Burnt Skull : Sewer Birth

Burnt Skull are guitar/drum duo Dustin Pilkington and Anthony Davis from Austin.  Pilkington and Davis began playing together in 2011 whilst working on other projects.  Pilkington plays in Cruddy, Total Abuse and The Sneezes, Davis is involved with Gremlins UK as well as both recording under the name Best Fwends.  'Sewer Birth' is their debut album (12XU) featuring 10 alternative rock songs influenced by the experimentalism of vicious and discordant noise.  The album deals with, "sacrificing your mutant child to the underworld ("Sewer Birth"), painting the wall with the back of your head ("No Cross"), and becoming one with a sickening, ever-growing mass of human pulp ("Infinite Flesh")

."  Sure, this gnarly subject matter should give you a good idea of what's in store, however don't be surprised to find some curve balls that make this anything but another noise record. The feral "God Hole" is a grimy punk number featuring spluttered vocals, metronomic beats and barbarous guitars.  Another stand out track is "Abduction", which has an industrial feel to it as a conjuration of meshed effects and tribal rhythms swarm in a wall of fuzz.  'Sewer Birth' changes the game for what you might expect to come out of Austin these days, it's dark, twisted and fierce, listen to this on a day when the whole world seems wrong and it will make everything feel SO right.

V/A : Killed By Deathrock Volume 1

Sacred Bones have just come out with a fantastic compilation called 'Killed By Deathrock Vol.1'.  The eleven exhumed songs cull obscure, internet un-friendly singles released via modest labels from 1980-88 .  Deathrock deals with the charred Post Punk and Goth sounds, shedding a spotlight on some unsung treasures of the time.  Highlights for me are the first two tracks, 

Your Funeral "I Wanna Be You" (Denver, Colorado female three piece):

 

...and Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons "Liberty" (Swedish band who had little output before calling it a day): 

'Killed By Deathrock Vol.1' started as a project for Sacred Bones label founder Caleb Braaten back in 2007.  Both European and US bands are closely knitted together through their experiments in dark punk on this cohesive, exhaustively researched compilation.  This is probably your only shot at getting these songs at all physically, and it's not an opportunity you want to pass up.