Many of you are already quite familiar with Dark Descent Records. For those who aren’t, it’s a small independent label based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It specializes in death, black, and doom metal — music that’s dark as night and dangerous as a mine field.
I wish I had time to dive deeply into every one of their releases, because the ones I’ve heard have been dependably lethal.
Dark Descent have had a Bandcamp site for some amount of time, but until recently I’m pretty sure they’ve only used the site to stream music, with actual sales limited to physical media. However, NCS supporter Vonlughlio alerted me to the fact that over the weekend Dark Descent began offering some of their releases for download on Bandcamp — and they’ve been adding new albums to their Bandcamp page, with more to come this week.
Last night Dark Descent also announced the creation of a “sub imprint” named Unspeakable Axe, which will focus on “bands influenced by and existing in the same indefinable territory as some of the founders of extreme metal – bands like Possessed, early Sepultura, and Hellhammer – as well as the ones that deliberately blurred the lines after they were already established, like Messiah, Merciless, Deceased…, Varathron, Mortuary Drape, and others.”
The announcement continued: “And as you can tell by our name, we’re not averse to Autopsy-esque (or just plain bizarre) death metal, either. If it’s fast and loud and has at least some thrash in its veins, we’re probably into it.”
Unspeakable Axe can be found on Facebook here. They’re interested in demo submissions from “obscure bands approaching the intersection between ugly, ancient death metal and vicious, chaotic thrash metal”.
Now, back to that Dark Descent Bandcamp page. There you will find albums from the likes of Maveth, Desolate Shrine, Vassafor, Adversarial, Anhedonist, Binah, Father Befouled, Heresiarch, Horrendous, Mitochondrion, and much more. Many of those albums can now be purchased for digital download at a price of $5.99.
This is especially good news for people like Vonlughlio who love their music but for whom the cost of international shipping added to the cost of the physical release is a serious deterrent and local distros are scarce.
This whole post may seem like an advertisement, but it isn’t. Dark Descent doesn’t even know I’m writing this, and of course you should already know that we don’t take a dime from anyone for anything we do. This is purely a public service for those of you out there who, like me and Vonlughlio, have a taste for voracious black/death done well.
Here are the links:
http://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/
http://www.darkdescentrecords.com/
http://www.facebook.com/DarkDescentRecords
And because I always like to include some music in our posts, here’s the full Bandcamp stream of Desolate Shrine’s December 2012 album The Sanctum of Human Darkness:
24 Responses to “DARK DESCENT SHIFTS GEARS ON BANDCAMP”
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Thanks for the kind words Islander!!! got myself Desolate Shire and it’s a solid record. So stoked for some of the updates in the bandcamp page. Killer roster of bands!!! great black/death
Excellent news. I’ve always found their shipping to be super-quick to me in the U.S., but as someone who’s currently at 4 weeks and counting waiting for a CD from overseas from a different label, I can definitely sympathize with those who can’t order DD from in-country. Bandcamp rulz.
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I think your keyboard’s broken Max.
Its circuits were fried by the news in this post. Max’s own circuits were fried long ago.
I resent that !! 1!!! !!1 You.. you .. TOTES ADORBS
I would like this just for the use of the term “totes”.
He may be trying to communicate. The number of exclamation points in each line represents one of the numbers in the Fibonacci sequence…although except for the first one, they’re all wrong.
Just a little excited is all. Been waiting for this (I know, get a life).
If you find a life, let me know where you got it. I’m in the market for one, too.
I have a used one I can let you have for cheap. Just a little liver damage. Brain needs work too. No blood in the urine though.
10 out of 30 albums available. That’s.. umm….wait.. .. almost half!
A good start.
This is pretty awesome news…Matt runs one of the best distros out there, and I like that hes keeping the price down for a digital download
Yeah the prices are fair. Even lower than the ones on the Debemur Morti Bandcamp which I thought were very faiir.
pretty fair indeed!!! I think this is just awesome!!!! shitty Monday but could care less because of this
Prosthetic Records are doing the same thing!. http://prostheticrecords.bandcamp.com/
Mutilation Rites, Hour of Peneance, Dragged Into Sunlight, Animals as Leaders etc etc are available for as full streams and purchase.
Som albums are still one track streams and prices aren’t fair, but good news still.
Im telling you bandcamp is part of the future, more labels should embrace it
This label is immense!!!!
Holy shit! A label that specializes in death, black, and doom metal based in the Springs!?
For those not in the know, Colorado Springs is the epicenter of the conservative zeitgeist in Colorado. Ever heard of Focus on the Family? Based in Colorado Springs. Ted Haggard and New Life Church? The Springs.
It gives me hope to hear Dark Descent Records is flourishing in such a anti-metal, anti-freethinking environment! Especially as a Springs refugee who escaped many years ago, but still baring the scars.
“Abashed the Devil stood and felt how awful goodness is.”
Loving Desolate Shrine by the way.
and the latest Krypts record further cements their high level of quality.
My borther heard this band from his friend and he’s been searching this all over the record bars but can’t find one. I’m not a fan of this kind of music but I’d be willing to help my brother find this. I’m not familiar with Bandcamp, but can he purchase from this site?