000 -- VAU [faint barren harmony]

000 is a spinoff of Shunt, sort of the "easy listening" version (HA!), if you will... meaning it's still noise oriented, but more spacy than purely catastrophic. The side-long "loll" comes across like satan playing a mean e-bow in a "contemplative" moment (probably while waiting for his pitchfork to come back from being sharpened) over a bed of gritty guitar hum that fades in and out. The nice thing is that it's not just all flat-out; there's a sense of dynamics and pacing that you don't see very often in this genre. "fract," on the other hand, is... noisier. Driven by the same hollow flanged-out sound of "loll," it also adds in bursts of guitar trash and what sounds like giants wrestling in a washing machine. And "vommrynd," the third and last track, continues with the growing wave of evil sounds, a trend of which DEAD ANGEL can only approve... plus it features lots of shuddering bass quake and crippled jet engine guitar noises, always a good thing. Well worth investigating.

13 Mg -- TRUST AND OBEY [Slipdisc Records]

Well, this is kind of interesting... quasi-"industrial" body rock (you know, you can wiggle your hips to it). Thunderous, even. I don't know that this is a bold new step forward or anything, but it IS a lot more listenable than anything I've heard in the genre in a while, and it manages to avoid sounding too much like Trent or Al -- no small feat, since leader H. Beno was the programmer/editor for Ministry's PSALM 69. (Explains why the guitars are so crunchy, though.) It's not as heavy as Ministry is these days, or anywhere as self-obsessed as Trent's been all his life, and it most certainly rocks -- crunchy guitars are manna from heaven ANYTIME dammit, they get bonus points for the crunch factor.

"Guardian Angel" and "Uppercut" both have a serious groove and a robotic vibe to them (particularly in the latter), with just the right balance of keyboards, guitars, and samples (most of which are unrecognizable; they pretty much sidestep the now-cliche "oooo let's see how many trash movies we can sample dialogue from!" move). "Sinister" is the one for me, though, a huge, lurching riff-monster with (you guessed it) big, crunchy guitars. I approve.... "Azimuth" is just as good or better, with a distorted percolating synth line that just clinks and clatters away as compressed riffs chug away. More percolating jumpiness surfaces in "Moan Song," while "Spree" returns to the heavy, orchestrated guitar riffing. Thuggish, mon.... Things get a mite noisy on "Four Speed," with heavily processed noise forming the spine of the tune, around which guitars swirl and churn. The bassist from Filter shows up on the last cut with the semi-ambient "Nath," which features drums that float up and then back down into the mix for a cool effect. All in all, a good one; if your life revolves around the whole Ministry/NIN/Skinny Puppy (when they were still good, anyway) axis, you probably should listen to this. Judging from what i'm hearing from those who've heard the new Skinny Puppy and Ministry albums, your hard-earned $$$ will probably be better spent here anyway, heh....

The cover looks an awful lot like the cover to Motorhead's HAMMERED (which may explain why they didn't send me one with the disc; then again, maybe they're just forgetful). It might well be intentional -- certainly it would not be a ridiculous comparison, since this is one LOUD band. Kind of like AC/DC with even less complexity, or 400 Blows with even less people. With only two members (drummer DJ Party Girl -- how is it, anyway, that there are so many Asian girly-girls who can play drums like they use sledgehammers for sticks? Where are they getting all that energy from and all that heft when they're all approximately the size 'n weight of a pack of ramen noodles, only better-looking and certainly much tastier? -- and guitarist/shouter Mr. Velocity Hopkins), they are nevetheless loud 'n heavy enough to need a license for the operation of heavy construction equipment. Imagine if the Unsane had been willing to admit they ever listened to Grand Funk Railroad and AC/DC -- monumentally heavy but without the pained crankiness! I am going to tell you right now, in all frankness, that you should worship this band already. Apparently they have been around long enough to put out a smattering of other hep shit (including a split with Oneida, oooo), so i am kicking myself that i'm just now hearing them, but better late than never. This album doesn't even sound like music as much as it does the sound of a demolition site. They favor everything basic and extremely loud. They don't believe in introductions, "solo passages," or meaning. They do believe in rocking. Result: music for parties that resemble barely-controlled riots. "AHHHH FEELS GOOD!" All meat, no fat, so self-explanatory that even the doofi at the NEW YORK TIMES can figure it out -- you need this. Quit fucking around with that poo ROLLING STONE is claiming to be "the new salvation of rock 'n roll" or whatever bullshit they're spewing and buy this instead. You'll feel better, deep down inside. Trust me. Would i lie to you?

This priceless artifact of pure, whole-grain rock goodness arrived in the listening room literally hours before going to press (finally), so our listening time on this one has been, uh, limited (to say the least). Nevertheless, it doesn't require a degree in rocket science to determine if 25 Suaves still got what it takes to sling punk-metal hash in the fiercest way imaginable. Turns out they do (big, big surprise, right?) -- this time primal thud 'n strum duo Peter Larson and Fumie Kawasaki are joined in the quest for sonic terror and, failing that, some real groovy kicks, man, by bass whompin' man Dave Sahijdak. I have no idea if he's a permanent addition or just guesting here; I don't suppose it matters (and even if it did, it's not like anyone cares -- he's here, he's playing, everything is cool, why worry about anything beyond that, huh?). He whomps in fine fashion, giving the drum and guitar drive a bit more oomph without turning them into art-rock or anything useless like that. So what you get for your $$$ here are nine high-octane bursts of RAWK, dude -- no-frills, no-bullshit, drummer hits everything really hard and guitar player plays really loud and hard and everybody yells and sweats a lot and it's all very cool. It's not exactly hi-fi, but it's clear and understandable and it rocks, and you didn't really listen to stuff like this for nuance, did you? Goddamn it, this is not a Steely Dan record, if you want fucking arty-farty nuance then you should be listening to something else, for this is party rock. Loud, obnoxious, riff-heavy, thumpin' and jumpin' party rock and not for sissies, either. There are nine songs here with titles like "Turn Up The Music," "Give It Up," "Born Dead," "Let It Burn," and "You're Gonna Die." The band wisely keeps the lyrics to a minimum and the big, pounding, chunky like peanut butter but with way more raw meat riffs to a maximum. The real sound of real rock, DIY style, loud and in your face. Fuck those limp fuck poles in the likes of Disturbed and Korn and all that horrible shit; go sell those cds in your collection and use the $$$ to buy this one instead. You'll be better off. Really. Would I lie to you? Better be sure to get their earlier album 1938 too, while you still can.

These New Yorkers are onto something interesting -- combining old-school 80s synth-pop moves (think Depeche Mode, OMD, etc.) with samples, more modern hints of electronica, and a Celtic-sounding singer (Claire Veniot). The results are surprisingly catchy. Apparently a lot of people think so, certainly -- "Anything" was selected by Billboard's talent web site for inclusion on the NEW TALENT SPOTLIGHT VOL. 1 CD, they're a featured artist on Riffage.com, and they're currently in the top fifty bands vying for a recording contract on Garageband.com. It's not hard to see why: from the grooving first track "Freedom Run" to the brooding synth drone closer "Alpha & Omega" they combine a new twist on a familar sound with a sharp, uncluttered pop sensibility. Some of the more brooding, less beat-heavy tracks like "Bardo Takes Time" remind me, bizarrely enough, of the first Tanita Tikaram album (remember her? you don't, do you?). Key tracks along the way include "The Boy Behind the Veil," which builds in intensity verse by verse (it's the first single, btw), the dreamy-yet-catchy "O Mayday," the clubby big-beat shake of "Wildfire," and "Anything," the song that managed to get Billboard's attention. They also manage to rework Melanie's "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)" in a manner that, while being almost unrecognizable in comparison to the original, is nevertheless a startling cover -- in fact, given their successful transformation of the song into an electronic Celtic rondo of sorts, it's actually a pretty inspired move. Their cover of the Beatles' "Across the Universe" is even more removed from the original -- they turn it into a cranked-up electronica romp that you would never recognize if hadn't known its origin beforehand. A fine disc that will appeal to those who miss the heyday of Depeche Mode and the like but aren't quite willing to give up the new sounds of electronica. Dragging in the Celtic influence was a stroke of genius; hear for yourself why....

TG: Review, please.

N/A: What did I ever do to deserve this?

TG: No editorializing! (motions with gun) Go on... get on with it... there you go... good boy....

If the Chrome Cranks were raised on a diet of blood pudding and Black Sabbath and had a singer who was more literate than (and almost as acerbic as) Steve Albini they might have, on their best day, sounded something like 50 Tons of Black Terror. [n/a]

Rhythmic chunks of devolved free jazz from Shawn Kerby and Brian Noring. I have no idea what instruments they're playing (some kind of horn and, um, other stuff), but the sound brings to mind bebop musicians stretching out on stage in a forgotten bar late at night when the only people left are drunks too pixelated to care about the strange sounds radiating from the stage. This disc isn't as noisy as many PE releases -- in fact, it rarely strays from pure improv territory -- and some of the songs such as "Is There a Splash of Hope in a River of Sadness" actually approach being soothing. This sounds more like an undiscovered beat record from the sixties than anything "modern." Even more startling, "I Know" features the first vocal I've heard yet on a PE release (at least, the first thing recognizable as actual singing, anyway). The vocal element appears on a couple of other songs, often in hair-raising fashion. Some of this makes me think of Eugene Chadbourne, maybe even Gerald Hawk. Devolved beat jazz crossed with neo-primitivism? Whatever it is, it's strange and exotic stuff.

