Criminal's Return Deluxe Reissue

Drifters Sympathy,

Criminal's Return represented an important new phase for Holy Sons after Decline of the West and for the first time ever its on LP. Recorded from '07-'09 in Portland Oregon, this new edition includes two previously unreleased tracks, “A Corpse With Long Hair” & “At The Carnival”, from the New York era.

 

Raw And Disfigured

Thrill Jockey,

A sprawling new double-album recorded at Sonic Youth’s studio and featuring Steve Shelley on drums. Raw and Disfigured draws thematically from the archetypal tale of Quasimodo and classic ghost story imagery to illustrate the "hero's journey" in the time of a coming apocalypse. The most DENSE, heavy Holy Sons LP yet?!?!

  1. The Loser that Always Wins
  2. Lady of the Hour
  3. Cast Bound King
  4. Hand that Feeds
  5. Permanent Things
  6. Four Walls
  7. Held the Hand
  8. Lost in the Fire
  9. Transformation
  10. Slow to Run
  11. Reach Out and Touch Something
  12. Cóiste Bodhar
  13. Nights Like This
  14. Up on that Hill
  15. Backslider's Wine
  16. Bloody Strings
  17. Michaelangelo (bonus track)

I WANT TO LIVE A PEACEFUL LIFE REISSUE

ABC Group Documentation,

  1. Stunned
  2. Trivialized
  3. Family Man
  4. Every Mansa Riddle
  5. Getting Old
  6. Spirits High
  7. *Peaceful Life (previously Unreleased)
  8. Last Hurrah
  9. Ready to Die
  10. All the Wrong Things
  11. Hermit's Tune
  12. Washed Out
  13. Desire
  14. Amen
  15. *Trivialized (Radio Broadcast Version)

LOST DECADE III

X-Ray Records,

The Lo-fi recording boom rose to prominence in the late 80's when new recording technology brought 4-tracks within teenager's grasp at an affordable price. Then only a few years later, Nirvana opened up the commercial market for underground music and virtually all of the home-recording pioneers stepped out of their shabby environments towards a new horizon of recording studio budgets. Simultaneously the 'lo-fi movement' was proclaimed dead by the press for the next decade. Not until Ariel Pink arrived would people consider the weirdo genre of home-recording ready to be stocked on store shelves again... and in this unfashionable dead-zone is where the Lost Decade series was made in private.

Lost Decade is a rare look into the mountain of recordings Emil Amos amassed while in full-swing of the initial lo-fi revolution. There's a palpable stench of pot smoke swirling around these late-night recordings and a constant sense of supreme alienation. This batch of Lost Decade tapes is taken from a crucial time of Emil's development (1996-2002) that he spends a lot of time going into on his acclaimed podcast "Drifter's Sympathy". These recordings are tangibly haunted and plagued by a distinct sense of 'spiritual trouble'... trapped in amber and mashed into a near-ambient distillation of confusion and suffering.

  1. The Uninhabitable
  2. Let's Go Downtown
  3. Dead Raccoon
  4. Hit the Switch
  5. Luresyafar
  6. Tears Stupid Tears
  7. Compulsion
  8. In Search of...
  9. I've Been Cured
  10. Robbed & Gifted (Ultra-stoned Early Demo)
  11. Joke's Been Told
  12. Blue Meditation
  13. Standing Among the Stones
  14. I Notice

In the Garden

Partisan Records,

In The Garden is essentially John Agnello and I out at Water Music in Hoboken, New Jersey carving out the sound of a classic 70's record if it had been made by a band with all its players being very focused in the hey-day of their career... but we 'faked' that vibe using one player. That's basically what I learned 4-tracking in the 90's... how to replicate live-sounding recordings where a band is reacting and playing off of each other in real-time.

This album was originally aesthetically based on the joy of pulling out old 70's American & British songwriting LPs at night while you're pounding whiskeys by the fireplace. The way those albums look and feel like a lost pillar of classicism. The drums are so round and close they sound like you could eat them ...and there’s that feeling of pure pleasure you get from hearing guitar solos that were done in one take and slightly flawed vocal harmonies recorded on the fly before Pro Tools existed. It came from a lust after that time when mixes and the relationship between all the instruments breathed beautifully at the height of analog equipment.

  1. Robbed and Gifted
  2. Denmark
  3. Original Sin
  4. Double Negative
  5. Eyes Can See Clearly
  6. Behind Glass
  7. Pattern Gets Cold
  8. Too Late
  9. It's My Feeling
  10. In The Garden

DECLINE OF THE WEST VOL. I & II (DELUXE REISSUE)

Partisan Records,

Vol. I & II, now released for the first time on deluxe double vinyl, include seven previously unreleased tracks and covers from the original album sessions and brand new artwork, re-imagined from the original release.

