LETHE "INCONSEQUENCE" 3CDr (AOW 12)

There's beauty in the infinite, an endless stretch of possibility basking in the light before you, beckoning and summoning, calling out in whispers and lilting caresses.  Like a mist washing over a mountainside forest, calm and expansive.  But that mist could be smoke, the waste of scorching fires eating away the beauty, eradicating it inch by inch, malicious and indifferent.  Everything that once was will cease to matter, nothing but a blackened husk barely containing an echo of its former splendor.
Existence is tedium and boredom, waiting for the fires to approach and consume.  Sorrow waits at the end of all your work, all the pointless striving.  The nothingness is gigantic and unrelenting.  It awaits, yawning, craning its jaws to swallow you and your paltry life whole.
Lethe's massive triple album "Inconsequence" seeks to map out the domain of the pointless, and the sounds found within are nothing short of glacial and oceanic.  Deep, focused, and chillingly absent, "Inconsequence" drifts out to the edge of despair and waits.  Does anything actually happen?
Altar Of Waste is proud to present this towering new work of hopeless drone in a DVD package designed and constructed by Cory Strand, in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $18 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

LINDSKOLD "THE AURA OF COLLAPSE" CDr (AOW 16)

Mysterious instrumental black metal ambience, cloaked in the blinding violence of blurring repetition and stumbling circle patterns.  Guitars are distorted to the point of destruction, sounding like crumbling pustules of torn earth and free-flowing tar oozing across a scarred landscape.  Lindskold's lone member Skarmus builds tornado-like towers of frothing audio severity, wading into pools of black metal, HNW, and bass-throbbing dark ambient simultaneously, emerging with something indebted to atmospheric BM but altogether more primal, deranged and viscerally aggressive.
Altar of Waste is pleased to present this mysterious drone metal entity's debut record, offering it up to the vacuous winter night it so scathingly evokes.  Packaged in a DVD case designed and constructed by Cory Strand, in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

YOG-SOTHOTH "HYPNOTIC CRUSHERY" CDr (AOW 03)

Massive sludge drift masquerading in the guise of rock recidivism, with glacial riffs recalling Sabbath at their most plodding and the Melvins at their most astral.  The electric guitar takes up a position of idolatry, with all notions of structure and song given over to pure adulation of feedback and amplifier vomit.  The formula references Bower and Buzzo in equanimity, with psychedelic swirls of screaming squall collapsing under the shriek of theremin and the primacy of drumming as physical expression.
Yog-Sothoth are one of Minneapolis' best kept secrets, a project that builds monuments to excess and worships before the shrine of overindulgence.  Reveling in simplicity, the band here lumbers through six tracks of shambling doom kosmiche, taking riffs to their obvious extremities and then dumping sky-melting guitar solos over the entire mess.
Altar Of Waste is beyond pleased to give this unsung piece of basement psychedelia the release it deserves, having existed as a whisper in the Minneapolis dark for far too long.  Packaged in a DVD case designed and constructed by Cory Strand, in a limited edition of 50 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

FUTURE RELEASES

The label is off to an astounding start.  I'm very excited about what I've got coming up in the next several weeks:

LETHE "Abandonment to Failure": double disc set of suicidal HNW scathe.  Immerse yourself in the wearying weight of regret.

YOG-SOTHOTH "Hypnotic Crushery": psychedelic guitar worship from Minneapolis.  Like Skullflower choking on Melvins riffs.

BURIAL GROUND "Zombie": insane, crushing wall static based on Lucio Fulci's epic splatter film.  I am beyond psyched to release this-Burial Ground are one of the best HNW outfits in operation.

LETHE "Haunting and Woe": another huge collection (four discs) of dark ambient washout from Lethe.  Radigue worship taken to its frigid extreme.

FALLEN "1996 Demo": obscure and crude death metal from ages past.  Severely lo-fi and caustic as fuck.

LETHE "Inconsequence": three discs of oceanic droneworks from Lethe exploring the pointlessness and tedium of being.  Massive.

The Yog-Sothoth record will be the next one going into production, with a larger run than normal (50 copies.)  I will post the records as they become available.
Thanks to everyone for the support. 

DREAMLESS "MELANCHOLIA: A MISCELLANY" 2CDr (AOW 08)

A compilation of rehearsal takes, live performances, and home demos highlighting the noisier, more belligerent side of Minneapolis' shoegaze destructionists.  Some of the material here sounds almost industrial, with its focus on abrasive guitar layering and open-ended freeform improvisation, resulting in a sound related to, but ultimately removed from, the aesthetics found on "All This Sorrow, All These Knives."  Even the home demos are caustic, with drums programmed into crunching, crushing oblivion.  Disc two is a lovely, gorgeous ambient reworking of an unreleased track constructed by Lethe, a wash of pure post-MBV blurgaze that recalls the hazier works of Tim Hecker or Campbell Kneale.  Some of the most severe Dreamless material floating around.
Altar of Waste is pleased to present this atypical set, packaged in a DVD case designed and constructed by Cory Strand with a full color insert, in a incredibly limited edition of 5 hand-numbered copies.  $20 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

