Lycia – A Line That Connects (Handmade Birds, 2015)

When darkwave legends Lycia returned from the musical wilderness with Quiet Moments in 2013, it was widely hailed as a stellar comeback for the band.  While I certainly enjoyed the album, I couldn’t help but feel that they were just warming up. Quiet Moments is unquestionably a good record, a great record even, but it also struck me as the work of an artist attempting to fully regain their footing after some fairly lengthy gaps between releases (seven years between Empty Space and the Fifth Sun EP, three years between Fifth Sun and QM).

Weeping Rat – Tar (Handmade Birds, 2015)

Sacramento was positively drenched with rain last weekend.  The meteorologists called it an “atmospheric river;” I called it a great time to wallow in some seriously depressing music to match the shitty weather. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no better band in 2015 to accompany overcast skies and sheets of (probably toxic) precipitation than Australia’s Weeping Rat.  The band is set to drop their debut album Tar via the mighty Handmade Birds, and it’s a deliciously dismal listen, to say the very least.

Barren Harvest – Subtle Cruelties (Handmade Birds, 2014)

Darkness comes in many forms.  A band doesn’t necessarily have to scream about Satan or pile on the distortion in order to take listeners to pitch-black places.  Subtle Cruelties, the debut album from West Coast duo Barren Harvest, is an exquisite example of this.  A collaboration between Jessica Way of Worm Ouroboros and Atriarch’s Lenny Smith, Barren Harvest’s sound is rooted in the subtle tones and textures of ambient and neofolk, yet somehow manages to be darker and more sorrowful than even the most depressive of black metal bands.

Burial Hex – The Hierophant (Handmade Birds, 2014)

As a reviewer, tons of releases come across my desk every year, but few of them actually make me stop and say “Wow, this album is really something.”  Burial Hex’s The Hierophant is just such an album; its seamless mixture of disparate tones and textures is simply unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before.  Please believe it when I say this is not another case of music journalist hyperbole, this is simply one of the most stunningly unique, beautiful and unsettling recordings ever to ravage my unworthy ears.

Pinkish Black – s/t (Handmade Birds, 2012)

Of all the great heavy music that’s happened in 2012, I find myself being the most interested in the handful of bands that have openly defied the trappings of heavy music both musically and conceptually, while at the same time being embraced by the metal community. I’m thinking of bands such as Wreck and Reference, Menace Ruine and Author & Punisher; bands that have forged unique and innovative identities for themselves without adhering to the guitar/bass/drums format. You can add Fort Worth, TX duo Pinkish Black to that short list; their self-titled debut album is a drums/synth/loops/voice fuelled exercise in gothic/death rock exellence that nods to the past as it creeps towards the future.

Sutekh Hexen – Larvae (Handmade Birds, 2012)

Somewhere between raw black metal, dark ambient and experimental noise lies San Francisco’s Sutekh Hexen.  Their second full length album, Larvae is a hellish yet ethereal sounding affair that’s relentlessly, unendingly dark; permanent fucking midnight.  I’m not talking about the Earth being covered in eternal blackness here, I’m talking about the dark night of the soul, the abyss within.  It is outsider music designed to take you on a journey to the darkest recesses of inner space, a crepuscular womb of crumbling distortion.