Oneiroid Psychosis - Forever Is Forgotten (2004)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Stillbirth (1995)

Fantasies About Illness (1996)

Garden of Remembrance (1999)

DREAMS (With Pollutions When Virile) (2002)

Sentient (2008)

Well, boys and girls, this is it. Every Halloween since I started this dumb blog -- aside from 2017 and 2019, for some reason -- I've posted an Oneiroid Psychosis record. But this is the last piece of their discography that I have to post. Barring the remote possibility of my finally tracking down a rip of Death In Utero, their first cassette -- or the even more remote possibility of a new album -- this is all I have for you. Let us rejoice in the synth-y horror, the eerie pianos, the ghoulish crooning, the pure spookiness of it all, one last time. I'm pretty sure I'm among this band's biggest fans, and I hope that I've managed to convert a few of you over the years.

Despite it being the last album of theirs I've gotten around to posting, Forever Is Forgotten is for sure one of their best records. It's probably their most serious, or least cheesy, in that it often sounds closer to The Cure than to Nightmare on Elm Street, and lyrically, he's talking about serious stuff like heartbreak and mortality, as opposed to vampires sucking his blood while he's asleep. Plus, there's a full-on doom metal breakdown.

(Y'ALL. Between starting this post and getting to this point in it -- and after over a decade of periodically searching -- I fucking tracked down a rip of Death In Utero. It's 192kbps, but still, what a goddamn Halloween miracle. It really is a wonderful life.)

Track listing:

1. Mysterium Tremendum

2. Birth and Death

3. The Room

4. The Devil's Tongue

5. As Leaves Fell

6. Never Forgive, Never Forget

No thought worth thinking

No life worth living

Also listen to:

black tape for a blue girl - Mesmerized by the Sirens (1987)

Eerie Von & Mike Morance - Uneasy Listening (1996)

Bleb Margo - Ghost Infected Flesh (2000)

US raw black metal. Creepy and thrash-y, in an early Bathory sort of way. Sounds like a drum machine, but played manually -- as opposed to being programmed -- which is always funny. Then there's "Hagmeat". You're not ready for "Hagmeat".

Track listing:

1. Enter the Bleb

2. Rites of Infestation

3. Coffin Crush

4. Tormentor's Feast

5. Tongue of the Gutslut

6. Hagmeat

I hear your flesh crawling now

Also listen to:

HellVomit / Embilulugugal - Memento Mori (2002)

Dark Storm - Infernal Tyrant (2005)

Miranda Sex Garden - Carnival of Souls (2000)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Miranda Sex Garden - Iris (1991) + Sunshine (1993)

Fourth and final album by the eternally underrated Miranda Sex Garden. Carnival of Souls was a reunion album, but despite the four and a half years of downtime and a few new band members, it's the sound of a band working at the height of their powers. The towering walls of sound and haunting vocals are all intact, but it's all even bigger and more crushing than ever, and with some welcome expansions of style -- for instance, the cinematic noir-jazz of "Tonight". It's been seven years (!) since that first Miranda Sex Garden post, and in the interim, Carnival of Souls has become my favorite MSG release, hands-down.

Track listing:

1. Are You the One?

2. Sleeping Beauty

3. Tonight

4. All There Is

5. Broken Glass

6. Escape from Kilburn (Instrumental)

7. Token (Incidental)

8. Without Trace

9. Caravan

10. Thrusty Bob's Hardcore Lounge (Incidental)

11. Close to the Sky

12. Ever & Ever

All we ever knew was music and laughter

You should also listen to:

Canaan - Blue Fire (1996)

Fear of Dolls - When the Organ Played at Twilight (1999)

Shadowseeds - Dream of Lilith (1995)

Swedish atmospheric, ritualistic black/doom metal with a strong dark ambient presence. Reverb-drenched, melodic sorrow with vocals consisting entirely of spoken incantations. A truly singular record. Main dude from this band went on to form Saturnalia Temple.