  1. Gnostic Device
  2. The Feral Kid
  3. Saccharine Trust
  4. Slave Morality
  5. Level Anything (Sebadoh cover)
  6. Kindred Spirit
  7. More Noise Pollution
  8. Satanic Androids
  9. Evil Falls
  10. Bleakest Picture 
  11. Nothing Left (Daniel Johnston cover) 
  12. Things You Do While Waiting For The Apocalypse
  13. Nature's Way (Randy California cover)
  14. My Graveyard
  15. Down in the Boondocks (Joe South cover)
  16. Let Me Give Up II
  17. Beverly Hills (Circle Jerks cover)
  18. Accept the Truth!
  19. I'm Healed
  20. More Therapy
  21. No Claws
  22. Song from the Conscience
  23. Last Wave

Fall of Man

Thrill Jockey,

>>>>The biggest & blurriest yet...

  1. Mercenary World
  2. I Told You
  3. Fall of Man
  4. Being Possessed is Easy
  5. Out of Sight
  6. Discipline
  7. Disentegration is Law
  8. Boil It Down
  9. Aged Wine
  10. Trampled Down

THE FACT FACER

Thrill Jockey,

A return to the sound of Decline of the West and I Want to Live a Peaceful Life combined into a new kind of Dread for the whole family to mull over... Brimming with equal parts dark comedy Kafka riffing vs. stark Reality fixations...

  1. Doomed Myself
  2. Line Me Back Up
  3. Transparent Powers
  4. Selfish Thoughts
  5. All Too Free
  6. Wax Gets in Your Eyes
  7. Life Could Be a Dream
  8. Long Days
  9. No Self Respect
  10. Back Down to the Tombs
  11. The Fact Facer

LOST DECADE II

Chrome Peeler,

The deepest pull from the cassette archives yet... half of these tapes were recorded on mesculine from '95 to '02 in dorm room stairwells, laundry rooms and various other excommunication hideouts... ...Volume III is currently being dug up >>>> back in the game!

Side A:

  1. Sheds & Shelters
  2. From the Floorboards
  3. I Can't Cross the Street
  4. I Got Kicked Out of My Hometown
  5. Let Me Give Up!
  6. Hero Complex
  7. If It's Lawless
  8. Paul Knew

Side B:

  1. Move to Sweden
  2. Kingdom Come
  3. Altar in the Woods
  4. Mantle's Hot
  5. Young Man
  6. Sweet Nothings

My Only Warm Coals Expanded

Important Records,

Originally released as an 80 copy run of lathe cut records in the Netherlands around 2005 - This was the final record I'd made entirely using cassette 4-tracks & handhelds in an attempt to encapsulize that approach-- more songs were added for the expanded edition on Important Records from lost 90's era basement recordings,, rounding out probably the ultimate lo-fi HolySons statement.. >>> 10-4

  1. Station ID
  2. More Flophouse Blues
  3. Bed of Nails
  4. Blank Sheet
  5. The Bad Sleep Well
  6. Natural Courses
  7. My Lot in Life
  8. Underdog Cringe
  9. The Fact Facer
  10. More Voodoo
  11. Station ID

    #2 ---
     

  12. Aged Wine
  13. Things on My Mind
  14. Mind's eye
  15. Stairwell
  16. Don't Boil Me
  17. More Suburban Shamanisms 
  18. Wasted, Warped
  19. Detached in Ways

Survivalist Tales!

Partisan Records,

'Stepping further towards glossier 70's easy listening ballads b/w the gutter world-view and a more personal horror music template intact! ..Kaleidoscopic production styles that were never meant to sit side by side break down walls of sonic oppression... You decide if it works! >> A shotgun blast of psychic toxicity flowing onto the page... sorted and arranged later for yr consumptions!'

  1. Survivalist Intro
  2. Payoff
  3. From Home
  4. Look of Pain!
  5. Golden Child
  6. Reckless Liberation
  7. Sympathetic Strings
  8. Slow Days
  9. Deprivation Thrills
  10. A Chapter Must be Closed
  11. Survivalist Outro

Criminal's Return

Important Records,

There's a time to love and a time to hate, as the book of Ecclesiastes states,... the brain chemistry of HolySons records tends to fluctuate wildly back and forth between these two poles. Whereas there's an intrinsic benefit to vulnerability in art, there's potentially just as much to gain from more stoic forms of expression. The record's cover depicts an ex-criminal who is finding his way back into the world and meeting with a myriad of his own dread and distrust. The songs largely come from this guarded mode; their coldness is intended and distilled, like a fine wine, for your bitter pleasure.

