Fleshwater "We're Not Here To Be Loved"

LP - $17.25 / CD - $7.00
LP UPC: 196925325356
CD UPC: 197187122400
STREET DATE: 11/4/22
CAT#: CCA107
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Fleshwater paint in broad strokes of alternative, shoegaze, electronic, post-hardcore, and off-kilter pop splashed against a tight sonic canvas awash in vibrant colors and visceral textures. Their songs unfurl with all the unpredictability of a living entity (and you can never quite put a finger on where they’ll go next). The moment you press play, it’s as if they appear in a rush of emotion, only to disappear back into a ghostly ether once the record stops.

As such, the Lowell, MA quartet—Anthony DiDio [vocals, guitar], Marisa Shirar [vocals], Matt Wood [drums], and Jeremy Martin [bass]—balance the intimate inhale of male-female harmonies with an overpowering exhale of distortion.

Now, they materialize in 2022 with nine songs on their full-length debut, We’re Not Here To Be Loved [Closed Casket Activities].

“It’s ambiguous,” notes Anthony. “It’s like the music is attached to the mood rather than lumped into a genre. There are so many different elements. Fleshwater is never one thing.” The band quietly emerged in 2020 with Demo. “Linda Claire” amassed 1.3 million Spotify streams under the radar, while Stereogum hailed the three-song set as “a cool piece of hazy guitar-trudge music.” Along the way, the musicians wrote what would become We’re Not Here To Be Loved and self-produced the album with Kurt Ballou [Converge] recording them. The band mined a kaleidoscope of influences, ranging from Hum, Deftones, Sunny Day Real Estate, and Far to Björk, and they ultimately arrived at an ethereal signature style of their own punctuated by gnashing grooves and anesthetizingly gorgeous vocal conjurations.

Barely cracking the one-minute mark, the single “Kiss The Ladder” pulsates with glowing guitar and Marisa’s hypnotic chant, “Now I don’t want to be anyone.” “Backstairs Breathing” begins with creaky clean guitar and melodic verses from Anthony. It gives way to an urgent refrain as both voices entwine, “Become a memory next to me.” A snappy distorted rumble underlines the insidiously catchy “The Razor’s Apple” catalyzed by Marisa’s gauzy, yet guttural delivery. It spirals past a head-nodding drum breakdown on the back of knife-point precise riffing. “It’s my favorite vocal performance by Marisa,” he adds. “We’re definitely excited to play it live." Crossing the five-minute mark, “Foreign” leans into a punchy riff as Marisa and Anthony lock into one last cathartic call-and-response on the chorus.”

In the end, Fleshwater are unlike anything you’ve ever heard—and it’s why the experience of listening to them will belong to you alone. “I want people to have their own experience with Fleshwater’s music and let it take them for a ride,” Anthony leaves off.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Baldpate Driver
2. Closet
3. The Razor's Apple
4. Woohoo
5. Linda Claire
6. Kiss The Ladder
7. Enjoy
8. Backstairs Breathing
9. Foreign

MARKETING POINTS:

• Vinyl comes packages in a full color LP jacket complimented with UV spot varnish printing, full color insert and an 18"x24" full color double sided poster.

FOR FANS OF:
Citizen, Modern Color, Narrow Head, Bleed

Deadbody "The Requiem"

LP - $17.25
LP UPC: 196626533739
STREET DATE: 10/28/22
CAT#: CCA109
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Vinyl comes packaged in a deluxe tip-on style LP jacket with a gatefold insert and digital download.

Produced, Engineered & Mixed by Taylor Young at The Pit Recording Studio. Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege. Photography by Kylla Barsell, Artwork by Thomas Toye and Layout by Martin Stewart.