Track listing:

1. Dream of Lilith (Lilith)

2. Kalis Moon (Gamaliel)

3. The Hidden God (Samael)

4. Thy Shrouded Wings (A'arab Zaraq)

5. Lion-Serpent Sun (Thagirion)

6. Baptized in Blood (Golachab)

7. Dreaming Ecstasy (Gha'agsheblah)

8. Dark Night of the Soul (Satariel)

9. Daemon est Deus inversus (Ghagiel)

10. Shadowseeds (Thaumiel)

Let the darkness be your light

You'd probably also like:

Nahual - Mysteries of the Cosmic Serpent (2001)

Black Autumn - Ecstasy, Nightmare, Doom (2007)

Troum - Mort Aux Vaches: SEN (2000)

Related:

Screaming Corpses - A Different State of Consciousness (1987)

Maeror Tri - Sensuum Mendaci (1991)

A single, hour-plus piece of masterful, industrial-leaning, analogue drone. Starts in a warmly lulling, if slightly queasy place; and slowly drifts further and further into a place of unfathomable longing and despair; before depositing us into churning, echoing, lightless chaos. Truly stunning stuff if you have the time, which we all know you do.

Echoes of a boundless existence

Other recommended listening:

Hollow Earth - Dog Days of the Holocaust (1996)

IHVHLXXII - Dtxenioutha (2003)

Mighty Sphincter - The New Manson Family (1986)

Cacophonous, drug-addled, overall psychotic deathrock from the great, largely unsung Mighty Sphincter. First heard this via Cosmic Hearse, which at its peak was probably my all-time favorite mp3 blog, and have been wanting to post it for years but always felt like, "What's the point? Cosmic Hearse already did." However, that post (which, unsurprisingly, is a hell of a lot more interesting than this one) is over ten years old now, and I'm certain that a lot of you have never heard this little slice of heaven/hell.

Track listing:

1. The New Manson Family

2. Drop Dead

3. Blood Banquet

4. Good Morning

5. Helter Skelter

6. Bedlam

7. Rich & Dead

8. Centerfold Murders

9. Genuine Argyle

10. Stretching Heads & Tails

11. Final Reward

12. Kings

13. Constrictions in E Major

PIG

You should also hear:

Alien Sex Fiend - "It" The Album (1986)

Death Ride '69 - Death Ride '69 (1989)

Psychic Mirrors - Nature of Evil (2016)

Deluxe 80s boogie throwback done as well as it can possibly be done. Thick-ass robo-synths, slap bass, super-tight grooves, and wavering falsetto vocals. Everything that made the original sound, but shot through with punchier, shinier production.

Track listing:

1. The Bells of Saint Christopher

2. Island Girl

3. Foreign Affair / Criminal Intent

4. Stormy Weather

5. Obatala (Souls on Fire)

6. Head of the Class

7. Rated X

8. Draw Me Your Favorite Funk

9. In My Eyes

10. Science Fiction

11. Shock Treatment

12. Veronica's House of Tarot

Come find me

You'd probably also like:

Don Blackman - Don Blackman (1982)

Nile Rodgers - B-Movie Matinee (1985)

Voltaic Omen - Funeral Psychosis (2008)

Strange, spectral US raw black metal. Disjointed songs full of blown-out drums, muffled growls, hovering guitar distortion, and some haunted house organ.

Track listing:

1. Behind the Forest - Under the Mountain

2. Blood Church

3. Funeral Psychosis

4. I Destroy Kings

5. Protestant Screams of Death

6. Rejected by Life, Refused by Death

7. Sucking Magic from the Tit of Lilith

8. Vexes

You have summoned me

More like this:

Lugubrum - Winterstones (1995)

Mors Liberatrix - Beholding from the Tower (2003)

Zero Kama - The Secret Eye of L.A.Y.L.A.H. (1984)

Minimal tribal industrial. This album fucking scares me. Most tracks max out at around 2-3 musical elements, each of which is some kind of percussion, some kind of droning element -- often sounding like a recorder or pan flute --  or a mixture of the two, and it makes me feel like I'm about to be ritualistically murdered by someone I can't even lay eyes on. Oh, and according to the liner notes, every single instrument used on this record is made out of human bone.

Track listing:

1. Death Posture

2. Atavism Dream

3. Night of Matter

4. Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome

5. Love Alway Yieldeth

6. Azure-Lidden Woman (Pregnant Womb of Non)

7. Hassan I Sabbah

8. Starlit Mire

9. Winged Eye Hadit

10. Love Alway Hardeneth

11. Town of Pyramids (Night of Pan)

Temples of death

You might also like:
Mother Destruction / Sixth Comm - Seething (1990)

Lunus - Monolilith (1993)

Mark Shreeve - Legion (1985)

Related:

Mark Shreeve - Ursa Major (1980)

ARC - Octane (1998)

Driving, uptempo, post-apocalyptic-sci-fi-worthy sounds from synth wizard/OPIUM HUM favorite Mark Shreeve. Much more compact and 'fun' than the stuff I've linked above. Includes a song (with words and everything!) about Randal Flagg, a recurring character from various Stephen King novels, including The Stand.

