The Flenser will start taking pre-orders for the new albums by Black Wing and Heat Dust starting July 14th 1pm PDT. We will also be offering pre-orders for a new pressing of HAVE A NICE LIFE’S “The Unnatural World” (colored vinyl), a new pressing of BOTANIST'S “VI: Flora” (colored vinyl), KING WOMAN'S "Doubt (colored vinyl) and left-over Sannhet tour shirts. More information below. Dan Barrett, the man behind Connecticut-based Have A Nice Life, Giles Corey, Enemies List and countless other projects, has announced a release date for the first proper full-length from his digital-only solo project, Black Wing. Titled…Is Doomed, this seven-song album will be available on LP and Digital formats from The Flenser on September 25th. The majority of the tracks on …Is Doomed are brand new, although the album boasts a mastered version of the widely-circulated song "My Body Betrayed Me", which has been available on Bandcamp and made waves immediately upon upload. The Chicago Reader described the song as combining "a stark, mechanized postpunk beat, gentle shoegaze guitar hum, feathery ascending synths and Barrett's cool, multitracked vocals into an uplifting, celestial tune that belies its heart-wrenching and bleak lyrics; even as he sings about dying Barrett manages to sound just a little bit blissful." Like all of Dan's projects, Black Wing was self-recorded, at home, but this recording process was a bit different for him. At the time, Barrett was having some health problems - the first serious health issues he'd ever had - and was "…surrounded by all sorts of machines, lots of beeps and boops and what have you. I had a heart monitor strapped to my chest for a month. I was dripping a lot of blood all over the place. It was all very undramatic and fleshly and strange. I didn't know what to make of any of it. Meanwhile, it was a beautiful, hot summer, sun everywhere. So I decided to just go ahead and make a depressive chillwave record - basically, music to listen to in the car with the windows down while feeling slightly melancholy and distracted." The resulting seven tracks are gloomy yet uplifting, heavy while ambient, overwhelming yet alluring; resulting in one of the most remarkable electronic releases of 2015. Released in vinyl and digital formats. Pressed on black vinyl, olive green vinyl (limited to 500 copies), olive green inside cloud 'color-in-color' vinyl (limited to 200 copies and only sold in Black Wing/Heat Dust bundle). Shipping September 25th! Pre-order! Heat Dust - Heat Dust Heat Dust will be releasing their debut full-length album via dark imprint The Flenser on September 18th, 2015. This LP sees the band diving headfirst into the nihilistic depths of a very special kind of dark post-punk. Heat Dust features members Clayton Hunt (guitar and vocals), Shawn Tabor (bass), Christopher Stein (drums) Jasper den Hartigh (guitar and vocals). Heat Dust started as a three-piece back in 2011 by den Hartigh, Tabor and Hunt. Then, the band added Stein to the fold, as he played alongside den Hartigh in hardcore bands Subservient Fuck and Bloody Mummers. With a lineup shift and a few releases in between, the band really got to know each other as musicians. Guitarist/vocalist Jasper den Hartigh commented, "Our earlier releases were all written in a super short period of time. When it became time to start working on this new record, we were a lot more deliberate about our songs. We had learned how to play with each other much better, and realized where our music tastes intersected. We took a long time to write, going through endless changes in structures and riffs. We wanted to be careful and truly make the best record we could." With this self-titled record, Heat Dust have perfected their sound; energetic and distorted post-punk with expressionist lyrical content that's influenced by Joy Division, the Chameleons, Wire, Public Image Ltd, Gang of Four, and Killing Joke. Released in vinyl and digital formats. Following the release of the Heat Dust LP, the band will embark on a U.S. tour with Thou/The Body. Pressed on black vinyl and olive green inside cloud color-in-color vinyl (Limited to 300 copies). Shipping September 25th! Have a Nice Life - The Unnatural World NEW PRESSING ON BLACK AND ELECTRIC BLUE VINYL (LIMITED TO 500 COPIES) Fans of Connecticut's post-industrial doomgaze two-piece HAVE A NICE LIFE have been restlessly awaiting the band's second gloom fueled auto-biographical meditation and The Flenser is pleased to present HAVE A NICE LIFE’s The Unnatural World. The Unnatural World is eight-songs and 47 minutes. The Unnatural World is Have A Nice Life’s most monumental work yet—a colossally-sounding, perfectly-orchestrated example of industrial shoegaze. The Unnatural World will leave fans comatose on the ground near