LETHE "GLACIERE FLAMEAUX" 2CDr (AOW 07)

Equally inspired by the primal aggression of black metal's original wave and the stoic majesty of Iceland's natural landscapes, Lethe's latest excursion into drone ambient is a powerful, measured work of glacial temperance and refined minimalism.  Using Sigur Ros' landmark "Takk..." album as a source, "Glaciere Flameaux" reinterprets the band's iconoclasm and tendency towards emotional catharsis as two massive, dark compositions that barely suggest their origin.  Instead, Lethe creates darkness out of optimism, evoking the spectral nature of Iceland's gorgeous cartography and meshing it to the spectacle of burning churches.  Far from being a simple remix album, this is contemplative drone at its most epic and subdued. 
Altar of Waste is pleased to present this elegant work in a DVD package designed and constructed by Cory Strand in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $15 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

LETHE "A SECOND SONG FOR DAVID LYNCH" CDr (AOW 06)

Conceived as a companion piece to Cory Strand's upcoming "A Song for David Lynch" EP on Small Doses, "A Second Song for David Lynch" reaches further into the grotesque spectacle located in the heart of David Lynch's universe.  More reflective of the bleak and disturbing confusion of "Inland Empire," Lethe's vision highlights the nightmarish qualities of Lynch's work, the epic noir horror found lurking in the shadowy recesses of bizarre imagery and lurid color. 
Beauty is far from absent, though.  Lethe continues Strand's exploration of "Twin Peaks" through vaguely melodic overtones and jazz-tinged structural elements.  In the mind of David Lynch, numerous worlds exist alongside one another, strange and evocative, haunting and complex, often violent, and always weird.  The overlaps create distortions, pockets of surreality that threaten to become the known.  The only recourse is love and the individual, quirk and fetish.  "A Second Song for David Lynch" attempts to map out the famed director's melodramatic approach to psychological horror, with surprisingly lovely results.  Altar of Waste is pleased to present this set of recordings in a DVD package designed and constructed by Cory Strand in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

LETHE "FHALESETHENCE" CDr (AOW 05)

The medieval destruction of magick through the allure of the stench of sex and the resultant hollowness form the base for Lethe's latest exploration of death ambience, the frigid and scalding "Fhalesethence."  Like winter winds flaying the skin in the arctic wastes, Lethe's formless and assaulting onslaught slices and shreds, carving away the physical to free the ghostly visceral within.  In ancient times, beauty was lured with beauty and hacked away, robbing it of its most prized vitality.  Human nature has changed little since then; greed and selfishness walk in hand with narcissism and the posture of refinement.  Slowly, wonder vanishes from the world, swept away in a cloud of ever-growing stupidity and a failure to appreciate the unknown.  "Fhalesethence" is a funeral song for what was lost, now only rusted memories and whispered fairy tales.  Altar of Waste is pleased to present this staggering recording in a DVD package designed and constructed by Cory Strand in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com 

LETHE "FAILLITE" CDr (AOW 04)

The gravity of indecision reaches a witheringly existential crisis on Lethe's sprawling deep drone piece "Faillite."  Over an hour of sub-tones clawing their way to a broken surface, feeding off a greying aura of regret and self-dismissal.  The question of presence is distilled to a nullifying extreme, embodying the lack of a person.  Lethe again reaches far into the astral and brings back a cosmic mirror by which all failures shall be measured.  Excess and gratification of the base yields a reaping of sorrows.  This is the exit, the doorway into the void.  Forever falling, drowning in the emptiness of indifference.  Beyond lies poison and despair, black and engulfing, ever-hungry and screaming for more.
Altar of Waste presents "Faillite" in a DVD package designed and constructed by Cory Strand in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $10 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com

LETHE "AND COME DEATH SHALL I FORGET" 2CDr (AOW 02)

Lethe delves deep into the void in their second set of recordings for Altar of Waste, this time conjuring up vast stretches of near nothingness that float towards the outer vestiges of the cosmic expanse.  Dark patches of the weighted slumberous gorge themselves at the trough of black opulence and recede into the infinite blankness, forever wandering further into the end.  Memory is a liability, constantly under attack by the soporifics of being, a slave to the sorrows of merely existing.  There is no pleasure, there is no joy.  Strap on the headphones, kill the lights and shiver under your blankets.  "And Come Death Shall I Forget" is a map of a vacuum, a place barren, hollow, and near total collapse.  A different kind of haunting excess, death ambient to totality.  Packaged in a DVD case designed and constructed by Cory Strand in a limited edition of 10 hand-numbered copies.  $15 ppd. in the United States.  Overseas, please inquire as to exact cost.

CONTACT FOR ORDERING: corystrand@gmail.com