This is an imaginative melding of gothic darkwave and industrial with the right idea -- they take the robotic machine-tooled rhythm sound of industrial-dance music and overlay it with piles o' gorgeous synth, piano and vox to create pulsing waves of rhythm and beauty. Imagine standing in thick fog outside the Battersea power plant in England and hearing the sound of machinery mixed with the sound of haunting, almost classical music coming at you from different directions and meeting as one sound. Most bands who attempt this sort of thing ultimately fail because they're really much better at one component of their sound than others -- they're either better at the industrial moves and not so sharp at the goth stabs or the other way around -- but this band is seriously adept at all parts of their sound, which gives them an immense edge. They definitely favor a European neo-classical sound (i don't know where they're from, but i'm guessing overseas -- "Oh Dear" has a solid madrigal influence that would be really unlikely from an American band), but they incorporate industrial sounds, techno and other distinctly non-goth beats, plus they have a real feel for dynamics that sets them apart from a lot of darkwave bands who just pile it on and leave it all set on overkill. The layers of sound regularly change in volume and density within the songs, and even within the beats the strength and sound of the different parts of the drum kit vary widely in sound and intensity from one moment to the next. None of this happens in a way that's distracting, but in a more subtle fashion that keeps the sound from stagnating -- it's far more complex than the quiet verse/loud chorus dynamic favored by pop bands, but nowhere near as static as the loud-everywhere tactic favored by industrial-dance bands and the like. Their beats are also a tad more inventive than those in your average darkwave band, which certainly doesn't hurt.

The opening track ("Fates and Furies") is one of my favorites -- they build a swirling mass of layered sound over an aggressive military snare beat, which eventually turns into a nice segue into "Intrigue," a slower-paced song where they hit you with Summer Bowman's dazzling voice. With a voice and attack similar in style to Liz Frasier of Cocteau Twins, her vocal track is so high-pitched and swirly that at times it resembles a processed keyboard sample more than an actual voice. Her vocals continue to be the focal point of most of the tracks that follow. Her vocals are put to especially good use on "Valentine," which sounds like an acoustic folk song overlaid with goth trappings. While Roger Frace and Summer Bowman both sing on the album, my favorite tracks are the ones featuring Bowman's vox (through no fault of Frace -- i'm merely biased in favor of female singers). She's an amazing, operatic singer with a voice that winds up and up to the sky -- i have no idea what her vocal range is, but i'm betting it's well on up there -- and it fits in well with the baroque nature of their songs. Sometimes, as on "Every Thing She Is," Frace provides backing harmony to Bowman's lead vox, which makes for a nice sound.

"Rusty Haloes" is another favorite -- a pulsing, machine-like rhythm and droning keyboard micro-riffs form the bedrock over which Bowman sings, it sounds like it's going to break out into something far more explosive but never does, creating an eerie tension that pervades the entire song. Things take an interesting turn with "Radiant," with a technoish beat and arcane keyboard riffs spiraling like wheels in the background -- it starts off on one level and moves to another, more aggressive one when the drums switch over to a stark snare halfway through. "Fade" is even stranger (without being too "out there") -- a heavily-reverbed piano playing the same note over and over is gradually overwhelmed by a growing bank of rhythmic elements, including drums set on slow thunder, making for a grand and majestic coda to a uniformly excellent album. As an added bonus, the CD also includes a video for the third track, "The Unaware." and other multimedia files related to the band. Plus the cover art (the entire CD digipak presentation, really) is utterly jaw-dropping. This is the third or fourth CD i've heard from Middle Pillar Presents and they've all looked and sounded excellent. So far they're batting a thousand; perhaps you should investigate...?

This is apparently the soundtrack to a late sixties psychedelic hippie movie I never heard of called THE INVASION OF THUNDERBOLT PAGODA, a film divided into three parts (The Opium Dream, Shaman, and Heavenly Blue Mylar Pavillions). I have no idea what the movie is about (i've never seen it), but if the pictures included in this booklet are any indication, i'd say the movie is about getting way stoned, man. Or something. Anyway, they made this movie (Tony Conrad is in it, if you're interested), MacLise devised the soundtrack, and then the entire film was shown at St. Mark's Church on the Epiphany with members of the cast playing live, and that performance is what appears on this disc. (The disc also includes a few other tracks, and I'm not clear on when those were recorded.)

MacLise, you'll remember, is the jolly fellow who left the original incarnation of the Velvet Underground when he thought they were "going commercial," and while he was still alive (he died in 1979), hung out with heavy dudes like Tony Conrad, LaMonte Young, and Terry Jennings. (In fact, he was also an original member of Young's Dream Syndicate, which evolved into the Theatre of Eternal Music.) He was many things, but he was first and foremost a drummer... and like Conrad, he had "issues" about the nature of the music business and the circumstances under which his music was recorded, which is why so little of it is currently available. To the best of my knowledge, nearly all of this disc is previously unreleased music (I think "Shortwave" was included on a compilation somewhere a few years back). Beyond that, I know little about the man -- if you're looking for a history lesson, ach, you'll have to look elsewhere. I'm just here to clue you in to the stylin' sounds on le disco....

The first half of the disc is taken up entirely by the long (just under forty minutes), droning, percussion-anchored "Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda" -- sonorous, raga-like drones waft about as bongos abound. The percussion stays pretty much steady throughout as the background drones and other mutant sounds (courtesy of dulcimer, flute, and unrecognizable guitar) shift and shimmer, eventually creeping up the musical scale... sort of like an ambient microtonal suite for percussion, maybe. It's the kind of music where you smoke a lot of dope, lay back with the headphones on, then drift off into tranceland. "Shortwave -- India" is an odd one, a very brief snippet of shortwave sounds and other odd instrumentation, but "Heavenly Blue Pt. 4 & 5" is closer to the sound of the title track, with hollowed-out bongo percussion and more of those wailing raga-style drones. "Blastitude" is more like ethnic or world music, something primitive, with tribal rhythms and shouting and a much rawer feel than the earlier material on the disc. The final track, "Humming in the Night Skull," is an actually pretty slice of droning psychedelia, with bells and harmonium giving it an almost church-like vibe. Mysterious stuff, to be sure. A fine starting place for the uninitiated to begin exploring the shamanistic worlds of MacLise.

Macronympha -- WHORECESTRA [Mother Savage Noise Productions]

Sixty minutes (one track!) of brutal, distorted noise pouring out of your speakers like thick, bloody sludge with lots of gross-looking chunks in the bile. Kind of like a more distorted sister to Gerogerigegege's torturous 45 RPM PERFORMANCE, only much more distorted and hateful. Unlike a lot of pure noise performances, here the dynamics ebb and flow, keeping your ears from getting "tired" -- every so often the crushing grind will level off just enough for your ears to recover, so they'll be GOOD AND FRESH when the next wave of sonic violence hits them like a hammer. The piece takes a symphonic approach in that it divides into discrete, recognizable movements -- a long wave of steady grinding distororoar, then a shift in tone, then a segment of stop and start movement, and so on. For all the emphasis on sound levels and volume, though, this piece is less interested in shattering your ears (the label has Anal Drill for THAT) than presenting lots of textural variations. To me, that's the best part of noise recordings -- listening for the changes in texture and tone (hmmm, come to think of it, i'm not sure what else there IS to listen for, in the absence of conventional junk like melody and chord progressions and all that stuff). Good noise (like this) as opposed to bad noise (aimless farting around at the end of many punk/metal records) depends mostly on texture and structure, and there's plenty of both here. Rancid pee dog approves of this... and it makes an excellent soundtrack for defacing monuments, peeing on government property, spraying obscene graffiti on billboards, and other acts of deliberately obnoxious anarchy.

Macronympha -- PITTSBURGH, PENNSYLVANIA [???]

A friend of mine who was listening to the recently-issued double-CD festival of noise terrorism from Relapse (THE JAPANESE-AMERICAN NOISE TREATY, to be more specific) made an interesting observation: that he actually preferred the American disc, because it was his opinion that the American noise artists were actually into new areas of noise while the Japanese artists were basically reinventing the wheel again in the same fashion as before. (Those weren't his exact words, but the spirit was there and i'm quoting out of context, but you know what i mean, eh?) Since I haven't heard the set myself yet (it may be reviewed here in the next issue, though), i don't know how true this is, although it's an intriguing thought that, as it happens, parallels my own thinking on the subject. And if this new release by Macronympha is any indication, he may well be RIGHT.

Macronympha -- who are essentially influenced by overseas noise merchants such as Merzbow, Controlled Bleeding, and Thirdorgan -- come into their own here, fusing the drill-out-of-control high-end fury of Merzbow with the low apocalyptic rumbling of Gerogerigegege's 45 RPM PERFORMANCE into something uniquely its own. Lots of savage crunching going on here, like buildings being mulched, automobiles being run through a crusher in slow motion, pure living hell pressed down into white vinyl... brilliant. For the first time that i'm aware of, they've recorded a "concept" album -- the concept here being the stink of urban decay, an audio history of one city's descent into Armageddon complete with steel rusting by the bolts and bodies rotting in the street. Scary, scary stuff. The B-side is just one long track of roaring destruction, reminiscent of the aforementioned Gero album, only more jagged in its viciousness. The three tracks on the A-side are a bit closer to their traditional style, but not by much. All of it is pure noise godhead, probably capable of ruining your hearing even at low, low volume. Definitely not for the weak.

Fair warning -- while the graphics are stunning (great layout, wall- size foldout poster insert, monochrome photo of a field of skulls on the cover), they are also, ah, well beyond the boundaries of good taste, ok? The foldout poster is of an old Southern lynching and is incredibly gruesome. For that matter, the title of the three-song suite (and its subtitles) -- "Critical Determination of Genetic Malfunction in Three Racial Groups" -- could be construed as a racist or white-power diatribe (although i don't think it actually is; i actually think it's more of an attitude thing in keeping with the overall bleak theme of the record). If these are things that disturb you, you probably shouldn't pick up this record. If -- like DEAD ANGEL -- you're able to appreciate art without necessarily sharing the artist's viewpoint, then you may well want to approach this with enthusiasm, seeing as how it's one of the best white- noise releases to come down the pike yet....