I always look forward to checking out a new Jester release, because not only are all of their releases well-recorded and swaddled in packaging of exceptional design, but they frequently point toward musical scenes and territories previously left undocumented. This release is no exception. The heavy-duty fold-out booklet turns into a really nice poster, and the layout is sparse, simple, and elegant. The cd is worth owning just for the artwork alone, actually. But nothing in the artwork and liner notes will prepare you for the harsh vistas of sound that commence when you throw on the disc. 1349 Rykkinn, it turns out, is one Bard Torgersen, a DJ and noise-stylin' homeboy from the Rykkinn suburb of Oslo who spent from 1983-1996 mixed up in all sorts of crazy-ass, dangerous experiments in dissonant noise, heavy bass, fascist repetition, and surrealism. During these years he made albums and toured with the likes of Masters of Moh, SUPERskill, and Lord Bard; now he appears, apparently for the first time, on his own, using found sound from travels around the world and shuddering bass power electronics to create thundering rhythmic hallucinations.

Things get off to a perilous start with "Extreme Sunlight," in which crashing waves of mechanical chattering meld and recombine, until the entire track sounds like the cd is horribly damaged. The appeal of this track, as with the rest of the disc, is in its varied tones and rhythmic components -- Torgersen has a lot of stuff going on here, mostly loops of skipping cds from the sound of it (and heavily distorted loops at that), and he keeps stacking it up in different configurations, the stacks getting deeper and thicker as the piece progresses. The individual sounds also become more chaotic and arrhythmic as time passes, until -- by the end of the piece -- it sounds like the cd is not just hanging up, but hanging up in such a horrid, screeching fashion as to possibly damage the speakers. Painful-sounding, to say the least. "Glenn Kristoffersen is Dead" isn't quite so cut-up and mutilated, but its sounds are considerably more screechlike and hair-raising. Over what sounds like might have been samples of country music, Torgersen spreads out a vast array of high-pitching wailing sounds that eventually resolve into thundering rhythmic chatter like the sound of earthmovers demolishing a city block, occasionally creating wailing echoes when the bulldozer blades strike steel and buried electrical cables beneath the concrete. "Gilera 500 cc" opens with what sounds like anti-aircraft fire overlaid with twanging noises like giant metal straps being spanked with hammers; from there the sound just gets more devolved, with tight and machine-like rhythms degenerating into aimless, meandering cycles of madness.

Then we come to the fourth (and possibly most interesting) track, called either "Fields With Flowers in Crazy Colors" or "Sparkling White (hooked on heroin and Hitler)," depending on where you look. As the noises of the previous track die away, a gentle acoustic guitar emerges as the noise recedes far into the background, until it's barely distinguishable as anything but ambient sound. Eventually rhythmic elements of the noise are brought up into the foreground, obscuring the guitar in mystic clouds of swirling ambient wind and endlessly repetitive pinging as a counterpoint. At the end everything but the ping fades away and the hard noise returns with "K.I." Here the sound is closer to the vein of "traditional" noise -- that is, lots of high-pitched squealing -- but instead of remaining formless, it resolves into an actual rhythm before being joined by more noise-laden drone. "Best Boy" is almost nothing but rhythm: a pattern, crunchy and machine-like, rolls over and over and over like the rollers of a printing press as hissing, steamlike noise lurks in the background. Eventually the steam turns to shuddering waves of noise, rising and falling in unpredictable patterns as the looped rhythm continues. The last track, "Buenos Aventura," is a bizarre one: a babble of conversations centering around some Brit (???) standing around at some party talking about dreaming of Jesus, heroin, reincarnation, and slapping people around -- a typical party conversation, in other words -- all while different varieties of music waffle away in the background. I'm guessing this track is some kind of cryptic inside joke, although as musique concrete it works just fine (meaning, you don't have to get the joke to hang with the track).

What I like about this album is that it's not just noise for the sake of noise -- there's direction and form to it all. Torgensen's approach here makes me think more of Null and PEAK OF NOTHINGNESS more than it does anything by, say, Merzbow. Interesting stuff, and hopefully more follow....

Homegrown alternative rock, turned up loud and recorded / mixed in murky fashion. Aaron did all the recording and studio work himself, which may have something to do with the sound, or he may well be working in the lo-fi tradition (see Sebadoh, Liz Phair, lots of 90s lo-fi artists). "Your Skin" is pure blaring garage rock, indie style, with nods guitarwise to the likes of Neil Young and Dinosaur Jr., while "Someday" adds countryish riffs and unexpected percussion tidbits to the murky brew. His sound reminds me, bizarrely enough, of the now-completely-forgotten 54:40, who were operating in this ballpark on their first (and only good) album. There's an interesting overlay of voices, speeches, and samples at the beginning of "1995," as an acoustic guitar fades up, and when the song kicks into full gear, it has more to do with alt-country than anything else. Garage punk crossed with the country death blues and tone-drenched guitars... dark and desolate stuff when he's not rockin' out. Intriguing, to say the least.

Abdullah have come a long way. I remember receiving a demo from these guys way back in 1999. * The tape was really strong. They played old-school doom rock with a hint of blackmetal. What made it even more impressive was that the whole thing was done by two guys. Jump to 2002: They're still playing old-school doom rock, but the touch of black metal has been replaced with a pile of NWOBHM. Seriously, it sounds like before recording GRAVEYARD POETRY they locked themselves in a room with a stack of Diamond Head and Witchfynde records -- that or they've been spending entirely too much time hanging with fellow Ohio natives Boulder. What this means is that Abdullah have managed to pull together a record that makes it seem like the whole stoner rock thing never happened. Fans of the Hellhound Recs. bands and The Obsessed or Trouble circa 1989 should be all over this disc. [n/a]

* I believe said demo was re-released by Rage of Achilles Records back in 2000.

This is what death metal ought to be -- loud, brutal, heavy, unpredictable, and most of all, completely fucked up. Part of what bored me with death metal originally (which is why i gave up on it for about a decade) was that the bands all sounded alike after a while because they all drew from the same influences (especially the cheesy ones), and always played by the same general rules. Abscess are an exception. Their death roots are fairly obvious (not terribly surprising since drummer Chris Riefert and guitarist Danny Coralles used to be in Autopsy), but they bring to the gore party one synapse-shattering innovation that immediately sets them apart from their death-obsessed brethren: they are hep to psychedelia, mon. In fact, the entire essence of their style is to more or less wing it, shoveling out piles of brutal sonic mung at high velocity, then slow to a crawl without warning and trip out. In the title track, they shift from standard-issue roaring death to weird, slowed-down shit with chattering vox, then high-pitched droning guitar commences until a huge fucking weight of slow wasting doom crushes you flat for a while. And so on. Part of what makes them appealing (or annoying, depending on your view) is that they can't stay fixed on one sound or motif for very long without launching into something totally different. Imagine what happens when they decide to start switching gears totally independently (there's not as much of that here as there was on TORMENTED, but then, the circumstances behind that album were pretty off-the-cuff to begin with), spewing psychedelic death in all directions at once.

For this album they rehearsed considerably, and it shows -- they're a lot more focused and "together" than they were on TORMENTED. That's not always completely a good thing -- a band like Abscess works better, i think, when they're loose and totally improvising -- but it does mean that when they do tricky moves like going abruptly from breackneck speed to what must be the world's slowest riff (as they do in "Serpent of Dementia"), it's real impressive in its exactness. They have some seriously demented guitar tones going (especially on "An Asylum Below"), and they're heavily enamored of reverb, which leads to some nifty moments of grinding psych amid the audio carnage. For pure blinding pound, though, you must look to tracks like "Tomb of the Unknown Junkie," which has some pretty impressive shrieking as well hyperkinetic splattergrunt soloing from all three members in the middle. (Clint Bower, the other guitarist, used to be in Von, so you can just imagine how creeped-out his shit is.) There's some pretty insane moments of blinding i'm-playing-really-fast-now-woo! guitar in "Monolithic Damnation" as well....

One of the more interesting things about this album is that they did it without a full-time bassist, and all three of them play on different tracks (Bower on four, Riefert on four, and Coralles on three), with pretty consistent results. (It does seem like Coralles favors his basslines thunderous 'n fuzzy, but i haven't had the chance to listen extensively yet, either.) Riefert is the bassist of note for one of the album's best (and shortest, oddly enough) tracks, the mysterious 'n highly melodic "Vulnavia," which fades in just long enough to give you a taste o' the trance before fading back out to end in less than a minute and a half. Odd... very odd... naturally you must partake of this diabolical psychedelic death feast....

They definitely got the group name right -- this is distracted, agitated, sound-shaping on a really big canvas, sort of like Pollock with microphones instead of brushes. Given the sound jokers involved (Ernesto Diaz-Infante on guitar 'n objects, sax-torturer Rent Romus, percussionist Scott Looney, violinist 'n vibemaster Bob Marsh, and vocalist Jesse Quattro on loan from the thrash-metal group Saint of Killers), it's amazing that you can even tell what's going on. I gather the idea was to take a bunch of people from wildly different genres (experimetal, jazz, metal, improv, etc.) and see what kind of madness they would create. A fine madness it is: at any given moment their suave jazz ensemble blows cool 'n measured, then uncontrolled bursts of activity in all directions cause it to fall apart. Best of all, Quattro wails, shrieks, death-croaks, and drones in hair-raising fashion all through the pieces. Unpredictability is the order of the day.... The titles also reveal a bizarre sense of humor at work:  "Urban Gothic Hoedown," "H-bomb transvestite infiltration bop," "don't touch my shit," "hidden conversation -- who's sensitive here?," and "Sodium Pentathalon -- 400 loads" are just a sample, and certainly don't invite the belief that they're stuffy, eh? The general theme, though, is one of freedom -- improv is king here, and there are moments where it gets gloriously and spastically messy, so if you're not prepared to rumble with extreme freejazz and left-field eccentricity then you'd best stay at home. Once again, strangeness saves the day....

