Label Description: Doomentia Records in conspiracy with Sentient Ruin present “Cogwheel”, Altarage’s highly anticipated seventh full-length album, coming 31/07/2026 on LP, CD, cassette and digital formats.
Basque experimental death metal behemoths Altarage return to crush the earth under their gargantuan hooves of dissonance. Packing in a staggering one hour and fourteen minutes of tectonic extreme metal upheaval, their seventh full length album “Cogwheel” not only represents the longest, and most imposing work in their career, but also their most defiant and visionary. Since 2015, and across six genre-defining full length releases and the spawning of countless imitators, Altarage have brilliantly and mercilessly ploughed through the barriers of convention and tradition, setting in motion one of the most revolutionary ruptures in recent death metal history, and redefining the very architecture of heaviness and of their long standing dual mandate of destruction through transformation, and transformation through destruction. “Cogwheel” reinvents this dismal trajectory once again, representing yet another rift in Altarage’s enigmatic and oppressive conquest for innovation. Tempos slow down, forms sprawl, deconstruct and convulse. Abstraction and evaporating compositional frameworks expand. Echoes of Swans, Sunn O))), Scott Walker and Godflesh accrete into structural elements while lyrical themes and concepts mirror this process of rehumanization, shifting from the supernatural and the imaginary, to real, blood-pumping societal struggle that embodies the very notion of suffering and anger inside the cogwheel of transactional industry slavery. And at the center of all of this, always them: the riffs, the eternal centerpiece and engine to Altarage’s tyrannical decade-long conquest. Colossal, implacable, inescapable uranium-depleted hammers of creation and destruction, demolishing and flattening everything in their wake. Conventions and their vestiges, wiped off the earth. Remnants and dogmas of tradition, flattened and pulverized under the weight of inevitability to create a new ground zero, scorched and sterilized of orthodoxy, and reseeded with the germs of innovation and expressive rebirth through the convergence of human struggle and musical destruction.
Label Description: I didn’t love my album The Father, so I took some of it and added more sound to it. What is a recording anyway? Like are we kidding ourselves? I know that every time I see an album referred to as “personal”, I’m being asked to buy into a narrative that’s about as real as Santa Claus. Something else that’s pretty funny is that someone is going to not read this blurb and then refer to all of this as “deconstructed” even though the process of making it was piling things on to recordings I made with my phone.
Label Description: Bay Area based experimental metal entities Sutekh Hexen and Seattle’s Hissing unveil SH:HS, a long-awaited collaborative release capturing the raw intensity of their joint improvisational project, SH:HS (Sutekh Hissing Arkestra).
Originally conceived as a live convergence of both bands’ full lineups, SH:HS documents two volatile and distinct performances recorded in 2017 and 2019. These recordings, born from spontaneous interaction and unrestrained sonic exploration, have since undergone an extensive transformation. Across 2024–2025, both groups meticulously revisited the material, cleaning, mixing, and reshaping the source recordings with a careful balance of restraint and intervention, preserving the immediacy of the performances while expanding their depth and dimensionality.
The result is a work that embodies abstract metal improvisation at its most feral and unfiltered. SH:HS channels dissonant textures, unstable rhythmic forms, and raw sonic collisions unfolding in real time. What emerges is a dense and unpredictable soundscape, oscillating between chaos and intention, where structure feels simultaneously eroded and reconstituted in the moment.
This release stands as both a document and a reconstruction, capturing not only the ephemeral nature of live improvisation, but also the evolving dialogue between two of of the west coast’s most uncompromising experimental acts.
CD co-released with Phage Tapes.
Edition of 300 copies in 6 panel Digisleeve. 2 Tracks. Running Time 29:45
Live recordings by James Livingston and Joy Von Spain Mastered by James Plotkin Illustrations by Eric Radey Layout and design by Kevin Gan Yuen and Zach Wise
Label Description: Recorded Live at Sweat Records in Miami, December 29 2024. Back cover polaroid by Lia Miranza Hernandez Avendano. Live Audience Recording by Guillermo (Lia’s Dad). Master and design by Lasse Marhaug.