Galaxie 500 -- GALAXIE 500 box set [Rykodisc]

Okay, so i'm such a clueless putz that i'm just now getting around to hearing Galaxie 500, six years after they broke up -- hey, better late than never, right? Right? RIGHT? (Uhhhh....) Fortunately for moi, Rykodisc has conveniently saved me from the hassle of scouring used-record stores for their out-of-print-and-damn-near-impossible-to-find records by not only releasing all three of them on CD with extra goodies, but by collecting all three with a fourth disc of otherwise unavailable rarities for this swell box set. (There's a fourth disc out now, COPENHAGEN, documenting one of their final live shows.)

The Cliff Notes summary: The box set includes all three original albums (TODAY, ON FIRE, and THIS IS OUR MUSIC) in their entirety, along with a number of extra tracks on each disc (mostly culled from B-sides and the BLUE THUNDER and FOURTH OF JULY EPs), and video tracks (!) for "Fourth of July," "Tugboat," "Blue Thunder," and "When Will You Come Home," all viewable on your PC. The fourth disc collects up all the previously obscure or unavailable material (their original three-song demo, various covers, European b-sides, compilation tracks, etc.). The 48-page booklet (designed, like the rest of the set, by Naomi herself) includes the band's story from the members themselves, along with lots o' swell pix, liner notes from the original albums, and a complete discography.

As for the music itself, well, the albums were recorded on a shoestring and it often shows, but if it's good enough for Guided by Voices and Lou Barlow and Liz Phair (who is apparently heavily influenced by Dean Wareham's guitar stylings), then dammit, it's good enough for Galaxie 500! Especially since the music across these four discs is consistently stellar and generally much better than the bands they've influenced, in my opinion. (How did i ever go so long without hearing this band? Arrgh!) Plus they do New Order ("Ceremony") better than New Order, which is all right by me. An absolutely essential item. Get 'em while they're available.... (Note for the budget-minded consumer: The separate Ryko reissues are exactly the same as these discs, with all the extra tracks and video tracks, only with the original cover art. But note that the rarities disc is only available here. I suggest saving up your pennies for the box set over the individual albums....)

Gals Panic -- AIRPORT SECURITY THINGS [Goopy Pyramid Records]

Look, look, I'm SKANKIN'! Awright! Yow! Twist shukka twist shukka leap leap leap! Hey! And I don't even own anything plaid! Aaaaieeee! Crazed ska from my own obnoxious hometown, a self-released effort to boot (an EP, cassette-only as far as i know; they have a couple of singles out too), and it's pretty nifty (assuming you can stand ska, that is). Actually, debate rages as to whether these guys (whose singer has the dubious distinction of being even SHORTER THAN MYSELF, which takes some doing for anyone over twelve, believe me) are actually "true ska," since they lean toward bursts of heavy-metalism now and then, but the purist argument always bores me anyway, so hah!

Besides, they MUST be ska, for their lyrics are smart-assed and read as if they were written in the car on the way to the studio, and most importantly, make LITTLE SENSE. "Play our game 'til she gets naked / On mine I want cheese and bacon / If I had another quarter / I could reach the next nude border"... yah, must be ska, mon.... Plus "Sega Face" is about Sega games (duh) (and yet NO MENTION of Sonic! how could they forget?!?!), and "Space Race" reveals that they are apparently unaware that the cold war ENDED a while ago (or else they just don't CARE). Songs like "Mummy Cops" and "Skoliosis Skank" are pretty self-explanatory, I think....

For a self-released project, this sounds pretty good -- the guys are certainly no slouches in the playing department -- although their judgement is sometimes questionable (a song whose entire lyrics are "talk... laugh... cry"?!?!?! uh....). But hell, they're SUPPOSED to have questionable thinking, it's SKA dammit, and they are energetic and thus good for jumping around like a spastic moron, aaaaaah, just go buy it, ok?

Gals Panic -- I THINK WE NEED HELICOPTERS [Goopy Pyramid Records]

Aaaaah... the pleasures of goofy ska-metal. A childish pleasure, to be sure, but since DEAD ANGEL believes in the power of being infantile, this scores big points around here.... Gals Panic are from Austin (le hometown!) and regularly pack out the clubs (although since the clubs here are slightly bigger than my closet, i'll admit that's not exactly difficult), and from this CD, it's not hard to tell why. They play well, they're obnoxious, they're funny... and judging from "Jerm and Lance Fuck Around," probably high as a kite to boot. All of the tracks on the original AIRPORT SECURITY THINGS cassette (reviewed a couple of issues back) are here, in addition to a whole bunch of other stuff, for a total of 19 skankin' tracks; most of the cassette songs have been considerably reworked (and for the most part, improved in the process). Granted, i could easily live without the covers of "Superstar" and "We've Only Just Begun" (although they don't really "cover" these tunes as much as they turn them upside downa and incinerate them), and "Talk... Laugh... Cry" is still as dippy as it was on the original cassette. But this is a small price to play for the coolness of stuff like the self-explanatory "Dogs Don't Do Drugs" ("do what you want with your own brain / leave the doggy alone") and the cruel but oh-so-true "Ace Frehley Doll," not to mention the revamped (heavier!) versions of "Segaface" and "Chuck Norris Action Jeans."

Best of all, though, is the totally lunar "Jerm and Lance Fuck Around," which is... uh... well... it lives up to its title and then some. The singer and the guitarist employ lots of gadgets and a drum machine and lots of truly loopy lyrics to form a series of "movements" that don't really have much to do with each other, other than the fact that they're all surreal and/or utterly ridiculous. "Big heads... stone heads... how did they get here?" "Power... power... power made a cola out of you...." I'll bet they were very, very drunk (or, ahem, something like that) when they recorded this masterpiece. Must be heard to be believed. A college-age classic for years to come, i'm sure. Too bad it wasn't around when i was in school, we could have thrown amplifiers and drunk sorority girls off rooftops while listening to this, mon.... Would have been FUN..

Garbage -- s/t [A&M]

Okay, so i got into this big discussion/argument with someone on the L7 mailing list about which is better, Ruby or Garbage, and since i'm apparently the only person on earth who hasn't seen the video for "Vow" on MTV (where WOULD i see it? every time i turn the damn channel on, they're playing The World's Stupidest Show, SINGLED OUT, or the close contenders for the title, REAL WORLD and ROAD RULES. Where the fuck do they FIND these morons? Why would anyone actually WANT to be on these shows? Mein Gott in der himmel, i can't believe the LENGTHS some people will go to in order to publicly debase and humiliate themselves just to be on television. Has it truly sunk to this, that western civilization is so completely enslaved by The Idiot Box that the highest form of achievement is to appear as some butthead doing stupid shit just for the opportunity to stand next to Jenny "yes, i really AM this much of an airhead, but aren't my nipples POINTY?" McCarthy? I suppose so... i weep for the children... the Headless Sno-Cone Girl pees on the idiot box in an attempt to prevent me from turning it on again so hopefully there will be less of these rants in the future....), i had to finally break down and buy this.

The verdict, please.... [Opens the envelope] Ruby wins! It isn't even close! Ha ha ha! To be fair, there really isn't much resemblance between the two groups, outside of the fact that they both have female singers and a fondness for musical backgrounds provided by chopped-up sounds created through PC and studio technology. And this is hardly a bad album, but frankly, the Ruby disc is a hell of a lot weirder, creepier, and flat-out more inventive in its sound manipulation. Plus i just plain like Lesley Rankine's singing better, although Shirley Manson is a fine singer in her own right.

Some people may already know this -- God knows there have certainly been enough magazine interviews on the subject -- but one of the "faces" at work here is Butch Vig, Former Producer to the Alternative Stars (L7, Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, etc.) He's the guy responsible for the drums, loops, EFX, and such. Which brings up my biggest complaint about the band: they've made a big deal out of the fact that they're incorprorating weird noises and stuff into pop structures, but they've buried it so far in the background that you can hardly tell it's THERE. On the Ruby disc, the weird noises and fucked-up samples quite frequently ARE the song, an arrangement i find much more interesting.

At any rate, the album is worth hearing, even if (obviously) i think it pales alongside the Ruby creation. (Perhaps this means you should check out the Ruby disc and see if you agree with me, eh?) The songs are all well- constructed, very pop-like, Shirley Manson is a fabulous singer, and the musicianship is pretty swank. The level of quality is pretty consistent throughout the disc, and i'd probably think this was supremely hot shit if i hadn't already heard the Ruby disc....

Garlic has a real interesting sound -- alt-country, mostly centered around steel guitarist Marcus McCarroll, filtered through Beatlesque harmonies and frequently uptempo rock drumming. This is complicated by the fact that they are from London, so their pop and country moves are filtered through British pop sensibilities as well. Regardless of the rhythms they take on or the subjects of the songs themselves, that twangy, reverberating steel guitar dominates the sound, giving a country flavor to everything. At the same time, they are not afraid of fuzzy guitars, big-sounding drums, or funny noises. The result is an album with a backwoods porch feel that incorporates enough odd and unexpected sounds and dynamic shifts to keep it from growing stagnant. For some reason they make me think of Cheer-Accident -- perhaps its their archness, their harmonies, and that piano on "drink induced conversations" that makes me think of Thymme Jones. I am grossly unqualified to discuss alt-country and have no idea how to even begin comparing them to such bands, but they are without question amazing musicians, and these are cryptic but compelling songs. Not likely to knock Britney and 50-Cent out of the top twenty, but certainly better for your ears.

