Arkham Witch - On Crom's Mountain

At last, a new release from Arkham Witch!  I'm breaking my own no-new-releases rule once again here due to my excitement over this album.  Straddling the line between the old-school Lovecraftian doom of Simon Iff's other project Lamp of Thoth and the NWOBHM-informed approach of like-minded bands such as Christian Mistress, On Crom's Mountain isn't deep or particularly dark heavy metal.   Instead, it's a fairly upbeat, joyous drunken celebration of crusty rock n' roll, ragged and righteous.  Of course, there's the requisite Lovecraft/Howard lyrical leanings, along with some witch and viking-related material, and some more cryptic sentiments.  It's still gestating in my ears, as I've only listened to it a scant handful of times, but even now I must go crack another beer and loosen up the old neck muscles - It's tough to headbang and type at the same time.

Through Arkham madness, and lunacy

In gibbous frenzy - we are free!

Fear No Pain

Lord Vicar is the group founded by former Reverend Bizarre guitarist Peter Inverted and vocalist Christian Lindersson, most notorious for replacing Wino in Saint Vitus on the under-appreciated "C.O.D." album. It's about what you would expect - molasses paced swaying doom riffs, eldritch lyrics, and crushing despair and hopelessness. Strangely it also sounds wonderful while I am sitting on a porch, sipping on a fruity girly drink, whiling away my first day of downtime in weeks. Ponder the futility of human existence and pass the pomegranite juice, you wanker!
Pillars Under Water

Unaussprechlichen Kulten - Wake Up in the Night of Walpurgis

Crusty Chilean ESL death metallers Unaussprechlichen Kulten sing entirely within the orbit of the Cthulhu mythos, and are obviously well versed and fervent. I haven't but precious moments to type, so I'll not mince words: this album is crucial to your understanding of the universe. Further growth will simply cease until you absorb this precious nourishment, for your minds and many wriggling tentacles.
The Black Goat of the Woods With a Thousand Youngs

The Ziggurat - Hymns of the Cthulhu Mythos

What can we say about the Ziggurat? Their palpable enthusiasm for Lovecraftiana is undeniable, and the primitive death metal approach is just on this side of competent, but something about this band just makes me smile and shake my head in amused bafflement. Everything about them, from the goofy song titles (my favorite, sadly not on this album, is "Chocolate Shoggoth Shake") to the requisite Geocities homepage to this photo of band leader Dwayne Boyd, screams unintentional hilarity. This particular LP might be less obviously amusing if the vocals weren't twice as loud as everything else and the drums didn't sound like rubber tubs, but then it wouldn't be as memorable either. Ah well, who cares what we think?
Into the Dank Abyss

Teach Your Plants to Talk

In celebration of the upcoming 100th post here in the Swamp, your host has compiled these varied fragments from several of the tomes already featured here and from the many more that remain, so far, obscure. Here is a track listing - I will let the yawning infinity of madness speak for itself:
Joseph LoDuca - Introduction
Anaal Nathrakh - The Yellow King
Argus - Bending Time
Ironsword - Overlords Of Chaos
Arkham Witch - Legends of the Deep
Rotting Christ - The Old Coffin Spirit
Dagon - It Came from Beneath the Waves
Payne's Gray - Within the Vault
Bog People - Slow Green Pace
Brown Jenkins - Dagonite
Crystal Eyes - Dead City Dreaming
Dayglo Abortions - The Spawn of Yog Sothoth
Teen Cthulhu - The Great Race Of Yith
Electric Wizard - Dunwich
Fall of The Idols - Cold Air
The Grotesquery - The Terrible Old Man
Harvist - He Who Rises From the Deep
Kataklysm - Mystical Plane Of Evil
The Lamp Of Thoth - The Doom That Came To Sarnath
Mercyful Fate - The Mad Arab
Dunwich - Strange Sacrifice
The Wandering Midget - I Am the Gate
Krallice - Dimensional Bleedthrough
Henry Wentworth Akeley - Akeley's Wax Cylinder Recording

Teach Your Plants to Talk

Baby's First Mythos

Not normally one to buy into the cutesyfying of the Mythos, I nonetheless was charmed by this little booklet of ABC's designed to help rear little monsters properly. This is a scan of the old black-and-white handmade edition; the book has recently been re-issued in color (and "now with X!") and is available for purchase elsewhere.
Hmm....

Paranormal Ichthyology

Behold, foul ones!
Ignore that gibberish posted previously here, I have returned to the land of the lucid. Dagon, represented here, plays a wonderfully icky black/death/doom hybrid that virtually personifies the Fish Metal realms of the Swamp: Unintelligible rasping and howling, long stretches of ringing quarter notes, mood swings as unpredictable as the sea itself, pirates, sharks, pretentious three-part suites...
What's not to loathe?

Dagon - La Secta del Mar

Long forbidden in America, but destined to someday blacken our shores with pulsating putrid throbs of noise and guttural chanting in suppressed tongues, this audio recording of sounds from the moving picture Dagon, the ill-begotten brainchild of one Stuart Gordon, who had been responsible for the horrors of Re-Animator and From Beyond, and one Carles Cases, composer of nasty tuneless wailings, struggles to escape rightful oblivion even now. Its appearance here can bode no good, as surely as it spread madness in Spain, the place of its mewling birth. Hence it comes to you with unnamed songs of opaque meaning and thankfully sparse documentation.
They'll never believe you.