new releases

Death Agonies/ Pig Heart Transplant - Tunnel C20
Flatline Construct - Queen West Withdrawl C20

available from any Blockade show this summer or mail order from the artists directly.

Any left over copies after tour in may will probably go to Self Abuse and other places.

"man understands divinity like a dog understands electricity"

Abraxas by Justin Bartlett.

I can't remember where i first saw Justin's artwork, quite possibly some of the illustrations he did for Oaken Throne or Sunn 0))). I was immediately struck by the seeming contradiction of his work appearring to be utterly mired in genre tradition and simultaeneously being somehow apart from where his contemporaries were coming from.

This is the second Abraxas shirt design we've used. This one will be availble at any shows we play over the summer. No mailorder, Bezerker Wear still has the Blockade: Serpent/ Messiah design for sale

Gnosticism, antinomianism, cosmogony, Christian heresies and a plethora of subjects relating to the notion of the divine have been at the forefront of my mind for a long time. In a sense i feel like i've been undergoing a strange theophany (as part of an ongoing lifting of the veils) since 2005 and the figure of Abraxas as Archon has recurred heavily in this time.

As participation in underground culture continues to evolve to being both everything and nothing to me Abraxas becomes a useful shorthand for a far more complicated set of symbols that are continuously expanding and eternally unknowable.

Joshua Norton Cabal

studio sound check for Inner Light CD, due out later this year on Chimera

Winters in Osaka

Sometimes putting out music is more about sending signals out and hoping like minded fuck ups will respond on some level. The upcoming Bastard Noise and Unearthly Trance split releases are both fine examples of projects coming about because of this.

Anyway, Adam Jennings of Chicago's Winters in Osaka is someone i'm suprised we weren't in league with much sooner than we were.

Adam is now an occasional live collaborator with us and we released a WiO/ Deat Agonies split cassette last year and have WiO/ Death Agonies live collaboration due out sometime later this year.

WiO's latest CD is called Molded to Crawl and the first two tracks feature sizable contributions from us (amongst others). It's available from Haunted Hotel now (who also released the excellent Brodies Militia/ Antiseen split 7" and the Mass Grave/ Catheter split 10" amongst others).

this isn't about noise

Brutal Knights are in Europe soon, bring Matthew a book on history or cavemen or something nice.

Slaughterstrike is the band that everyone from The Endless Blockade who isn't in Brutal Knights is in. It's also got two of these dudes in

First show this friday in Toronto.

As I enter middle age my friday nights of having a few beers and playing misanthropic death metal with the lads is the equivalent of my fathers generation going out and playing darts at the pub.

Coming soon to 2009: some news about The Endless Blockade. Maybe.

Death Agonies

Yeah, we really should be doing other things but we've been working on a bunch of Death Agonies pieces recently.

• Split C20 with Pig Heart Transplant on Survivalist (Blockade/ Pig Heart Transplant tour in september).
• Something or other on Brise Cul.
• Cassette on Cathartic Process (buy the new Bastard Noise behemoth 5xCD set and Bizarre Uproar 2xCS from him).
• and something on some label by some dude that played a pretty great noise set at Traumatone HQ (Skeeter). No links, i'm as clueless as you probably are.

a minor playlist of sorts:

Bastard Noise - Rogue Astronaut CD

Piss Horn - Hatred Mountain CS

Kathaaria - Complex Void of Negativity LP

Urban Blight - best band in Toronto