Death waits in the wings for all of us. Ironically, it might be the only certainty in life. Nevertheless, we live anyway, squeezing meaning out of each day. Deadbody face this existential truth head-on with a barrage of death metal, grind, and hardcore as unrelenting as it is undeniable. The San Fernando Valley quartet—brothers Taylor Young [vocals, guitar] and Colin Young [vocals, Bass], Miles McIntosh [guitar], and Jorge Herrera [drums]—storm out of the gate with an intense vision befitting of our encroaching collective demise on their 2022 debut album, The Requiem [Closed Casket Activities].

“The idea of the album is the death and mourning of not only an era, but the ego,” notes Taylor. “Regardless of your output, status, goals, failures, or otherwise, the last thing you do is rot or burn. You can’t take any of it with you, so there’s no point in getting hung up on petty details. It sounds bleak, but it’s also meant to be freeing. Let go and move forward.”

The musicians initially breathed life into Deadbody during 2020. The members had made their bones in the underground with Taylor a sought-after producer and member of Twitching Tongues, God’s Hate and Zous as well as former drummer of Nails, Colin in God’s Hate and Twitching Tongues, Miles in Apparition, and Jorge in ACXDC and Despise You. They wrote and jammed over the course of the next two years, recording in Taylor’s studio The Pit in Van Nuys. Creatively, they nodded to the likes of Human Remains, Discordance Axis, Burnt By The Sun, Assuck, Brutal Truth, and Suffocation.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Tempered by Mercy
2. Without Honor
3. Wound Eternal
4. Joy of Torture
5. )}][{(
6. Horrors of the Malformed
7. The Requiem
8. Dead Body

MARKETING POINTS:

• Members of God's Hate, Twitching Tongues, ACxDC, Apparitions

FOR FANS OF:
Burnt By The Sun, Human Remains, Brutal Truth

Official Site

Intensive Care "That We Be Made Worthy"

LP - $17.25
LP UPC: 196626418586
STREET DATE: 10/7/22
CAT#: CCA102
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Trauma surrounds us. Underneath the scars in its wake, it leaves truth. Intensive Care excavate harsh honesty from life’s moments of wreckage. Bottling raw intensity, screams tremble through a warped industrial cacophony as they engage a sonic sensory overload. The Toronto duo—Andrew Nolan [vocals, bass] and Ryan Bloomer [drums, percussion]—grab trauma by the throat and translate it into nine gutturally gnashing anthems on their Closed Casket Activities debut, That We Be Made Worthy.

“We’re really influenced by early electronic and experimental music, but we grew up in hardcore and Metal bands,” notes Andrew. “It’s grounded in heavy music, but it’s really exploratory. We’re using drums, bass, and the tools at our disposal to create something of our own.”

The friendship between Andrew and Ryan dates back to the late nineties when they met via the international tape trading scene. With Andrew in the UK and Ryan in Toronto, music bridged the distance and forged their friendship. They made waves together in The Endless Blockade before introducing Intensive Care during 2016 with the Pay Pig EP. They delivered projects at a prolific pace, including Voyeurism EP [2017] and A Removal To Elsewhere EP [2018] in addition to various singles and a split with Full of Hell. Throughout 2020 and 2021, they wrote and recorded That We Be Made Worthy out of home studios in Toronto. This time around, piano and electronics offset moments of harsh catharsis, adding another dimension.

“We really brought the electronic influence to the forefront,” he affirms. “We pushed it and made this side more musical.” A feverish siren squeal bleeds into “Behind Every Closed Door” as a trudging groove bolsters the frontman’s pummeling delivery. Surveying his time employed at a harm reduction for homeless adults in the throes of the opioid crisis, the chant hits hard, “Behind every closed door, a corpse not yet discovered, behind every closed door a memory waits to live again.”

“Six months after I left the job, I realized I had this underlying trauma,” he admits. “Every single time I opened a door, I would get flashes of a corpse on the other side, because that’s what I was constantly finding.”

