Depressive Atmospheric Black Metallers Flowers of Rust Release Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul on Apocalyptic Witchcraft!

Born in the shadows of COVID-19, lockdowns and isolation, Flowers of Rust is a creative outlet for multi-instrumentalist Jake O’Brien, a fractured landscape of ghosts and devils where the darkest depths of emotion can be explored and unchained. Over the course of two EPs, Flowers Of Flesh (2021) and Calcified (2022) and a full-length album, Putrescence (2023) the Flowers of Rust sound developed and evolved, becoming ever more powerful and enthralling, cutting deeper into the heart of darkness that lies within us all. Then, in November 2025 the project’s most potent and accomplished collection of songs yet appeared, on an extremely limited run of hand numbered CDs – Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul. Upon hearing the album Conor Droney of the Apocalyptic Witchcraft label was sufficiently impressed to decide that Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul – and indeed the bleak creativity of Flowers of Rust in general – needed to be heard by a much wider audience. He promptly brought the band into the Apocalyptic Witchcraft family, commenting “signing Flowers of Rust feels like the beginning of something raw, honest, and impossible to ignore.” And the story of Apocalyptic Witchcraft and Flowers of Rust begins with a welcome rebirth for Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul.

Held between two haunting passages of acoustic guitar, the introductory ‘Eigengrau’ and the concluding ‘Driftwood’, Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul features five further tracks of enveloping darkness, spirit crushing weight and searing, scarring emotion. From title track, ‘Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul’, imbued with such tangible pain and desolation that it seems to breathe, to the collision of frightened disorientation and snarling danger that entwine within first single, ‘Sour Mercy’; the sheer, breathtaking magnitude of inner torment that rears from the darkness of ‘Brave New Corpse’ to the dread majesty of the guitars juxtaposed with frantic, desperate rhythms of ‘Bright Violence’, Flowers of Rust have created something frighteningly captivating – there is no escape from this labyrinth of loss and loneliness. The magnificent, overwhelming ‘Mother Atrophy’ nearly drowns you in its implacable freezing flood as you gasp for air between its pitiless waves. Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul is an album of harsh truths and bitter realisations, a baring of the soul and an invocation of internal darkness.

With drumming from J V Green (Burial Oath, Goatchamber etc) and a guest guitar contribution from Thorn Blackfyre (Black Altar, Vástígr etc), Crude Exhibitions Of The Soul is without doubt the most important work yet to emerge under the Flowers of Rust banner. Sympathetically and intuitively mixed and mastered by Thom Tadsen (Cringe, Trenchgoat etc) the songs possess a startling depth and presence. When Apocalyptic Witchcraft send this album out into the wider world, on cassette and digital formats, on August 7th its effect on the lost souls who embrace it will be profound.

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ALBUM PRESALE LINK HERE.

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