Macronympha/Smell and Quim -- "Transsexual" 7" [MSNP/Stinky Horse Fuck]

Side A opens with an amusing conversation regarding restructured vaginas and promptly turns into the theme from J. G. Ballard's CRASH -- in other words, the sound of many, many cars colliding with an Amtrak train. This carefully orchestrated symphony of random, violent sound, courtesy of Macronympha, eventually spirals down into a lock-groove of what sounds like a city bus engine with a bad, bad case of the hiccups. The track in question is called "Fem-Gland (S-He Mix)," in keeping with the single's transsexual theme (more about that in a moment). The flip side, "Cunt Morphology," comes from Smell and Quim and is a wee bit less intense; they trade in the Black and Decker approach for vaguely rhythmic scraping that's occasionally augmented by shrieking drillpress noises. This, too, all ends in a lock groove, with equally obnoxious results. Someone should tape the first lock groove on one track and the second on another and then have Merzbow and Masonna duel over it; what a godlike thought, don't you think?

The packaging was arranged by MSNP, and as with most of their releases, it's deliberately pornographic and riddled with a black sense of humor. The single itself features pictures of transvestites/transsexuals (the blonde on the Macronympha side is awfully fetching), and the cover and inserts (all apparently lifted from "dubious" magazine sources) repeat the motif. The copy I have also includes a juicy booklet crammed full of text and pictures devoted to the whole TV/TS experience, all rendered in an exquisitely sordid tabloid fashion. Your mother would not approve. The single is limited and I'm not clear on how many will include the booklet, so if your interest is piqued, act fast....

This must be the drone issue -- nearly everything reviewed so far outside of blinding black metal has had drone as a major component. This disc, a four-song ep that builds on their earlier release from a while back, begins with lots of rumbling drone and the occasional keyboard motif buried in the background on "consequence school" -- it's a nice drone too, one that rises and falls, and the texture of the keyboards in the background is a nice, minimalist touch. The wandering flute (?) that opens "in within," then goes on to play while other things (a storm, throbbing drone, maybe other instruments too) continue in the background. The volume and dynamics make it akin to Eno's original concept of ambient music -- the sound of music and other events heard from a distance. Gradually, as things slowly creep up in the mix, the wavering drone and flute begin to dominate as the storm continues in the background. Some of the same sounds appear to show up in "the one who is created" (or possibly different chunks of the same original source material), although this one has more of a gentle drone and less jarring dynamics. The last song, "pigs may fly," at times threatens to resolve into an actual song, but never quite does; instead, it drifts in the drone zone, with different instruments and sounds floating in and out of the fog. This is definitely music to be absorbed in a meditative state of mind, with nothing else going on, to pick out the details... at the same time, the drone elements are strong and compelling enough to make this a fine background listening disc. Nice... very nice....

An eerie treat somewhere in the neighborhood of ambient goth. I know very little about this -- it was sent in with no fanfare and has a fairly minimal (albeit lovely) slipcase with no liner notes to speak of -- but it's definitely interesting. The first track, "Levell," is a brooding slice of gothic ambience, keyboards hovering in the background without really sounding like keyboards, as a lengthy spoken text runs over the ominous sound; the track bleeds into "Gray Garden," a collection of unsettling voices chanting and murmuring as odd, vaguely rhythmic sounds fade in and out. The overall sound of this piece makes me think of Mauve Sideshow guesting on a Hafler Trio disc, maybe... or a more ghostly and gothic Nurse With Wound... or something else? It's very hard to get a handle on where Maenad's coming from -- the influences aren't terribly obvious, which is intriguing. The third (and final) track, "Daughter of a Strange God," begins with distant droning and chittering sounds; as the sound grows incrementally, a spoken word sample begins to fade in and out of the mix. Eventually the found sounds begin to take on less prominence as the distant drone takes on a distinctly synth-like vibe, but remains largely in the background... actually, one of the most startling things about the sound on this disc is the restraint in volume and odd placement of sounds in the mix. What one would normally expect to find in the background is up front, and vice versa, and the spoken bits are obscured enough to force you to listen to attempt to divine their meaning. Odd yet compelling.

More whole-grain dronesome goodness from the now-defunct trio whose posthumous output has begun to exceed anything they ever did during their short time together. This turns out to be a collection of tracks that previously appeared only on cassettes (from the band itself or on compilations). Given that the cassettes are now damned difficult to find (i have four of them, nyah nyah), this is a truly a boon for casual Maeror Tri devotees (i say casual because the hardcore have already scoured the earth for the cassettes and vinyl and probably already have most of what's on here -- of the twelve tracks here, there are only four that i don't already have). It also makes a nifty introduction for the newcomer, especially in light of the fact that the rest of their material is either impossibly limited in numbers (they were fond of intensely low runs, often on foreign labels without American distribution); this not only collects up some of the best material from the cassettes, but it does so in a nice package at a reasonable cost. (Incidentally, for those of ye who continue to wonder about the fate of MYEIN, the now out-of-print disc originally issued on ND and arguably one of their finest moments -- it's probably going to be repressed, the only question is when.)

For the uninitiated, Maeror Tri's sound falls somewhere between the more ambient moves of Skullflower and the more violent crashing of Organum -- lots of droning, heavily repetitive passages, eerie sounds of unknown origin, brooding soundscapes of almost psychopathic intensity. Even in passing they remain one of the foremost proponents of drone, especially guitar drone; in my opinion, only the early Skullflower albums and the first album by Endless Smile come even close to matching the forbidding grandeur and density of Maeror Tri's signature sound. And they managed to churn out boatloads of impressive tracks for several years, resulting in approximately a dozen albums (if you include posthumous works) of intimidating works of sound sculpture. Two of Maeror Tri's original members now ply a similar trade as Troum, who show every sign so far of not only continuing this tradition, but possibly even improving up on it.

Which brings us to the latest installment of MT worship. This is actually the second half of a series gathering up rare MT tracks; the first, covering the period 1989-1993, was originally released in a limited edition of 500 by Holonum. (This disc covers the period 1993-1996.) Vince the Manifold Guy, possibly the most crazed MT fan in America, has assembled this collection with great care -- the sound throughout is great and suitably immense, no small feat for material that was originally created on cassette machines -- and housed it all in a stylish CD package. He has also taken the packaging concept one step beyond by fashioning large sandstone cases for the first 35 copies; each of these editions comes with the Maeror Tri name and logo etched on the front, along with the title, and the copy number stamped on the back. It's not exactly necessary, true, but it sure looks cool...

As for the material itself, it's all stellar -- long, epic dronefests of haunting beauty, sometimes accented by sonic violence ("Archaic Sensations"and "Cruor," for instance, both originally from the ARCHAIC STATES cassette), at other times remarkably gentle ("Take My Hope to Fertile Fields," one of the very few MT songs to employ acoustic guitars). Some of the best material on here, such as the aching "Solis Ortus," comes from obscure compilations. "Tartarus," with its repeated sounds and growing field o' drone, is another excellent compilation effort. All of it sits together well, which is surprising given the far-flung nature of the original recordings and the time gaps between the releases. Certainly a treat for drone-happy ears....

How amusing that even though Maeror Tri have been defunct for several years now ("replaced" by Troum, the unit formed from two of MT's original members), they are still issuing releases... maybe more, in fact, than they did when they were together. This is a limited edition (200 copies) reissue on CD of a release that originally appeared on cassette in 1992; Stefan Knappe appears to have brought this about himself, and i sincerely hope this is the beginning of a trend, because there are still plenty of the old cassette releases i don't have and they are damned hard to find (not to mention horribly expensive; MT is an expensive jones).

So what do you get for your hard-earned $$$ with this disc? Drone. Lots o' drone. Barrels of it. Drone by the bushel. Maeror Tri is still the reigning king of guitar drone, and this disc is no exception -- in fact, this is one of the better (and more ambient) ones. The basic direction of each song is largely the same -- great waves of guitar-generated drone like a vast panorama of sound, some augmented by noise, some not. A couple of the songs differ enough to prevent it from becoming deadening -- "Onoskelis" is buoyed by a haunting riff that climbs and descends over and over, endlessly, over a shifting bed of drone like the sound of cathedral pipes, and the droning sounds of "Nos Tel Venko" are broken and have a tendency to recede like the ocean tide, while unidentifiable noises reverberate unpredictably; this then gives way to organ-like tones floating over crashing waves of drone. "Lost in Glowing Dome" -- also decorated with occasional bursts of odd noises -- largely sounds like a drone machine populated by Gregorian monks. Repetitive mutant riffs appear again in "Arachnid," along with more drones along the lines of cathedral pipe organs. The ninth and final track, "Cippus," is almost a culmination of themes from previous songs, and also one of the most "soothing" tracks on the entire disc. As with a few other songs, it makes effective use of static buried in the background to create texture within the rising and falling waves of sound.

The overall feel of these nine songs is one of majestic isolation, perhaps like the haunting sound of a desert at night or a voyage through underground caverns. Track for track it's one of the most solid offerings from a band that, to my knowledge, has never released a bad album. The packaging is also beautiful and the sound is excellent. Highly, highly recommended (assuming you can find it).

Main -- HYDRA-CALM [Situation Two]

Once upon a time there was a semi-cranky guitarist named Robert Hampson, who ran a band called Loop that was heavily into dissonance and loudness and looped guitar figures (hence the name, eh?) and stuff like that. For a lark, he played on a couple of Godflesh albums and even toured with them. Then he got bored or something and when Loop disintegrated under mysterious circumstances (well, mysterious to ME, anyway), he started releasing goodies with another guy in the form of Main. Since leaving Godflesh, this has been his big project ever since. And here we have a CD compilation of Main's first two EPs, HYDRA and CALM, which is pretty damn suave. The material on here falls somewhere between PURE-era Godflesh minus the paranoid hate and EVANESCENCE-era Scorn minus the constant techno drums (there are drums here from time to time, but they aren't quite so PERSISTENT). The big draw here are the guitars -- looped, sampled, swirling, fuzzy, droning, like a river of sound that occasionally swirls into dissonant eddies and grottos. In other words, mondo stuff. Every now and then Robert actually opens his mouth and sings -- sounding very choral when he does, actually -- but it doesn't matter, because he's buried under all the guitars and there's no way to tell what the hell he's saying.