Thematically, he drew inspiration from the Catholic Saint of Amputation—Saint Antony of Padua. As such, imagery of amputation doubled as a metaphor for imbalances of power, race relations, and labor rights throughout That We Be Made Worthy. The snarling and biting “Taxonomy of Rats” dissects “the history of disadvantaged people in society referred to as vermin.” Then, there’s “Incisors,” which layers the “fight for respect and recognition in the workplace” over a chaotic din. The seven-minute finale “At The Foot Of The Mountain” tempers a primitive groove with the expanse of UK doom as it reinterprets the myth of Sisyphus as told by Albert Camus.

“It’s a strange ending to the album,” Andrew elaborates. “It’s supposed to be equal parts victorious and defeating. The refrain in the song is ‘No victory is final’. We keep saying that because you think you won, but you have to keep doing these things and pushing the boulder up the hill.”

In the end, Intensive Care climb out of the trauma and towards an artistic triumph of their own. “We’re always looking ahead,” Andrew leaves off. “We keep our eyes on what we’re doing.”

TRACK LISTING:

1. The Promise of Christ
2. Behind Every Closed Door
3. Our Fault
4. Incisors
5. O Blessed Tongue
6. Taxonomy of Rats
7. Beds of Pain
8. Whatever You Give Away At Death
9. At The Foot of The Mountain

MARKETING POINTS:

• Deluxe Tip-on Jacket with 24 page stapled booklet

FOR FANS OF:
Full of Hell, The Endless Blockade, Regional Justice Center

God Is War "Predation Perfected"

LP - $17.25
LP UPC: 196292628845
STREET DATE: 10/7/22
CAT#: CCA103
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

6 songs of varying dark electronic music inspired by Industrial and Noise.

TRACK LISTING:

1. I Admire you...like You I Used to Think the World Was This Great Place Where Everybody Lived by the Same Standard That I did...and Then Some Kid With a Gun Showed Me I Was Living in His World
2. Predation Perfected (I Don't to Respect Any Og in Industrial or Power Electronics Cuz I Am One Mother Fucker)
3. On Lsd at the Legion of Doom (The Grimiest and Gulliest of Goons)
4. A Man's Game Requires a Man's Cost
5. I Don't Give a Fuck Who Played It First, I Been Doing Better, Same Wit All My Shooters
6. El Cucoy and Abou Knees Grinning in the Darkness

MARKETING POINTS:

• On tour with Full of Hell, Blood Incantation & Vermin Womb
• Vinyl limited to 300 copies
• Physical packaged with an obi-strip

FOR FANS OF:
JK Flesh, The Body, Sore Dream

ZOUS "No Ground To Give"

LP - $17.25 / CD - $7.50
LP UPC: 196006382926
CD UPC: 196925039345
STREET DATE: 6/10/22
CAT#: CCA089
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Plunging the depths of death metal with hardcore intensity, Zous resembles a cataclysmic event—all by the design of one man. Vocalist, producer, mixer, engineer, and multi-instrumentalist Taylor Young pours intense focus into an unshakable sonic architecture rooted in technical proficiency and pit-splitting brutality. After a successful demo release earning acclaim from Decibel, Metal Injection, and more, he delivers a deadly and dynamic vision on the band’s 2021 Mini-LP, No Ground To Give [Closed Casket Activities/Maggot Stomp].

“I love classic death metal that almost sounds like hardcore,” he explains. “This is something I’ve always wanted to do. I had a long time to think about how I hoped it would sound, and now the project has an aesthetic of its own.”

In the middle of the Global Pandemic, he finally carved out the time to pursue his initial ambition. Taylor first introduced Zous via the Pandemicon EP, which he wrote, recorded, and finished in less than a week. Physical copies and merch quickly sold out as the music piqued tastemaker interest. Decibel promised, “ZOUS will hold instant appeal to old-school devotees.” Throughout 2021, he crafted what would become No Ground To Give.

This time around, he increased the energy all-around.

“I wanted to make it a little more technical—up the tempos, more blast beats, and faster riffs,” he goes on. “There are some newer and meaner elements.”