  1. From Now On
  2. Arranged Release
  3. I'm Surrounded
  4. Thorns
  5. Fermenting Mind
  6. Criminal's Return Pt.1
  7. Cruel + Unusual
  8. Possession
  9. Criminal's Return Pt.2
  10. Chemical Fire

Drifter's Sympathy

Important Records,

I'm usually forced to cut experimental/instrumental songs when they don't fit an albums' aesthetic. This time I tried fitting the more straightforward material to the vibe of the experiments instead. Because of this dynamic the album resembles the format of some of my favorite German records from the 70's that weren't so much psych, experimental, or folk; they were records defined only by imagination, exposing the mind as something always evolving, never resolved, always searching. Those records were thrilling in that they didn't seem to have a ceiling, ending or conclusive statement... similar to the films of the 70's which cycled back to the unresolved meditations of film-noir and the struggle to reconcile the darker side of one's self and era.

  1. Snowed In
  2. Drifter's Sympathy
  3. Drifter's Dub
  4. Burrow Away
  5. Raised by Wolves
  6. Data Miner's Theme
  7. More Mind Briars
  8. Immolation Thrills

Decline of the West (Expanded Edition)

Partisan Records,

...I got to daydreaming about what it would sound like if the next Holy Sons record was produced by someone as inventive as Lee Scratch Perry, or MF Doom, or Carl Sagan for that matter. At the time I'd felt 'Peaceful Life' could've suggested a career of musical pacification and that bothered me. Too much in culture is warped and diluted by the desire to pander to an imaginary audience... but when we retreat to the inner temple of the self, worthwhile art is created. This tension, in itself, is a good platform for an upbeat misanthropic concept record. So for the leaner and meaner genre-hoppers>> Decline of the West. Hybridizers unite!

  1. Gnostic Device
  2. The Feral Kid
  3. I'm Healed
  4. Evil Falls
  5. More Therapy
  6. Things you do while waiting for the Apocalypse
  7. More Noise Pollution
  8. Satanic Androids
  9. Nothing Left
  10. No Claws
  11. Saccharine Trust
  12. Slave Morality
  13. Kindred Spirit
  14. Bleakest Picture
  15. Song from the Conscience

I Want to Live a Peaceful Life

Film Guerrero,

This was an attempt to fulfill an old dare i made to myself to record a real folk record. I was pretty obssessed with old Fred Neil records and just before he died I'd planned to go see him with my father who was an old friend of his. I ended up just making this wake of a record on return from Florida which marked the first time I had gone into a real studio since about ten years before. Half of it was recorded at home trying to mimic the washed out quality of the old Popol Vuh soundtracks as they sound late at night on VHS.

  1. Trivialized
  2. Stunned
  3. Family Man
  4. Every Mansa Riddle
  5. Getting Old
  6. Spirits High
  7. Last Hurrah
  8. Ready to Die
  9. All the Wrong Things
  10. Hermit's Tune
  11. Washed Out
  12. Desire
  13. Amen

Enter the Uninhabitable

Red 76,

Recorded at home in the breaks of recording 'Staying True.' The point was to capture every personal aspect that wasn't going into 'Staying True' and achieve a more direct communication. The result is a darker album mostly about aging, death and aloness recorded entirely on four tracks and handhelds. A mix-tape from the half-way house...

  1. Rough Sketch
  2. A Raw Youth
  3. The Beach
  4. Springing Out of the Earthy Sick
  5. Drainpipe
  6. To the Sour Beat
  7. Festering Mind Energy
  8. Earthy Sick (reprise)
  9. Who Knows What Desperado Means?
  10. Bad Reflections
  11. White Paste Taste
  12. Golden Tomb
  13. Old Man Way
  14. Up on My High Horse (Again)
  15. Blue Champagne
  16. Wounded Son II

Staying True to the Ascetic Roots

Pamlico Sound,

'Some might think of this record as the 'official debut' of HolySons,, only because everything previously heard was more in the form of a compilation. It was originally an attempt to take the same exact lo-fi recording techniques that were used in the earlier matierial and insert them into a more subdued, quiet, traditionally psych enviornment. I started working with an outside engineer for the first time; using better machines and better microphones, the result was this strange, probably more accessible, prettier album.'