Gastr del sol -- UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE [Drag City]

The late Gastr del sol may be one of those rarest of bands -- a band whose recorded output actually got better with each subsequent album, rather than the other way around. They started out as an experiment, with David Grubbs (formerly of Squirrel Bait) teaming up with Jim O'Rourke (the eternally rumpled god of the minimalist guitar scene, aka "Mr. Fashion"), working with a shifting assortment of like-minded souls (including Cheer-Accident's Thymme Jones, Tony Conrad, and Ralf Wehowsky, among others). The idea, apparently, was to deconstruct music -- to record wildly dissimilar bits and pieces, then edit them together with a razor and splicing block into something vaguely coherent and "musical." The results of the first couple of albums were interesting but mixed... but as they continued to work their mojo, their vision of what they really wanted to achieve became clearer, along with their understanding of how to reach the goal line most effectively. In my opinion, it all came to a head on THE HARP FACTORY ON LAKE STREET, and from that point onward their music has grown by leaps and bounds into something simultaneously unnervingly arty and yet surprisingly accessible. While i haven't heard their final album CAMOFLEUR, i'm definitely interested in the possibility that it, following their tradition of following a good album by an even better one, might actually be even more godlike than this one....

The album begins with "our exquisite replica of 'eternity'," where a shimmering drone is shattered from time to time by almost-random guitar noises and other ominious cut-up sounds; then, as the drone changes in tone and the noises drop out, clarinets and horns come in with drones of their own, eventually building to a wild frenzy that is exploded by crashing symphonic sounds (found sound?), at which point a stately horn melody of a minimalist sort trundles down a valley of peculiar waves of sound before it all dies away, replaced by a spring-like loop that gradually fades into nothingness. All of this, mind you, is done with such impeccable editing skill that it sounds absolutely live, although i'm sure that's unlikely. After that, the acoustic chords of "rebecca sylvester" sound almost shocking. As Grubbs shares some of his more oblique (verging on crepescular, actually) lyrics, the tape grows thick with drones and background shrieks even as the guitar plays in a most Faheyesque style... all coming together in the final "verse," where interlocked guitars and gorgeous harmony vocals drive home the song's eerie question: "Why did the sharks watch him drown?" On "hello spiral," bursts of disconnected noise and found sound eventually gives way to a bare-bones guitar presentation and cryptic vocals about how "the sailor unleashed his dog in the square/ the cat ate the french fry by the tail"; but when the vocals end, the real meat of the song begins, as two guitars create one hypnotic, interlocked riff that gradually evolves over the rest of the piece. Over five minutes into the process, drums actually enter the picture and the sound takes on a totally new character. The interlocked and primarily acoustic guitars make an appearance again on "dry bones in the valley (i saw the light come shining 'round and 'round)," a cover of the John Fahey classic that is actually quite true to the spirit of the original. Many of the guitar parts, in fact, are duplicated so faithfully that you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the two...although toward the end it takes on a droning cadence that wanders a bit from the original version (but Fahey probably would have included it himself if he'd thought about it).

Incidentally, this album only confirms my growing belief that O'Rourke is at his best when working with others. While i don't much care for a lot of his solo work, i've so far found nearly all of his collaborations to be pretty interesting, and in some cases even downright inspired. Knowing that the band is no more, i'm curious as to whether or not he'll continue in some fashion as a collaborator or go the solo route totally from now on. For that matter, i'm really curious as to what Grubbs intends to do, since i can't imagine he'll go this route again (at least not in this musical direction), given his penchant for moving on totally once he's exhausted a form. Regardless of what they do, i have no doubt it will at least be intriguing.

The band may be defunct now -- most likely to dueling visions of where they should go, natch -- but at least they went out like men on fire. This is a bad-ass slab o' shiny. It's not quite as revelatory as the previous offering, UPGRADE AND AFTERLIFE, but it's certainly more varied... they appear to be using every kind of instrument known to man on this disc, especially on the opening track "The Seasons Reverse." Congas, hyper beats, arcane percussion, and decidedly free-jazz sax wailing almost put them into Sun Ra territory. Eventually the beats fade out into repetitive guitars, firecracker sounds, and a mysterious conversation between the non-English-speaking firecracker thrower. "Blues Subtitled No Sense of Wonder" lays down a relentlessly hypnotic deet-doot loop over which somebody (Grubbs? O'Rourke? who knows?) lays down solemn piano movements, eventually to the accompaniment of trombone, strings, and more. This song finds them at the intersection of art-rock, blues, and classical music, with surprising (considering their early cut-and-paste albums, anyway) results.

The coolest passage on the disc comes during "Black Horse," a swinging jazz track (yes, it is, trust me), when -- almost two minutes into the thing -- everything abruptly dies away for an amazing cascade of harmonic piano and interlocked guitar for about a minute and a half before switching back to a lower gear. That passage is just riveting. The rest of the song is pretty intense in its own right, encompassing about a dozen styles of music at once, and seamlessly at that. The piano as centerpiece theme returns again in "Each Dream Is An Example," where it's augmented this time by horns and molded into several repetitive movements. (The liner notes also say Edith Frost appears as vocalist on this track, but i think she's actually on the lush and dreamy "Mouth Canyon" instead.) A strong Fahey influence shows up on both tracks, but the latter is also soaked in the kind of country-blues feel so familiar to Edith's own albums. "A Puff of Dew," with its cryptic noises and off-kilter-editing feel, comes closest to the "old school" Gastr del sol of earlier albums; interestingly enough, it's also the shortest track on the album. It's a strange one: reverbed drones that get eaten into destroyed sounds as the band attempts a slow blues or something, the whole track has a scattered feel, like a blues song being transmitted by shortwave on a night with really bad reception thanks to the meteor showers. "Bauchredner" is very much in the Fahey mode, pinched guitars competing with each other, finally building to something that actually -- God forbid! -- resembles a rock tune. Granted, it's a rock tune that more or less repeats the same measure over and over with minute variations before exploding into slide guitar and other fabulous stuff, but hey, i'll take this over your average nihilist headbanger any day, mon.

The most interesting thing about this album, at least in relation to their earlier output, is how little it relies on the chop-chop uberedit hijinks they used to be known for. This is definitely more of an organic-sounding record, although i suspect there's a lot more editing going on than meets the eye. The difference now is that they're less obvious about it. Increasing geometric precision or a shift to the subtle? You be the judge.

This album is impossible to explain and to even attempt it would be to do a grave injustice to the artistry of the great John Gavanti. Take our word for it: to those who have heard this masterpiece, Gavanti's greatness cannot be measured on any ordinary scale. This is possibly the most important album recorded in the history of Western civilization; nations have gone to war over disagreements as to the significance of this album, okay? It's sold 37,000,000 copies in the U.S. alone. Even aborigines in the outback have this album -- it's not uncommon to find tribes that have purchased a phonograph solely for the purpose of marveling to the suave sounds of John Gavanti. Just go buy the damn thing already, okay? Just make sure you tell the record store geek that you're only buying it because you wore out your original copy or else he'll smirk at you for being so out of the loop....

TTBMD: This is a quiet cd.

TMU: Well, there's plenty of dynamics going on here. But not much is the way of pure blinding volume, that's true. Of course, three-string guitar and mandolin are hard to rock out with... I was gonna tell you all about the guy's history and stuff, but for some reason i'm having a real hard time focusing on that type... does that look like Swahili to you? I'll bet you can find all that stuff at their web site.

TTBMD: This is good. It reminds me of Village of Savoonga. Sparse, acoustic instruments take you on an ethnic trip to a wet desert -- a place that does not exist.

TMU: I like those bass tones. Maybe i need a three-string toy guitar.

TMU (opens case): Oooo, look -- he sent us a piece of the sky.... (holds up diced Polaroid)

TTBMD: Sounds like he's trying to tune a guitar unsuccessfully on this one.

TMU: Strings winding and unwinding while the toy guitar emulates a piccolo... making your instrument sound like something else seems to be the name of the game here, eh, o my brother?

TTBMD: Correct. Simple, fun, live. This guy is doing his own thing and obviously doesn't give a fuck what anybody else thinks.

TMU: Lots of plucking action... suave tones abound. This is a man with some style. I envision him performing in a sharkskin suit backed by Eurobabes lounging about in the background with cocktail martinis while he plys his cosmic trade.

TTBMD: What the fuck are you talking about?

TMU: I... uh... um... (thinking real hard)

TTBMD: His contemporaries would be Thurston Moore, White-Winged Moth, Bill Horist....

TMU: Is that a piano i hear? O, such joy it brings me every time i hear the piano....

TTBMD: No piano! He's making his guitar sound like a piano.

TMU: He is? (listens) He is! Such a clever bastard, o my brother!

TTBMD: Clever indeed. Clever indeed.

TMU (screaming): I NEED DRUGS NOW! (lights cigarette) This makes me think of Michael Schumaker, too.

TTBMD: It makes me think of Michael Schenkner.

TMU: I saw his brother once in the Scorpions. He threw his Flying V twenty feet in the air and caught it in the middle of one song. I was really fucking impressed. I bought one of their t-shirts, the one with the guy having his eyes gouged out with the fork, you should have seen how impressed my mother was....

TTBMD: Yeah, BLACKOUT. I personally prefer the LONESOME CROW album myself, their first effort.

TMU: I actually went to that show to see Girlschool. I had the hots for Gil, the bass player.... look, this segment of track five (looks at long, incomprehensible title), uh, track five, there's no way i can say that title.... uh, this segment has some nice picking, like classical guitar stylings. I like this.

TTBMD: On this one (track 6), it sounds like the guitar is submerged in water and is trying to breathe.

TMU: I like those flanged-out sonar-type sounds... they're sure getting some boss sounds out of such minimal toy guitars and stuff. This guy Gayle knows what he's doing here. This reminds me of Isao Tomita's THE BERMUDA TRIANGLE.

TTBMD:  I like this track the best so far. This is better when he doesn't freak out so much.