The first single “Stepped On” charges forward on steamrolling double bass and gnashing guitars. Taylor’s growls deliver a gut punch offset by a shrill scream courtesy of Brad Boatright (who also mastered the record) and noise from Full of Hell’s Dylan Walker. “It’s a direct response to the George Floyd tragedy,” he admits. “I hated the idea someone would get upset over rioting in response to such a fucked-up thing. If you’re stepped on long enough, you’re going to fight back.”

Elsewhere, Takafumi Matsubara [Gridlink] tears through a head-ripping solo on the opener “Coup de Main,” while Leon del Muerte, guitarist of too many bands to count, makes an explosive appearance on the hammering “Authoriticon.” It all culminates on the death metal supernova of “Event Horizon.” After covering Autopsy’s “Torn From The Womb” on Pandemicon, Taylor joins forces with Autopsy singer/ drummer and death/doom pioneer Chris Reifert who provides guest vocals on a cathartic and caustic finale cast in flames of distortion. “Having Chris on ‘Event Horizon’ is one of the biggest milestones I’ve had musically,” he goes on. “I’ve been listening to him for half of my life. We traded records and became friends. The track just kind of happened afterwards. The dynamic was really relaxed and fun.”

Vinyl comes package in a tip-on lp jacket, complete with the No Ground To Give EP on Side A and the Pandemicon EP on Side B

TRACK LISTING:

1. Coup De Main
2. Pray A Lie
3. Stepped On
4. Authoriticon
5. Event Horizon
6. Intro
7. Pandemicon
8. Hench
9. Wasteland
10. Torn From The Womb

MARKETING POINTS:

• Packaged in a Tip-on lp jacket
• Written, performed, engineered, produced and mixed by Taylor Young of The Pit Recording Studio (Twitching Tongues, Criminal Instinct)
• Guest appearances from Takafumi Matsubara (Gridlink),Dylan Walker (Full of Hell, Sore Dream, Collapsed Skull), Brad Boatright (From Ashes Rise), Leon Del Muerte (Nausea, Impaled, Exhumed, Murder Construct), Chris Reifert (Autopsy, Abscess, Static Abyss)

FOR FANS OF:
Strictly Death Metal

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Collapsed Skull “Eternity Maze”

7"EP - $7.00
STREET DATE: 6/10/22
CAT#: CCA093
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Collapsed Skull is a dizzying bass and drum hardcore attack from the east coast (feat current and former members of Full of Hell, Jarhead Fertilizer). With revenant nods to their west coast forebears, thundering bass wars against other-worldly shrieks, blasting drums, chopped hip hop samples and broken machine stutters. Their debut EP, Eternity Maze, is a hard look at the classist power structure in American society and the ritualistic abuse of those in power. It's an endless cycle, a dead end maze. The illusion is that there is a way out.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Collapsed Skull
2. A Hundred Spears
3. Endless Warring Streets
4. Pigs one the Hunt
5. Eternity Maze
6. Bone Fragments
7. Forest Siege
8. Lamb with Knife
9. Scaling Genocide
10. Anomalous Ruin
11. Illusory Infrastructure

MARKETING POINTS:

• Features members of Full of Hell and Jarhead Fertilizer

FOR FANS OF:
Man is the Bastard, Gasp, Hatred Surge, Despise You, Hatred Surge

Primitive Man "Insurmountable"

LP - $17.50
LP UPC: 196626731098
STREET DATE: 5/13/22
CAT#: CCA095
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