The HYDRA material is mostly dominated by bass and guitars, especially on "Suspension," nine-plus minutes of floaty droning punctuated by a numbing, repeated bass thud that starts up about halfway through the song. The CALM material is a bit more aggressive; "There Is Only Light" features a thunderous tribal drum stomp and a really HUGE bass sound, not to mention lots of squeaky, droning guitars. "Remain" is a bit quieter in that the drums are buried, but the bass throb is relentless, even if it is in the background. "Feed the Collapse" features a cranky-but-shimmering metallic riff and other weird noises and is pretty hypnotic. The sound on "Sever" fades in and out, like the tide.... an effect even more pronounced in the twenty-minute dronefest "Thirst." If you liked "Pure II" from Godflesh's PURE, then you'll like "Thirst" -- it's the same kind of ear-piercing harmonics, just a different frequency....

Main -- FIRMAMENT III [Beggars Banquet]

If life were more like the olde Grimm fairy tales, perhaps FIRMAMENT III should be the soundtrack. You know the kind.. One day our hero is busy goofing off when suddenly he (or she) is held captive by a band of ugly pirates on break from working the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. "We're rascals, scoundrels, villains and knaves..." The rest of the story is a jumble of plot twists and tense moments as our hero makes many escape attempts -- all of them futile. Until, of course... a bizarre turn of events occurs. During a freak storm at sea, the pirates are swallowed up by a giant sea anemone and all is right with the world again.

Initially, I must confess I wasn't too keen on the path Hampson has taken for this album. The transitions between events on the first track seem to be hastily spliced together, and not very well executed as compared to the long, slow-developing changes evidenced in previous works. Over time, however, this album has really grown on me. I've come to notice that many of the subtleties of the recording lie in the mechanism (ab)used for listening. The seemingly awkward transitions represent the difference between viewing a poster, designed to look best from afar, up close rather than at the intended distance.

The album starts out with some unmistakably Main beginnings, only for them to break suddenly, giving way to other developments. As the album continues, Hampson leads the listener down through processed field recordings ranging from banging metal pipes to underwater sloshing. On the other side of the journey is a stripped-down, new Main. Softer, minimal and perhaps a little bit restrained. In effect, Hampson examines smaller fragments of dark, guitar soundscapes utilizing a time-honored tradition of stretching them over a wide canvas and letting the results speak for themselves. Always listen in the dark. [yol]

Main -- Hz [Beggar's Banquet]

The mighty [yol] should really be doing this review, seeing as how he's the Main junkie around here... or least he WAS, but now he's got ME tangled up in this weird guitar frippery, dammit, so i guess i'm going to have to review the thing. God knows SOMEBODY has to... this is prime material....

For those of you who came in late in the third act (those lines at the popcorn stand can be murder, eh?), here's the story so far: Once upon a time, billions and billions of years ago (back in the eighties, in other words), there was a band called Loop who made tranced-out, dope-fiend space ritual type albums. Eventually they broke up, and their guitar ringleader, Robert Hampson, played in Godflesh for a while. Somewhere around this time he also began formed his own thing, Main. After a couple of initial stabs at this "new thing," during which Main released a couple of CDs that sound like Loop making the transition to something else, everything crystallized into the now-legendary "drumless space" bit. After a few more releases, they got ambitious last year and basically released a new CD-ep a month for six months in the "Hz" series: CORONA, TERMINUS, MASER, HALOFORM, KAON, and NEPER. Which brings us to the present, and the box-set of all six CD-eps. (There are actually two sets: one is a box designed to contain all of the original CD-eps in their original sleeves, and the other is a three-panel gatefold digipack with all the material on two CDs. Guess which one DEAD ANGEL got.)

That's the history... the EASY part. Now comes the more difficult task, which is... describing this stuff. Ummm... imagine Aube in an ambient mood and with a fascination for guitars and the picture becomes clearer (unless you've never heard Aube, of course). Main's sound has become increasingly watery, with lots of stuff floating around the minimal guitar riffs. Muted vocals, sounds like water running through underground pipes, stones rattling in cans, other stuff too arcane to classify... all of it is mixed in such a fashion that concepts like melody and technical playing become utterly irrelevant, with the emphasis falling squarely on the sound itself. Most of Main's material is heavily looped, albeit in such a fashion that it's really difficult to discern, with the occasional repetitive guitar figure serving mainly as a bridge between the more abstract weirdness.

The original CD-eps were each broken into parts, but since it all runs together and you can't tell where one part ends and the next begins without watching the timer on your CD player, it makes more sense to discuss these tracks in terms of the separate titles themselves. CORONA's dominant sound is that of running water (apparently, although not necessarily, since little in Main is what it actually seems), with looped bass riffs popping up periodically and guitars wavering in an out at will, sounding like a celestial choir or hovering UFOs. The guitar sounds on TERMINUS are a bit more munched-out, with some serious phaser action going on at the beginning and a swelling hum that grows to approximate a low-flying UFO before dropping out abruptly to be replaced by ping-pong noises... and so on. MASER revolves around various tinnitus-inducing sounds and more heavily- looped basslines, with sheet metal guitars buckling further down in the mix. HALOFORM is punctuated by clinking, clattering sounds and hollow bass thud; here, the odd trilling, clattering sounds are the primary fixture, along with guitar lines that swell and fade like violins in the middle section. On KAON, everything sounds like it's taking place in a wind tunnel, with radar-blip noises, odd honking, and more watery spaghetti guitar, sort of like Enrico Morricone on REALLY BAD acid. ("I yi yi! The orchestra, it is MELTING! And the squinting stranger, he is pointing his GUN at me! O no! All is lost!") The last in the series, NEPER, manages to combine most (if not all) of the elements of the previous outings and sounds really extraterrestrial, besides... like the Dark Gods twitching in their sleep as aliens send mysterious messages via morse code to their agents stationed at the bottom of the Marinas Trench.

Seriously cool stuff, unlike anything else happening out there... and at just $15 for the two-CD set, this is a staggering deal and a great introduction to the mysterious world of Main. As an added bonus, you can spend HOURS trying to decipher the cryptic artwork inside and never get anywhere! Great fun for the entire family!

Malchicks: BAD ACID COMEDY [Other River Music]

The album cover and title suggest a punk band at work, but as it turns out, appearances are quite often deceptive. What the band REALLY is, in fact, is something more along the lines of Soul Asylum (before they started stealing too liberally from Tom Petty), Replacements, and similar loud-pop bands, with a healthy harmony sensibility taken from the Beatles. In other words, the kind of stuff that SHOULD be getting played on the radio but doesn't because they're too busy playing icky processed radio-friendly junk. Unfortunately for the band, they're from Seattle and they are definitely not grunge, which is why you've never heard of them.

The songs themselves are basic rock and roll played by musicians who can actually play full chords, and after several years of hearing a lot of bands who apparently can't, it's kind of refreshing. It probably isn't fashionable, but from where I stand, that kind of works in its favor. And how can anyone with ears resist the harmony chorus of "Rain (Wait for the Sun)," a song that sounds like the Beatles on steroids? Or the catchy picking of "Killing Sun"? Or the jangly pop strum of "Only Speak"? And "Strawberry Glory" is brilliant for all the same reasons the Beatle's "Rain" is still great -- it's just an irresistible song with a great sound, plus it even manages to include the violin-like strains of an Ebow, what more can you want? Why this band probably has to live in a van while Mariah Carey rides around in a chauffered limo is utterly beyond me.

This is brilliant. Ten songs worth of pure melodic meat with no filler, from people who sound like real human beings instead of asinine "rock gods." If radio ever bothered to play stuff like this more often, they might even win me back. In the meantime, I await the next disc from these guys and hope they continue to stick around.

Todd the Black Metal Drummer wants everyone to be clear here: he really, deeply hated this album. It grated on him so badly that he was nearly compelled to tear it from the phonograph and break it into shining black spears of fossilized petroleum. Even now, months later, the mere mention of said listening experience is enough to cause him to break out sweating like a pig. Since i prefer the unholydeathdrummer to be filled with angst (it brings out the meanness in his playing, natch), this is not necessarily a bad thing. As for the album itself, i don't see what the problem is -- just because the songs are basically all just one thumpin' beat looped endlessly (or no beat at all) while efx boxes make whiny noises is nothing to sweat over....

So here's the poop. Mammal are from Dearborn, may or may not be Mr. Velocity Hopkins of 25 Suaves (are you worshipping them yet like i told you?) doing excruciating things with a beatbox and filth-encrusted noise boxes, and are apparently players in the "broken electronic" scene (and here i didn't even know there was one). Based on this, i'd certainly agree that broken is an appropriate word: Mammal's songs are beyond repetitive, which is all right by me but may well cause you to claw your eyeballs out (even i think they're a bit excessive in that regard, but i suspect they did it on purpose, which amuses me). I don't know if this is supposed to be a legitimate stab at a new, gloriously irritating form of audience alienation, or performance art, Suicide worship, or what, but i like the idea of captive audiences being forced to endure this for long stretches. I sense much riot potential here. I wonder if they have a fog machine? They appear to be obsessed with the stuff (eight out of ten songs have the word "fog" in the title), and it would make it that much harder to the audience to see them in order to throw bottles accurately, so if they don't have one already, i'd definitely recommend it. As for me, i think the spirit of power electronics is best invoked by bands who deliberately make themselves as unlistenable as possible, and in that regard, Mammal may well be champions. This is definitely a band that thrives on pure confrontational overkill; i can only imagine the riots that would ensue if you put them on the bill with Suicide and let them play four-hour shows to trapped audiences. The pandemonium is a pleasure to imagine, eh?...