TMU: This is much more minimal than the other tracks. I like the other tracks, but this is more subdued... otherworldly....

TTBMD: This one, "easily inquisition trial," sounds like a folk track in the style of John Gavanti. John Gavanti fuckin' rocks. We have to review his album in the next issue, as a forgotten album. I have not forgotten. The album is on top of my speakers twenty-four hours a day. I can feel its presence in my dreams. It has a grip on me as strong as heroin.

TMU: Have you listened to the April Wayne album yet? That must be like being in the grip of bad, bad paint thinner.

TTBMD: Overall, this live disc from Gayle is a good listen. I wouldn't listen to it every day like John Gavanti, but all in all, I recommend it.

TMU: I agree. While nothing can equal the mysteries of the immortal Gavanti, this is a fine effort. I'm not sure what to make of titles like "uppii to pepe monogatari (sumouppara no neko damashi)," but he is working in the tradition first set by the likes of AMM and other experimental guitarists, and he does not dishonor that tradition. We shall allow him to retain his finely-honed sword rather than forcing him to commit seppuku.

This sprawling double-disc of improvisational moves between guitarist Philip Gayle and percussionist Richard Cholakian is the result of two recording sessions, apparently cut live without stopping over several hours and then tinkered with and pressed onto cd for your Sun-Sound Listening Pleasure. To make matters just that more intimidating, there are only three songs on all of this (one is cut in half at the end of the first cd and resumes on the second). It's like something out of the late sixties, when all the improv cats had to release sprawling double-albums of them wailin' away live at some benefit concert for the starving lemurs of Bola Bola or whatever. So i can fully understand if you start to back away in fear... but it's worth hearing, since Gayle and Cholakian have a frantic, telepathic style that keeps things moving and doesn't get boxed in too often or for too long. (For the record, the three tracks in question are "Available Jones" (12:36), "Sick Bones" (24:14), and "OK" (77:53). They do relent mildly in their deliberate torture by at least splitting up "OK" into two parts rather than running it uncut on one disc.) As for the sound, it's the sound of freedom -- improvised jazz happening on the spot, with a basic framework of guitar and drums overlaid with other strategic elements (water bottles, harmonica, water phone, gongs, cookie tins, etc.), noodling on the fly. You're either down with this kind of thing or you're not, but if you are, these guys are worth checking out. So is the disc, although some may not have the patience to sit through the entire thing (or even individual songs) in one sitting. (If that's you, then just remind yourself of all the character you're building by learning to be patient.)

There is some seriously demented stuff going on here. 80's video game noises, primitive guitar sounds, and random processed noises all get blended together to sound like some strange alien transmissions. I could almost swear there were actual conversations occurring between some life forms that STAR TREK hasn't discovered yet... really, the craftsmanship on this disc is that incredible. [bc]

I'm not quite sure what to make of Generous Maria. Musically they're great... nice fuzzy guitars, scuzzy distorto-bass, big drums, non-annoying singer, the whole deal. The lyrics on the other hand... OK, check out these lines form the song "Strict Nurse": "What I need is a strict nurse. Oh yeah, a strict nurse. Oh find me a fast car. She'll prescribe something real strong, yeah something real strong that goes straight to my core. I'll be your patient. Give me something illegal." [tmu is laughing] What the fuck is that? Those are, like, Bon Jovi or Scorpions-grade lyrics. In another song the singer howls. Not in a cool Iggy or David Lee Roth way either, more like the guy from London Quireboys (anyone remember them?) or something. To be fair, Generous Maria are from Sweden so maybe something has been lost in the translation. Also, the lyrics get a bit better as their portion of the disc progresses.

Skua (also from Sweden) are also a bit of an anomaly. A lot of bands doing the Stoner thing do one of two things: They either lift riffs directly from Kyuss' BLUES FOR THE RED SUN and SKY VALLEY, rearrange them a bit, add their own lyrics, and call it a song, or they take a random sample of Fu Manchu and Monster Magnet riffs, string those together, and mumble like Scott Hill over the top. Skua do neither. They seem to have passed over Kyuss and Fu Manchu in favor of lifting from Queens of the Stone Age, which I guess is some sort of progression. Now whether this is a good thing or bad thing depends on what you think of the Queens and whether you think there's any need for a Queens (ahem) inspired band. It doesn't bother me much, the guys in Skua are pretty good at what they do. Also, they seem to be pretty young and probably will get around to doing their own thing eventually. [n/a]

Now this is some seriously crazed shit. Imagine Public Image Ltd., early Beastie Boys, Depeche Mode, Funkadelic, and Brutal Truth all battling for supremacy in a studio cluttered with leftover fragments of pop, industrial, dance-music, grindcore, and anything else that happens to be lying around. Now imagine they're all taking direction from a trio of smart-ass college boys in possession of a drum machine turned up as fast as it will go. This is disturbed stuff, all right. The songs aren't particularly long, but they cram enough stuff into each one to make up for it -- the ep as a whole sounds like someone took all the master tracks from a hundred wildly different albums, sped them up, then stuffed them into a blender and set it on puree. When they're not being absurdly catchy, they're letting the drum machine pound holes in the wall and howling like they've been set on fire. This is the sound of musicians with a severe tendency toward attention deficit disorder, five songs of cut 'n paste mayhem that is genuinely diabolical in its ability to combine catchy, even (oh, the terror!) danceable beats and swell, swell melodies with the unnerving sound of asylum inmates turning over all the hospital beds and electroencephalograph machines, then setting them on fire and bolting from the building while throwing grenades. I am deeply afraid to imagine what they'll do with a full album's worth of space eventually... then again, this is the kind of thing that works better in small, wildly-uncontrolled bursts. Truly one of the strangest releases on America's heaviest label. It should be real interesting to see how they pull this off live....

Gerogerigegege -- 45 RPM PERFORMANCE [Dark Vinyl]

The mad Japanese noisemaster Juntaro Yamanouchi, most notorious for antics like often masturbating onstage during performances, delivers what may well be the most gloriously unlistenable album ever made. No kidding, this makes METAL MACHINE MUSIC sound like easy listening. According to the skimpy liner notes, this was recorded "using two record-players and two single-records only," and the results are something that sounds rather like an army of Cadillacs being swallowed by an earthquake and mulched into chrome-plated paste.

There are a grand total of two tracks here: "Side B Of It" and "Side A Of It," and they both sound exactly alike. For all I know, they -are- alike; I wouldn't put it past Japan's prime misanthropic prankster. Not that it matters, since most people will never make it past the first minute anyway. Definitely an orgasmic experience for the noise fetishists, though.

At low volume, this is actually kind of soothing in a way, kind of like a sick, twisted version of ambient music. When you get put on hold in hell, this is probably what they play. All 45 minutes of it, until you want to weep. Juntaro would approve of the idea, I'm sure....

Ghazala is a bit on the obscure side (meaning, i'd never heard of him until recently), but he is known primarily for two conceptual pieces: one is REQUIEM FOR A RADIO, in which a lot of people take turns (under his direction) disassembling and destroying a radio while on tape, after which the sounds are used to create "music"; the other is this CD, in which he employs the "Vox Insecta," an insect voice synthesizer. Essentially he fed many, many insect sounds into a synth and used those sounds for the construction of this epic rumination on the impact of the explosion of the atomic bomb at Hiroshima. (For how he manages to bridge the gap from atomic explosions to insects, you'd have to read the liner notes; i think the gist of it is that insects are natural survivors or something to that effect.) The results are, to be frank, pretty spectacular -- droning air-raid siren wails mix with guttural bass washes (synthesized from frog calls, perhaps?) and are sculpted with tremendous finesse, as if Ghazala somehow managed to step outside on the edge of the Okefenokee Swamp one night and convinced all the insects in the air and on the ground to wax symphonic. A few of the reviews i've seen of the disc mention its dissonance, and there is certainly plenty of that, although it's more of an ambient sort than you might expect; a few years back this probably would have fallen under the heading of "isolationism," although i think it's more properly cataloged with the likes of Stockhausen and Cage and (perhaps most importantly) the Dream Syndicate and the Theatre of Eternal Music. In fact, if you are already hep to the latter two luminaries mentioned, then you either already have this and know of which i speak, or you need to knock down granny ladies on the street in your unseemly haste to acquire this disc. Imagine if Tony Conrad's minimalist violin drones were harnessed in the quest for a more classical performance structure and you're drifting into the right expanse o' drone. (I should also note, just for the sake of boosting another criminally unheard-of album, that portions of this requiem in five parts bear striking similarities to the sound captured by Dead Fish Fuck on their one album that i know of, SILENCE AT THE EYE OF THE SCREAM.) This CD should be in your collection. Period.

Ghost -- LAMA RABI RABI [Drag City]

These guys are from Japan and you can tell they must be psychadelic just from looking at the pictures 'cause they all have long, freaky hair and wear clothes that even bag people would deem unfashionable, plus they have lots of titles like ""Mastillah" and "Marrakech" and "My Hump is a Shell" that look really deep and meaningful even though they don't make a hell of a lot of sense. But that's all right; they're hippies and we're not going to hold it against them because this is a fine album and not only that, but an AFFORDABLE one -- no small thing where Ghost is concerned, since all of their previous output is otherwise available only as imports whose prices rival those of Current 93 discs (which, for those not knee-deep in the river of hepness and all that shit, means they are damned expensive).