Listening to Primitive Man is a devastating experience of Doom as performed by just three members. Their discography of agonizing personal and universal hell is spread across three albums, two EPs and a raft of splits released over more than 10 years. 2020 saw the release of the groups most recent full length album ‘Immersion’ (Relapse Records), a terrifying and confrontational record that expressed resentment and the unbearable during uncertain times. The tension through out the record is palpable. McCarthy’s foul roar feels wrenched from a cavern so deep that it defied language itself. The riffs are vast slabs – edifices dragged and erected to stand tall against the outrages of ‘humanity rotten on the vine’ (‘Consumption’). With 2013’s Scorn and 2017’s Caustic, Primitive Man raged against religious dogma, elitism, capitalism and the creature within, desperate to burst out. They keep the animal inside at bay with a rancorous and cerebral blend of the heaviest sounds. Splits with Hell and Unearthly Trance, and a host of others, have seen the band branch out into experimental noise. Other projects from members of the band – Black Curse, Vermin Womb and Many Blessings – show how they are bursting at the seams to express their outrage at the state of
things, in different mutations.

2022 brings the release of the groups latest album, Insurmountable. Four new suffocating tracks totaling over 38 minutes of Primitive Man in their strongest and most crushing artistic display to date. Mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk and featuring the artwork of Ethan McCarthy (Hell Simulation). Vinyl comes packaged in a tip-on gatefold lp jacket, complimented with an obi-strip, gatefold insert and deluxe colored vinyl.

TRACK LISTING:

1. This Life
2. Boiled
3. Cage Intimacy
4. Quiet (Smashing Pumpkins Cover)

MARKETING POINTS:

• Mixed and mastered by Arthur Rizk
• Artwork by Ethan McCarthy (Hell Simulation)
• Vinyl features a tip-on gatefold jacket, obi-strip and gatefold insert

No/Más “Consume/Deny/Repent”

LP - $17.50
LP UPC: 196292069877
STREET DATE: 4/29/22
CAT#: CCA098
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

No/Más dispenses a face-ripping combination of grindcore, metal, death, and thrash that would cut deep a decade ago or a decade from now. The Washington, D.C. group — Roger Rivadeneira [vocals], John Letzkus [guitar], Patrick Merson [bass], and Henry Everitt [drums, vocals] — engage an uncompromising sensory assault, barreling forward like a runaway freight train only bolted to the rails by deft riffing, explosive drumming, and vocal brutality.

Under the influence of everything from Slayer and Napalm Death to Wormrot, NO/MAS materialized in Washington, D.C. They made waves with their 2018 full-length debut, Raíz Del Mal, which Metal Injection christened “one of the most intense releases of the year.” Meanwhile, Decibel added, "Every song on their latest album, Raíz Del Mal, is a nice little rollercoaster that tends to make its twists and turns around grind, black metal, D-beat and hardcore." In between dropping the Last Laugh EP in 2019, they graced bills with the likes of Exodus, Pig Destroyer, and many more.

Produced and Engineered by Taylor Young at The Pit Recording Studio and featuring the Artwork of Ethan McCarthy (Hell Simulation).

TRACK LISTING:

1. Manipulate/Consume
2. Sin Vergüenza
3. Exile
4. Interrogation
5. Sudor Frío
6. Mal De Ojo
7. Arson/Repent
8. Ciego
9. Ausencia De Luz
10. Refugio
11. Deny/Disgrace
12. Against My Will
13. Rabia
14. Police Brutality
15. Hypothermia

MARKETING POINTS:

• Produced by Taylor Young of The Pit Recording Studio
• Artwork by Ethan McCarthy (Hell Simulation)

FOR FANS OF:
Napalm Death, Nails, Full of Hell

God's Hate "God's Hate"

LP - $17.50
LP UPC: 195497914425
STREET DATE: 3/11/22
CAT #: CCA081
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

“Life is hard—be harder.”

That’s the driving ethos behind God’s Hate, one of the hardest hardcore bands in the land. Co-founded by Colin Young of Twitching Tongues and vocalist/AEW professional wrestler Brody King, God’s Hate set out to re-establish the mantle of hardness created by East Coast HC titans Merauder, Hatebreed and the seminal Troy-core scene of the late 80s and early 90s.