Noise techno of a most grinding sort. Devotees of broken electronics and the thumping disco beat of your dreams, Mammal have apparently been terrorizing Dearborn (home of the mighty Gravitar) for a while, among other places. It's basically a devolved (and very repetitive) variant on homemade techno employing noise and deliberately ugly-sounding gadgets to make dance music for disturbed, neurotic robots. It has great potential as an annoyance device -- you set the needle down and immediately a grinding whine doodles up and down without end, like a rodent chewing on your inner ear, while the head mammal vamps with ugly soundbusters here and there. Imagine hip-hop's fascination with the DJ crossed with noise and taken to its inevitable and wildly reductionist conclusion. Right up there with Arab on Radar and maybe Yoko Ono for conceptual elan and pure verging-on-unlistenability. I think Mammal would be well-served to incorporate some variety into their beat-wiggle, but maybe that's the whole point of the thing -- repetition as a backdrop for noise freestylin' -- so what the hell do i know? I do know that at 13:27, "fog face" is more of a test of endurance than an actual song.... The rest of side one (this is an actual LP, boyz and girlz... you know, the big black round thing with a hole in it?) is a series of short noise bursts and cut-up chunks of sound, the last one ("fog tubes") being the most chaotic and steeped in exquisite hideousness.

Flip the LP (and a heavy one it is, too -- between this and the swell Multiplying Stealth Ninjas cover art, i'd say they take LPs seriously) and "body trick" gets down with superfast rumbling rhythms and hypnotic, near-tribal swoops of sound and grunting. There's some near-military beats happening at one point in "tube fog," along with screechy scratching noises and overly distorted tones from a variety of sources. The remaining songs on side two kind of run together for me -- a distorted collection of grinding, crunching noises doing battle with a robotic beat that comes and goes. Plenty of diseased sounds happening, and i suspect those hep to power electronics would find this dandy if it weren't for the soul-killing beat; conversely, dance thugs may find the walls o' sonic filth hamper their ability to get down in appropriate fashion. Not quite sure exactly where he's going to go with this bold vision -- he may end up painting himself into a corner early on, given the minimalist aspects of his sound and the abrasiveness of its confrontational nature -- but it will probably be entertaining to watch....

When SNSE tried to get this pressed as an LP, three mastering engineers supposedly refused to press it for fear of damaging their equipment with the album's "extreme sounds." I have no idea if this is actually true, but I can imagine how that would be so: there's some seriously grotesque tones happening in Mammal's jungle. Armed with fuzzboxes, a ring modulator, and a deviant mind, Mr. M. or TONB or whatever the hell he calls himself this week lays down beyond-primitive drum machine beats of epic minimalism, then rocks the groove. Forever. Endlessly. With much repetition. And lots of tortured, shrieking earhurt. Diabolical gadget-fu and a fiendish need to be the most willfully unlistenable sound source on earth result in an album actually worthy of the tedious "oh it's so unlistenable" poo that's sprung up over the years regarding Lou Reed's deal-breaker METAL MACHINE MUSIC (MMM isn't the world's most unlistenable album, it's just loud and boring, that's all).

Mammal is not for the weak. Harsh screeches, irritating glitch beats, freeform noise, and endless repetition make it tough going for the uninitiated. "Hide A Body" is particularly excruciating: rhythms borne from episodes of digital clipping, piercing monotone electrotones, and general pervasive hideousness are ground into raw electronic meat by the unhealthy distortion, so crude and deliberately overamped that you'll wonder if your speakers are damaged. Some of the grim power-electronics in "Double Nature" (itself a lengthy test of endurance) and "Skin Tricks" are reminiscent of early Ramleh or Skullflower; for that matter, the swell cover art wouldn't have been out of place on an early Skullflower album. "Anti-Cloud" is the one for me, though -- glitch rhythms and counterpoint rhythms, turning into staggered riffs / motifs, bursting into clouds of violent noise or static, churning in sick fashion like a crippled washing machine being sexually assaulted, all through what sounds like a bad shortwave transmission. If Merzbow and power-electronics are your mojo bag, but you're always wondering what happened to the beat, then you'd be wise to cast your ears toward the disturbed and reductionist ultraviolence that is the Mammal experience. Bring your earplugs.

Man Manly likes to play it close to the vest -- the cd-r artwork doesn't even list the tracks, much less the deviants responsible for this ... The poop sheet does tell me that they are a group, as opposed to a buff bodybuilder with efx pedals and a fondness for alliteration, but not what anybody actually does, so we'll just have to guess. What they main appear to do is compose and execute pieces laden with strange noises, efx, droning keyboards, and strange instruments. What it sounds like is rooding torment disguised as noise, sort of. On "Outer / Inner" they chain everything to the most primitive slo-mo beat they can find (provided by one keyboard note... well, it's one something....) and then let everybody roam free playing at will. Loosely structured, the song just drifts by, like a boat through a jungle chittering with wildlife and the occasional ping of the radar equipment. Judging from other tracks like "V Age" and "B lie ve" they prove to be seriously down with the drone (although some of that drone is provided with a lovely piano on the latter), and the soundbite about flying saucers that opens "Alien Alchemy" is pretty amusing (what follows is a spaced-out keyboard homage to Sun Ra, more or less). Bursts of noise and judicious percussion, high-pitched wailing noises, mad efx in echo -- these are the elements at work in "Dalinka," which eventually drags in the drone as the alien noises flit to and fro before vanishing abruptly. The disc ends with the cyclotron rhythm of "R tate on," a rhythm that is diddled with to endless amusement -- they EQ it, bury it in noise, pit noise rhythms against it, and let it go on like a drone machine, the repetitive whine growing higher and more insistent and buried in wailing noise, some of which becomes more evident when the cyclotron drops out completely. Strange, strange sounds abound here....

April March -- CHICK HABIT [Sympathy for the Record Industry]

I foolishly loaned this out before i actually did the review, so i can't elaborate on specific songs -- hell, they're all titled in French anyway except for "Chick Habit" and i can't read French so it doesn't really MATTER anyway -- so you'll just have to trust me that this is really cool and amusing stuff. Basically one woman singing in French (except for the title song, which is actually in English, with very funny lyrics) with a million session men behind her, this is proto-punked out retro-trash garage pop at it glorious best. Imagine a less snotty version of the Muffs with less emphasis on sheer revved-up volume and you're getting warm... but even that's not right. This is more about the sound of a forgotten era, when life was simpler and comic books only cost a dime and bobby sox were still in fashion (i think)... it's bouncy and fun and not terribly serious, just tremendously catchy. It's also, at 25 minutes, quite SHORT -- it does not wear out it's welcome! Bonus points for the fetching cover (in a decidedly retro graphic style) and the inclusion of a spooky li'l Little Miss No-Name Doll on the back....

April March -- PARIS IN APRIL [Sympathy for the Record Industry]

Well now, i'm feeling mildly ripped off here. Imagine my excitement when i found this "new" CD from slinky French garage-rock chanteuse April March; but when i got home to play it, i discovered that a) about half of it is nothing but the same tracks from her earlier release CHICK HABIT and b) the new tracks are not always exactly brilliant. Ah, i am crushed... well, not really, since there are some truly swell offerings among the new material, such as the loopy "Poor Lola" and the get-up-and-gogo thrills of "Brainwash Part II." And for a nice change of pace, the suave sing-song thrills of "The Land of Go" is more than sufficient for kicking back with a martini and a smoke. Still, the whole business of filling up a CD with previously released material, a few new songs, and THEN French versions (or is it English versions?) of those new songs is... uh... um... well, it's not the best bang for your buck. Recommended mainly for the hopelessly smitten (have i mentioned that on the cover April looks an awful lot like the skinnier sister of porn starlet Fawn Miller?) and those who don't already have CHICK HABIT. Maybe the NEXT one will be all-new stuff, eh? Maybe.

April March and Los Cincos -- s/t [Sympathy for the Record Industry]

Whoa! Where has mah Little Betty Boop of the Garage Set gone? Mama's got a brand new bag, all right.... This is still vaguely related to the usual trashy garage rock April March is usually associated with, but now it's more like the garage band wants to be the new Velvet Underground (or maybe the resurrection of Galaxie 500 on a budget). Lots of middling tempos, organs, droney sounds, and big-chorus vox. "Olive Green Dictionary" has a really cool ping-pong oscillation thing going on, and the ending is this incredibly swank monochromatic space drone straight out of some far-flung space opera. By the time they've also plowed through (slowly, mind you) "Last Train to Christmaas" and "The Moon is Blue," it becomes obvious what this is: a space-rock Christmas album about eight months early. Uh... okay. I... i can hang with that. Sure. Really. I'm with the program....

Some of the tracks here do have a high pop content, though, such as "Some Things Just Stick in Your Mind," probably the closest thing to a conventional garage song here (luv the trashy-sounding drums, mon). And "Bebert" sounds like -- i swear -- a deranged, Moog-infested version of "Jingle Bells" or something. Am i just imagining this Christmas connection or was this album delayed or what? Hell, even the cover features snow- covered hills and houses, so i can hardly be BLAMED for thinking about these things, all right?

Los Cincos, incidentally, is apparently a conglomeration of various indie scenesters from half a dozen bands, the only one of whom i actually recognize being Petra Haden of This Dog. (Her sister Tanya also appears, along with James Hey, Bennett Rogers, and the intriguingly-named Space Honky.) I don't know if they get together in similar fashion on a regular basis or if this is just a one-off, but it certainly works for me. Most hep. I approve. (Of course, April March can do no wrong as far i'm concerned, so i'm hardly the shining beacon of objectivity here, eh?)

April March/Makers -- APRIL MARCH SINGS ALONG WITH THE MAKERS [SFTRI]

Talk about inspired matches: In one corner we have April March, the bouncy, squeaky-voiced faux-French ingenue; in the other, we have the Makers, a grotty garage band of some vintage. Put the two together and you have nine jumpin' garage tunes with hysterical yelping and lots of crazed surf-guitar lunacy (especially on "I Just Might Crack"). If Betty Boop had been the lead singer for a garage band, it would sound like this. In fine garage tradition, none of the songs exceed two minutes in length, which keeps everything sharp and to the point. (Unfortunately, it also keeps the album length down to about eighteen minutes, which really kind of pisses me off since Sympathy's arrogantly asking full price for the fucker.)