It's too bad this album came out long after i quit smoking dope, because this has a tremendous stoner vibe that i would have found most happening back when i lived with my head in a cloud o' smoke. "Mastillah" is a slow droning thing with loping drums and sleepy flutes; "Into the Alley" is more of a folky thing with wistful vox about, uuuuh, something. "Marrakech" employs a weird tribal funk groove and distorted vox with occasional bursts of psychedelic drone guitar; "Abyssina" is more folk, some kind of dreamy paean to nature complete with chirping birds, sitars, and other weirdness. Other songs are all over the map, mixing country, Indian music, psychadelia, woodwinds, and more into a weird jumpy gumbo. Definitely an album to keep you guessing, and not always gentle and mellow (they get frantic on "Rabirabi" and drop into a subterranean rhythm punctuated by spiky reverb guitar on "Bad Bone"). If you've every wondered what the fuss is all about but been intimidated by those $25 price tags, this would be the place to begin.

What a mouthful, and i don't even know what the title means. (Guess i should have paid more attention in Spanish.) But i know that Giffoni, whom i've heard already on a few earlier PE releases, is a fine manipulator of guitar sounds, and this disc is no exception. On "live guitar improvisation #1" his sound is a bit more violent than i was expecting, but it's an interesting meld of experimental guitar and power electronics with far more dynamics than i generally associate with the latter genre. The use of both continues into "the idea began in bushwick," whose tones are similar to an overdriven pipe organ but which is riddled with noise, static, disembodied voices, and other stuff that breaks down into something else entirely. He's on more "traditional" territory with the bright, Faheyish "for all the ones who i can trust," but the last song (with an indecipherable Japanese title) is a wild mix of tapes and sounds and noises with Giffoni's guitar weaving equally strange sounds around it. One of the strangest and yet strangely accessible guitarists working right now and well worth your attention.

One of the last things guitarist Robert Poss and bassist Susan Stenger did while still in Band of Susans was to appear live with Bruce Gilbert of Wire, playing extended improvisational guitar. While this material (recorded live at the Hacienda in Manchester on October 11, 1995) was originally scheduled to appear on Blast First! later that year, a catastrophic mixing accident made about half the material unusable, or so it appeared... so it went on the shelf. Then some genius (Paul Smith, to be exact) managed to figure out how to remix "variation" in 1997 and suddenly the project was on again. After negotiations, talking, blah blah blah, it eventually migrated over to Wire's label WMO... and now it is available for all to hear.

Thing is, describing this disc is no easy task. For one thing, it sounds absolutely nothing like Band of Susans (save for the immense loudness of the guitars and the luv o' feedback) and even less like Wire (were Wire ever this "unstructured"?), outside of the vague notion of artiness. For another, there are only two tracks ("manc" and "variation") and they are both incredibly long (37:27 and 34:13 respectively) and extremely formless. Basically, what happens is they get up there and start generating drones and making stinky guitar noises -- wails of feedback, stuttering chop-chop sounds, chiming sounds, squeaks and squawks, gradually building from relatively low-key ambient noise to titanic walls of sound. If there are actual chord progressions happening anywhere in here, i'm certainly not aware of it (beyond a certain volume it's kind of hard to tell anyway, and this is definitely way, way beyond that threshold). By the time "manc" nears its end, the sound is roughly akin to lying down on the tracks while a freight train rolls over you. Talk about oceanic, i'm surprised the club was still standing when they finished....

The second track, "variation," is pretty much what its name implies -- a variation on the same essential concept. It starts out quieter, with drones and bass rumbling that gradually grow in both volume and intensity, although it takes much longer to reach peak volume; on this one they take their time about reaching an ear-splitting din. The bass rumble on this is absolutely immense; i can see why they had trouble mixing it initially, especially since by the end it nearly drowns out everything else. Ah, there's nothing like the combination of experimental guitar histronics and sheer obnoxious volume to crush your soul into wet paste....

Gin Palace's follow-up to last years KILL-GRIEF e.p. is absolutely fucking blistering. On KICKING ON the 'Palace expand and elaborate on the DAMAGED meets BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE sound they spit forth on Kill-Grief. The speaker-shredding guitars, pounding drums, and the intense, venomous vocals have been augmented with touches of organ, harmonica and acoustic guitar (!). The songs are a little longer and the band seems a bit more comfortable, even slowing things down a bit on the bluesy come-ons "I Like It" and "Dying Breed." Fans of Penthouse (guitarist Jon Free's previous band) [TMU: Americans will recognize the band as Fifty Tons of Black Terror, thanks to Bob Guccione's hubris.] will be all over "Kicking On" and "Tapestry," which feature lurching, stumbling riffs that could have been lifted from MY IDLE HANDS. Easily one of my top five contenders for best rock record of 2004. [N/A]

They describe themselves as a "sexy synth band from another planet" -- I say they're Beme Seed by way of Sun Ra and Funkadelic, strained through a prism of Manhattan performance art. What we have here, it sounds like, are a bunch of zoned-out freaks from art school blowin' their horns and making a beautiful noise, probably while wearing lurid, skimpy latex outfits. Or chicken suits, even. Who knows? The band itself remains mysterious, leaving behind only cryptic and ass-rattling songs full of honking and squonking and all manner of chanting hypno-voodoo. Nearly all of the cd is taken up by the 35-minute "Gods" (apparently, like the rest of the cd, recorded live), a rambling but generally intriguing sprawl of free jazz, religious ecstasy, and entertainingly devolved ideas about sound, rhythm, tempo, and "togetherness." The remaining three tracks play out in just sixteen minutes and are essentially shorter variations on the same otherworldly theme. "Lahasa" starts out with just one lone guy blowing his horn, but since there are 23 players in this ensemble, by the time it really gets rolling it's pretty busy. But not too busy -- they have a good thing going on this eight-minute track, with rhythms drifting in and out and a dizzying number of melodic elements to keep track of. "Full Moon" is more of a creeper, inching along and propelled by a bed of clanking percussion and horns more like low moaning than shrieking (although there are some people shrieking through this), and the short but wildly furious "Halloween" is a brazen display of cacaphony that will bring a tear to your eye (or have you hiding under the refrigerator, especially when they start pounding on the drums that sound like hideous steel sinks). I wonder what this band would sound like in a studio as opposed to being recorded live.... Why this band isn't on Public Eyesore already is beyond me, but they should be. The spirit of Ra says you would be foolish not to at least give them a listen.

Gist -- YOUTH'S AVAIL [self-released CD]

This CD-ep is tailor-made for the DEAD ANGEL Hellfortress Beneath the Ice in the sense that it's really difficult to pigeonhole. They combine elements of new wave, "alternative nation" stylings, and hard rock in a really quirky manner that makes it hard to discern their influences, much less figure out what the hell to call them. Nayan Bhula's alternately scratchy/propulsive guitar work sounds like a bizarre approximation of Pat Place, Peter Buck, and Suzi Gardner all fighting over the same instrument. It's a good thing the rhythm section is a lot less crazed and somewhat more straightforward, or else he'd be flailing away in the ionosphere without a tether... but fortunately bassist Jennifer Moentmann and drummer Fred Burton manage to rein him back in. (Well, most of the time, anyway.)

Instrumentally, the two most interesting things about the band (outside of Bhula's elliptical, chicken-scratching style of guitar frenzy) are that he actually knows how to do something interesting with a wah pedal (a lot trickier than it looks), and that self-professed L7 obsessive Moentmann actually sounds a lot more like... uh, Peter Hook. (You know, Joy Division, New Order, blah blah blah.) Maybe this is what Joy Division would have sounded like if they'd grown up trying to emulate Lynyrd Skynyrd and Black Sabbath. (Or maybe i'm reaching. But i'd never do that, would i?) The tub- thumping guy is sensible enough to just rock steady (can you imagine if they were all quirky in three different directions? Summons up visions of Rush at their most excessive... eek!), much as Ron Spitzer always did in Band of Susans, and this is a good thing. (He does pull off some cool tom rolls in "Frustrated Anger," though.)

High points: The seesaw motion of "Youth's Avail," going back and forth from complex low-key chicken-scratching wiggly guitar to flat-out bruiser rock, then finally culminating in some spiffy wah abuse; the dirge-like intro of "New Light" (whose chiming bass/guitar riffs vaguely recall Helium); "Frustrated Anger," where they start in an ominous slo-mo crawl and gradually pick up the pace (both in speed and intensity) as the fizzy guitar comes in, the layers pile up, and they go through more shades o' blue than a mood ring before a chittering bass interlude prefaces a complete change of direction; and "Screams of Life," which has plenty of weird guitar noises and abrupt stop 'n start riffing to keep you guessing where it's all headed next. Really, the whole disc is swell (even the odd untitled extra track that sounds almost like a lost Sonny Sharrock outtake; maybe they're Last Exit fans too, who knows?). About the only two downsides (both minor) are the somewhat squashed production (but at least at's CLEAR, which is better than most low-budget endeavors) and the fact that a lot of the songs rely on the light/heavy song structure a bit too often. But there is definitely plenty of promise for the future here... and besides, they don't sound like anybody else that i can think of, always a good think in my book.

They get bonus points for the front cover, which includes a picture of not just an angel, but... yes... a HEADLESS angel. Might this have been a secret communique to the Headless Sno-Cone Girl? We'll never tell... some things must remain forever mysterious....

