San Francisco's two most peculiar black metal bands have conspired to release a mind bending split LP via The Flenser. Botanist and Palace of Worms each contribute three tracks mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven) at The Atomic Garden Studios; the album is available on vinyl in a limited edition. Botanist is an unconventional one-man post-black metal act featuring vocals, drums and hammered dulcimer instrumentation. Hanging Gardens of Hell is told from the perspective of a crazed man of science who lives in self-imposed exile, as far away as possible from humanity and its crimes against nature. The Botanist awaits the day when humans will either die or kill each other off, which will allow plants to reclaim the Earth. Formed in 2007, Palace of Worms is a one-man black metal band in the vein of Leviathan and Crebain. Frontman Balan plays all instruments: drums, guitar, bass. Palace of Worms has released a demo, two full-lengths (2009's The Forgotten and 2010's Lifting the Veil) and a 2012 split with Mastery. "Botanist could be the fullest realization of the post-black metal concept yet, and that makes the future awfully exciting." -The Quietus "The brilliance of Botanist, then, is that he takes all these things that are not metal-gentle British folk, shoegaze, New Age-and shows you that they are, in fact, more metal than metal." -The Atlantic "Palace of Worms comes highly recommended to anyone who has at some point found refuge in the recordings of other San Franciscan black metal monuments (Leviathan, Draugar, Necrite, etc.)." -Lurkers Path