I first became aware of this band because of my ranting appreciation of Nisi Period's SOON THE LOVE BALLOON WILL POP in one of the back issues. Apparently one of the members of that now-defunct band is currently doodling at the keyboards in this band, and he informed me so. As i read up on the band and this album, i finally became intrigued enough to buy the damn thing and guess what? It's brilliant. Not only is the music (prog-psych-pop-something) stellar, but the packaging and concept are amazing as well. Here's the scoop -- the album is packaged as a psychedelic answer to the NUGGETS compilations, centered around a handful of Boston bands like The Sea Monks, Abunai!, The Red Baise, The Seven Seals, Spectrowax, , North Find Molasses Disaster, and so on, complete with lengthy liner notes detailing the scene from which all these hithero-unknown bands evolved. Of course, this is all essentially a giant put-on -- Abunai! is the swirly force behind every single track -- but it's a good put-on, a well thought-out put-on, and i definitely approve of the amount of effort and imagination that must go into something like this. The liner notes abound with bizarre claims of Earth-2 dopplegangers and sly inside jokes that are probably vastly amusing to progophiles and totally impenetrable to anyone else, and the whole thing is kind of a clever parody of earnest English folk and psychedelic compilations... strangely enough, it makes me wonder what it would sound like if Abunai were to cover in its entirety the FOLKWAYS box-set in their own psychedelic style and issue it with equally convoluted liner notes... there's probably a nod to Fahey in there somewhere too, givne his penchant for twisted fake notes on his early albums....

Fortunately for those too impatient for this kind of stuff, you can listen to the album without knowing (or even caring) about any of this. The twelve tracks on here are all uniformly excellent, and all just different enough to make it plausible as a compilation of different bands from the same scene... but at the same time the band's sound is unified enough to make it work like an album as opposed to a scattershot compilation. The "sound" here largely encompasses early Pink Floyd, Hawkwind, Fifty Foot Hose, maybe Fairport Convention, and tons of British folk-psych bands whose names i can't think of right this moment (so sorry), with occasional forays into more modern fuzzdeath and vaguely punkish elements. Lots of phased guitars, space echo, delay units, flangers, and other woozy efx make for big beds of floaty sound over which Abunai! rock to varying degrees of heaviness. The "best" tunes (the ones i like best, anyway), are the more mid-tempo ones crammed full of strange guitar efx and solid floor-on-the-floor drumming, like "Barbara Allen" and "Learning to Ask" (which also has pretty, melodic guitar bits as well), "Sweet William," "Can't Always See" (driven by a heavily delayed ping-pong bass line and swirly keyboard bloops, most hypnotic and otherworldly, mon), "Toast" (delay-line ching-ching guitar riffing with everything but the kitchen sink piled on top of it, sounds from another dimension are go, daddy-o). Everything is pretty much top-notch, tho -- unlike a lot of prog/psych bands, Abunai! don't get bogged down in endless jams, and while their songs are absolutely stuffed full of weird sounds (how the hell do they manage to play so much stuff at once?), the songs are also intensely structured, so the tunes are all actually going somewhere instead of just waffling. Swankness abounds. I await more....

The cosmic jokers from Beantown have done it again, whipping out one of the trippiest albums ever to come swirling down the cosmic wind tunnel. Like Pink Floyd's SAUCERFUL OF SECRETS cubed and slotted into a quadratic equation containing integers derived from Hawkwind, F/i, and the whole whaling kingdom o' Krautrock, the impact of this disc is less a matter of "listening" than something akin to having an acid bomb explode between your ears. Crazed, semi-psychotic stuff that pinwheels in all directions at once like a drunken octopus, but played with startling clarity and precision, this is the kind of thing that will turn your mind inside-out if you listen to it long enough. I think Abunai! just advanced to the head o' the psych class with this one....

The interesting thing is that while the album sounds basically like one long, inspired live psych jam, it's actually anything but that -- in fact, the album was assembled from miles of instrumental jams captured on tape over a long period of time. Apparently the band jams a lot with the tape rolling, just playing without conscious thought as to how it might work on an album, and after accumulating a large pile of these tapes, they decided to layer them into a giant spaced-out sonic omlette just to turn the average listener's mind to mush. To that end, they spent a long time ferreting out pieces that would work together, then layered them on top of each other -- sometimes backwards -- just mixing and matching until they emerged with something that met with their collective approval. The result is a long album of 21 tracks that flow seamlessly into one another with often mind-altering results; the "songs" (each listed individually with titles on the cover) are actually more like movements in one long epic piece. (My favorite song/movement is "Drowning in Light," the longest single section of the disc at 12:56, in which a UFO guitar dips and hovers in hypnotic, shimmering fashion while lots of other sounds swirl around it.) In some places the layers are stacked mighty high indeed -- the opening track, "The Sound Museum," has at least twenty tracks plowing away at once -- and the results are disorienting, mainly due to the depths of sound. No matter how hard you listen, burrowing down into the layers, if you listen just a bit harder you can hear even more happening in the background... and if you dig even deeper, even more than that. It's truly a sound without end, a space without borders, in which guitars and organs and drones circle and weave without ever settling.

The track listing is entitled "Chart of Dimensionless Numbers," and that's appropriate... if fractal patterns could be encoded as music, they would sound like this, i'm sure. Patterns build on other patterns and morph into yet other ones, until the sound becomes so dense, so thick, that it practically threatens to implode. How they managed to mix this into something listenable is beyond me. (And make no mistake, the sound clarity is remarkable, especially given the wild number of tracks at work.) The effort they put into the selection of tracks to merge together is obvious (at one point they color-coded the tapes to make sure they didn't have too much material continuously running in one key), and the organic feel of the resulting tracks is amazing -- it all comes together so well that it's hard to imagine it wasn't all done in one session as a continuous whole. More entertaining than swimming in a vat of drunken eels and probably healthier to boot....

Bonus points for the packaging, too (a faithful reproduction of a pack of guitar strings, enclosed in a polybag), even though its odd size does pose a problem for storing on my shelf. By gaw, this disc is so luridly over-the-top in its psychedelic excess that it sort of makes me regret that i gave up smoking dope....

Some wise guru with a mountain up his ass once said, "There are only three things in life that are certain: death, cockroaches, and AC/DC." And he was right, because look, here they are on the prowl again, thirty years after Los Brutahs Young decided that playin' rock 'n roll looked like a lot more fun than sewing bras and pastin' up porno magazines. (Turned out to be way more lucrative, too, but who knew?) Seriously, these guys are old enough to be your dads (for all i know they may be your dads, especially if your mother was one of the li'l tarts at their early shows), but they still out-rock all the dumb-ass whining shits in these nu-metal and emo-core bands who were still heaving oatmeal in their high chairs when Angus blew up a studio amp while recording "Let There Be Rock." This is not surprising, since Angus and Malcolm and the boys can actually, you know, play their guitars and stuff and don't have to rely only a pile of bullshit efx-boxes to get their "sound." These are men who grew up in a world where musicians were expected to know what the fuck they were doing when they picked up their instruments, instead of just jumping up and down like goddamn disorganized kangaroos on crack and screaming about fucking angst and shit. As far as the Young brothers are concerned, there is only one sensible way to spend one's time, and that is rocking. And that they have done, like clockwork, for three fucking decades. I give them outside odds they'll still be here in another thirty years, if the rest home will let them out -- which is more than i can say for any of these bands who can't spell and apparently think playing through lots of fuzzboxes is a magical substitute for actual songs 'n stuff....

I have to admit up front that AC/DC can do no wrong as far as i'm concerned, so i'm already in their corner. They are the only band i can think of (besides maybe the Band of Susans and Angel'in Heavy Syrup) who have never made a truly bad record. They have made a few pointless ones, though, especially for a stretch in the nineties, when they appeared to be running out of steam for a while. That's the point at which i got distracted by other sounds for a while ("oooo look, noise!") and lost track of what they were doing. (It turns out i didn't miss a whole lot.) It is true that lukewarm AC/DC is still better than the poo served up by your average hard-rock band at any given time, but when you reach the point where you have everything up to the album where they go into a holding pattern, why bother, eh? But now i am definitely all ears again after hearing this one, technically their latest even though it's been out a couple of years now. (One thing i'll say for the band: the decision to start taking more time between albums has definitely helped.)

The point at which i actually drifted away was when Phil Rudd left the band after FLICK OF THE SWITCH -- nothing against the other guys, but Phil is kinda hard to replace, especially when i'm the one in charge of the stereo. But apparently Phil returned on BALLBREAKER (which i still have yet to hear), and this is his second one back with the band, and unless BALLBREAKER is hot-shit way better than this, i'd have to say this is the best thing they've done since BACK IN BLACK. (I think i might actually like this better than BACK IN BLACK, actually.) What they've done here is combine the upfront sound and pure fucking catchiness of BACK IN BLACK with the groove of the older albums (particularly HIGHWAY TO HELL) and the quirkiness of the riffs from the still-underrated FLICK OF THE SWITCH, and... and... oh, for cryin' out loud, they've gone and made a fucking blues album, okay? It's all about the beat... well, that and a whole assload of immensely swell riffs and the most inspired note-strangling yet to burst forth from the li'l ass-wiggler himself. The first four songs are perfect examples: "Stiff Upper Lip" opens with Angus playing a nifty riff over a persistent high-hat, then Brian Johnson is there to tell you all about his stiff upper lip, natch, then the Big Beat commences and those harmony guitars sync up and it's like 1982 all over again. Then "Meltdown" turns out be... can it be?... a real-life honest-to-Anu boogie tune. It's like all those horrible bands with the sinister fucking Adidas never happened. The psychotronic dying guitar solo at the end is a swell bonus, too. "House of Jazz" is more of the same, a titanic beat cutting through hocus-pocus guitars (Malcolm is still the King o' Rhythm, and Angus is all over the place on this one), and "Hold Me Back" is another agreeable and perfectly-executed boogie with jazzy chords (!?!), but it isn't until "Safe in New York City" that they hit you with the first whammy. An intro straight out of POWERAGE leads into a big, fat beat over which bass, guitar, and more guitar just build and build until they launch into the kind of insanely catchy riff that made them zillionaires in the first place. (Brian's yelling over all this too, but that's just icing on the cake, really.)