These gentlemen from Jacksonville, Florida have a strange gig happening here: they combine elements of punk, straight-up rock, and jazz into something that sounds like... uh.... jazz as interpreted by Neil Young and Crazy Horse? The Sex Pistols channeling the spirit of Sun Ra and John Coltrane? Um, something like that. They rock, often in a distinctly southern way (i don't care what their jazz credentials are,i have a feeling the guitarist didn't learn how to play solos like the one on "Year of the Cock" from listening to jazz records), but they often sound like three completely different disciplines working at once. The rhythms may be jazzy, but the guitars are punkish... or the rhythms are rock, the guitars are punk, and the saxaphone jazzy... they mix it up quite a bit. This certainly results in a unique sound (although the press thingy references the Minutemen, and i guess i can see that in spots), but it's kind of hard for me to get a handle on sometimes. When they manage to swing into something i can get my head around, though, as on "Spouse Rider," they have my attention -- a monochromatic beat like something from the Fall meets a warbling organ as rock-steady bass rumble lumbers up to the bar and the man with the horn goes completely apeshit over a building rhythm section, and it all builds to a climax and just stops. One thing in their favor for sure: they don't waste time. The drums in "Silencer" are pure free jazz, hard to pin down, while the rest of the instruments practice a peculiar form of start 'n stop hocus-pocus as skittering guitar chitters away like a horde of bugs crawling up and down the fretboard. I'm not exactly sure where these guys are coming from, but they definitely have different ideas about music, mon. Intriguing stuff and a far sight more inventive/creative than your average jazz-rock (with emphasis on the latter) combo.

GOD -- APPEAL TO HUMAN GREED [Big Cat]

This is the long-awaited remix album of cuts off GOD's previous album. It features remixes by Lumberjacks, Bill Laswell, Justin Broadrick, Kevin Sheilds, and Kevin Martin. Without going into a blow-by-blow description, nearly all of the tracks as remixed are fairly stripped down from their previous guitar furor and then replaced with heavily laiden strains of the tripped out, hemp-influenced, bass-dub thing that is all the craze these days. While none of the tracks individually stand out as superior or more inventive interpretations of their originals, they are fun to listen to and as a whole, make up an enjoyable ride. Suitable for all borb system travellers, 'natch. [yol]

Godflesh -- MERCILESS [Earache]

Godflesh return after an extended absence with thirty or so minutes of pure, grinding pain. And painful it is-- four bruising tracks of nihilism and dread that come across like a requiem for a serial killer. Listening to this makes me want to wander the streets late at night and drive an icepick through someone's lungs. Whether that's good or not depends entirely on your perspective, I suppose....

Now that Godflesh is more or less signed to a major (Sony in the US), they can finally afford real equipment (it's amazing to realize that their previous long-player, PURE, was recorded on a home-studio eight-track unit), and the difference is noticeable right from the first track "Merciless." The high end is sharper and more defined than on previous albums, and while the thunderous bass plumbs even murkier depths than before, for the first time it doesn't swallow everything else in the process.

"Blind" and "Unworthy" are essentially remixes of the same track, a grinding death-funk exercise in immolation reminiscent of SLAVESTATE's excursions into death-disco. Of course, your average dance track doesn't feature guitars that sound like they're being brutally sodomized or Justin's peerless death-croak, but given the state of the house scene, that's probably an improvement anyway. "Unworthy" is the heavier of the two, with harsh peals of noise and an overall sound like the band is being sucked down a garbage disposal.

The strangest offering is "Flowers," a "demixed" version of "Don't Bring Me Flowers" from PURE in which everything is sampled-- the song is nothing but repetitive loops of guitar sounds taken from the original song, building in intensity until a steady bass pulse hammers away at your head while droning waves of feedback threaten to set your cranial soup on fire. Is this the direction in which the forthcoming album will go? Beats me, but it sure is obnoxious (which is the point).

Godflesh -- SELFLESS [Earache/Columbia]

My, but this is gloriously obnoxious. And very static; not only is the album generally reaaaaalllllllll sssssllllllllooooooowwww, even more so than OTHER Godflesh albums, but most of the five to eight minutes songs are built around a maximum of two (maybe three) riffs. Now, this is either incredibly hypnotic and spartan, and thus the word of total radiating genius (my opinion) or merely repetitive and unimaginative, plus real irritating (everybody else I've talked to who's heard it). It DOES sound much, much better than previous albums, thanks to all that $$$ from Columbia, so for the first time we can actually hear what the hell Benny's doing in the background at last, and the usual subterranean crunch actually has some definition this time around. Of course, if it only makes you want to open the CD player and sail the shiny little disc out the window, that's kind of a moot point, eh? But whatever....

Godflesh has had this tendency to keep shaving away at its sound for the past few albums, apparently in an attempt to distill everything down to its simplest form possible; this album is no exception, and I'm not sure you can GET any more basic than this. As already mentioned, the main formula here is to throw in two (maybe three if Justin's feeling merciful) riffs per song, played over and over reeeeeeeal slow for anywhere from five to ten minutes until you are totally numbed with fear and loathing or have started searching for the receipt so you can return the damn thing. Sort of like the musical equivalent of watching a slow-motion train wreck with lots of weak flesh being crushed beneath the diesel engine's mighty wheels, in other words. No kidding, this is so slow that if they got any slower, they'd be standing still. Black Sabbath at half-speed? More like Black Sabbath at one note per minute. Hell, it's even slower than the Earth CD reviewed a few albums back! Yow!

While this isn't the slowest thing ever recorded (I think Type O Negative already copped that honor with the twenty-bpm "Bloody Kisses"), it might be the heaviest and most dismal. This is music for beating loved ones to death with an axe handle while they sleep. Some of the songs like "Crush My Soul" and "Body Dome Light" could actually qualify as dance music, I guess, if you extend the idea of dance music to include radically detuned guitars being used as blunt instruments, and you could sort of mosh to the rest, if you were underwater. And for the total masochist, the CD includes --lucky you! -- a paralyzing 23-minute hatefest called "Go Spread Your Wings," in which Justin screams "I'll never escape" about a million times while backed by what sounds like the Emerson, Lake and Palmer of Earth-X, where everything is death metal, even the Muzak. This is godlike in its annoyance potential. Makes me wonder what new standard in obnoxiousness they'll set with the NEXT album. Or how long they'll be hooked up with Columbia, for that matter.

Godflesh -- SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE [Earache]

Some reviews i've read of this are claiming this is the best thing they've done since STREETCLEANER. Not sure i agree with that, but it's certainly the most CONSISTENT. It's also the most single-minded; judging from the lyric sheet (!), it appears that the entire album is about how much Justin hates religion. Hmmmm. They (Justin, Benny, and sometimes-live drummer B. Mantia (!!)) kick off the jolliness with the imposing death-grind of "Wake" and never really get any happier, heh. Some of the tracks, like "Sterile Prophet" and "Circle of Shit," lean heavily on the hip-hop tinky drum thing, which is mildly annoying -- i like my drums monolithic, dammit, i do not approve of tinky drums. I DO approve of Justin screaming in severely bilous fashion, something he hasn't really done for a while now. Ees kewl, seenyor. It all starts getting pretty primal, though, with "Hunter," where a messed-up beat combine with a surging hate guitar groove to basically rock like a pee-dog.

What's interesting is that some of the weird, quasi-ambient stuff they've been pursuing in Final has crept into Godflesh now. Check out the shrill ambient wash that builds to a roar at the beginning of "Gift From Heaven," for instance, or the SOLARIS-like ringing tones in "Amoral." Then there's plenty of bass heaviness in "Angel Domain," along with some serious monolithic riffing... hmmm, maybe this IS the best thing they've done since STREETCLEANER after all. The best track is "Kingdom Come," with churning, slablike bass riffing and scary ringing overtone guitar that sounds like a soundtrack to rioting in the streets, yeep! Heavier than cows falling from a UFO tractor beam gone haywire -- step too close and you'll get beat down, just the way they like it....

The remaining tracks are plenty heavy in their own right, although nowhere near as groove-laden. It's certainly reassuring to know their brief major-label excursion didn't suck anything out of them.... Bonus points, btw, for the tremendously hep inner photo (courtesy of controversial artist Andres Serrano) of Broadrick being drenched in blood. This is offset, however, by the considerably less-swank photo on the cover (which is real, incidentally -- shot on location from the hillside in one of New Orleans' finer stinkpits). I liked it better when their covers were blurry and surreal. But then, they didn't ask for my opinion, did they?

Godflesh -- LOVE AND HATE IN DUB [Earache]

You knew it was going to happen. As often as Justin Broadrick's been wallowing in deep vats o' dub on the projects run by other people (Ice, Scorn, Techno-Animal, etc.), it was only a matter of time before he smoked enough dope to think it would be a good idea to run Godflesh tracks through the Patented Peabody Wayback Dub-O-Matic Machine. Fortunately, this is a better idea than it might sound like to some, especially given Godflesh's eternally massive bottom end. In a bizarre way, though, this actually sounds more like a Scorn album (early to mid-period, that is) than a Godflesh album, which is kind of strange....

So anyway, how much you will like (or need) this disc depends pretty equally on three factors: a) obsession for discography completeness, b) your tolerance for remixes, and c) your dub fascination quotient. I'll say this -- the original LOVE AND HATE disc is one of the best Godflesh has done in years, and the selection of tracks here (remixes of basically everything but "amoral" and "hunter") makes this essentially a radically altered "alternative version" of the album, one that's every bit as good as the original but aimed at a slightly different audience. And the remixes are indeed very different -- many fly in extra sounds and subtract others, completely different vocals are employed, and in some cases the remix sounds absolutely nothing like the original. As for the dub quotient -- yah, the EQ has definitely been diddled (the bass is practically hiding underground causing seismic tremors and the drums have that hollow sound so intrinsic to Scorn releases). In fact, since i've mentioned Scorn twice now, let me say that the "closer mix" of "almost heaven" sounds remarkably like an outtake from Scorn's EVANESCENCE.

