Two awesome reviews by Adam from Crucial Blast records

Crucial Blast webstore

"....murky out-metal CD-R releases from the new Faunsasabbatha imprint"

HEADS OF PAGAN Under The Tall And Darkened Arches 3" CD-R
Faunasabbatha

One of the three new limited editioon CD-Rs that we just got in from Faunasabbatha, the awesome and criminimally limited-edition new sublabel of Rural Faune. Rural Faune is itself an amazing little CD-R label based outta France and which is run by our pal Bruno, who shares my adoration of handmade short-run releases for especially noisy drone bands and abstract psychedelia, and his discs from Robedoor and Wolfskull were big faves of mine last year; but as heavy as some of that stuff on Rural Faune was (and is), Bruno decided to start up this new imprint that focuses exclusively on "doom and black metal". Of course, Bruno's idea of what constitutes doom and black metal is kind of warped, and so we get these amazing discs of WTF heaviness that I guess you could call doom or black metal but which actually exist in their own fucked up, bedroom-crafted outsider metal soundworld: tortured abstract deathdoom haunted by the voices of spirits trapped inside a crumbling sanitorium...blackened guitarnoisescapes....doomed funereal piano pieces...and improvised power sludge. Kind of in the same headspace as Campbell Kneale's Battlecruiser imprint. Obviously this is right up my alley, and I'm hoping that we'll be seeing ALOT more from Faunasabbatha in the near future.
Heads Of Pagan are another French duo, using voice, effects, and guitar to construct the 21 minute deathscape "Under The Tall And Darkened Arches", and this is one nasty skullgrind; the piece starts off as a simple ominous riff that drifts over a rhythmic background loop that sounds like a heavily reverb'd guitar being scraped and pounded, with sparse clean guitar notes and haunting little half-melodies being plucked and layered over top. As the track progresses though, it becomes more and more chaotic as distorted feedback and rumbling guitar noise builds into a heavy free-drone, flanging and other FX appearing in the dense murk of layered guitars, and finally turning into this massive undulating industrial sludgedrone, like one of Total's amp-shattering feedback/noise jams colliding with Wolf Eyes in a satanic industrial ritual. Seriosuly heavy rhythmic psych-filth. The 3" CD-R was released in another micro-pressing of 66 copies, and is already sold out from the label - we've got a mere half-dozen copies, and once they're gone, that's it. Packaged in a 3" sleeve with murky skull-encrusted artwork.

MP3 SAMPLE: " Under The Tall And Darkened Arches " (excerpt)

WAVERLY HILLS The Nurse CD-R
Faunsasabbatha

One of the three new limited editioon CD-Rs that we just got in from Faunasabbatha, the awesome and criminimally limited-edition new sublabel of Rural Faune. Rural Faune is itself an amazing little CD-R label based outta France and which is run by our pal Bruno, who shares my adoration of handmade short-run releases for especially noisy drone bands and abstract psychedelia, and his discs from Robedoor and Wolfskull were big faves of mine last year; but as heavy as some of that stuff on Rural Faune was (and is), Bruno decided to start up this new imprint that focuses exclusively on "doom and black metal". Of course, Bruno's idea of what constitutes doom and black metal is kind of warped, and so we get these amazing discs of WTF heaviness that I guess you could call doom or black metal but which actually exist in their own fucked up, bedroom-crafted outsider metal soundworld, kind of in the same headspace as Campbell Kneale's Battlecruiser imprint. Obviously this is right up my alley, and I'm hoping that we'll be seeing ALOT more from Faunasabbatha in the near future.
Waverly Hills is a notorious abandoned sanitorium in Louisville, Kentucky that was the site of a large number of deaths from tuberculosis in the 19th and early 20th century, and the massive, evil-looking building has served as a location for a handful of horror movies and television shows in the past few years - at this point, it's probably best known outside of the Louisville area for appearing on a recent episode of that goofy Sci-Fi channel show Ghost Hunters. The site is alleged to be one of the most haunted locations in the U.S., and it's easy to see why it's dank, crumbling hallways and towering spires capture people's imagination. This French band is obviously pretty infatuated with the sanitorium, naming themselves after the building and composing an entire hour long album of suffocatingly bleak and abstract doom in ode to Waverly Hills, with song titles like "The White Plague", "In The Hallways", "Room 502", and "Under Quarantine". The duo of vocalist Gwen and guitarist/drum programmer Pierre modeled their sound after the extreme industrialized deathdoom of Rigor Sardonicus, which should give you an idea as to how monstrous the sound is here: huge slabs of evil creeping doom riffage swirling in reverb over super-minimal drum machine rhythms, beats so sparse and stretched out that they are barely even there, the tracks sprawling out sometimes up to 14 minutes long, with ultra deep, monstrous roars and tortured wailing emanating from deep reverb pits. Ridiculously heavy, but also really abstract, almost like they were improvising the songs, with lots of creepy guitar/string noise and feedback crawling between thr riffs, and the glacial drum machine beats sometimes drifting off into silence. Massive, formless, utterly oppressive DOOM, Disembowelment mixed with Abruptum, Rigor Sardonicus fused with recordings of electronic voice phenomena. Released in an absurdly small hand-numbered edition of 74 copies, packaged in a full color paper sleeve printed on heavier stock, the CD splattered with paint and has a piece of silkscreened fabric glued to it, and sealed with a piece of metal wire. As far as I know, totally sold out from the label.

MP3 SAMPLE: " Room 502 " (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: " The White Plague " (excerpt)