One thing i like a lot about this record is that it sounds like it's being played by guys half their age -- they aren't fucking around here, not one itty-bitty iota. More proof that rocking correctly reverses aging, whoa! They're playing their buns off here, that's for sure -- especially on groove-soaked stuff like "Can't Stop Rock 'n Roll," whose chorus has one of the niftiest riffs on the whole album, and "Satellite Blues," a straight-ahead stomper that defies all rational description and yet rocks quite nicely, thank you. "Damned" ticks along like a Swiss watch, with not a single wasted beat, riff, or note, and filled with all sorts of quirky changes. "Come and Get It" is driven by cryptic blues riffs and more of those unexpected jazzy chords, plus some... um... peculiar backing vox (actually, unusual backing vox are in abundance on this album), while "All Screwed Up" gives them the opportunity to induldge in all manner of stop 'n start robot-riffing and putting the backbeat in funny places and leaving plenty o' holes for the Big Beat to shine through. What i really like, though, is how on the last song, "Give It Up," they manage to outright steal the plodding beyond-minimalist beat / intro to "Living After Midnight" and somehow graft an actual groove and beat that swings over it. Magic, i tell you... black fucking magic....

It is true that the lyrics are by and large nothing to get real excited about, but anybody who listens to AC/DC for the lyrics is kind of missing the point, right? (Brian is in particularly fine form on this one, just in case you're wondering, although his unmistakable shriek is beginning to show a bit o' age here and there.) The real message here is that, for whatever reason, the band appears to have found a new lease on life, and if this continues, they will soon own the free world (i wonder what their position is on Iraq). The only news better than this is that they're apparently finishing up a new one to be released before too much longer. And nu-metal appears to choking on its own bile at the same time... hmmm... could there be... yes... a relation? Only Angus knows for sure, and he's too busy rocking the fuck out to answer our piddly-ass questions....

The Acid King portion of this CD kicks off with a track entitled "Blaze In." It is an instrumental number that kinda sounds like something from Kyuss' "Blues for the Red Sun" ran through a Sleepinator. Acid King have always had a bit of a Sleep-y vibe. The Kyuss tip is a new development. From there it's on to the meat of their "side." "Free" is a typical Acid King drone-fest. It opens with some cool delay drenched guitar and quickly starts to crush. The next song, "Four Minutes" (and no, it isn't four minutes long...) is a little more atmospheric with Lori sounding positively ghostly. Stoner Goth? Finally, "Blaze Out" is a reprise of "Blaze In."

The Mystick Krewe of Clearlight's "side" consists of two tracks. For those of you not familiar with MKoC, they're a New Orleans supergroup of sorts featuring members of eyehategod, Down, and Spicke (to name a few....). They general play long-assed instrumentals that sound like a swampy mix of Deep Purple, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Sabbath, and the Allman Brothers. On this release one Scott "Wino" Weinrich (Spirit Caravan, ex-Obsessed, ex-Saint Vitus) contributes some vocals. Of their two tracks, "Veiled" sounds most like a "regular" Clearlight song with its heavy organ-driven groove and drawn-out (in a good way) ending. The other song, "Buzzard Hill (My Backyard)" sounds a lot like an Obsessed song peppered with organ. Both songs swing hard. In a way that could almost make people get up and dance... if people were still inclined to dance to rock-type music. [n/a]

(TG scrambles out into the hall with C12 a considerable distance behind. She's already firing rapidly, aiming in so many different directions that her gunfire seems random. As she approaches a corner, she tosses a smoke bomb, switches on her Magnasoles, and begins walking up the wall. Smoke billows as she runs across the ceiling, firing wildly down the hallway intersection; her pink latex miniskirt is so tight that even with all this action it barely moves, affording C12 a heart-stopping view of her ass when she unlocks the Magnasoles and drops to the floor below.)

C12: So what are we reviewing? Can you even do this? You seem a bit preoccupied....

TG: Not a problem, weenie boy. (fires a burst from the Locktite Neutrino Molecule Scrambler down the still-smoking hallway) Got the new Acid King and Mystic Krewe of Clearlight split right here. (inserts disc and begins to run again as it plays)

TG: The Moon Unit got this primarily for the Acid King tracks (big surprise), and they smoke, mon. That classic dirt-encrusted guitar sound is back and they're plenty hefty. We're talking bulldozer heavy, only in slow motion. Lori's voice sounds a bit rawer this time around, but the unearthly drone is still a swank part of her singing style, so this is good. (An elevator opens and a dozen sporebots pour out; an expertly-tossed Microtonic Fractal Fragmenter grenade turns all of them into metallic sushi, along with the elevator, the steno pool in the next room, the electron microscope laboratory, and most of the hallway.)

TG: They definitely get off on the right foot with "Blaze In," which is all clotted-amp feedback and thundering riff-humping with Lori tearing off lots of blinding lead moves before she even gets around to (eventually) singing. Once again Lori demonstrates that she is beyond bad-ass. (walks on walls again, wiping out a score of sporebots with automatic weapon fire) This is like the last rites of a dying dinosaur or something.... "Free" is more spaced-out, with wildly reverberating guitars making trance moves before the band starts to seriously crush, and "Four Minutes" also demonstrates that they can sound eerie even at low volumes, at least during the introduction (the rest of the song is pure slow crushing doom). They exit with "Blaze Out," which is similar to the opener but even heavier. Did i mention that Lori sounds totally forbidding, as always, on all of the songs? This disc is worth having just for the Acid King tracks.

C12 (gasping): What about the Clearlight portion? Oh, watch for that one! (shoots with .45 and nails a sporebot emerging from behind an industrial waste can)

TG: The Clearlight tracks aren't bad either, although they're wildly different and the segue between the two bands is a tad jarring on CD. "Buzzard Hill (My Backyard)" sounds like a throwback to the time when bands like Dr. Hook and Little Feat ruled the airwaves, only heavier and with way more boss axe-grinding. Basically a long jam with lots of opportunity to solo, it's not bad at all but not quite my thing. I like "Veiled" a bit better -- why i don't know, i just do. Excellent musicians, no question, but i think i prefer Acid King's molten-sludge drone....

C12: Somehow that fails to surprise me. (He rolls a Hallucination Inducer toward a crowd of advancing sporebots; as the smoke envelops them, they stop their advance and begin disassembling one another.) Ah, there! You know, I wasn't really quite sure that would work...

This live recording truly shows how great this band is. They offer up everything from space rock to mellow pieces that just evolve and then explode. Most of their music is improv and as musicians they have their shit together. I put this on and just fade away. [ttbmd]

Amusing in an unspeakably hideous sort of way.... This Austin band is popular mostly, i suspect, for their kitsch value; kind of like a less- tuneful and punkier version of the B-52s with one of the most truly annoying "vocalists" ever to abuse a microphone, they're lots of fun live and i'm sure they provide much entertainment on stage, but on record, they are, uh, a bit less compelling. Catchy as "Powerbag" is (in a distinctly 80s new-wave style) beneath the singer's obnoxious bleating, i can't imagine listening to more of this stuff in large doses. On "Insomnia" the band steps down into quasi-punk lounge mode, which is kind of interesting, and the singing marginally improves, but still... i dunno, maybe i'm just getting too old....

I'd comment on the completely ridiculous (but funny) video that accompanies this single, but i don't believe my heart can stand it right now. Perhaps in the next issue....

"I used to Fuck People Like You in Prison," now THAT'S a name for a punk rock label... but I digress.... Aerobitch are a sleazy, skeezy punk 'n' roll band outta Madrid, Spain. There isn't a whole lot you can say about the music. It's punk rock. They touch all the bases, The Dead Boys, Motorhead, old AC/DC, the Dwarves, and more modern bands like the Hellacopters and Electric Frankenstien. They cover The Saints' "Know Your Product"and AC/DC's "High Voltage." Singer Laura Bitch sounds like she smokes 3-5 packs a day and drinks tequila with a whiskey chaser. (This is a good thing, by the way.) I dunno, I really like this record but sleazy punk rawk should sound sleazy. You know, like it was recorded on a broken 4-track with shitty mics while the bands was too fucked to tune or work the volume controls on their guitars and amps. Laura sounds plenty sleazy but the band sounds too... accomplished. Like they went in to a studio and recorded everything separately and Laura come in to cut the vox later. If this were more raw sounding, I'd be raving. [n/a]

The concept: Julia Cafritz (Pussy Galore, Free Kitten), along with Joe DePhillips and Kim Rancourt of When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water, for whatever questionable reason, make (with the assistance of Don Fleming) a "radical reinterpretation" of the 1973 Wings classic album BAND ON THE RUN, track by track. After recording the initial vocal tracks, Fleming and and sound-porker Tom Smith (To Live and Shave in L.A., etc.) remixed (in strange fashion) the tapes, at which point Smith spent 14 months fucking with the tapes with extremely devolved results. Never mind the question of whether or not the world particularly needs a radical reinterpretation of a mediocre Paul McCartney album (frankly, I would have preferred to see this concept applied toward the Beatles' "white album") -- the real question is, was it worth it? I'd say yes, although how often is probably directly related to your interest in the album being referenced. Of course, if you're already obsessed with the pop-culture points referenced here or just have a passion for hearing pop classics butchered (for reasons ironic or otherwise), this could be your meal ticket to hell for all eternity. The initial recording is one of high quality, and there's a level of seriousness here that elevates the whole enterprise out of the joke / novelty category, while Smith's radically uberfucked remix is interesting on any number of levels. It may be pointless, and I'm sure it would be completely horrifying to the average McCartney fan, but at least it works more often than not purely as a collection of intriguing sounds. To say this is a strange version of the album in question is putting it mildly: it's McCartney and the Wings sound pulverized by glitch electronics, bizarre mixes, and deeply perverse motives, the barest essence of the original pop song left as a reminder of what it was before they started perverting it in the name of "art" (or whatever it is that motivates them). It's worth hearing at least once, just to see how radically unlistenable (in a disturbingly catchy way, sometimes) a collection of pop songs can be rendered in the studio. Strange experiments in the name of audio science (or the work of satan, assuming you're outraged by the desecration of venerated idols, blah blah blah).

