Cattlemass - Alpha 1128 - VINYL LP

The debut full length album from Pittsburgh's Ritual Mass is more than a collection of songs, it's a series of calculated assaults on the virtue of the holy. Evolving beyond earlier EP and demo releases, Cascading Misery encapsulates the bludgeoning infliction of pain and the slow peel of skin by flame, rife with both sonic chaos and extinguished hope.From the outset of album opener InchObsidian MirrorInch the atmosphere is oppressive, thick with a suffocating malaise. There is a sense of something ceremonial at work but not in a way that seeks communion. Rather it's ordeal as sacrament. Riffs strangle and churn into convulsive submission, oscillating from slow agony to psychotic break, over which a guttural lament so savage it freezes the blood is wrenched through dungeon stone. Each track unfolds like time spent in isolation, bound by chains, the mind slowly unraveling and surrounded by memories of torment both real and imagined.By the time the epic fourteen-minute album closer 'Disquiet' dissipates into a mass of formless static, Ritual Mass have dragged you into a world where suffering is not an end but a condition of existence. Cascading Misery is music for the dissolution of hope, the terror of being, and the long march toward death.

Alpha Sub - Alpha Sub [VINYL LP] date 07/11/2025

Only a few chamber music ensembles of the world-famous Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra are allowed to have the addition InchGewandhausInch in their name. That obliges! The musicians of the Gewandhaus Brass Quintett are all award-winning brass players and present the multifaceted diversity of their instruments with unusual programmes ranging from swinging baroque to jazzy groove. Their latest focuses on compositions written especially for the quintet. Compositions in the traditional style, onomatopoetic and rousing pictures by the Californian Kevin McKee, tonal experiments in the work of Steffen Schleiermacher or melancholic-jazzy harmonies with a touch of melancholy. The fundamentally different sounding world premiere recordings convey an impression of the colorful complexity of the brass sound.