Crucial Blast

An independent music label/small press and online shop specializing in avant-garde metal, black noise

Crucial Blast was formed in 1999 as an imprint and web-based mailorder dedicated to documenting and releasing cutting-edge, adventurous, and downright weird sounds from the intersections of extreme metal, experimental music, hardcore, and electronics. The label took it's first breath with a handful of EP's from regional death/thrash/punk acts Strong Intention, Crucial Unit, Fisticuffs, and The Bod

yBag Romance, and then began to branch out with the debut CDEP from Ohio's Rune (Willowtip/Relapse) and a split CD album that featured a lost recording from the king of harsh Japanese noise, Merzbow. The diversity of these early releases set the tone for Crucial Blast's ongoing infatuation with abrasive, adventurous music, charting out the noisier underbelly of the international extreme music scene with releases ranging from brutal sludge/noise rock, quirky Japanese grindcrust, electronically enhanced grind, sound-collage sludgecore, compilations/chronicles of the legendary Maryland Doom Rock scene and the heavy drone underground (respectively), and including acclaimed albums from artists like Gnaw Their Tongues, Weedeater, Genghis Tron, and Skullflower.

12/14/2024

Cultic COMIN' IN HEAVY IN 2025 !

Catch us next Saturday (12-21-24 ) at Skid Row!

12/12/2024

12/11/2024

Many thanks to The Devil's Mouth for including VHS's incomparable FOR A FEW RIFFS MORE in their "Top 30 of 2024" list! Great review , as always.

List time is here again.

12/06/2024

JOIN US

12/03/2024

JOZEF VAN WISSEM is touring the USA this month - DO NOT MISS THIS!

The acclaimed Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem is known for his experimental composing and hypnotic use of the lute, and has built a stunning catalog of albums and collaborations over the past two and a half decades, including the score to Jim Jarmusch's Only Lovers Left Alive.

van Wissem will be performing his original scores to THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1928) and NOSFERATU (1922) (see tour poster for specific dates/films) with showings of the films on this tour. It is a one-of-a-kind experience, not to be missed.

Jozef van Wissem's astounding original score to NOSFERATU (1922) will appear on an upcoming limited-edition VHS videocassette release of the film from Crucial Blast Video, which will also feature amazing original artwork from UK illustrator Godhead.
This will be the first time that van Wissem's score will accompany the film on physical media.

Release date TBA, but soon.

www.jozefvanwissem.com

www.jozefvanwissem.com/tour/

details and photos of the tape release soon:
www.crucialblast.net
www.crucialblastshop.net

12/03/2024

Thanks Rot Coven for the enthusiastic words on HIGH High Noon Kahuna and their "This Place Is Haunted" album. Stoked to see it made your "Best Of 2024" list!

"High Noon Kahuna - This Place is Haunted
Hard charging surf-punk-noise-rock damage from Maryland. The more I listened to this the more it reminded me of a three way knife fight between Kyuss, The Grey Daturas, and Dick Dale. “Flaming Dagger” is maybe my pound for pound favorite song of the year." - Rot Coven

12 track album

11/29/2024

NEW NEWSLETTER FOR 11/29/24

CRUCIAL BLAST: Black Weekend 20% Off Sale + New and Recent Releases

Wanna receive updates via the Crucial Blast E-Mail Newsletter for artist / label news, new releases, new store arrivals, special offers for newsletter subscribers, tour info, and more?

Sign up using the subscribe form on the left side of both www.crucialblast.net and www.crucialblastshop.net .

AND...Here's the browser version of the latest newsletter that just went out today:

https://pub22.bravenet.com/bravemailer/v2/online.php?id=1827&usernum=1806233137&e=orders%40crucialblast.net&cname=Valued%20Subscriber

11/29/2024

6 track album

11/27/2024

BLACK WEEKEND SALE
20% OFF EVERYTHING
AT BOTH WEBSTORE AND BANDCAMP

THANKS TO THE UNDERGROUND FOR OVER 25 YEARS OF SUPPORT!

Sale lasts through midnight December 2nd.
Use code : CRUCIALBLAST24 at checkout on both platforms

CRUCIAL BLAST WEBSTORE: www.crucialblastshop.net
CRUCIAL BLAST BANDCAMP: www.crucialblast.bandcamp.com

Thanks again for all of the support!
- Adam Wright / CRUCIAL BLAST

11/27/2024

CULTIC LIVE !!!