Amid great rockers like "Try to Cry," "Explosion," and "Bust Out," there are a couple of cool tearjerkers that are not quite so dependent on velocity, like "Sometimes Sometimes" and "Sad Little Bug" (with bass organ! almost like a warped garage answer to Helium!). But for the most part, it's a raveup, as evidenced by goofy rants like "Explosion" and the almost-but- not-quite laid-back swing of "Let Him Try." Tremendously cool all the way around; there just should have been more of it, dammit....

Bonus points for silly pictures, ridiculous liner notes, and the dialogue preceding "Bust Out," in which one of the Makers attempts to talk April into taking off her shirt while employing an unspeakably bad French accent. Plus that's a really stylish jacket April's modeling on the cover. Get the vinyl, it'll be more "authentic" and cheaper besides.

Yah, i know... say Minneapolis and everybody thinks Prince 'n Husker Du, Soul Asylum, le punk shouting, that whole thing. But Minneapolis has other things to recommend as well, including (surprise, surprise) experimental music... like the avant percussion weirdness of Marginalized and Whoopsy (actually two drum corps dudes bangin' on shit, dig?), which demonstrates both a really perverse, distinctly midwestern sense of humor and a stiff set o' chops. They may be goofy idjits -- given my persistent state of geek godhead i'm hardly the one to tell you one way or the other -- but they got their nuts 'n bolts (but mainly the nuts, heeyack! heeyack!) all shined up right nice and stuff. (They know it, too, which is why one song is called "tight" and another is called "tight as hell." Which doesn't explain why other stuff has titles like "Grow a chicken ear," but hey, they're sensitive artists, so who knows what those crazy kids mean, right?) Going by the pix inside the artwork, i have to say they definitely look like the kind of guys who would record a song called "Trumpets filled carefully might obliterate this gigantic mind." (It's the cigar that clinches it, natch.) Their fi is a tad on the low side from time to time (mainly during the spoken-word pieces like "Little Debbie") but mostly pretty hep -- hep enough for me, anyway -- and they have an interesting thing going on, a certain perspective to their mojo... i approve of this madness. I am greatly intrigued. I find their fashion tastes mildly suspect, but their taste in tones beyond flawless. These men rock, more so than you do. You must listen. YOU WILL LISTEN! And no, i don't know what the fuck is up with the Tom thing. Ask them, maybe they'll even tell you. But probably not.

The bad news first: Gwen Mars are sounding more and more like they've been listening to too many songs by the Smashing Pumpkins. Throw in Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and slick "I wanna be Alternative" production, and you've got another release that's attempting to go to the top of those fickle college charts. The good news (or more bad news, depending on how you look at it) is that Gwen Mars do it well. They are tight, and dynamic, shifting and spacy and rocking and rolling like a mercury waterfall. After hearing their T-Rex touched single, I was actually surprised that they seem to be moving straight into the heart of hipness with this CD. I almost want to say that I've heard it all before, but I can't quite get to that point, because Gwen Mars have a voice that can't be ignored. I think it's the darkness of it that appeals to me. A darkness that rumbles and rides underneath your skin. Probably some of my too cool to be cool friends would laugh in my face for liking this band, but that's fine. I can take it. I'm a sucker for melodic shadows and guitar sliced sorrows. [mf]

Martyr Colony/Scream Bloody Murder -- split cassette

One side is "Frontal Attack" by Martyr Colony; the other is "Big Strong Man" by Scream Bloody Murder. Both fall pretty much into the genre of industrial hate-rock, with plenty of percolating synths, hard percussion, ominous samples, and big, big beats. Hard disco for the death generation, if you will... very cold, very cool....

"Frontal Attack" starts off sounding almost like the beginning of a really horrible Simple Minds song I can't stand (my personal problem, not their fault), but then a sampled woman comes in and saves the day, after which the drums kick in and everything starts getting about as far removed from the Simple Minds as possible. (This is a good thing.) There's a lot going on here -- drums that sound like someone beating the shit out an oil drum, scrunched synth noises, samples, DJ scratching, and mean, mean vocals from a man who sounds he was recruited from a homeless shelter. Good for dancing or committing acts of assault (or preferably both).

"Big Strong Man" is essentially more of the same; the big difference here is a vocalist with a different sound, plus a female vocalist too, which is still fairly rare for the industrial genre (sadly enough). He sings the verses, they both sing the chorus, while samples about sexual assault and violence underscore the sarcasm of the refrain "big strong/ big strong man/ i really need/ a big strong man." Like Martyr Colony, this is a band with an already strongly-developed style and a tough, confident approach to song construction. Pretty happening, in other words. I can't dance worth a fuck, but this split single might get even me to venture out on the floor....

Masonna -- MADEMOISELLE ANNE SANGLANTE (OU NOTRE NYMPHOMANIE AUREOLE) (Alchemy Records)

The first full-length release from noise god Yamazaki Maso (or at least the first full-length one more or less readily available over here) is the heartwarming saga of a boy and his fuzzbox... and fuzzbox... and fuzzbox. Plus lots of other scary gadgets and a lot of screaming. The album proudly proclaims to contain 30 bonus tracks, which is true -- there are 31 songs here, all short bursts of kamikaze noise with the occasional second or two of vaguely-human tunefulness, and with the exception of the title track, they appear to be without titles. Masonna's style is pretty simple: He screams into a microphone, then processes the sound through a amazing stack of analog fuzzes and other gadgets, occasionally adding some totally devolved form of instrumentation for background effect, until the sound emerges from the stack of Marshalls as just an apocalyptic roar of pure white noise. Don't be fooled into thinking this is merely tuneless farting around, though; there's a powerful sense of structure buried under all the noise, not to mention some truly paralyzing sounds and tones.

The title track, by the way, is two seconds long... quite possibly the only track outside of a Napalm Death album whose title takes longer to repeat than the song itself. Total scream-inducing noisy godhead. Buy this or be hopelessly lame.

The poop sheet claims they're influenced mainly by the likes of Mr. Bungle, Dillinger Escape Plan, and Fantomas, bands with which I'm only marginally familiar, but that's okay -- they sound like a lot of other things, too. While they are definitely well in math-rock territory, they also have plenty in common with Frank Zappa, Painkiller, Melvins, Slayer, and a whole pile of other wildly contradictory things. Where they break ranks with most of the other mathematically-inclined bands of late is in the inclusion of a sax player; beyond that, the aforementioned references give you a good idea of what to expect: Lots of frantic everything, propelled by the pummeling drums of Tyler Cox (currently doing double-duty in Totimoshi as well). They have a severe fondness for the abrupt stop 'n start thing (especially on "trapped under a ice"), but this is frequently simply to provide a backdrop for the sax bleating -- and when they decide to drop the no-wave freejazz hijinks and rock out, they abruptly turn into something closer to Helmet with actual talent, or maybe Slayer circa SOUTH OF HEAVEN. Most of the time their riffing is too fast and their song structures too genuinely perverted to make heads or tails of it upon initial contact, and it just barrels over you like a psychotic tossing furniture down a flight of stairs, but when they slow down a bit (as on the first part of "major strip"), their riffs are revealed to be deeply fucked-up and cryptic. (Of course, then they're back to racing down the freeway, moving their hands way too fast to figure out what the hell they're doing, which is the whole point, right?) There are some nifty shrill guitar sounds happening on "treadmill of suffering," along with a madly percolating bass that sounds much like Joy Division on 78 rpm. They actually approximate (sort of) a groove at times on "we enslaved elves to build our death machine" in between blasts of machine-gun drumming, but it is only an illusion, o flower child -- then they're off into hyperjazz land, thumping out devolved beats as the sax player and guitar player trade off ridiculous fast and complicated lines until your head starts to spin. The final audio track, "marca dos invernos," keeps shifting the rhythm and allowing moments for the sax to dominate with lines reminiscent of something from a Blue Note recording -- then the bottom falls out and they lurch madly across the floor with fat-ass riff death and tubbed-out bass before going back to the sax trilling. Matt Waters alternates between sax and vox, but spends far more time blowing than howling, with the result that the album borders on being an instrumental one. Highly complex, aggressive stuff that's all over the place and played with ridiculous dexterity. The disc also comes with a video for "... death machine" (recorded live). Definitely worth checking out if you like listening to the sound of metal guys hyped up on way too many stimulants after rooting around in the no-wave and freejazz collections.

Master Slave Relationship -- MY STATE OF EVIL DREAMS [Staalplaat]

This is a compilation of 15 tracks culled from previous MSR releases; as such, it doesn't really have the kind of unity and continuity one would expect from a "regular" album. Nevertheless, it has much of interest to offer, and gives a good overview of where MSR has been and where it's going. Most of the music is either beat-heavy, dance-oriented tracks dominated by keyboards and drums, or else eerie drone-dirges accented by various forms of noise. "Get Carried Away," the first track, is one of the more danceable ones, with eerie droning thrown in for good measure. "The heaviest" is similar but noisier, with vocals that border on sheer ranting. "Embracing power" is more laid-back (sort of), with wailing vocals that give it an eerie heft, and "Throwing it to the wind" makes effective use of an erratic, loping drum part that leads into more ambient electronics. "sex war" would actually be catchy, if it didn't keep dissolving into chattering, incomprehensible vocals and harsh electronoises; even then it's one of the more compelling tracks on the album. "Ground Zero" relies on a twisted noise riff (keyboards? guitar? who can tell?) and explicit lyrics to get its point across, while "Passage away from difficulty" is a slithering noisefest of weird tones and harsh, confrontational lyrics. "My evil state of dreams" is a long, often blunt soliloquy of burnt-out love, lust, hate, fear, and loathing, all set to an eerie organ drone; the closing cut "Swan song" is a pounding rhythm beast augmented by a noisy, wailing sea of effects in the background. Not always easy to listen to, but well worth the effort.