their record player. This second full length promises doom and gloom at a new level, more focused and soul tearing than ever. Dredging up themes of modern legend, religious insecurity, and crushing depression, the weight of sound is matched only by the band's piercingly uncomfortable and personal lyrics. Wave after overwhelming wave will slam listeners down into the psychological depths of existentialism and woe. Much like its predecessor release, the band's 2008 full-length Deathconsciousness, the same intense energy is maintained throughout the quiet lows and staggering highs of The Unnatural World. No speaker will do it justice and none of you are worthy! Have A Nice Life’s DAN and TIM co-founded and curated the the anti-establishment imprint Enemies List Home Recordings which has gained a reputation of releasing gloom inspired bedroom albums whose quality has rivaled the output of much larger labels. Over the past 10 years Have A Nice Life and Enemies List have acquired a legion of followers of gloom, loneliness, and unrequited love. For the first time, the band has teamed up with San Francisco-based dark music label The Flenser to co-release the full-length alongside their own Enemies List. Have A Nice Life commented, “Working with Flenser lets us keep things comfortable on our end, while also pressing enough copies to actually meet the need and not creating an artificially-inflated collector’s market, as happened with some of our past releases.” Please note that these will likely ship after the Black Wing and Heat Dust albums are released. We do not have a firm ship date yet but we still have a few copies of the second pressing ready to ship now. Pre-order! King Woman - Doubt NEW THIRD PRESSING ON BLACK AND ELECTRIC BLUE COLORED VINYL (LIMITED TO 200 COPIES) SHIPPING LATE JULY. King Woman is fronted by former Whirr vocalist Kristina Esfandiari. The group’s debut 12-inch Doubt unfurls lugubriously, blossoming into a haunting sprawl of crushing, slo-mo miserablism. Imagine some twisted fusion of PJ Harvey, Sunn 0))) and Black Sabbath. Churning washes of crumbling distortion and tar-pit riffage drift grimly through billowing clouds of dense, layered thrum; roiling backdrops for Esfandiari’s throaty, bewitching vocals. The sonic heft is matched by lyrical themes of family and religious abuse, and the suffering borne of both. Esfandiari originally formed King Woman back in 2009, but the band took a backseat to her other projects Miserable and Whirr (with whom she played from 2012 to 2013). Doubt is a follow-up to previous EP releases Dove / Fond Affections (The Native Sound) and Degrida / Sick Bed (Sleep Genius). “… both a classical approach to composition and a modern narrative of expressing sadness through slow-sinking quicksand.” —Impose Order! Botanist "VI: Flora" NEW THIRD PRESSING ON BLACK AND ELECTRIC BLUE COLORED VINYL (LIMITED TO 250 COPIES) SHIPPING LATE One of the Bay Area’s most interesting bands, Botanist is excited to announce their sixth sequential release. Titled VI: Flora, this eleven-song album was recorded by Otrebor in The Verdant Realm and mastered by Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden. VI: Flora continues the story of The Botanist, a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away from Humanity and its crimes against Nature as possible. Seated upon his throne of Veltheimia in the Verdant Realm, his sanctuary of fantasy and wonder, he surrounds himself with plants and flowers, finding solace in the company of the Natural world. While recent albums detailed a misanthropic master plan for the destruction of mankind at the hands of plants, VI: Flora focuses rather on the wondrous beauty of the plants themselves through a gauzy haze of dreamlike sound. The voice of the Botanist acts as spectral underpinning to the reverie. Botanist’s previous releases—I: The Suicide Tree / II: A Rose from the Dead (tUMULt, 2011), III: Doom in Bloom (TotalRust, 2012) and most recently, 2013’s IV: Mandragora (The Flenser, 2013)—have seen much critical acclaim, landing on NPR’s 25 Best Metal Albums, Metal Sucks’ Top 15 Metal Albums, Metal Injection’s Top 10 Releases, and an honorable mention on Pitchfork’s Top 40 Albums of 2011. “… music that disobeys every rule about black metal, sounds nothing like black metal, and yet can’t really be called anything but black metal. In that way, Botanist could be the fullest realization of the post-black metal concept yet, and that makes the future awfully exciting.” —The Quietus “Botanist lives up to its environmentally minded, hammered-dulcimer’d nerdery. And, not only that, but the man behind Botanist has created an alternate world where black-metal tropes—buzzing sound, croaked vocals, bleak aesthetics—exist, but are sonically limitless.” —NPR order!