Track listing:

1. Legion

2. Storm Column

3. Flagg

4. Sybex Factor

5. Domain 7

6. Icon

7. The Stand

8. Legion (Space Mix)

9. Hammer and Cross

The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want for nothing. He makes me lie down in the green pastures. He greases up my head with oil. He gives me kung-fu in the face of my enemies. Amen.

Also listen to:

Rainbow Serpent - Futuregate (1995)

Arcane - Gather Darkness (1999)

Tjolgtjar - Halloween (2007)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Tjolgtjar - Kjal Tjormejn (2012)

Another record I've been wanting to post for years, but forgetting every time October comes around. So basically, it's a raw black metal album based on the Halloween movies that pretty concisely summarizes what I want out of music this time of year. Few recordings bring me more joy than their cover of the Silver Shamrock ad jingle from Halloween III: Season of the Witch.

Note: This is available on their bandcamp with a severely tweaked track list, so by all means go get that, but the download link is with the original order.

Track listing:

1. Night of the Living Dead

2. Judith Myers

3. Mask of Michael Myers

4. The Myers House

5. Laurie Strode

6. The Night He Came Home

7. The Blackest Eyes

8. The Haddonfield Babysitter Murders

9. The Shape

10. Silver Shamrock

Lined up for a slaughterhouse

You might also like:

Alignak - Mainlining Goats Blood (2005)

Black Candle - Lost Light of the North (2017)

Spectre - The Illness (1995)

Horror-flavored instrumental hip-hop/dub/illbient, a microgenre that I should probably know more about. Downtempo beats, dub-y bass-lines, and hella samples.

Track listing:

1. Mayday/Nightstalker

2. Megablast

3. Spectre Meets the Psycho Priest in the Temple of Smoke

4. The Sound

5. The Other Side

6. Evil Dub

7. 9th Secret Rule of the Order

8. Danse of the Dead

9. Minions of Set

10. The Illness

11. Intermezzo

12. Elephant, Mosquito

13. Crooked

I've heard strange things happen around here

You'd probably also enjoy:

The Bug - Tapping The Conversation (1998)

Phil Western - The Escapist (1998)

Alan Lamb - Original Masters: Night Passage (1998)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Sarah Hopkins & Alan Lamb - Sky Song (1985)

Alan Lamb - Archival Recordings: Primal Image / Beauty (1995)

Three unsettling, at times oppressively harsh experimental sound pieces. The first two pieces were recorded on what Lamb called the Faraway Wind Organ, which actually amounted to ten miles of abandoned telegraph wires that he purchased for dirt cheap, while the third was recorded on a specially built, smaller (but still very large) set of wires. Metal wires humming, scraping, and clanging against each other makes for a somewhat terrifying, if surprisingly musical listening experience. Thanks to the commenter who recommended this album to me like four and a half years ago.

Track listing:

1. Night Passage

2. Last Anzac

3. Meditation on Spring 8

I am the final silence

The last electrician alive

Similar listening:

KTL - 2 (2007)

Anthony Pateras - Chasms (2007)

Antoni Maiovvi - Shadow of the Bloodstained Kiss (2009)

Synthwave before they were calling it synthwave. I know it's weird to gatekeep a genre that's so blatantly referential, but it's gotta count for something that Maiovvi was doing this shit before Stranger Things turned everyone into synth fanatics a few years ago.

Track listing:
1. Nightmoves
2. Witchcraft
3. They Return
4. Interstellar Space Exploration
5. Velocity Central
6. 6000SEX
7. Plymouth Fury
8. Future Space Love Party
9. The Chase, Part 1
10. The Chase, Part 2

What's the boogeyman?

If you like this, listen to:

Umberto - From the Grave... (2009)

Pentagram Home Video - Who's Out There? (2014)

The Black Heart Procession - Amore del Tropico (2002)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

The Black Heart Procession - 1 (1998)

Fourth and first non-numbered album by The Black Heart Procession. Amore del Tropico is a two-fer -- a breakup album and a concept album -- and marked a turn towards a more sonically rich, diverse, uptempo (not, mind you, upbeat), and yes, accessible sound. While I wasn't sure what to make of it when it first came out, it's become my favorite BHP record. It's also been a rich source of tracks for my Halloween playlists over the years.