Old-school new-wave synthpop dance tracks -- if the mere mention of bands like Human League and early Depeche Mode make your sweat glands want to crawl out of your skin and hide, quivering in terror, then Agency-X probably won't be your cup o' goat sweat. This particular item is actually the single mix (and many remixes) of "Don't Hold Your Breath," from the band's forthcoming album MISSION IMPOSSIBLE, along with a reasonable-enough cover of Yazoo's "Walk Away From Love." The single is bouncy with lots of chirping synths; of the remixes, i prefer the "waste of time" one. And the Yazoo cover is most swell. If you remember Modern English and Thompson Twins and their 80s contemporaries with fondness, then you'll want to grok this. (If you spent the 80s worshiping Judas Priest, you may... um... not.)

This is the recorded debut of Gustavo Aguilar's Get Libre Group, a collective of improv and experimental musicians from up and down the California coast with percussionist Aguilar as the eye at the center of the storm. Aguilar plays the sabor drum kit and provides other sounds; Todd Sickafoose completes the rhythm section on bass, leaving Eric Crystal (saxophones, flax, melodica), Chris Garcia (udu, tabla), and Robert Reigle (tenor saxophone) plenty of room to improvise over and around them. The choice of unusual instrumentation yields what will be fresh tones to many ears, and the album improvisational drift make it greatly resemble the hip soundtrack to a forgotten sixties film. They play against this agreeable tendency midway through "Legends," though, abandoning their nomrally measured tones for an escalating frenzy that builds to furious squalling before returning to a more reserved delivery. Desolate and deliberate sax lines are eventually joined by other instruments on "N-6," a short piece notable for its sparseness. The lengthy "Concepts in Travel Comfort" takes its time in building from minimal instrumentation and low volume to something more complex and dynamic, and creates a nice tablueax of pleasing, exotic-sounding passages in the process. The entire album goes down like musicians from all directions merging at ports of call to spread the sounds and rhythms of distant cities. For the cosmopolitan player, dig? 

Air Miami -- ME, ME, ME [Teenbeat/4AD]

From the ashes of Unrest, Mark Robinson and Bridget Cross emerge with the new Air Miami... and i'm impressed. I don't think there's a bad song on here. They're also heavily influenced by Joy Division (check out the ping- pong basslines, mon), even though they're not "goth," which is most guten. While they retain a lot of the punky edge Unrest was famous for (or so they tell me; i've never heard Unrest, myself, although after hearing this, that will shortly be rectified), the best songs on here are the pretty pop ones, like "Seabird" (which is totally gorgeous; Bridget's voice could melt polar caps, okay?) and "Special Angel."

About half the album features drums by machine, and the rest is credited to one "Gabriel Stout," who may or may not exist; either way, there's plenty of bounce all the way through. Sure, the sounds are cheesy sometimes, and deliberately so (as on the goofy "World Cup Fever" and "Neely," which incidentally features the most overt Joy Division sound appropriation), but that's all right --this is POP, it's SUPPOSED to be cheesy sometimes. And it's a GOOD kind of cheesiness... hmmm... didn't i have this conversation with someone already? At any rate, while there's plenty of tomfoolery going on here (catch the titles, for instance: the titles listed on the outside are recast on the inside of the gatefold, so that "I Hate Milk" becomes "Please Please Someone Kill Me Soon," "Sweet As A Candy Bar" becomes "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba," and most amusingly, "Neely" is actually called "I'm Gonna Fuck You Up Today"), the songs themselves -- and all the playing -- is rock solid. The sound (on the poppy stuff, anyway) is sort of like Joy Division meets ABBEY ROAD-era Beatles, which is more than fine by me. The rest of the time they take detours into goofy uptempo stuff with a punky edge that nevertheless remains danceable ("I Hate Milk," "You Sweet Little Heartbreaker," etc.).

A word about the packaging: There's some sharp graphic sensibility at work here (and having the really cute girl with the poofy lips and slick fashion sensibility on the cover doesn't hurt either). They've worked out a deal in which 4AD releases the CD version and Teenbeat releases the album, which is what i have -- and it comes as a double-LP set of 12" 45s, which is most swank, believe me. Did i mention the graphics are great? Luv those staggering primary colors, mon....

OK, here's a quick Japanese lesson for today. Akaten means Red Heaven (aka = red, ten = heaven). Hence, the name of this project. Aren't you glad you know that now? Sure ya are! Well, it's Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) and Atsushi Tsuyama (Omoide Hatoba) teaming up to do some seriously wacky, quirky stuff! The liner notes, if one can call it that, are seriously lacking. Which is why I have no idea what label actually released this nifty piece of shiny silver plastic. I'm guessing that Yoshida put it out himself. It comes in a swank red bag with minimal graphics. Nearly all of the tracks are rather short, making this more of an EP than a full length release. As for what it sounds like... imagine what might happen if you fed an assortment of psychedelics to a caged monkey and then handed him an organ, drums and guitar just as he was coming down off the stuff. It's completely deranged, silly and hilarious. No description can do justice to the stuff your ears will hear. Just listen and don't try to figure it out. Aw, jEah... [yol]

Two bands, two tracks each. No room for filler here. Alabama Thunderpussy gets things off to a good start with their tunes "Heavyweight" and "Rabdos (The Strangler)." Equal parts punk, metal, sludge, and southern rock, the ATP side comes off as a swift kick to the head. This is easily the best thing I've heard from them. Halfway to Gone is a New Jersey trio that mine the same territory as ATP. They're slightly rougher around the edges and are the meaner-sounding of the two bands. (Maybe it's 'cause they're from Joisey?) Their tune "Darktown Strutter" is as catchy as all hell while the instrumental, "Thee Song," rumbles along in a most pleasing way. [n/a]

Allegory Chapel Ltd. -- WHEN ANGELS FALL [Charnel Music]

This automatically gets bonus points for the title and the gorgeous black and silver picture on the back cover of an angel falling into a whirlpool. Not that it needs any, because this is amazing, by far one of the best things yet released on Charnel. Basically, the album mixes elements of noise, classical (particularly the use of pipe organs), industrial, and dialogue into a fluid and dramatic whole (which is harder than it looks, believe me, I've tried it myself).

Aside from the powerful use of classical organ (especially on the first track, "Introduction...."), what I like most about this album is Elden M.'s use of controlled noise -- not the furious whiteout roar employed by Masonna or Merzbow, but instead noise that's sculpted and shaped into patterns, until it becomes an instrument into itself. From the simulated static thunderheads on "Trajectory Calculations" to the swirling vortex that keeps panning from speaker to speaker on "Predatory Instincts," the noise here often sounds larger than life. The effect is often quite disorienting and even menacing, particularly on "Predatory Instincts," where the static vortex is often augmented by the sample of a woman screaming "please let me out" and other, more explosive sounds buried in the roar; the cumulative effect is the most unnerving thing I've heard since the Pain Teens' "Bannoy."

The noise elements are composed of everything from static, hum, wind, vague thumping, strange clattering sounds, distorted crackling, and some stuff that's totally unrecognizable, but it always remains channeled in an obviously purposeful direction. "Escalate the Violence" features a series of ascending electronic whines that evaporate into what sounds like a city being completely and systematically levelled by mortar fire, and the noise elements of "P x Q," punctuated by shouts of "NO!" as a piano tinkles away in the background, are even more punishing.

"Recital 587" is a bit more traditional -- ostensibly a piano recital-- only it's weighted toward the bass end of the scale and fed through so much reverb that it sounds like elephants are jumping up and down on the keyboard. (Very slowly, though. Very slowly.) Arcane noises clink and clatter away in the background as the song progresses, giving the song a feeling of physical depth. The last song, "Requiem for Thee Possessed," begins with the sample of a man talking about racial discrimination and employs a titanic bass hum that eventually give way to a beautiful female singer, devolving fragments of noise, and eventually an unearthly choir, before returning to the original sample. Unnerving, unearthly, and meticulously arranged, and even then, weirdly accessible (well, sort of...).

Already a serious contender for DEAD ANGEL's favorite album of the year and still ten months to go... plus new albums by Angel'in Heavy Syrup and Band of Susans yet to come... I may LIKE this year after all! Woo woo!

TMU: Hey, John Zorn is on here. And Fred Frith. And it was recorded live somewhere in Japan. This first song is a collaboration between Frith, some guy named Sabu, and Onnyk.

TTBMD: Yes, very loose... loose... free jazz.

TMU: Geometric designs on the cover denote the songs as cryptic blocks of sound. The stone motif of the cover design reminds me of how impermeable the membranes of time are. This is the sound of Last Exit drunk on Mad Dog 20/20 and begging for change to get home. But they're on the mean streets, baby, and all they're getting for their pain is kicked in the teeth again! HEEWACK! (launches into bad AC/DC air guitar)

TTBMD: Seems to be starting to take some shape now. The guitar has become incorporated now. The percussion's pretty damn good. He's the glue that's holding everything else together.

TMU: This sounds kind of tribal in a fucked-up jazz hepster sorta way. This is what those punks in LORD OF THE FLIES would have been blowin' on the conch shell if they hadn't all been such fucking nancy boys.

TTBMD: Last Exit would not be far off the mark. And now I'm interested in hearing what Zorn has to offer in this band.

TMU: I am stained with their illuminating forebearance. Metallic strands of hope burn feverishly in the corridor of cells lining the limbic system, prodded back into life from previously jaded states by the loping intensity of these postmodern stylings. The juxtaposition of instruments sets up a play of motion that unfolds and develops like a virulent form of black magic.