The remixes of "almost heaven" and "gift from heaven" alone demonstrate how enthusiastically Broadrick embraces radically opposed remixes. The "breakbeat" mix of "gift from heaven" sounds like dub gang warfare gone tragically awry; you can just imagine the Jeep lurching up and down the highway while this one pulverizes the stereo speakers into itty bitty crumbs. By contrast, the "heavenly" remix of the same song is a droning, subterranean bass wave with all the vox and beats removed so that it actually more resembles a Final track. You'd never guess that they originally started out being the same thing at all. Ditto, in a sense, with the "closer mix" and "helldub" versions of "almost heaven" -- while you can recognize that they were lifted from the same source, the latter version is so thoroughly soaked in a vat of hellish EQ and added skronklike noises that it might well be an irradiated version from another planet. (For the record, i think the "closer" version is the better one.)

Most of the other remixes for tracks like "frail," "sterile prophet" (one alternate version and a hellish dub treatment), and "time, death and wastefulness" are simply alternatives to the originals and not necessarily better or worse... but two tracks show how powerful the remix toolbox can be in Justin's resin-stained hands. The original version of "kingdom come" was a swank groovefest whose guitars were more dominant than anything else; here Broadrick has reversed the pattern, throwing the guitars way into the background, bringing up the vox (nearly inaudible in the original), and jacking the drums WAY up into the mix, then dragging in a violent dub bass of epic proportions. The result is pretty damn amazing. But the real stroke of genius is on "domain," this disc's reworking of "angel domain," which is merely okay on the original disc but tremendously godlike here, mostly thanks to a snarling fuzzed-out bass and the excellent decision for Broadrick to intone the vox in a sinister monotone rather than shouting as usual. It sounds like a serial killer sharing his inner thoughts from amid a swirling maelstrom of churning fuzzhell. Broadrick should go this route with the vox more often.

Needless to say, i think it's a pretty essential thing to have around the house....

Godflesh lumbers toward the millenium (and yes, i know that technically the millenium happens at 2001, hush up and let me finish here, howzaboutit?) with an album that, intentionally or not, encapsulates all of the various sounds and tangets Justin Broadrick has been waffling away at for the past ten years... and sounds like a morbid party-down album to boot. Sort of. What J. and Benny have done here is to take the best elements of early Godflesh (eerie, ambient Lovecraftian guitar dissonance), later Godflesh (sledgehammer riffs, Black Sabbath fixation, droned-out vox), Final (strange ambient sounds), and Techno-Animal (hoppin' beats), and mixed it all down into an ass-shaking (and ass-quaking) groove o' doom. This is not only Godflesh's most danceable album, it's also their most varied... and possibly as a result, their most consistent. I like to think of it as SLAVESTATE updated for the nineties, or perhaps the first EP filtered through the refracting prism of Final and Techno-Animal.

The guitar sound is largely reminiscent of the first EP and STREETCLEANER; this is made even more evident by the return of the Alesis drum machine, missing in action for the past couple of albums, which makes an appearance on a few tracks (particularly the awesomely oppressive title track, which opens with pipe-tone tom-toms climbing up into the upper registers as the detuned guitars fade in, and includes a middle section that is simply the most hypnotic and heavy thing they've done in ages). The fact that they've downtuned to B for the first time since probably the PURE album or earlier makes that guitar sound a familiar blast o' crunch too. But this time out, the beats are front and center; many of the songs, such as "Endgames," feature the guitars pushed into the background while the emphasis is placed on trip-hop drum beats. In some others like "Witchhunt," the guitars and drums are essentially one indistinguishable minimalist riff locked into a a fat groove that shakes from side like an ill-tempered rhino. One of the most interesting things about the new album -- and i haven't seen it mentioned anywhere else, either -- is that a lot of the songs have actual introductions, where they briefly do some weird beat/riff/noise doodling, often while fading in the main guitars, before launching into the song proper. Another interesting move is Justin's choice of vocal styles; for the first time, he's all over the map. Whether he's roaring through an overcompressed shout on "I, Me, Mine" or muttering darkly ("Whose Truth Is Your Truth") or droning with waves o' reverb (many of them), he manages to achieve a pretty serious variety of sounds. Part of this sudden interest in variety, etc. can probably be attributed to the length of time they took to make the record -- nearly two years, off and on -- and the results are deserving of praise; there's not a bad song on here (although "Defiled" does seem to aggravate some listeners; doesn't bother me, however).

"Bittersweet" is probably the most "classic" sounding piece here -- in fact, it sounds very much like an outtake from either the first EP or STREETCLEANER -- with huge, morose Sabbath-style walls o' riffage and the trusty Alesis dug up from the grave to provide the ominous beat, while Justin drones and wails about being invisible and weak (not that you'll ever know it without looking at the lyrics -- did i mention that they printed the lyrics?).For those who miss the primal bludgeoning power they whipped up on thunderous tracks like "Spite" in the past, they have helpfully provided "Nail," which sounds more like they're playing mason blocks instead of guitars. Those entranced by the snakelike feedback wailing of those early albums will be happy to groove to "Descent," which is (in a demented sort of way) sort of the Godflesh adaptation of the Nirvana principle: quirky intro plus quiet verses plus brain-frying heaviness on the choruses equals nifty shit. They throw in more surprises with the out-of-control breakbeats in "Control Freak," moving at the fastest clip they've achieved literally since the songs "Streetcleaner" and "Tiny Tears." It's bizarre (but good) to hear Godflesh propelled by velocity.... The last two songs, "The Internal" and "Live to Lose" (originally recorded during the SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE sessions and released now for the first time) owe much of their sound to the futzing about Broadrick has done in Final and Skinner's Black Laboratories -- under the uberfuzz are some distinctly creamy harmonic tones, and in the latter one (which reminds me, oddly enough, of a slowed-down and detuned Band of Susans) there are even flourishes of what might be an acoustic guitar.

The bottom line is that this -- possibly their final album for Earache, if you believe the rumors -- is not only the heaviest and most consistent album they've made since STREETCLEANER, it may actually be even better than those first two landmark slabs o' otherworldly hate. (It helps that they've eased up a tad on the obsessive crankiness in favor of introducing marginally less opporessive moments.) It certainly has my attention. Now if we could just get Justin to stop diffusing all his energy in the million other side projects and concentrate all of it in this one, we might get albums of this quality out of them a wee bit more often....

First thing to keep in mind: This is not even remotely an essential item in the Godflesh canon. It's interesting, but if you were starting from stratch to accumulate their catalog, this would be way down on the list of ones to acquire. Second thing to keep in mind: It's only available as a CD-R for $17 plus shipping directly from Godflesh themselves, via their web site for Avalanche Recordings. At that price, especially for something you won't find in stores, only the dedicated will be picking this up. As for the recording itself, it is essentially an expanded version of a "lost" ep that the band intended to put out around the SELFLESS era, an idea that was scuttled by Earache's disinterest. The original four tracks are now matched by dub versions as well, maxing the EP out to eight tracks. The sound? Think of it as the missing link between MERCILESS and SELFLESS. It combines the obsessive biomechanical "rhythm for robots" feel of the MERCILESS ep with the song structures and general feel of SELFLESS, with the exception of "sungod," which sounds like it should have been on MERCILESS to begin with. How much interest you potentially have in this depends on your tolerance for Godflesh's techno and dub leanings. "Messiah" ..., but "Wilderness of Mirrors" grafts the patented low-end assquake onto hip-hop beats and irradiated guitars; to pique the interest factor, they warp the beat periodically and mutilate the vocal sound in interesting ways. The hands-down winner of the set, though, is "Sungod" -- an endless drum 'n bass loop with little variation takes on mutant guitars that sounds like the product of a fiendishly twisted loop generator. Similar in mechanics to "Blind," it sounds like an army of replicants spitting out tweaked technoish guitar riffs in overlapping patterns, like a hypnotic auditory hallucination. The dubbed-down version is even more surreal, with overlapping samples as well in addition to the mandatory dub treatment. None of this is as mind-shatteringly brilliant or revolutionary as their early stuff, but it's certainly not bad by any means. If you're not heavily into the dub component of Godflesh's beat-heavy existence, then you might find the dub tracks irritating. Otherwise, it's certainly deserving of a wider audience than what it'll find on CD-R, i suspect.

Any way you slice it, this has inadvertently become a transitional album in the ways of all things 'fleshlike. Not only is it the first full album with a live drummer (Mantia only appeared on half of SONGS OF LOVE AND HATE, remember), and simultaneously the studio debut of Ted Parsons (former human metronome for Swans, Of Cabbages and Kings, and Prong), who's been playing with them since the SOLAH tour, but now it turns out to be Benny's last album with them as well. (He's leaving to go back to school, apparently, and is being replaced by Raven -- logically, the next step will be for Justin to be replaced by Tommy Victor and become Prong Mach II. Stranger things have happened....) Frankly, I can't even imagine what Godflesh would sound like without Benny, so it will be interesting to see where they go from here. At least Benny gets to bow out with the strongest album they've done in years -- this sounds like the album they could have made somewhere between the debut ep and STREETCLEANER, but with occasional nods to many other projects they've all been involved in over the years since then. Having Mr. Parsons step up to the drum stool turns out to have been an extremely shrewd move -- he's capable of playing with metronome-like precision, but his style is very different from the band's previous drummers, man or machine, and that in turn has driven the band in a new direction -- not only does Ted provide beats that are totally unexpected yet totally Godflesh, but his entire approach forms the backbone for a more stripped-down, structurally looser sound than ever before. Freed from the tyranny of counting measures to stay in sync with the machine, in many places on the new album they sound like something akin to a more trance-oriented Zeni Geva, assuming that Null initially worshipped at the altar of Black Sabbath and Swans rather than Pink Floyd and Swans. (It also seems that Justin's a lot more tritone-happy on this album, although that may be my imagination.)