Track listing:

1. The End of Love

2. Tropics of Love

3. Broken World

4. Why I Stay

5. The Invitation

6. Did You Wonder

7. A Sign on the Road

8. Sympathy Crime

9. The Visitor

10. The Waiter #4

11. A Cry for Love

12. Before the People

13. Only One Way

14. Fingerprints

15. The One Who Has Disappeared

Remember, remember

No one leaves

You'd also like:

The Dead Science - Submariner (2003)

The Paper Chase - Now Your Are One of Us (2006)

Wooden Stake - Dungeon Prayers & Tombyard Serenades (2011)

US doom/death. A seamless fusion of cavernous sludge, sluggish death metal, and melodic occult doom, with an ever-so slightly blackened finish. The master's kinda quiet or the production's kinda distant or something, so turn it up.

Track listing:

1. Cadaverum Caecorum Liber

2. Salem, 1692

3. Tortured into Eternal Repose

4. Die Rache der Hexen

5. Six Feet of Earth... and All It Contains

6. Cemetery Closes at Sundown

7. Skullcoven

8. Anguished Atonement

9. Bleeding Coffin

Blood on Satan's claw brings Him back

You'd probably also enjoy:

Horrors of the Black Museum - Gold from the Sea (2008)

Brulvahnatu - Menstrual Extraction Ceremony (2011)

A Gethsémani - Âme Triste (1987)

French lo-fi, synth- and drum machine-powered darkwave. A haunted, slowburning trip through a desolate, nocturnal cityscape.

Track listing:

1. Real Life

2. Liverpool Night House

3. Totenstill

4. Impressions

5. De l'autre coté du miroir

6. Carrousel

7. Spasme

8. Cheree

9. Cithyse

10. Mangereva

To mourn the death of color

More like this:

Snowy Red - The Right to Die (1982)

Sixth Comm - A Nothing Life (1987)

Nora Orlandi - Il Dolce Corpo di Deborah (Colonna Sonora Originale) (1968)

A pretty great soundtrack for a giallo film that I've never seen and doesn't seem to get the best reviews, which tend to center on the idea that the plot makes no sense, despite that being pretty much a given for Italian horror. Eerie, smoldering, late-night jazz with some hints of exotica and other weirdly perky diversions.

Track listing:

1. Marcel-Deborah

2. Night Story

3. Intimità

4. Ossessione

5. Il Valico

6. Molto Tempo Fa

7. Musica Bionda

8. I Robot

9. L'Imprevisto

10. Ginevra

11. La bandita

12. Croisette

Shallow breathing

Also consider listening to:

Bruno Nicolai - Tutti i Colori del Buio (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (1972)

James Clarke - Mystery Movie (1974)

Merknet - Nigra Diaconia (2014)

Russian occult black metal. Dense, labyrinthine songs with a strong presence of ritualistic dark ambient. Wouldst thou like to live deliciously?

Track listing:

1. Rising Gehenna

2. Litany

3. Io Pan (Malefica)

4. Seven Spirits ov Dishonest

5. Funeral ov Heaven

6. Baphe Metis

7. Nia

Heed the voices of black abyss flame

Similar listening:

Wind of the Black Mountains - Sing Thou Unholy Servants (1996)

Dead Reptile Shrine - Isth Narai Ja (2002)

Burial Hex - Wall of Zombies (2007)

Misanthropic industrial noise/dark ambient. Knob-twiddling harsh noise, tape loop drones, disturbing samples, drum machine, ear-annihilating high-frequency feedback, stuff like that.

Track listing:

1. Anthropophagus Awaken

2. For Love of Brother

3. Malkuth Rant

4. Rekne LL

5. Erase Risen

6. Torture Child

7. Wall of Zombies

The truth is in the gas chamber.

Also listen to:

Ramleh - Hole in the Heart (1987)

Megaptera - Near Death (1991)

Judecca - Beyond, What the Eyes Can't See... (1996)

US death metal. Brutal and weird, just the way you like it. Judecca apparently didn't get the memo about douching being ineffective and, in fact, often harmful, so those of you getting your information about vaginal health from 90s death metal records should be careful.

Track listing:

1. The Undead

2. The Stench of an Undouched Cunt

3. Beyond, What the Eyes Can't See...

4. As We Fuck

5. May You Find Peace

6. Trauma Induced Coma

7. Consume the Soul

8. Forensic Pathology

9. The Black Blood of Christ

I've dissected the brains of six month old children

More like this:

Horror of Horrors - Sounds of Eerie (1994)

Infester - To the Depths, in Degradation (1994)

Mephisto Walz - Immersion (1998)

American gothic rock with a gauzy, and (yes) immersive atmosphere. Put this on the next time you're eating Xanax at a graveyard dance party.