TTBMD: This second collaboration, with Zorn, Sabu, and Onnyk -- very interesting things going on here. Horns, bird callings, keyboards, drums -- it's all here. Great. Great!

TMU: I concur, although i think i prefer Zorn in the context of Painkiller. Although they are raising quite a clatter.

TTBMD: (burps) Now we can check out the track with Frith solo. This is nice. Much more mellow.

TMU: He has these bell tones going on. I too appreciate the mellowness. Destroying your instrument is all fine and good, but there has to be a moment of quiet for the dynamic range to truly be grasped. Frith fills that spot here. He fills it well.

TTBMD: Zorn's solo contribution is next. Fucking obnoxious.

TMU: I hear the bleating cries of the goat, doom childe! Is he actually playing anything here, or is this just all disturbed samples or something? Or is he molesting his guitar? I can't tell....

TTBMD: It's all kinds of horns and shit. It sounds like a fucking zoo.

TMU: Look, if you squint right, you can see the monkeys throwing their shit at the gawkers. Fling! Fling!

TTBMD: "Don't look at my ass you sons of bitches! Here! HAVE SOME!" Shit sandwich.... in a nutshell.

TMU: You get the impression that all of Zorn's amps go to eleven.

TTBMD: No, I mean this track is literally a shit sandwich.

TMU: I think it sounds appropriately possessed by demons.

TTBMD: I think it's possessed by ducks. And swallows. And fucking....

TMU: Chickens?

TTBMD: Is Zorn a big hunting fanatic?

TMU: Fuck if i know. I thought he was Jewish and was forbidden to eat meat and shit. Jews don't get to eat meat unless it's been stamped with a "kosher" stamp, right?

TTBMD: Fuck if i know. He is Jewish, though. And if he's forbidden to eat shit, that's a good thing.

TMU: I don't think the Torah covers that. It just forbids meat, not shit. I guess it's okay to eat shit.

TTBMD: What if the shit is, like, from a cheeseburger? Wouldn't that still be like meat? Like the Meat Shits?

TMU: It sounds like the ducks are being raped with a shotgun now.

TTBMD: I'm finished with this review.

For a hardcore band, they sure sound sufficiently deathlike, especially on the blood-freezing intro "Through Deep Snow, Darkness Stalks the Hunters." These hyperactive misfits are apparently a product of the DC hardcore scene, although calling them strictly a hardcore band is a bit of a misnomer since they incorporate all sorts of hefty black / death metal guitar frenzy and blackened bleating into their hardcore ubershuffle. What they are, really, is extremely fast and really intense. They don't so much play as much as they jump out of the speaker and beat you silly with their instruments. The parts i like best are the noised-out grind intros, like at the beginning of "Summary Executioner," where slo-mo poundcare turns into a wash of grinding guitars and a bare-bones beat before the frenzy begins, sort of like the blood begins to churn in the water and then the sharks arrive. Most of the time, though, they tend to approximate the sound of bulldozers wired up with nitro and blazing down the freeway, destroying everything they touch in their blind rush to flatten buildings. (When they do slow down to fade out on "Denazification of Your Weak Mind" and segue into a melodic intro that grows more evil as it progresses on "Dragon of the Black Pool," though, it's a nice touch.) The pained, noisy bludgeoning on "600,000 Dead" leaves me deeply moved as well (more specifically, a few internal organs appear to have switched places after all that shaking). The album as a whole is a pretty earth-shaking affair, with plenty of feedback-drenched guitars and vast immolating pound. Make sure you turn your speakers down a tad before throwing this one on (unless they needed replacing or your neighbors need annoying, in which case turn it up, son...).

Amazing Cherubs -- "Space Pussy/Satyricon" [Feralette Records]

I freely admit that I picked this up solely for the A-side title and the cover (a sleazy-looking b-girl in a itty-bitty pink vinyl "space outfit" holding the cheesiest ray-gun I've seen in quite some time). Naturally, I expected nothing more beyond the cover -- in fact, it took me nearly a month to actually get around to LISTENING to the record -- so imagine my surprise at discovering that it's actually not bad. Not brilliant, mind you, but the a-side is kind of catchy and has that typically English zippy- stingy guitar and some amusingly low-fi "space noises." The b-side is essentially more of the same, only minus the space noises. Are these guys English? They sure have that catchy squealy "I'm so British" guitar thing down cold.... Oh, and the songs are short.

Death by harsh power electronics... like a streetcleaner for your ears. Monorail Trespassing is rapidly becoming the source of choice for all things noise in America, and the ear-frying sounds these guys make shows why. There are only two tracks on this CD-R, but that's probably enough to crush you beneath their massive wall of dirtsound. On "being beat up," grinding sounds of destruction grown in volume and density as the piece goes on, employing destroyed sounds and utterly gross levels of distortion in a deliberate attempt to ruin your hearing. While they're not immune to the high-pitched shrieking thing from time to time, mostly they prefer a chunk-style noise grind, like the sound of concrete walls trying to grind through each other. The second track, "being beat up again," is essentially the original track with a different mix and additional sonic porking by special guest Alexandre Huard. Both of them sound really obnoxious and appropriately unpleasant. This is raw power electronics the way it was meant to be done. If you're hep to having your ears efficiently stripped and cleaned, you need to act fast, though -- this is limited to fifty copies and i have # 42, so your chances of picking it up are getting slimmer by the minute. Don't dawdle or you'll miss out on all the fun....

These guys do filthy, amped-up boogie rock, and do it really well. The cheat sheet tips Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and Sabbath. I'd say ZZ Top, Canned Heat, and Motorhead -- which, for all intents and purposes, means they sound a lot like a nastier Nashville Pussy. Not a bad thing at all. [n/a]

Anal Drill -- STIMULATING THE MASOCHIST [Mother Savage Noise Productions]

OW! OW! OW! That hurts! This is what the Constitution meant by "cruel and unusual punishment," man.... sixty minutes of pure, hateful noise terrorism. Anal Drill are an all-female noise unit from Houston, Texas, which automatically gets bonus points from me just on the grounds o' STATE PRIDE, but truly, no lie, this is gloriously obnoxious. The first side of the tape features a thick wall of nearly continuous static over which these women lay down the occasional (and short-lived) pounding percussive beat, delay-induced hurricane noise, bandsaw effects, microphone feedback, and God only knows what else, all in a systematic attempt to turn your eardrums into runny pools of sludge. They are successful. Your high end will be GONE before you even reach the point of having to turn the tape over.... But you WILL turn the tape over, because you're such a masochist, and there you will find more of the same, augmented this time by chunkier and more repetitive sounds. Plenty of variation and texture here for the dedicated noise fetishist. This tape is seriously out of control... wall to wall noise designed to fry your hearing to a crisp. Imagine Gerogerigegege's 45 RPM PERFORMANCE being broken up and reconstructed by Merzbow while employing his most savage devices and you're groveling in the right direction....

WARNING: For the squeamish among you who might consider getting this, the cassette artwork is sexual in nature and EXTREMELY EXPLICIT. You might want to keep this in mind if your granny is prone to opening your mail by mistake....

Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- I (Subterranean)

More bizarre weirdness from the land of the rising sun... imagine the Butthole Surfers colliding with the Cocteau Twins in a punk jazz lounge and you begin to get a glimpse of the strange delights this disc has to offer. The first song, "S.G.E. (Space Giant Eye)" burps up a bomping bassline surrounded by guitars spitting out serrated shards of surprisingly melodious feedback. And then that VOICE comes in over it all... that breathy, ethereal voice. The other four songs are a bit less manic, closer to a tasty yet eccentric mix of free jazz and blues most of the time, embellished by Mineko Itakura's gorgeous voice. (Or is it Mine Nakao? The first plays bass, the second plays, guitar, but both sing, not that I can tell the difference.) The version of "My Dream" here is considerably different than the one available on Charnel's compilation LAND OF THE RISING NOISE; here the guitars are drenched in echo and reverb, twanging away like they marched right out of the Okeefenokee swamp, and the vocals are more prominent this time. Of the two, I think this is the better one, although that may be a matter of personal taste.... The final song is the extended "Crazy Blues," framed at the beginning and end by the sound of running water, a song that mutates wildly over the course of ... minutes and is probably actually closer to improvisational jazz than blues (at least as Americans think of the blues, anyway). Not only is the musicianship impeccable here (as on all of the album), but Mineko's bass playing here is flat-out amazing. Hunt this down, especially if you'd like to hear a foreign take on western jazz/blues.

Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- II (Alchemy Records)

More from the Angels! Not quite as immensely godlike as their first, this is still way ahead of the pack in terms of sonic quality and sheer adventurous eclecticism. Parts of the opener, "Introduction I," bring to mind a hipper Henry Mancini... at least until the wild guitar histronics kick in, at which point they reveal a secret Rush fixation (but only the good parts, thank God). Once again the vocals are gorgeous, even though there's no way to tell what they ARE unless you happen to understand Japanese. "Crazy Blues" shows up again, only much fuzzier and noisier, with a new, modified arrangement that inexplicably buries the best part of the original version. "Introduction II" is a variation, leaving a final track for the collectors and the curious: a mildly amusing cover of "I Got You Babe" that's immensely preferable to the original. (Then again, I never did like Cher. And Sonny never did much for me, either, now that I think of it.)

Angel'in Heavy Syrup -- III [Circular Reasoning]

Rah! Rah! Rah! Le Angels RETURN! And about time, too -- they record at a positively glacial pace, much to DEAD ANGEL's dismay. Would that they were only a fraction as prolific as the pranksters in the Broken Flag camp.... But on the other hand, the time they spend on their work pays off in amazingly intricate and well-crafted songs, so i'm not going to quibble TOO much about their obsessive attention to detail. Aside from the outstanding musicianship -- they may not be THE most technically proficient band in all of Japan, but they're damn close; the only other that comes readily to mind would be the Ruins -- the sound on this CD is just staggering. Their sound is much fuller and richer this time around than ever before, which means many blessings for the ears....