Elements from all of their previous albums (and a few side bands) are here -- the bone-crushing heaviness of the opening track "Defeated" could have come from the MERCILESS sessions, several songs expand on the crushing Sabbath-worship of "Bittersweet" from US & THEM, "Antihuman" sounds like a rogue Ice track, and "Animal" could be an outtake from STREETCLEANER, while other songs echo elements of the mantra moves on SELFLESS, cascading feedback and grinding bass of the early releases, even the techno stylings of from SLAVESTATE in a couple of places. ("Vampires" does sound an awful lot like a song from the last Prong album, which is kind of interesting.) The difference is that everything is subservient to the mammoth, often heavily torqued guitar and bass, and brute force rules over every other consideration for the most part. This may be the most consistently heavy and unrelenting thing they've ever done. At the same time, there's no filler on this release -- and some of the songs (in particular "Anthem," "White flag," "For life," and "Jesu") are among the best they've ever done. This is a focused mess o' tracks, all right....

I think it's interesting that they're now on Music For Nations, because this new refinement of their sound may earn them an entirely new audience as this album makes its way into the hands of the stoners. People hep to the likes of Electric Wizard and Goatsnake who previously would have been put off by the frequent experimental forays into loops and sonic ugliness (or the drum machine) should find this collection of riff-heavy uberfuzz death dirges more to their liking. For that matter, this is the closest they've ever come to making a "traditional" death metal album -- it may have that stoner hypnogroove, but it's executed with machine-like precision.

Incidentally, if you ever wondered what a Low or Codeine song would sound like in these hands, check out the untitled ending track (approx. a minute or two after "Jesu") -- the first heavy section, in fact, sounds very much like a Codeine riff. My favorite track on the album hands down, one of my favorite Godflesh tracks ever, in fact.

Godhead -- POWER TOOL STIGMATA [Sol 3 Records]

Godhead hail from Washington, D.C., but have absolutely nothing to do with hardcore (well, one of the album's engineers once did engineering for a Jawbox record, but that's pretty tenuous, dontcha think?). Rather, they're solidly in the electro-body rock vein, with vague stylistic nods to NIN and Front 242, among others. Unlike a lot of the industrial dance groovers, they have a good understanding of how to integrate melodic passages into the heavier moments, and they manage to avoid most of the more irritating cliches of the genre (dumbass samples, puny and derivative sounds, unimaginative songwriting, vocalists who sound too much like Reznor or Jourgensen or Ogre), which puts them miles ahead of much of the competition right out of the box.

First off, they get immense bonus points for the good taste (and balls) to cover "Eleanor Rigby," which they do in respectable (and listenable) fashion. It doesn't top the original, of course (how could ANYTHING top the original?), but it's no embarassment, either. My guess for the dance-floor single would be "Fucked Up," whose insistent drum pulse and building guitars eventually explode in turbocharged mayhem on the choruses -- the Nirvana effect in EBN, what a concept.... "Lies," with percolating synths and explosive slash-and-burn guitars matching the surging beat, would be a good one as well. The more interesting ones, though, are the ones that explore territory a bit more unusual for EBN, such as "Memorial," which opens with drones and bass straight out of Joy Division and a spiky piano that continues even as the song picks up the pace, or the weird gothic trip-hop of "Headache Symphony." Also high on the coolness meter is "Afterthoughts," which has an amazing drum sound -- sort of like machine lathes beating on steel sheets -- and a fairly imaginative song structure.

I'm not sure there's anything terribly revelatory happening here, but it's all well-done and won't insult your intelligence, and you can groove to it, mon. And wasn't that the point? Yah... time for you to shake that rubber skirt groove thang....

Gods Among Men are a three piece noise 'fest from Seattle. The three pieces are guitar, drums, and cello, with the people behind the pieces doing much yelling. Musically there is much thrashing going on, and I don't mean "thrashing" in the Slayer-"thrash" as genre sense. I mean, they literally seem to be thrashing their instruments. This is a good thing. Not enough bands play THIS hard.

Oh yeah -- "But, Neddal, this talk about thrashing instruments is all well and good, but I want to know who they sound like?I can't just buy a disc 'cause you say it sounds like they're breaking stuff can I?" Yes, you can and you should. But whatever, here goes -- use Neurosis as your starting point. Now add a touch of the Melvins, maybe a hint of Black Flag. I also hear some Stinking Lizaveta. Top it off with some Mr. Bungle-like skittering and you'd be close. The bottom line is that it rocks. (I've been told that the Gods Among Men are currently working on a full-length. So keep your eyes out.) [n/a]

This is the Gods Among Men full-length that I mentioned back in # 53. It's a big leap forward from their self-titled EP. That's not to say that the EP was weak by any means. There is still much thrashing of instruments and lots of yelling going on. The recording is much clearer if not cleaner. The songs still tend toward the spastic, but they have focused their energy into controlled bursts rather than chaotic blasts. With this focus comes a new sense of dynamics; the songs ebb and flow, with quieter and more sparse moments standing in contrast to the more hardcore-sounding freakouts. I should also mention that these guys are one hundred percent DIY, which is something to be admired. [n/a]

This EP is the followup to their brilliant first album. I think i like the first one better. Which is not to say that this is bad; it's just that the first album is so flawless that it's kind of hard to top. Nevertheless, the do their cinematic thing here, largely to good effect, opening with a tremendous drone on "Miccia" and building from there into orchestral swells accompanied by a massive, rumbling low end. The sound builds and builds, then finally dies away into something quieter before building up again. Approximately five minutes into the piece, they finally get around to having actual beats.... Then the pace picks up, building to a frenzy before backing off again. It all segues into "Benzina," with more ambient bass and the occasional tinkly guitar while some guy they taped on the street rants against the courts, the government, you name it. His rant is blackly funny and not a little bit profane, and it unfolds against the backdrop of their droning instrumentation. Somewhere in all of this it turns into "Sabbia and Sappone," with more of the ambient bass and spaghetti western moves. All in all it's not quite as riveting as the first disc (i said that already, didn't i?), but still worth hearing if you're hep to their peculiar brand of imaginary cinema sound....

Well, i was going to delve into all sorts of epic shit regarding this staggering two-disc opus, the latest ravings from these Canadian masters of the whole "soundtrack to an imaginary movie" thing, but (typically) i ran out of time and the whole project is just too immense for me to grok in such a short amount of time. This double-album is bigger than my head, goddamit! So i'm gonna put it off and maybe we'll get lucky and i'll remember it in the next issue, eh? In the meantime, here's the essentials you ought to know: this is their second proper full-length release, it's two whopping CDs, it's in a digipak with cool but cryptic art and incomprehensible track listings, and if you're already hep to them you'll want to have this. If you think they are vastly overrated (hi hellfarmer!), this won't change your mind. They get bonus points for the black helicopter on the back of the digipak....

In one word: moody. [n/a]

The GoGos -- RETURN TO THE VALLEY OF THE GOGOS [I.R.S. Records]

Yes, THAT GoGos. And this godlike thing here is a 2-CD retrospective crammed FULL of amusing shit -- the original hits, lots o' b-sides, a PILE of live/ unreleased stuff (much of it from their earliest days), and three new songs. The best part is that the disc is, with one or two exceptions, entirely in chronological order, which means you can hear the band go from being amusingly bad surfpunk (i can just imagine them pogoing and falling off the Mabuhay stage) to the pure pop machine they were for a couple of years before everything disintegrated... and then you get to hear the stuff since then, both live and studio, that indicates they could come out of retirement without any embarassment. The first six cuts, from 1979-1980, are interesting just to hear where they're coming from, even though they sound pretty hideous; starting with "He's So Strange," though, they start turning into a real live band with some possibilities, and everything after that just gets better and better. Besides, they get bonus points from me for doing the only good cover of Wanda Jackson's "Let's Have A Party" i've actually heard. What's really odd in listening to all of this is suddenly realizing how much SURF guitar there was in their sound. especially in the guitars.

The main reason to have this set (outside of having all the hits in one place) is the stuff recorded after TALK SHOW and the "breakup" -- all of it live except for the three new songs. The new ones ("Good Girl," "Beautiful," and "The Whole World Lost It's Head") are pretty happening too, chiming away like the ten-year gap between the last album and now didn't even exist. The other reason to have it is the accompanying CD booklet, which is HILARIOUS, and pretty much demolishes the GoGo's "cute li'l sweethearts" image and does a pretty good job of reminding people that they were originally a PUNK band, regardless of all those catchy surf guitars. All in all, most cool. Now if they'll really reunite and start putting out albums again, that would be just totally MONDO....

Golden Palominos -- DEAD INSIDE [Restless]

This is hands down the creepiest thing i've ever heard. Forget the bluster of the sadoporn noise junkies or the ranting of the lo-fi punk ranters, this is the real deal. To begin with, it doesn't even sound like you expect a Golden Palominos record to sound; the sound is largely ambient hoverbot droning only occasionally disrupted by anything as mundane as actual beats, and the vocalist, Nicole Blackman this time, doesn't sing but instead talks her way through the album. And what she has to say is pretty dire: the album opens with death and closes with more death and in between covers self-deception, madness, sociopathic behavior, disintegrating societies, and drowning (both real and metaphorical). Combined with irregular bursts of sinister sound-bite loops, the effect is of listening to an unusually articulate street lunatic calmly explain why it's all right that we're all going to die as she juggles hand grenades. The most disturbing of these songs are generally -- coincidentally or not -- the ones with the most ephemeral backing tracks, songs where the bass and guitars are warped into subterranean metallic drones and rippling wave generators, songs like "Victim" (whose lyrics, the last musings of a woman who's been kidnapped by a sociopath and is about to have her head evaporated by a shotgun, are exceptionally harrowing), "Drown," and my personal favorite, "Holy" (about a woman starving herself in order to become an angel).