Master/Slave Relationship -- MUSIC FOR A SADOMASOCHISTIC SCENE [Daft]

A while back ago, M/SR master Deborah Jaffe released an interactive CD-ROM (SMUT PICTURE RACKET) compiling M/SR lyrics, art, musings, pictures, and other related material concerning the state of her dominant leanings. The CD-ROM is designed so that while the user is between areas, waiting at the menus, chilly ambient music plays so the experience isn't quite so static. Most, if not all, of that background music came from this disc. The music here was originally worked up for background atmosphere during S&M workouts (if that's the right word); divided into nine parts (I-IX), it is indeed background music. The sounds are almost entirely synth-generated, with crackling noises rising all falling periodically, occasionally moving into a cathedral pipe-organ feel, and the nine separate pieces are largely indistinguishable (not surprising, since they were designed to be unobtrusive). As you might expect, this works best when played in the background while doing something else. An interesting diversion from M/SR's usual sample-heavy electrodance terrorism... and the booklet enclosed is, um, extremely INTERESTING (not to mention painful-looking and really graphic). I'll bet this gets confiscated a lot when crossing Customs....

What a shame -- you see this record everywhere, most places are begging you to take it, it seems like it's always getting the price slashed. Why isn't everyone biting? Is it because noise fans don't like the idea of acoustic stringed instruments making their din? Or is it just fear of trying out something different with no legitimate ties to the noise industry? Either way, wait no longer... this is a long and rewarding piece of 7" plastic.

Side one sounds like nothing so much as old-skool power electronics, with only the first minute of the work even having any sounds that resemble a violin. After that, the scrapes and whines are treated, looped, re-treated, and layered HEAVILY... there is a lot going on here... until we find ourselves in some very rhythmic and relentless slashing and screeing. Side two follows the trend of many noise 7"s coming out now and closes us off with a very resonant, deep, nearly motionless drone that REALLY doesn't sound like an acoustic instrument. Much heavier ont he hissy analogue crackle than I would have expected from someone who to this point seemed to work entirely in a digital domain. Unquestionably recommended. [cms]

TG: Hey, that was a short one. He must be starting to take lessons from that Ayad dude....

C12: Speaking of which, we have a couple of reviews of his here, for one of the new Melvins releases and the latest offering from Milligram. Shall we subvert them into our own freewheeling style?

TG (looking at him like he's mad): Are you insane? He's a wildman and he's really fucking tall. Plus he's Canadian. The only people crazier than Canadians are Texans and we already have one of them in the well --

TMU (voice floats up): And when i get out of here i'm going to handcuff you to a bed and sodomize you! I'm going to let the Student Enema Nurses on the Fifth Level use you for a test case! I'm gonna hang tire tools from your eyelids! I'll impale you with Chinese chopsticks! And then I may decide to get unpleasant!

TG: -- so there's absolutely no way I need a crazed metal Canadian coming down here to kick my ass for fucking with his review, okay? Run with it, nelly boy... run like the wind....

Mauve Sideshow -- BLOOD WILL TELL [Ventricle 7]

This arrived with absolutely no info whatsoever, in a really cryptic CD package, and that's too bad, because i really wish i knew how to get in touch with these guys (Treva and Dusty, whoever they might be), because this is pretty fucking brilliant. Using only vox, Mellotron, and sound collages, they construct eerie, desolate soundscapes that fall somewhere in the ballpark of the more ambient meanderings of Main, Null, and the sadly unheralded Pleasure Center. (For all i know they once WERE in Pleasure Center; the one lone PC CD i know of was put out by a Seattle label, if i remember correctly....) At any rate, the songs -- with titles like "Dust," "Crumbling Stairs," "Smokescreen," "Last Thought," etc., etc., -- are all haunting, brooding washes of sound occasionally punctuated by eerie and disembodied vox, weird flanged-out efx, and other peculiar sound oddities. Apparently the band's motto is "be prepared to expect the unexpected"....

The packaging is a bit interesting -- the "insert" is actually a cyan- only photo of a woman's face (one of the band members?) plus three transparent mauve overlays -- two of trees, one of the same face moved over a bit, with the result that you can diddle with the order and rotation of the overlays to form your own mysterious picture.

This is the mysterious, cryptic, obscure find o' the issue. If you see it, snag it IMMEDIATELY. This is an immensely cool work of art. Shame nobody has ever heard of them while bands like [lawyers sweat extracting reams of libelous bile] trumpet the Seattle connection while perpetuating vast platters o' worthless spooge. Stuff like THIS is the real heart of Seattle, not vapid hair-farming, needle-packing quasi-metal bands....

Tris McCall -- THE BROKEN LOOM [Ohio Records]

This is definitely an anomaly around the DEAD ANGEL offices -- an earnest, simple, acoustic folk (!) album from the lead singer of The Favorite Color. But DEAD ANGEL worships John Prine and still has the balls to think that Don McLean is still cool, so it should come as no surprise this is one of DEAD ANGEL's favorite albums in quite a while. It's hard to believe songs of this quality can spring from such a young (24 years) "standard issue boy," but the proof is there on disc, song after song -- "hands like cool water," "the festival soul," "the fifth beatle," "rock and roll," and all the others hit with quiet authority and a realness that's sorely lacking in much of the pumped-up, testosterone-laden shriek currently fashionable at the moment. (I mean, really -- i like Soundgarden as much as the next guy, but don't you think the whole "i'm really bummed out even though i'm makin' money and don't have a 9 to 5 job anymore so i'm gonna scream about it for a while now" is getting kind of old? And they at least have TALENT, which is more than i can say for Bush or Stone Temple Penii, so... but i'm digressing....)

The concerns addressed on the album are consistent with what you'd expect from someone McCall's age -- relationships dissolving, people selling their souls to the corporate machine, the whole generation X question, whether rock and roll means anything anymore -- but they're voiced with an articulate authority that's startling, especially in an era when monosyllabic lyricism is all the rage. (For more insight into the nature of McCall's highly articulate observations, check out the interview in this issue). The high points would have to be "the fifth beatle," a cautionary tale of someone changing overnight and shedding all pretense of individuality just to become a cog in the bland faceless mass that passes for society, and "clock on the mantlepiece, ashes from the stars," which covers, ah, just about everything. (It's mostly about the passage of time and our place in the cosmos, if you really want to know.) The other songs are every bit as captivating, sometimes even mesmerizing, while maintaining a simple, unassuming charm throughout the disc. McCall makes no false moves here, and the overall result is riveting.

I have no idea if McCall and his band The Favorite Color will be successful -- it's a mean world out there and this is not a culture founded on quality, alas -- but if he isn't, it certainly won't be through any misstep on his part. And when people whine "why isn't there any good music these days?," it will be their own fault for having passed up on this one. Catch it if you can.

I have to state upfront that i am terribly biased: Tris McCall is a fine, intelligent man and musician whom i like immensely, and inclined to say nice things about him because i'm consistently impressed by his passion for what he does and the grace with which he does it. Fortunately he makes it easy for me to say nice things about him by releasing swell albums, of which this is the latest. He reminds me a great deal of Jonathan Richman -- not necessarily in terms of his sound (although i have little doubt that he's influenced by Richman), but in his frank and wide-eyed way of looking at things and his rock-solid belief that, why yes, music does matter.

Plus he writes really good songs.

This is a fine album, and considerably less "homegrown" than some of his previous efforts; Scott Miller (of The Loud Family, i think) produced the disc (except for three songs produced by Tris himself) and his production works well here, like a destined meeting of like minds. The disc is subtitled "Jersey Songs by Tris McCall," and that's exactly what it is -- a series of songs based on life in Hudson County, where Tris apparently lives, and New Jersey in general. If this sounds suspiciously like something Bruce Springsteen might have conceived, well, i'm sure that's intentional... but i suspect the intention here is to scale the Boss' bombast down to something more manageable and human, an effort at which Tris succeeds splendidly. (Incidentally, the insert comes with a nfity "Hudson County Glossary" that demystifies all the Jersey references for people like me). This is Jersey as witnessed by Jonathan Richman on a street corner rather than Springsteen from the back of a tour bus. I don't necessarily get all the specific references, but i get the feel of Jersey life and human interaction just fine, and i suspect that's the entire point in the first place.

As for the songs themselves, they are excellent and wildly varied -- Tris McCall is a hard guy to pin down. His preferred idiom is pop, but his views on what, exactly, constitutes "pop" are pretty expansive. My favorite parts of the album are the hook-riddled examples of working-class pop/rock like "Janie Abstract," "Lite Radio in My Kryptonite," and "I Can't Get Up Out Of My Chair," but songs like the hypnotic "LOL" -- sounding almost like a loop of Joe Jackson over which Tris sings -- are just fine too. And Tris is the only person i can think of who could make a really memorable and listenable song about a state highway department ("The New Jersey Department of Public Works") -- shades of Jonathan Richman and his driving/highway songs.... Beyond the overall barometer of excellence and listenability of the album as a whole, at least three songs on here are absolutely brilliant and would be all over the radio in a better world: "Mad About Us," "Dear Governor Kean," and "Hung By A Jury Of My Peers." Mondo catchy, supremely intelligent, and in the case of "Dear Governor Kean" highly original (how many times have you ever heard a toe-tappin' pop song about a state governor with a chorus referencing legislation?), these are the kind of songs most pop songwriters wish they could write once or twice in a career, and here Tris has three of them in one place. And even scarier, about half the album is awfully close to this same barometer of quality and the rest of the album is still head and shoulders above anything being played to death on the radio these days.

Tragically, this album is probably not easy to find -- it was self-released (by inclination or because your average label these days isn't bright enough to pick it up, i don't know) and is probably widely available only in the Hudson County area of New Jersey. Fortunately, Tris McCall has a web site (see the EPHEMERA listing) and i'll bet you can order it directly from him there, after reading through the entertaining tidbits of info up there....