Tracked at The Pit Recording Studio in Van Nuys, CA, by Taylor Young (Twitching Tongues, Zous) between August 2019 and the summer of 2020, the record marks a significant lineup shift for God’s Hate. This time, Colin, King and guitarist Anthonie Gonzalez are joined by Twitching Tongues bassist Alec Faber, Taylor Young on lead guitar and third guitarist Martin Stewart. Features original artwork by Marc Nava and Tim Lehi.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Number One
2. Be Harder
3. Finish The Job
4. Six Feet Deep
5. God’s Hate
6. Eternity of Hate
7. Violence Unlimited
8. The Valley Beyond (818)
9. War Man
10. Social Class Warfare

MARKETING POINTS:

• Features Colin Young of Twitching Tongue and AEW professional wrestler Brody King

FOR FANS OF:
Hatebreed, Merauder, Dying Fetus

Vein.fm "This World Is Going To Ruin You"

LP - $17.50 / CD - $8.00
LP UPC: 196006448233
CD UPC: 196006447694
STREET DATE: 3/4/22
CAT #: CCA090
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

This World Is Going To Ruin You. Engineered and produced with Grammy winning producer Will Putney of Graphic Nature Audio in April 2020, just weeks into a global shutdown, to create the bands latest twelve track full length album. Featuring guest appearances from artists Geoff Rickly, Jeff Smith and Bones, as well as the original artwork and typography of Autumn Morgan. Packaged in a gatefold LP jacket, accompanied with a full color 12”x12” full color 24 page booklet and 24”x36” poster, digital download code and deluxe colored vinyl.

While the bands 2018 full length debut Errorzone received praise from Pitchfork stating “sets the tone for one of the year’s most exhilarating heavy records.,” This World Is Going To Ruin You will be hailed as its own formidable beast. “Every release is like its own universe,” the band explains. “On Errorzone, we made a departure into another universe, sonically and visually. It was very futuristic and hi-energy and there were lots of elements we tapped into in order to fulfill our vision of that universe.”

In that sense, This World Is Going To Ruin You is not a return to the band’s roots so much as a more fully realized version of them.“But it’s not a contrived nostalgia trip. We’re just naturally taking that part of the band to a fuller potential.” vocalist Anthony DiDio explains. “Errorzone was entering another world, while this record is Vein.fm coming home”

TRACK LISTING:

1. Welcome Home
2. The Killing Womb
3. Versus Wyoming
4. Fear In Non Fiction
5. Lights Out
6. Wherever You Are
7. Magazine Beach
8. Inside Design
9. Hellnight
10. Orgy In The Morgue
11. Wavery
12. Funeral Sound

MARKETING POINTS:

• Engineered and Produced by Grammy winning producer Will Putney
• Vinyl includes a gatefold jacket, 24 page booklet & 24" x 36" Poster

FOR FANS OF:
Converge, Harm's Way, Botch, The Dillinger Escape Plan

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The Acacia Strain "It Comes In Waves"

LP - $18.15
LP UPC: 194491812102
STREET DATE: 1/14/22
CAT #: CCA073
LABEL: Closed Casket Activities

When a discography spans over 18 years and 8 full length albums, it becomes apparent what can be expected. With the release of ‘It Comes In Waves’, The Acacia Strain went outside the box and created something new, something that pushed their boundaries. Recorded by themselves while on tour in the Spring of 2019 and mixed by Steve Seid of Graphic Nature Audio, this seven song, 31+ minute long album dives deeper into influences, adding elements of Metal sub genres such as Doom, Atmospheric and Sludge, and creativity that have pushed the band to continue releasing new music and touring to date.

TRACK LISTING:

1. OUR
2. ONLY
3. SIN
4. WAS
5. GIVING
6. THEM
7. NAMES

MARKETING POINTS:

• Pressed in a tip on style gatefold lp jacket with uv spot varnish

FOR FANS OF:
Harm's Way, Hatebreed, Crowbar