Track listing:

1. Immersion

2. The Garden of Proserpine

3. Great Expectations

4. Age of Nothing

5. The Tyger

6. Elegy

7. Icarus

8. The Falcon to the Falconer

9. Heaven

10. Kings

11. Ode to the West Wind

This labyrinth of vales to wander

Similarly spooky vibes:

Nosferatu - Prince of Darkness (1996)

Autumn - The Hating Tree (1997)

Vetala - The Lord of Eternity (2014)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Vetala - Demo I (2008) + Demo II (2009)

By request, here's more raw filth from Vetala. Caveman beats, discordant guitars, and agonized shrieks of misery. The craziness definitely picks up steam as the record goes on, so don't let your short attention span make you miss out on the fun.

Track listing:

1. The Lord of Eternity (Part I)

2. From the Dungeons of Our Souls

3. Vampyric Black Evil

4. Night Perversions

5. The Lord of Eternity (Part II)

6. Pissing Terrorism

7. Day's Unbound

8. The Mist of Miseries

Sodomy with the dead

If you like this, listen to:
Brenoritvrezorkre - Vèrmyaprèb (1995), Nèvgzérya (1995), + Vasagraèbe éakr vatrè brenoritvrezorkre (1996)
Pillar Tombs of Aku - I (2014) + II (2014)

Mons Veneris - Vastlands of My Decayed Realm (2009)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Mons Veneris - Inferno (2005)

Mons Veneris - ...To Rape the Nazarene (2006) + Abismo a Céu Aberto (2006)

Mons Veneris - As 4 Submersões No Corpo Diabólico (2013)

Maybe my favorite Mons Veneris record. Vastlands of My Decayed Realm finds them in black metal mode, but it's a frightening, dissonant take on the genre that feels just as fucked-up as the project's more overtly experimental releases. You'd be forgiven for mistaking this for a lost LLN classic.

Track listing:

1. The Cremation of Light

2. Vastlands of My Decayed Realm

3. Darkmoon of the Vampire

4. Cursed and Tormented for All Eternity

5. Return to Chaos and Void

Misery lurks in the catacomb of the master

More like this:

Vetala - Demo I (2008) + Demo II (2009)

Wormsblood - Mastery of Creation (2009)

Atra - Up-Turning the Curse (2011)

Previously on OPIUM HUM:

Atra - In Reverence of Decay (2011)

Y'all. This year has been fucking trash. Every day has sucked an entire ass. Here in Portland, things have been particularly wretched. Surveillance helicopters circling overhead at night, sound cannons booming day and night, Patriot Prayer driving into town talking about "cleansing" the city (hey great job guys we always feel MUCH safer when you're in town jumping random people in broad daylight) and more recently, a thick haze of smoke that turned the air sour and made everything look brown and sickly.

I'm not sure if I have a point. Maybe it was gonna be something about how we can try to have fun getting distracted by Halloween? Let's give it a shot. Here's some eerie black metal with a bunch of reverb and some spooky cemetery organ. I wish Atra would make another record. Bag it and tag it, boys, another great post in the books!

Track listing:

1. Invocation of the Departed

2. Wander the Absence

3. Up-Turning the Curse

4. Harbinger (Part II)

5. Graveless Apparitions

6. Possession

Horizons eclipsed with burning witchery

Also listen to:

Onirik - Songs for the Apocalipse (2005)

Drowning the Light - Catacombs of Blood (2011)

Supermax - Supermax Meets the Almighty (1981)

Related:

Supermax - World of Today (1977)

London Aircraaft - Rockets (1984)

More excellence from weirdo disco great Supermax, this time with a more abstract, psychedelic bent. For the A-side, this lands us in 80s Eloy-ish territory at times, while on the flipside, it's more like a very plastic form of reggae -- one that entails chanting "Viva la ganja" and "Natty, natty, natty dread." Though these moments are questionable at best, the whole package is just so fucking weird, I can't help but love it.

Track listing:

1. As Long as There Is You

2. Tonight

3. Hammer

4. Today I Fall in Love Again

5. Madness

6. We Are the Gang

7. Aya Jah Jah

8. Superdub

9. Sunshine People

Woke up this morning and saw myself

In a completely different life

I saw some things I can't explain

You should also listen to:

Adrian Gurvitz - Sweet Vendetta (1979)

Change - The Glow of Love (1980)