Tris McCall -- STRAW MAN SPECIAL ep [Better Music]

Those of you with long memories may remember reading about earlier albums by Tris (THE BROKEN LOOM) and the Favorite Color (THE COLOR OUT OF SPACE), the band for which he plays guitar and sings when he's not making solo recordings, in earlier issues of DEAD ANGEL. Well, Tris is still around -- the record business has not manged to kill him off yet -- and still recording swank, low-key, queasily personal tunes. Like the tunes on this cassette, for instance, which are way better than anything REM's cranked out lately. (I wonder if anyone has offered Tris multimillion dollar deals yet. Better yet, i wonder if any of the brilliant schmoes at Warner Bros. who squandered gazillions to sign REM at the apparent beginning of their decline and fall are still employed.) Tragically, since it is apparently being marketed only on cassette, it will probably sink into undeserved oblivion while fat rock stars continue to rake in the bucks with more mediocre albums... which is too bad, because Tris McCall deserves better than what the maggots who run the big machine of the music biz are inevitably going to offer him.

It's interesting to notice that this is a more straightforward pop affair than his previous solo album -- where he mainly raged in passionate fashion with just a voice and an acoustic guitar. Here, with assistance from guitarist David Schreiber, he builds actual pop songs with multiple instruments (acoustic and electric guitars, drums, synth, and spiffy oogahs courtesy of Wurlitzer and Hammond Organs) and simple but traditionally pop-styled arrangements. The results are low-key but pleasing. Part of his success, is a combination of knowing how to quit when he's ahead (ie., he doesn't pile it on) and staying away from grandiose, overblown Statements of any kind. It's just a guy (well, two guys, i guess) with some gadgets making music, mon.... Of the five tracks here, the one i like best is "not just anyone," which opens with an ominous, springy bassline and is gradually rounded out by spare guitar shavings and background organ fills. It constantly sounds like it's about to kick into a higher gear but never does... i like that. The bass on "lol" is supposedly reminiscent of Bill Laswell, although i don't hear it -- but the song is nifty enough, with jumpy organ flourishes and a simple but effective guitar riff carried throughout most of the song... and the solo (a solo!) is most hep, sounding like slowed-down surf guitar. "I didn't want to tell you" opens sounding weirdly like a demented take on old-school rockabilly with a Bo Diddley beat. Buried in with the organ fills are two guitar loops -- one of goofy blues cliches, the other of equally goofy psych cliches. The inclusion of the loops is deliberate and amusing. The Diddley beats crop up again in "dear elizabeth," apparently a kiss-off song (it's hard to tell since i'm never terribly good at deciphering lyrics without a sheet). Rattling, twangy guitar and a relentless beat, along with inspired droning organ "solo" bits make it an excellent way to close out the EP.

If the above sounds vague, it's because Tris' music depends less on obvious, quoteworthy antics (attitude, breaking bottles over peoples heads, funny hair, uberfuzz guitar wank, etc.) than on the simple (deceptively so) process of putting together musical pieces that actually work. Probably the best thing i can say about this is that while Tris is that while there's nothing weird or freaky or deranged about what he does, i'd much rather listen to this than anything by the likes of Korn or Puff Daddy or any of the other spoo currently clogging up the BILLBOARD top ten. (And i'd certainly rather hear this than the new Hole album. Eek!) This cassette may be hard to find (drop down to EPHEMERA for an address), but it's very much worth your trouble to do so.

Tris returns with a full-on electro-rock album and some of his catchiest material yet. Working with a wide cast of musicians (among them the Braun brothers, both of the Negatones), this is a concept album of sorts, subtitled "Ten Musical Impressions of Hudson County, New Jersey," what he describes in the liner notes as "the culmination of a three-year joyride through the inide rock subcultures of North Jersey and Williamsburg." There's a heavy electronic pulse running through things, not to mention piles of fuzzed-out poptone guitars, and a jazzed-up lounge feel to some tracks like "go back to west new york." Songs like "the night bus" and "machines to make you feel good" are dancefloor pop lifted from the era when Human League were still kings, pumped up with energetic fuzz guitar and hypnotic synth rhythms. The best song on the album, sounding like an early and rambling John Prine tune leavened with droning synths, is "another public service announcement," in which he laments the way the city's inhabitants don't have any respect for the neighborhood, and what he'd like to do about it. Fans of McCall's earlier work may be initially be put off by his sudden desire to rock out with a full band, but repeated listening demonstrates how good that decision sounds. Lyrically he's never been in finer form, and this is one of the most accessible things he's ever done, so if you can find it, scoop it up....

Charles McClure -- [demo]

This threw me for a loop. I was never sure what to make of it from the packaging -- he bills himself as "Charles McClure, singer, songwriter," includes press material about inspiring tales of being selected as lead tenor in his fourth grade choir class, and so forth. He does everything himself, apparently -- the music, the promotion, the packaging design (which, while somewhat garish, is pretty well-done for a home job) -- in pure DIY-fashion... except this guy is hardly working in the punk ethic; in fact, judging from the photo of him on the cassette cover, i'd say he's older than i am! It just... doesn't ADD UP....

And then i threw the tape on and spent the next ten minutes hunting for my lower jaw. (I found it over by Shrine to Mineko; predictable li'l devil.) I don't know what i expected -- some lonesome picker with a cheesy drum machine, whatever -- but what i got was something that sounds like outtakes from Sun-era Elvis, Marty Robbins, and maybe Hank Williams (the dead one, not his grinning idiot yokel son with the damn goofy hats). And maybe a bit o' Bob Wills thrown in for good measure. I swear, he sings just like Marty Robbins on "All Because of You." If someone threw these tapes on an old- time Nashville country compilation, not only would no one blink, he'd likely be hailed as an overlooked genius.

A couple of the other songs, like "Security" and "My Personality," sound a touch more "modern," but not by much. "Left or Right" and "My Little Sugar," while not quite as stunning as the earlier material (must be why he put 'em last, natch), are still pretty intriguing for that long-ago sound. I just wish the sound were a little better (although since i'm sure he recorded all of this himself in full swing-band accompaniment on a cheesy four-track, it sounds a hell of a lot better than it has any right to sound); it would be interesting to hear this man after recording in a real studio. An interesting and unexpectedly enjoyable tape.

Brian McMahon -- AN INCH EQUALS A THOUSAND MILES [Crab Pot Records]

I think it's really fascinating that McMahon has taken this direction with his most recent work, churning out stuff that walks a fine line between restrained electric folk and the whole Lou Reed school of literate confessionalism. McMahon, in case you don't remember (or never knew in the first place), was a member of the notorious Electric Eels, contemporaries of Pere Ubu mostly known for shambolic live shows, confrontational music, and lurid titles (including what may be the best album title of all time, GOD SAYS FUCK YOU). So it's curious that he's turned into Chicago's answer to Lou Reed (no more obvious than on the album's first track, "If I Lived Here," a morose tale of a man who thinks his life would be so much better if it were completely different). Then again, given that Lou Reed went from the peculiar dissonance of the Velvet Underground into the street-poet gig, maybe it's not suprising after all. Of course, there are Eels-like touches all over the album -- he still has a fondness for odd noises and uneasy rhythms, demonstrated most aptly on the instrumental "From the Sea Beneath Her Arc." He also favors his sound loose and raw-boned; i'm having a hard time imagining, after hearing the errant squeaks and loose strumming in "Crowded Haus," that he's big on multiple takes. His sound is pretty firmly rooted in the punk tradition (although not the Green Day/Offspring axis, or even the more traditional hardcore; he still has more in common with Pere Ubu and the indie art-rock crowd of the late 70s than with any of the harsher, heavier types), albeit in a low-key fashion; the arrangements are all relatively simple, sparse, and spruced up by direct and to the point lyrics about alienation, self-doubt, and dogs who dine alfresco (?!?). In fact, the only real "rock" moment on the first side of the LP occurs in "Afraid to Change," when he breaks out into an actual guitar solo... but it's real short. McMahon would rather insinuate his way into your subconscious than beat you over the head with fuzzchords. (This may be why he's still making records when most of his contemporaries are not working as auto mechanics.)

On the flip side, he turns up the energy a bit, beginning with "Fly for Fun," which is actually sort of reminiscent of some of Pere Ubu's more accessible moments and includes some really swell guitar that twists and turns around the rhythm section. "Claire" is almost a country-folk song, or would be if it weren't for the shrill guitar feedback occasionally bursting through the background. And do i hear a Beatles influence in there? I believe i do.... The real excitement, though, is on the title track, which has a serious beat and shuffle rhythm and scratchy guitars jumping all around, like the Stones (back when they were still any good) minus all the goofy bullshit. (In fact, the Stones would probably be doing themselves a huge favor if they covered this.) The album ends with a couple of low-key, neo-folk songs -- "Men Who Write of You" and "Axis" -- that essentially dish out the sentiment that even though the world is weird and things don't always go as planned, it's still going to all work out. (At least i think that's what they mean. The former song's lyrics are so opaque that i haven't quite figured them out yet.) One of the real pleasures of this record, actually, outside of the straightforward playing and odd-but-right embellishments (unexpected noises, cello on the last track, other instruments as needed), is the potent combination of McMahon's arrangement sensibilities (there are at least twelve additional musicians on here, although you'd never guess from merely listening to the record, since the songs are sparse and contain just what's needed and nothing else) and his thoughtful lyrics, which are a godsend after the last few years of hearing an endless stream of pithy declarations and incoherent rhyming, which is apparently what passes for lyrics from most bands these days. (Must be why so many bands have given up the ghost and just gone instrumental, eh?) Most of all, it's good to see that someone from the first wave of punk is still around and still making music worth hearing. More albums should be this intelligent.