For those not familiar with the godhead that is Angel'in Heavy Syrup, they're four women from Japan playing a twisted brand of avant-rock/new age/spacy jazz psychadelia with breathy, helium-like singing. Of course, since the lyrics are all in Japanese, there's no telling what the lyrics MEAN, but they SOUND great. In the course of any given song, they'll change tempos a zillion times, incorporate wildly fluctuating dynamics, bizarre melodies, and shifting textures played in ridiculously complicated arrangements... and all without even breaking a sweat. In fact, one of their greatest strengths is their ability to flow seamlessly from one complicated movement to another, with the same smooth motion of a river winding through the hills.

The six pieces are here are uniformly brilliant; the highlights mostly revolve around personal taste (i particularly like the flute wandering through "Water Mind"). And in what's quickly becoming an Angel tradition, they rework a song from their last album, "Introduction I -- Naked Sky High." (They most add another layer or two of guitar this time around, with some genuinely squiggly riffing in places courtesy of Fusao, i think.) It's still too early to tell, but i think this might well be their best release yet. It's certainly head and shoulders above nearly anything i've heard in the last year, and i've heard a lot of genuinely good albums, so that's saying something....

This is one of those rare, rare albums that not only lives up to its title but is actually necessary listening even for diehards who already have all the original releases from which the eleven tracks are taken. To begin with, this rectifies a major problem with the Angel'in Heavy Syrup catalog -- it includes all of the second album (never released outside of Japan) but one song; in fact, half the album is a resequenced and radically remixed reconstruction of II with a couple of songs from I, also remixed, thrown in the middle. The rest of the album is two remastered tracks each from III and IV. One of the tracks from the first album -- "My Dream" -- is actually included here as the version from Charnel's LAND OF THE RISING NOISE compilation. All of it sounds like it has been remixed from the ground up, and judging by the extra bits floating between some of the songs, most likely from the original tapes. There's a lot less reliance on endless reverb, and the balance between the bass and the rest of the band has been improved, rendering a lot more clarity to the songs. Even the two songs (especially "Water Mind") from III sound different enough (without losing their original character) that listening to this compilation is like rediscovering the songs all over again.

In a lot of ways this sounds like a really well-recorded live recording, and since the band has always been exceptionally well-rehearsed from day one, the result is a psych album with enough oomph and variety to be totally mesmerizing from start to finish. The song selection and sequencing is impeccable, and the increased clarity really benefits the band by making it obvious just how good they are. "Stoom" devotees should note that while they definitely spend a lot of time being floaty 'n psych-like, they have their heavy moments, particularly on the last track, taken from IV. When they start getting heavy they approach being a psychedelic doom band. It's interesting to note that even though the songs are taken from four very different albums, they come across as a new whole. As usual, the Angels do not disappoint....

The main reason for owning this single is to have the b-side, which does not appear on the full-length debut by Gira's brand new bag. Of course, the A-side is certainly worth hearing in its own right, and this may even be a slightly different mix (awake, ye collector purists!), but if it is, it's not different enough to make much of a difference. "God's Servant," however is fairly interesting, with drums almost Swanslike in their intensity, but shot through with tinkling piano and lonesome violin. It's not quite as astounding as the material on the album -- hence its fate as a b-side -- but it's still worth hearing if you got behind the album in a big way. Other than that, this is strictly a completist's gig, mon....

The simple way to approach Gira's new bag -- to grok its essence, if you will -- is to apply the principles of mathematics. Start with Swans as your constant. Subtract the fearsome mania for repetition, female vox, thunderous drumming, aching piles of bombast, and high noise quotient. Add many new instruments for an incredible variety of textures, gospel and country influences, and a renewed commitment to relatively straightforward songwriting. Substitute "Leonard Cohen" for "Johnny Cash" in the vocal influence variable. Work out that equation, my sweating li'l children, and you should end up with Angels of Light. (If you ended up with anything else, you get a D and remedial exercises. If you ended up with "Britney Spears," you get an F and go to prison, you pervert.)

Of course, nothing involving Gira is ever that simple. While he manages to pull off sounding like the Swans but not sounding like the Swans (neat trick!), the parallels are all refracted. Yes, his lyrics are every bit as cheerfully morbid as always, but this time they come across as cryptically abstract narratives in miniature. Yes, the musical structures are uncomplicated, but here they have more texture thanks to the proliferation of guests wielding instruments you've probably never associated with the man. (Shame" -- the best song on the album -- opens with a banjo, for God's sake. And it sounds pretty damn good.) Yes, the tempos are fairly dirgelike, but the judicious inclusion of country instruments (dobro, hammer dulcimer, etc.) make the effect much different, not so much endless and static as simply languid. Swans sounded like the Velvet Underground or Joy Division played at half speed; Angels of Light sound like Johnny Cash or Leonard Cohen played at half speed.

Parts of "Forever Yours" are strongly reminiscent of Cohen's "No Cure For Love" (the similarities are mostly in terms of the vocal phrasing); the results are good enough that i kind of wish Gira would cover something by Cohen (it would be really interesting to hear him sing "Take This Waltz," actually). "The Garden Hides the Jewel" comes closest to sounding like traditional Swans (from the WHITE LIGHT era); it's actually quite pretty, just another indication of Gira's endless perversity, given that the song is actually (apparently) about a dead girl rotting in a garden. (It also happens to remind me strongly of the Don MacLean song "Till Tomorrow," but i don't know if that's intentional or not. I suspect it is, though.) The best song here, "Shame," starts out like a full-on western swing tune waking up in a bad neighborhood as the musicians build intensity only to slash it away at critical points of the lyrics. It's one of the few times Gira's ever made a serious effort at building the sound around the vocals, and the dynamics are simply astounding. The rest of the album hews to a general pattern of morose, low-key creepiness, and it's all excellent, even thought the aforementioned tracks are by far and away the high points of album. I'm not quite ready yet to go out on a limb and proclaim this the greatest thing Gira's done since WHITE LIGHT FROM THE MOUTH OF INFINITY (my candidate for the ultimate Swans disc), but i'm getting there with each repeated listen....

(As sporebots converge upon them from all directions, spilling out of hallways and doors and elevators, hurling their deadly metallic offal into the air, C12 -- who has regained a bit of his panache by now -- soldiers forward, his cybernetic suit activated and crackling with electricity. TG follows in his shadow, impossibly large guns in both hands, firing around him in convoluted patterns. She is wearing a latex mask now to prevent inhaling the spores, and the Captain's suit is hermetically sealed, his eyes invisible behind a dark strip of glass. Jagged waves of ultrasound blast from the sonic cannon on the Captain's Fighter Pack, pulling apart the sporebots unlucky enough to blunder into the sound waves.)

TG: What's next? You said we had a fat-ass pile of CDs....

C12: Indeed we do. (plays the new Angels of Light disc) Gira's back again with his peculiar brand of moody folk-rock. If you've already heard the first album, then you won't find too many surprises here, just more of the same melancholy dirges. A lot of this (especially the first track, "Evangeline") sound very much like an acoustic, prettified version of the same sound the Swans were pursuing on albums like WHITE LIGHT FROM THE MOUTH OF INFINITY.

TG: Is that the one where they went all soft and mushy and Gira started sounding like a weepy Johnny Cash?

C12: More or less. (annoyed) There are some people who vastly prefer the latter Swans albums to their... ah... output of the early years, you know.

TG: I prefer them back when they had balls. (crouches suddenly and ducks a heat-seeking mini-missile)

C12: Back when they sounded like unlistenable noise! 

TG (employing rapid motorized cannon fire to decimate the sporebots' ranks): You were saying?

C12: Ah, yes. The new album. The use of organ and countryish elments like slide guitar make the proceedings a bit more lush than the aforementioned Swans album. "Untitled Love Song" owes more to country death blues than it does to anything happening in the music world right now -- oooo, that aching pretty slide and lap steel! And that track even has Bliss Blood on it, providing back vocals. Gira has done well to make her acquaintance. "Song for Nico" is another nice one, sounding very much (one suspects intentionally so) like "All Tomorrow's Parties" with acoustic instruments. Then he's back to the country death motif again on "My Suicide" -- he does this kind of stuff really well; his temperament is just right for lonesome songs of crippled humanity.

TG: What about the rest of the album? Is it all like this? (shudders) Where's the thunder, dammit?

C12: No thunder, dearheart. Gira's past the need for thunder these days. The rest of the songs are pretty much somewhere in this neighborhood, so if that's not your bag you might want to skip this one. Old-school Swans devotees probably won't care for this much --

TG: Amen! (aims her Plasma Disruptor at the last remaining sporebot; it pulls itself apart in hot strips of metal like hot taffy)

The band was formed in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco and their name is inspired by their fingerless and legless bassist, a survivor of bacterial meningitis. The poop sheet that came with the disc mentions No Doubt, Operation Ivy, and The Muffs, all of which are pretty spot-on, and a bunch of other bands I know nothing about. So you can guess they have an attitude and issues, and you'd be right. They also have a cute guitarist / shouter (Stacey Dee), and the whole band is pretty respectable -- lots of energy, oi chants, and they're big on the pop-punk axis. They have nothing to be ashamed of. Songs like "Dubya" and "Psycho Bitch" don't tell me anything I didn't already know, and the music doesn't go anywhere I haven't heard before, but then again, I was never a huge fan of the pop-punk genre and I'm probably the wrong person to be reviewing this anyway. I'd rather listen to this than anything I've ever heard by any of the bands name-checked in the poop sheet, though, with the possible exception of The Muffs. It was recorded by Jack Endino and they know how to play, so if you're down with this whole style, then you should probably check it out.