We're back! Save the Date 12-21 we'll be playing this banger with .band and . Proceeds go to NOT ONE MORE.

11/27/2024

PRÉSENCE DU FUTUR / BÊTE LUMINEUSE Possession Subcosmique CASSETTE / DIGITAL (Crucial Blast)

Quebecois masters of haunting, ectoplasmic synthesizer music join together to offer a richly textured experience drenched in kosmische mystery and grinding menace.

PRÉSENCE DU FUTUR (featuring the mind behind Neige et Noirceur, Ossements, Les Hommes Chiens) crafts an otherworldly array of gorgeous synth, menacing electronics, and phantom melodies, a kind of "Fortean Electronics" in the spirit of TANGERINE DREAM, DELIA DERBYSHIRE, and KLAUS SCHULZE.

On the other hand, the mighty BETE LUMINEUSE cracks open a door to the abyss, and sets loose huge volcanic dronescapes bathed in black fire. Immersive, apocalyptic, earth-devouring. Essential endtime electronics.

ORDER: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10103

BANDCAMP: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/possession-subcosmique

11/26/2024

Check out the new LATEX "No More Words" Stream Video
on Crucial Blast Youtube

https://youtu.be/SSvhWeC8bYE

Gutter goth. Industrial post-punk. Metallic darkwave.

LIMITED CASSETTE / BANDCAMP DIGITAL OUT FRIDAY 11/29/24

OBTAIN: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10102
HEAR: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/extended-agony

LATEX " Extended Agony " LIMITED EDITION CASSETTE / BANDCAMP DIGITAL (CBR145)SHIPPING LATE NOVEMBERCASSETTE LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Gutter goth. Industri...

11/25/2024

LATEX " Extended Agony "
LIMITED EDITION CASSETTE / BANDCAMP DIGITAL (CBR145)
SHIPPING LATE NOVEMBER
CASSETTE LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.

Gutter goth. Industrial post-punk. Metallic darkwave.

OBTAIN: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10102
HEAR: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/extended-agony

crucialblastshop.net
crucialblast.net
crucialblast.bandcamp.com

11/21/2024

Jeff Wagner, one of the most important writers and historians in the underground music sphere (not to mention a solid dude), has just suffered an unimaginable tragedy. Luckily he and his wife Adrienne are safe, but they lost their entire home as well as multiple pets.

Jeff's work and writing has been constant fuel for what I do here at Crucial Blast - I've been reading his work for ages, going back to his time at Metal Maniacs. I cannot imagine what he and his family is going through right now.

A fundraiser for the family has been set up here:

https://www.gofundme.com/f/greensboro-fire-adrienne-jeff

I grieve this terrible loss of pets and home. I wish them the best.

Please spread and share if you can.

Our beautiful home has burned down. We lost several beloved cats and e… Adrienne Everheart necesita tu apoyo para Home is gone! Help Rebuild After Major Fire

11/19/2024

PLAGUE PSALM " II: The Gifts of Wrath "
LIMITED EDITION CASSETTE / DIGITAL (CBR157)

SHIPPING LATE NOVEMBER

CASSETTE LIMITED TO 100 COPIES.

Apocalyptic post-industrial ritual. Catastrophic occult dirge. Cinematic endworld ambient. Ceremonial percussion intensity in the face of the coming storms.

OBTAIN: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10100

HEAR: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/ii-the-gifts-of-wrath

crucialblastshop.net
crucialblast.net
crucialblast.bandcamp.com

Address

POB 4636
Hagerstown, MD
21742

Website

http://www.crucialblastshop.net/

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Videos

Unpacking this new dose of eerie synth and churning abyssal electronics from Quebec.... PRÉSENCE DU FUTUR / BÊTE LUMINEUSE Possession Subcosmique CASSETTE / DIGITAL (Crucial Blast) Quebecois masters of haunting, ectoplasmic synthesizer music join together to offer a richly textured experience drenched in kosmische mystery and grinding menace. PRÉSENCE DU FUTUR crafts an otherworldly array of gorgeous synth, menacing electronics, and phantom melodies in the spirit of TANGERINE DREAM, DELIA DERBYSHIRE, and KLAUS SCHULZE, while BETE LUMINEUSE cracks open a door to the abyss, and sets loose huge volcanic dronescapes bathed in black fire. Essential endtime electronics. ORDER: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10103 BANDCAMP: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/possession-subcosmique

