No words. No thoughts. Yes, just like that Swans song. Our speculations are abandoned derelicts, our deliberations hollow phantasmagoria — the work, our work, is to grab as most music as possible, gaze at it, listen to it, use it as intravenous matter, pump it, parachute it right to our stomach •• all things punk, doom, sludge, noise, black, experimental, ambient, dissonant, analog, digital, unusual, uncommon, ugly, calm, unsettling, dazzling and violent •• we will give them to you, with no defragmentation or rating system. Here’s all we heard and enjoyed in January.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed – “Arc” • Relapse
Sludge | Punk

Batrakos – “Demo I” • Defiled Light
Black Metal

Behavior – “375 Images Of Angels” • Iron Lung
Post-Punk

Black Tusk – “Pillars Of Ash” • Relapse
Sludge | Punk

Bloodiest – “Bloodiest” • Relapse
Experimental | Heavy

Conan – “Revengeance” • Napalm Records
Doom

Forndom – “Dauðra Dura” • Nordvis
Folk | Nordic

Gaucho – “Desplazados” • Iron Lung
Punk

Händer som Vårdar – “Interiors” • Posh Isolation
Ambient

Hexvessel – “When We Are Death” • Century Media
Folk | Psych

Lost Salt Blood Purges – “Only The Young Grave” • Art As Catharsis
Ambient | Drone

Latitudes – “Old Sunlight” • Debemur Morti
Post-Metal

Laureate – “Deceptive Manipulation” • Hospital Productions
Ambient | Industrial

Lycus – “Chasms” • Relapse
Doom

Mats Erlandsson – “Valentina Tereshkova” • Posh Isolation
Electronics | Ambient

Molly Drag – “Tethered Rendering” • Broken World
Shoegaze | Ambient

Mourning Beloveth – “Rust & Bone” • Ván
Doom | Death

Nachtzeit – “Tethered Rendering” • Nordvis
Black Metal

Onus – “Proslambanomenos” • Cyclic Law
Electronic | Ambient

OVTRENOIR – “Eroded” • ConSouling Sounds
Post-Metal

Pop. 1280 – “Paradise” • Sacred Bones
Post-Punk | Industrial

Problem Child – “Demo” • Self-Released
Punk

Roly Porter – “Third Law” • Tri Angle
Electronic | Dark Ambient

SECAM Kino – “Destined Ages” • Chondritic Sound
Industrial | Noise

Secret Boyfriend – “Memory Care Unit” • Blackest Ever Black
Electronic | Ambient

The Lion’s Daughter – “Existence Is Horror” • Season Of Mist
Post-Metal | Prog

The Human Voice – “Silent Heart” • Cyclic Law
Ambient

Treha Sektori – “Acermeh” • Self-Released
Ambient | Experimental

Vordr – “In The Shadow Of The Wolf I” • Kuunpalvelus
Raw Black Metal

Wall – “Wall” • Wharf Cat
Post-Punk | Noise