Some of the songs are a (wee) bit closer to earlier incarnations of the Palominos sound, such as "Belfast" and "Ride," which are anchored by metronomic beats and driven by stuttering hocus-pocus basslines and cryptic guitar loops but still actually have something like an actual structure. "The Ambitious Are" cleaves down the middle of the two approaches, with a slow looped beat and twitching, droning basslines that contrast with the electronic noises and sound bites. The rest of the album wanders somewhere between the two extremes of dark ambient guitar and beat-heavy rhythms. The lyrics are so dark and frequently so bleak that making it through the entire album in one sitting is pretty tough sledding, but that doesn't change the fact that the album overall is utterly brilliant....

Guitarist / singer J. Goodin is a one-man band whose playing style encompasses so many genres and textures, many deliberately jarring, that it's hard to get a handle on him. This is a good thing. Most of the time he embraces this thunderous guitar thunder that pleases me mightily, but he also dabbles in music concrete, strange experiments in EQ, and quizzical moments of pure weirdness. Heavy and crunch-laden on one song then full-blown country on the next, with bursts of pop and other styles like clockwork, there's a wide variety of sounds happening here. I particularly like the heavier ones like "drama queen" and "jump ophelia" that are nothing more than pure full-blown metal, dude, but even the more restrained, countryish tunes often provide plenty of apocalyptic heaviness, such as on "prelude -- morning ate my moon" or the creeping "grin like a dog," both of which are plenty sinister without wearing the distortion pedal (that pedal gets its own frantic workout on "scruffnut"). The gorgeous closing track "mr. snowflake" makes it clear that he can play it straight, without needing efx or weird moves to get the point across. An interesting (if occasionally perplexing) and varied collection of strong material from someone who's just aware of what makes mainstream music popular and just bored enough by it to make something listenable yet different.

The Goslings are a duo from outside of space and time (this may explain why there's no contact info on the cd sleeve) in possession of gongs, birds, organs, noises, cryptic field recordings, mutant droning synths, eerie sighing ghosts, perverted guitars, transmissions from Saturn, and other... other sounds. Yes. Many, many sounds. On "In May," they spend thirteen minutes spilling out these various and sundry sounds over endless drones. The result is somewhere between early, early, way early Skullflower and Endless Smile's eternally obscure first album. Lots of drone, lots of soothing harmonic hiss, lots of strategically-placed noises of a varied and textured nature... plus the first half sounds sort of like the members of Last Exit hammered on Jagermeister and trying to all sync up while the room spins in the slow ovals. (The second half is less slow ovals and more noise over pulse 'n drone.) The ringing, swelling drones at the end are a nice touch. "Statuette" is pure organ-fueled drone and honey voice and waves of harmonic distortion. The slow tempo and minimalist attitude allow the drones to overlap and fade without interference, creating shimmering pools of sound. "Lillian" is defined by repetitive loops of ringing tones and a steadily-increasing power drone that turn into the distorted sound of drone being twisted into unnatural shapes. On "Summer For Spring" they demonstrate the knowledge that every good drone goes well with bell-chimes (among other things). I have no idea where the band is from, or who the mysterious Max and Leslie might be, but if you're hep to the thrilling sounds of bands like Sunroof!, Flying Saucer Attack, Charalimbides, or early Skullflower, you should badly, badly, badly want to hear this disc.

This Australian band makes me think of a scaled-down version of Tone. Totally instrumental and, as the title implies, aligned with the soundtrack school of sound, this might qualify as space-rock if they weren't so bent on avoiding the effects-laden cliches of that genre. Their sound, in fact, is remarkably clean and bright, with their only real nods to efx being in the use of spring-reverb on songs like "Polo Neck Pioneers." One of the guitarists is somewhat enamored of blues tones and the keyboard player is fond of symphonic washes of sound, but the rhythm section is a powerhouse that keeps everything anchored. What I like is incongruous yet highly listenable pieces like "The New Brutalists," which manages to incorporate rock riffs, raga-style drone, blues, and jazz all into one mutant package, like a jazz fusion band scoring spaghetti westerns. The Tone comparison really makes sense on "Flanagan Transfers," where rock riffs turn into choppy guitars and spiraling keyboards building over a simple but insistent beat, the song laid out in mini-movements that build in intensity as the song progresses. "Conceptual Enjoyment," with its ringing, flanged guitar chords and keyboard drones over a slow beat and pulsing bass, is closer to the soundtrack sound, while "Rust Sometimes Dozes Off" actually opens with sounds of life that are gradually drowned out by bluesy slide guitar rifflets; you can almost imagine the imaginary film coming to an end with the credits crawling up the screen as the song gradually fades out. Too bad this is only currently available in Australia, for this is a really excellent album and would surely have great appeal for Tone fans who have to wait too long between albums (not to mention GYBE! listeners who prefer their cinematic musical visions a tad more rooted in actual music as opposed to found sound and weird experiments)....

N/A (aggrieved): See? See? They get to digress! Do I get to digress? They get to be smartasses! Do I get to be a smartass? Fuck no! Why? WHY! Because I am being HELD HOSTAGE by an overgrown Rubber Girl Scout with a gun!

TG: It's a good thing you weren't in my platoon, I would have butt-fucked you on a daily basis just for grins....

N/A: Don't threaten me, you disgusting she-male pervert.

TG (outraged): Just for that, on this one you only get two sentences. COMPOSE THEM NOW OR REST IN ASHES! (the barrel of her gun looms large in Neddal's pantheon)

N/A: Soundgarden / Kyuss-inspired doom-rock from Sweden. Their sound may be generic, but the songwriting is quite strong and this disc will grow on you if you give it a chance. [n/a]

The Grassy Knoll -- S/T [Nettwerk]

Despite the press thingy's mention of "haunting ethereal darkness," I didn't find this terribly ominous; for that you'd want the nada disc.... Which is not to say there's anything wrong with what's actually there, which is a percolating mix of samples, semi-jazzy instrumentation, and big, rumbling bass attached to a generally danceable beat. This is a versatile one; funky enough for the club and intriguing enough to stand up to close listening, but low-key enough to work as background music as well (with the volume down, anyway). "Unbelievable Truth" starts with looped wind samples before getting funky; "Altering the Gates of the Mind" begins with a thick backwards-riff like the sound of a record being run counterclockwise and then settles into... another funky groove. There's a lot of electronic funk on this album, actually. And as with most sample-driven albums, it lends itself well to the "guess-where- that-sample-came-from" game. My one complaint is that --partly since there are no vocals -- the songs all kind of run together, and more to the point, it's sometimes hard to tell them apart. Most of them appear to be constructed from the same basic formula: start with weird sampled noises and then get funky. Hmmm.... perhaps on the next one they'll get a bit more varied with their liberal use of sampling.

Graveland have been making great albums for years now and this is one of the best yet. The production has improved and the songs are more developed. Epic tales from the past, keeping alive the true spirit of pagan "black metal." Droning guitar work, mideval drums, haunting vocals. Supreme artwork and limited vinyl pressing. No Colours does it again. [ttbmd]

Gravitar -- CHINGA SU CORAZON [Charnel Music]

Like molten lead running through a sewer... or maybe thick sheets of metal being fed through a paper shredder... my, this is NOISY. Three guys, no bass player (plenty, plenty low end regardless), MUCH ear pain. It's amzing what three men with a total disregard for "proper" use of their instrments can do for their own sick amusement, isn't it? For fans of really LOUD, horribly distorted walls of noise, this should be the tiny round equivalent of nirvana.

"Alpha-115" starts out quietly enough, with semi-ambient guitar tinkles over a vague background drone, but just about the time you start to feel soothed, ugly scraping riffs start jumping up like irradiated cockroaches and before you know it, the walls are caving in. This continues for quite some time, to glorious effect, with the drummer thumping away and the singer buried in the drainspout as totally fried guitars threaten to strip the cilia from your ears and permanently rewire your central nervous system. You could cut telephone poles down with this.

The rest of the CD pretty much aligns itself in the pain emission format. "Evil Monkey Boy" is highlighted by lots of insane gibbering from the, uh, voalist, while "El Melveno" sports some truly deathlike vocals amid guitars that sound like pigs being butchered one moment and like they've been tuned down about a thousand steps the next. For wild, hyperspeed guitar wailing, check out "Bludgeon," which lives up to its title. Then "Moist" shuts it all down in a most peculiar, rambling, and bizarre fashion, leaving you dazed and soiled. NOT for the weak!

Total impression? Let's put it this way: Mason Jones once claimed Gravitar sounds "like an entire city undergoing demolition"; all I can say is that Mason's a damn perceptive guy....

Gravitar -- A BRIEF HISTORY [MGOGM]

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Okemos, where people bowl a lot (or so i'm told), the gentle people of this sleepy town woke up one morning to the terror of a giant dragon eating its welfare mothers and crushing its elementary schools and librarires. Some swore the dragon's name was Newt Gingrich; others claimed it was the foul materialized spirit of the great demon Republicanism; others said somebody must have dropped some SERIOUS acid in the drinking water. At any rate, it was pretty bad news and after a while all the dead welfare mothers began to really stink, so the enraged people of Okemos drafted a young group of seedy reprobrates with guitars to hopefully vanquish the beast by destroying it with great gales of brutal sound (sort of like GODZILLA VS. MOTHRA, only... only BETTER). And thus, in the throes of terror and amidst the ashes of burning chaos, was born... the mighty GRAVITAR.

Well, i don't know what happened after that, but i DO know that this tape is a nifty compilation of pre-Gravitar material, early Gravitar material, demos, stuff that got left off the two studio albums at the last minute, and fragments of chaotic live communication breakdown. In other words, a lot of unspeakably cool shit. This tape does nothing to dispel the common rumor that Gravitar drink cobalt li