13TH APOSTLE "SWALLOW THE VOID AND ERASE YOUR SOUL" LIMITED-EDITION CASSETTE ONLY 50 COPIES PRODUCED. SHIPPING LATE NOVEMBER The second release in an ongoing trilogy, 13TH APOSTLE’s Swallow The Void... streams through your neurons like a wave of barbed wire and carbonized human remains, a sustained scream of world-weary loathing and spiritual exhaustion. Bomb-blast heaviosity and ultra-distorted power that points towards the most putrid and pungent depths of death industrial, while mutating into its own distinct abominable form. Total hell. Strictly limited to fifty copies. GET IT: https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10101 HEAR IT: https://crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/swallow-the-void-and-erase-your-soul

OUT NOW FROM CRUCIALBLAST EDITIONS: LIMITED QUANTITIES FOR ALL The first two issues of the ongoing ABYSM zine/book series, collecting writing, reviews, essays, art / collage / visual poetry and more from the CRUCIAL BLAST archives, 1999-2024. Focused on "black noise / industrial / ambient / BM-adjacent weirdness" Each hand-numbered in a limited edition of 100 copies. The INDUSTRIE CHIMERE NOIRE Dans L'oeil Du Mort Art Zine is the first published collection of artwork from Joce and the Industrie Chimere Noire. Dans L'oeil du Mort features an array of artwork that stretches back to the Industrie's origins in 2007, some of which has been featured on releases from Profound Lore. ABYSM Volume I: A-E (Second Edition) BOOK (ZINE / CHAPBOOK) (Crucial Blast Editions) https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10096 ABYSM Volume I: F-K BOOK (ZINE / CHAPBOOK) (Crucial Blast Editions) https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=10097 INDUSTRIE CHIMERE NOIRE Dans L'oeil Du Mort ART BOOK (Crucial Blast Editions) https://crucialblastshop.net/album.php?ID=7926

The latest in a series of ongoing collaborations between Crucial Blast and Jason Walton of Agalloch / Snares Of Sixes / Sculptured and a host of other imaginative bands both within the realm of extreme metal and without. Nothing that he has brought us before is like this, though. Unholy dread electronics. Agonal cyber-ritual. Nightmare audio cut-up. An act of horror. Walton's MoonBladder reveals itself as a vaporous nightmare with Dark Sky Equilibrium, a single sprawling eponymous piece of music that seeps into your world like a shadowform summoned from a combination of infernal electronic signals and ancient ritual acts. It's utterly surreal, a constantly shifting soundscape seething with demonic ramblings and crushing rusted drones, black pulsating blots of negative energy, swells of thunderous distorted chaos and the sounds of cities being devoured, fried-out circuitry sprouting new bio-mechanical appendages and crawling across entire energy grid systems, washes of deathly orchestral ambience a la Cold Meat Industries giving over to bizarre and monstrous gibberish, grinding industrial screech and hum...it's all quite horrifying, god knows where some of these sounds are coming from, but the sum total is a masssive accursed sound-collage, finding its way to the sound of gasping, desperate prayer. Unheeded. Ignored. Asphyxiated. The darkest work from Jason Walton yet.

CULTIC "Seducer (Expanded Edition)" CASSETTE / BC DIGITAL OUT NOW. Get crushed by primitive, barbaric doom-death, psychedelic sleaze, and the roar of battle! GET: crucialblast.net crucialblastshop.net crucialblast.bandcamp.com

GET SEDUCED CULTIC "Seducer (Expanded Edition)" CASSETTE + "Whip Seduction" SHIRT OUT 2.9.24 crucialblast.net crucialblastshop.net crucialblast.bandcamp.com/album/seducer-expanded-edition #culticband #culticseducer #darkdungeonmetal #blackmetal #doommetal #doom #heavymetal #crucialblast #doomdeath #dungeonsynth #martialindustrial #darkfantasy #darkfantasyart