Antibody -- IN LOVING MEMORY [Castrated Tapes/Loud Cat]

Unfortunately, the alphabetical list of reviews begins with a band guilty of the aforementioned sin of uninspired packaging. IN LOVING MEMORY really sounds as though Antibody is making their first foray into the depths of noise. The sound is rather simple and straightforward; little or no layering or complexity is to be found here. Most of the pieces are short, sound more like promotional excerpts than fully-developed pieces. The xeroxed notes that accompanied this particular tape indicate that this should be filed under "noise/ambient." The initial genre classification does work, but there is little innovation or novelty to this release.

So how does it sound? Some feedback, some droning, some processed screaming -- nothing out of the ordinary for a noise release. Essentially, a standard (though mainly freshman) noise release. [bc]

Antibody -- ON THE RACK WITH WIRE [Castrated Tapes]

This two-man noise team from Sayreville, NJ are classic cut-up power electronics artists in the vein of Macronympha, but this is a bit of a different take on the vein they've chosen to mine. While there are bursts of jagged electro-terrorism to be had all over the tape, most of it is more ambient in nature, ladling eccentric sounds over flanged-out loops (loops seem to be the big wave lately for some reason), giving their particular headkick a bit more of a hypnotic feel, particularly on tracks like "Peace comes from knowing pervert machines." Others like "Scape" and "Tack" employ more subterranean sounds and distorted throbbing, coming across like Throbbing Gristle played at 16 rpm. But then tracks like "Invade" are much more punishing, like scrap metal being force-fed through a meat grinder, complete with bursts of distortion like radios being blown up and all sorts of high-pitched evil tone hate. Other tracks like "Gash Chambered" and "Sluts in a Trash Heap" are even more violently obnoxious. All of which lends a bit more variety to the proceedings than with many noise bands. An interesting diversion from the usual full-tilt powertrip mania.

My, this is a loud one. "False Tench" disgorges great screaming walls of everything all at once without warning and you're off to the races with a wall of screechy noises, earthquake sounds, dank bass rumble, and no telling what else buried in the sonic mung. You'll definitely find it abrupt and bracing, assuming you can still hear and you didn't spill your coffee all down your lap. "Center" is even more abrasive and out of control, and grinding gears on B52s being shredded to strands of aluminum spaghetti as the jet screams sideways down the runway with the brakes locked before flipping over and crashing into the ocean. "Pataphysical" is no less loud and cut-up, but its movement is a bit more stationary; instead of propelling you face-first down the razor-lined metal chute and into the incinerator, it pins you to a wall initially and breaks things over your head first and then pushes you down the stairs in a barrel full of clattering knives. The last track, "Latrines," is so loud and pounding that jackhammers breaking up the sidewalk would almost be soothing by comparison. This is a new pinnacle of obnoxiousness for a tape-driven project that prides itself on obnoxiousness. If you like your wall o' sound louder than an avalanche and filled with the sound of alien ships that blot out the sun wiping out cities with chattering ray guns, then this is for you. Treasure it always.

Even for Jordan Krall, cut-up tape fiend that he is, this is a pretty chaotic wall o' sonic blort. He makes some interesting moves, though -- like a doom childe weaving through the sonic dung to perpetuate the Ritual of the Craven Blowfish, he throws in some unexpected efx and bizarre juxtapositions, like the flanged-out reverb on "HaHa" and the introduction to "False Hearted Villain Blues," which opens with some cheesy forties (???) record, all nice 'n jaunty, before being obliterated by tape noise hell. "Capas and Scrabble" combines a skipping record with walls of sonic doom, and the doom is heavy on fast-forward tape rumble and Buicks falling down a deep, dark hole. Then there's the totally surreal "Ballpoint Banana" -- a lengthy sample of some poorly-acted drama involving robbery and violence leads into squealing, shuddering, and the Wail of Death. "Nakema" is basically more noises piled on top of other noises, but the "paperdoll" remix of "HaHa" is a nice one -- weird samples, psychotronic panning, reverb overkill, scratchy vinyl noises, and a general sense of the really bizarre almost make me expect to hear supermodels chanting "Chanel No. 5" over and over (why, i do not know).

The one problem i have with this -- with noise-collage albums in general, really -- is that after a while the sonic bulldozer parts all sound pretty much alike. Outside of that, though, this is a pretty violent-sounding mess of audio fury; Jordan's getting better at capturing the sound of recording equipment being heaved off a cliff, still committing sounds to tape even as the mixer tumbles down the mountain and into the abyss. Note that this comes in a nifty li'l static-shield bag and the label is from Puerto Rico, of all places. I didn't know Castro and his stinky cigars even allowed noise in... oh wait, that's Cuba i'm thinking of. One of these days i really need to pay more attention to that World Atlas....

Anticage is a trio from Slovakia who call their sound "freakout crossover," and that's as apt a description as any -- they combine different disciplines into a chaotic brew of explosive sound that veers from pop to punk and more at will, with lyrics that would get them labeled an "emo" band in this country. In fact, their tendency to explode into bursts of sound and their disciplined, angular playing puts them squarely in emo territory more than anything else. They tend to favor barreling along at a fast clip (especially on "In the Jealous Sky") and they like to all sing together, bringing to mind various Dischord bands (in fact, one of the singers sounds very much like Jawbox's J. Robbins in places). On "Spiritual Cancer No. 2" they seriously rock in locked-down math-rock fashion, although the boss sound is somewhat obscured by all the shou ting (i personally would have mixed the vox down a tad, but i tend to favor that sort of thing). There are only four songs on this demo, but that's enough to get across the fact that they put a lot of energy into what they do and they have a fairly compelling sound. Interesting, disciplined playing -- i'll bet they sound swell live, too.... [pym

I don't honestly know much about Aoki, but he has aparently made a name for himself as a jazz/improv bass player. This disc consists of seven different duets with different musicians, including one with Jim O'Rourke playing guitar. One has to listen carefully to the way Aoki plays his bass to really appreciate the interplay between him and the other musicians. Some nice improvisational pieces here. The O'Rourke piece is indeed a treat. [yol]

Aphex Twin: SELECTED AMBIENT WORKS VOLUME II (Sire/Warner Bros.)

Well, Richard James finally washes up on shore this side of the Atlantic (took long enough, didn't it?), and the results are... rather ambient. For a guy who keeps getting lumped into "house" territory, this two-disc set is awfully short on beats and long on moody, trance-inducing drone. Which is ok by me, although people who were expecting something a bit more thumpadelic may find themselves drifting off as the CDs play on... and on... and on... we're talking approximately 140 minutes of music here, which makes it a real endurance test if you can't stand to go more than a few minutes without hearing somebody whack something in a vaguely rhythmic fashion.

The art packaging is both entertaining and cryptic, not terribly surprising for a guy who claims to do most of his work through lucid dreaming. The two discs come in one jewel box with a hinged tray to hold one on each side (clever, and a real space-saver too); the booklet folds out to a fair-sized poster depicting abstract photos symbolizing the tracks themselves. Since they aren't arranged in any particular order though, there's no telling which picture goes with which track. Ah, those arty types....

The music itself is kind of spooky most of the time; dark, eerie, and morbid in an oddly sophisticated kind of way, like the soundtrack to a high- class art flick about unfathomable mysteries that end in death. And how's this for an odd comparison -- those who've heard the 21-minute "Pure II" from the Godflesh CD PURE and found it pleasing would probably enjoy this set immensely. (In fact, Final, the ambient spinoff project of Godflesh guitarist Justin Broadrick, is working in remarkably similar territory to these two discs as well.) On the rare occasions when a beat gets going, the results are surprisingly funky, but the main attraction of this outing remains the eerie, processed-beyond-all-recognition sounds that paint pictures of another universe far beyond our own. Some clever reviewer who doesn't work for DEAD ANGEL compared this set to the sound the monolith from 2001 would make if it could sing, and that pretty much says it all. Maybe this is what I'll play when I watch the comets vs. Jupiter on CNN....

Performance art and music are generally a hit-or-miss proposition (ask Karen Finley how far the combination will get you and be prepared to duck), especially when you divorce the music from the event itself. For every brilliant example (say, the Great Kat, whose twenty-year career now has managed to outlast most of the magazines that laughed at her when she first appeared in the 80s), there's an equally hideous one (the Impotent Sea Snakes, who were indeed impotent in every sense of the word imaginable and then some, come readily to mind). The last band of any note I can remember having much success (artistically or financially) with this route was Boston's Women of Sodom, who combined catchy (and dirty) techno with a mind-boggling live BDSM show complete with whipping and enemas. Apocalipstick are more of a rock 'n roll thang, but their modus operandi isn't too different (catchy and dirty rock songs sung by Jackie O. Nasstie, aka Bay Area fetish-scene notable Mistress Josephine), and they have the good sense to keep their smutty sense of humor upfront. It doesn't hurt that the band (guitarist KC/DC, bassist Bob Three, and drummer Adam Knievel, all veterans of the Bay Area punk scene) sounds pretty good, giving the lo-fi recording the same sound as those swell old Motorhead and MC5 albums. Titles like "Rectal Inspector," "Lick," "Lolita Backwards," and "Headache" are a pretty accurate indicator of the band's lyrical interests, although they're delivered with far more humor and with less raunch (well, maybe) than you might expect. The sound behind the warbling fetish chanteuse is pure punked-out beach-party rock and roll -- fun fun fun till Daddy takes the lipstick away -- and I can only imagine how brilliant this must be live, with the amps turned up to 11 and the band in full drag while Jackie O. does her championship jiujitsu moves all swaddled in latex and fishnet and stiletto heels. If you're like me and you don't have the good fortune to live where you can see them, well, the cd turned up loud and the hallucinogen of your choice (plus the latest copy of MARQUIS for good measure) will have to do for a poor man's simulation. You can get the cd for $10 even, postage included, from Bazoom! directly (see EPHEMERA for details).