Homewrecker, and it’s also ground zero for two other bone-breakers — Crypt Rot and Cringe.

Those two bands are participating in a new split consisting of an EP from each group — Nocturnal Deterioration from Crypt Rot, and Memento Mori from Cringe. The split will be jointly released as a digital download on  February 9 and in a cassette tape edition on February 23 by the sibling labels Redefining Darkness Records and Seeing Red Records. Today we’re bringing you the premiere of a song by each band from this hell-raising split. Continue reading »

Apr 252017
 

Crypt Rot are a relatively new Ohio band whose line-up includes current and former members of such groups as Homewrecker and Scorched (with whom they’ll be releasing a split later this year). Their debut album Embryonic Devils will be released by Southern Lord on April 28th, and today we’ve got a full stream with which to violate your earholes.

The music on the album is a head-wrecking horror, but the album title could be misleading. These are not embryonic devils. Both Crypt Rot and their songs are full-grown, fully formed devils with a monstrous capacity for spreading pestilence, destruction, and an atmosphere of paranormal terror and derangement. Continue reading »

Mar 072017
 

 

As I looked through my list of candidates for a SEEN AND HEARD round-up, and having siphoned off some of the more blackened entries for a continuation of the latest SHADES OF BLACK column, it dawned on me that many of the remaining songs were of a deathly variety. And so I’ve compiled them here with a different post title. Different forms of death, to be sure, but plenty of heaviness and savagery is to be found below.

HATE

Tremendum is the name of the new album by the Polish leviathans (note, I did not say “behemoths”) in Hate. It will be released on May 5 by Napalm Records. This morning the band debuted a lyric video for the first single from the album, a track called “Asuric Being“. Continue reading »