  1. Sugar Jets
  2. We are an Island
  3. Unhaunted
  4. Blow to the Head
  5. Overhead There's Unity
  6. Keep on Dreaming
  7. Dissatisfaction as Virtue
  8. Failure Wish Rising
  9. Wax Bag Blues
  10. As the World Paints Over Me

Lost Decade

Pamlico Sound,

'This compilation was originally released to represent a chunk of the home recordings HolySons had produced in the Nineties that had been previously unheard. There was no realistic way to approach releasing a summation of this amount of songs without a ridiculously large box set...so we condensed it into this small snapshot of a much larger chaos.'

  1. To Abraxas with Headaches
  2. Of Cain
  3. Supraharmony
  4. Wounded Son
  5. The Voice
  6. Wait Stop Plex
  7. I Wish the Night
  8. Ladders Kicked Down
  9. I Went Down With the Dogs
  10. Jesus Was Walking
  11. Rebel of Vicarious Life
  12. A Rail

Selected Discography

Various Labels,,

Holy Sons - Lost Decade III > X-Ray Records '18
Emil Amos - Filmmusik > Pelagic '17
Grails - Chalice Hymnal > Temporary Residence '17
Holy Sons - In the Garden > Partisan Records '16
Holy Sons - DECLINE OF THE WEST VOL. I & II (DELUXE REISSUE) > Partisan Records '15
Holy Sons - Fall of Man > Thrill Jockey '15
Lilacs & Champagne - Midnight Features Vol. 2 > Temporary Residence '15
Om - LIVE in Belgium > Outer Battery '14
Holy Sons - The Fact Facer > Thrill Jockey '14
Holy Sons - Lost Decade II > Chrome Peeler '14
Lilacs & Champagne - Midnight Features Vol.1 > Mexican Summer '14
Grails - Black Tar 4,5,6 > Temporary Residence '13
Holy Sons - My Only Warm Coals Expanded > Important Records '13
Scout Niblett - It's Up To Emma > Drag City '13
Lilacs & Champagne - Danish & Blue > Mexican Summer '13
Om - Gethsemane Dubplate 12" > Drag City '13
Om - Addis Dubplate 12" > Drag City '13
Grails - Black Tar Vol.5 > Kemado '12
Scout Niblett -No More Nasty Scrubs 7" > Drag City '12
Om - Advaitic Songs > Drag City '12
Lilacs & Champagne - S/T > Mexican Summer '12
Jandek - Seattle Friday > Corwood Industries '12
Grails- Deep Politics > Temporary Residence '11
HolySons- Survivalist Tales! > Partisan Records '10
Grails- Black Tar Vol.4 > Important Records '10
Jandek- Portland Thursday >Corwood Industries '09
HolySons- Criminal's Return > Important Records '09
OM- God is Good > Drag City '09
HolySons- Drifter's Sympathy > Important Records '09
Grails- Acid Rain DVD > Temporary Residence '09
OM- Conference Live > Important Records '09
Grails- Doomsdayer's Holiday > Temporary Residence '08
OM- Gebel Barkal 7" > Sub Pop '08
HolySons- Decline of the West {Expanded} > Partisan Records '08
Grails- Take Refuge > Important Records '08
Yellow Swans- At All Ends > Load '07
Grails- Burning off Impurities > Temporary Residence '07
Dolorean- You Can't Win > Yep Roc '07
Pseudosix- Pseudosix > Sonic Boom '07
Grails- Black Tar Prophecies > Important Records '06
Grails- Black Tar Vol. 2 > Aurora Borealis '06
Grails- Black Tar Vol. 1 > Robotic Empire '06
HolySons- Warm Coals 10" > Morc Tapes '05
Grails- Interpretations EP > Southern Records '05
HolySons- Bread Tribute > Badman '05
Grails- Black Sabbath Tribute > Temporary Residence '05
HolySons- Holysons/Dolorean Split 7" > Sctas '04
Grails- Red Light > Neurot '04
Dolorean- Violence in the Snowy Fields > Yep Roc '04
Holysons- Peaceful Life > Film Guerrero '03
PseudoSix- Days of Delay > 54 40 Or Fight '03
Grails- Burden of Hope > Neurot '03
HolySons- Enter the Uninhabitable > Red 76 '02
Laurel Canyon- EP #2 > Pamlico Sound '01
HolySons- Staying True to the Ascetic Roots > Pamlico Sound '01
Laurel Canyon- EP #1 > Pamlico Sound '00
HolySons- Lost Decade > Pamlico Sound '99
HolySons- Out of print cassettes > '92-'99
--Various Chapel Hill, NC hardcore cassettes-- '89-'92

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