Way to go to Boston-based crushers Phantom Glue. Word came down just a bit ago that the four-piece have signed with Black Market Activities, the Metal Blade imprint helmed by Guy Kozowyk of The Red Chord. Phantom Glue‘s 2010 self-titled debut (review here) was a rager, so hopefully their new alliance gets them some roadtime as they prepare to unleash their second album, A War of Light Cones early next year.

The PR wire tells it thusly:

Black Market Activities signs PHANTOM GLUE

Black Market Activities officially announces its newest signing: Phantom Glue. BMA will release the band’s new album, A War of Light Cones, in early 2013.

From Boston, Massachusetts, Phantom Glue name The Jesus Lizard, Neurosis, and Trouble as key influences, pounding out what Exclaim Magazine has termed “a heated bastion of caustic riffs and unearthly girth”.

Beneath the band’s self-proclaimed “avalanche of distortion” lies a rich conceptual foundation where lyrics and artwork combine to evoke a Lovecraftian universe. Vocalist/guitarist Matt Oates, also the band’s lyricist and resident cover artist, describes new album A War of Light Cones as “a nightmare/occult alternate history of Colonial America”. Standout track “Perils”, for example — released in August on alt weekly The Boston Phoenix’s Born of Fire, Vol. 2 compilation, alongside other Boston bands like Doomriders — tells the tale of a trapper catching a creature whose pelt grants psychic gifts.

Phantom Glue’s second album and their first for BMA, A War of Light Cones was produced by Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou at GodCity Studio (Converge, Cave In, Today Is The Day). Ballou’s connection to Phantom Glue dates back to the 90s when he and Matt Oates were bandmates in The Huguenots.

Phantom Glue’s lineup is completed by guitarist Mike Gowell, bassist/vocalist Nick Wolf, and drummer Kyle Rasmussen.

BMA boss Guy Kozowyk states, “We are proud to welcome Phantom Glue into the BMA family. As someone who grew up in Boston and still lives in the area, it means a lot to me to have a strong New England contingent on BMA. With the recent Hivesmasher album and now Phantom Glue, we’re helping represent some of the exciting stuff going on here right now.”

Veterans of Seventh Rule Recordings, Chicago heavy hitters Sweet Cobra make their Black Market Activities debut with the surprisingly melodic Mercy, an album that also serves as epitaph for guitarist Mat Arluck, who succumbed to cancer in 2009. Mercy, recorded by the ubiquitous Sanford Parker at Volume Studios in Chicago, features Arluck’s last studio performances with the band, giving the record an emotional context completely outside of the music – put to tape in the early part of last year even as Sweet Cobra released the stopgap Bottom Feeder EP, comprised of leftover cuts from 2007’s Forever full-length – but nonetheless inseparable from it.

Likening them to Seattle merchants Akimbo, what I’ve always enjoyed most in Sweet Cobra’s work has been the reckless bombast of it, like the hardcore kids grew up a little and wanted something thicker but no less angry. On Forever (reissued by Black Market in 2008) and the preceding Praise from 2004, Sweet Cobra touched on stoner riffage, but used it more as ploy to lure audiences into a false sense of security before pummeling them over the head with unhinged intensity and the feeling that at any moment the sound is going to manifest itself from out the speakers and actually kick your ass. On Mercy, they seem to show a little bit of just that, marrying neo-prog metal angularity with the branded Torche melodic vocal approach to hone their most accessible sound yet. And it’s not a fluke, they do it straight through the record, bassist Tim Remus employing a sub-melodic noise rock shout as the harshest vocal technique on the album on a song like the early-arriving title cut.

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