Since leaving the Electric Eels (a band that deserves to be remembered, if for nothing else, for the immortal album title GOD SAYS FUCK YOU), guitarist/singer Brian McMahon has been inching ever-closer to actual pop with each new solo release. This EP finds him nibbling on the leaves while hiding in the hedges outside the pop palace gates, waiting for the gates to open so he can sneak open. For a guy who's pedigree is mainly in artpunk, he sounds an awful lot like the Beatles during their most experimental phase here -- hell, "Fire Brigade" could be an outtake from the WHITE ALBUM. Basically a Beatlesque pop tune with biting lyrics ("Weak fall to the strong then / the rich tell the poor that they must move...."), its structure is completely transformed by extremely eccentric instrumentation (courtesy of McMahon's guitar synth and backing from the Kitchen Ants). In fact, eccentric flourishes are kind of McMahon's specialty, at least on this EP. He's always favored a bare-bones approach to songwriting followed by lots of noisy/avant garnishing, but here he hones it to a science. This is pop without the blandout radio formula sheen, and in a just world the utterly crazed and exhilirating "Yeah" would be one of the biggest singles of the year and all over the radio. "Leave Before Tears," a moderately more straightforward pop song, is kind of a throwback to the eighties new wave, and a most listenable throwback at that. "The Bishop, White" is a bit more cryptic (not to mention short), filled with more strategically placed squeaks and blips, and comes across a bit like the ending of ABBEY ROAD, which may well have been intentional. Seeing as how McMahon gets sharper and more confident with each new outing, his next one should definitely be something worth waiting for....

Brian McMahon -- 17 VOLTS [Crabpot Records]

It's momentarily disconcerting to hear a former member of the snarling punk legends Electric Eels sounding an awful lot like Mark Knofler (!) backed by Dylan's band circa JOHN WESLEY HARDING, but once you get used to it, this is a more than enjoyable record. Electric Eels fans who expect slashing punk hatred here will be mighty disappointed, though. This is a lot closer (and i mean a LOT) to old-school Dylan than punk by a long shot. Hard to believe this guy once participated in the making of an album charmingly entitled GOD SAYS FUCK YOU, heh. This outing is nowhere near as caustic. "Wonder of the World" opens in pure Dylan throwback mode (dig that really PIERCING harmonica, mon). Then "NYDNY" (short for "New York Don't Need You") warps forward to the eighties sounding -- in a deranged way -- like Dylan covering the Romantics' big (and only) hit "What I Like About You." Add a bit of primitive rockabilly to "Made For Each Other" and you've got a record that's beginning to SWING. It doesn't hurt that the recordings manage to be charmingly primitive yet crystal clear at the same, no small trick. Actually, the entire album sounds like a throwback to the days when bands recorded all together in the same room, one instrument per track, with no miles of cable and EFX to sand away everything interesting into a squeegee-clean fat radio-friendly sound. DEAD ANGEL approves of this throwback. Not everything has to sound huge with guitars the size of 747s, dammit! Grrr, fuck the potbelly compressed-into-politeness radio thing....

Tom Smith of To Live and Shave in LA produced this, which might explain the occasional bursts of crazed noise (like the twitching phaser and static that ride out "Sadie's Voodoo Luck"), but on the whole the eccentric noise moments work with the songs, not against them, in the same inexplicable way that JoJo's catastrophic noise bursts work in the context of Slap Happy Humphrey's songs. I like that you can actually hear them hitting the strings on the poppy centerpiece "The Amulet." I also like that you can hear the ghostly amp hum at the beginning of... well, everything. Other points of coolness: The subterranean rockabilly bass rumble of "Half of Nothin," like the Jordanaires cutting loose after a few rounds of Jim Beam; the return of the wailing harmonica on the monumentally sparse "She Made a Good Man Sound Bad"; the hypnotic arpeggiated guitar in "Pin Down Girl"; the finger-squeaking on "Deadline Poet" (not to mention the ending wave of cycling feedback that i wish i could figure out how to rip off). This sounds like it was made by real human beings who stopped listening to the radio about the time Nixon slunk out the back door of the White House. This is unspeakably cool, especially when you consider that this man's previous band is partly responsible for the birth of eccentric avant-punk band Pere Ubu. Check this out and see what most becomes an ex-Electric Eel.

Meat Beat Manifesto -- SUBLIMINAL SANDWICH [Nothing/Interscope]

Well, I hate to say it, but this is a really unexceptional set of discs. Here are two discs chock-full of mediocrity by Jack Dangers. I expected a little more from MBM, and this disc just doesn't deliver it to me. It might have been considered cutting edge or interesting if it were released about six years ago -- before techno took its hold and the innovators got there. I would expect to hear most of disc one at a rave here in the SF bay. Disc two is a much better disc, but there just isn't any of the aggression I remember from earlier MBM discs (the outright hatred of STORM THE STUDIO and ARMED AUDIO WARFARE or the high energy beats-per-minute of 99%). There is really only one highlight -- and I hate to admit that it's stuck in my head because I saw the video on empty-V.

It's not a bad set, but I really remember better things from Jack Dangers and crew. The entire set is filled with fairly decent chill-techno. Nothing sounds like it's really above 100 BPM. I guess I thought MBM had a niche -- and Jack thought he needed to get out of that niche. Maybe that's one of the problems with this set -- it's only Jack Dangers. MBM was three or four members strong before. I don't know what's prompted the move to more sedate techno, but I'm not sure I like the direction this is going. Wait 'til it goes on sale unless you're looking to fill the MBM collection or you just need a new background noise disc to fill the silence while you're working at 2 am and don't want big loud noises that annoy the neighbors and wreak havoc on your headphones. [bc]

Meat Loaf -- BAT OUT OF HELL [Epic]

I know, i know -- you WANTED to forget this album. You WANTED to strike from your terrified memory the video of a big, sweaty Meat dueting with the eternally wide-eyed Betty-Boop clone Karla Devito (and just where IS she these days anyway, hmmm?). You wanted to never be reminded again of those lyrics -- pages and pages of ridiculous lyrics, really, you could read WAR AND PEACE in less time than it took to wade through a collection of Jim Steinman's ravings. (Given his penchant for overwhelming bombast, it's hardly surprising in retrospect that once he and Meat parted ways, he would hook up with the equally bombastic Andrew Eldritch -- the Meat Loaf of the eighties, really -- for the Sisters of Mercy epic "More.")

But here i am... bringing it up again. Cruel of me, isn't it?

Before i get into why this really isn't such an awful album after all, i should confess the horrible truth: Not only did i buy this when it came out, and not only do i now own it on CD, but i also bought all of his OTHER albums (even MIDNIGHT AT THE LOST AND FOUND, the one that finally got him dropped, since i was apparently the only one who did buy it). I even bought the exquisitely awful Jim Steinman solo album BAD FOR GOOD (it sounded like Meat Loaf with shittier vox, if you're wondering, only not as good). So it's obvious that i am not exactly on an even keel here....

But BAT OUT OF HELL is actually not a bad album at all. It IS a baroque masterpiece of camp, though. Everybody forgets that Meat Loaf first burst into the public consciousness in THE ROCKY HORROR PICTURE SHOW; imagine this album as a teenage fantasy extension of that and Meat Loaf shines in an entirely different context. You didn't really think he was serious, did you? I don't think so -- at least not on this album, anyway. I do think he started taking himself too seriously after this one sold more copies than there are starving babies in Rawanda, which might explain why subsequent releases sort of sucked. If you approach this album from the camp angle, it becomes infinitely more interesting.

The title track and "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" are still great examples of overblown seventies excess (it must have been the coke) that still hold up even now. And "Two Out of Three Ain't Bad," regardless of its nearly trite eternal-flame-o-luv theme, is still a great song. Ditto for "All Revved Up with No Place to Go," and "You Took the Words Right Out of My Mouth," both paeans to the misplaced romanticism of teenage foolishness that are a whole more realistic (in a weird way) than any of the crap spouted by big-hair bands and the likes of Mariah Carey.

"For Crying Out Loud" is still the silliest thing i've ever heard next to Kiss' "Great Expectations," though. I still can't listen to either one without threatening to hemorrhage from laughing so hard....

This band keeps on evolving and improving their sound. On this release they have gone to a more traditional black metal sound; you will not find any trendy bullshit on this. Screaming vocals and more complex guitar parts, along with classic production, make this one of the best things I've heard in a long time. [ttbmd]

Megiddo's latest collection of raw, blackened evil takes some getting used to -- it's a bit of a departure from their earlier discs in a number of ways. Blaspherion is in fine form, nowhere near as mechanical as the drum machine from the demos, but still on top of it. It's true the drums don't sound as good as they did on THE DEVIL AND THE WHORE, but I'm putting that down to an engineering issue. Plus when he plays fast in places like the middle of "The Christwhore" and "The Final War" it sounds like he's moshing, a new development i don't much care for -- this is carrying the eighties-metal fixation too far, turn back, i say, turn back! The guitar sound is also a bit thicker 'n growlier and i think i preferred their earlier guitar sound. These bothersome trifles aside, it's otherwise a dark offering of nifty proportions. Certainly the album as a whole is soaked in evil, and the instrumentation and arrangements are beyond basic (but still compelling) in the best tradition of Burzum and Darkthrone. I frankly can't read the incredibly tiny 'n cryptic microgothictype to discern the lyrics, but with titles like "The Christwhore," "Annihilation Antichrist," "The Final War," "A Hymn to the Apocalypse," and so on, you don't really need to read them to get the idea. While they are undoubtedly one of the rawest, deliberately primitive bands around right now, they are no strangers to melody (check the amazing introduction to Warfare's "Dance of the Dead" for Exhibit A), even when they're blazing. The fact that they have a bad attitude and hate everybody is just a plus. In keeping with the tradition of earlier releases, they have cover tunes again -- the aforementioned Warfare track and Onslaught's "Witch Hunt," and as always, they are played with bone-snapping intensity. You should buy this and play it often, but not before buying THE DEVIL AND THE WHORE first, which is their ultimate statement so far and not to be missed.

This is... ENIGMATIC. The single has no rpm speed information (it sounds like chipmunks at 45, though, so I think it's safe to play it at 33-1/3); the label offers no clue as to which side is A and B; the sides on the sleeve are cryptically called "Right" and "Left." Hmmm.... Musically, though, the mysteries are a bit less arcane. Imagine the terror of Zeni Geva covering the Butthole Surfers with that really obnoxious singer from Old on vocals and you have the basic idea. Percussive, rhythmic, lots of chanting (particularly on "mind thief"), horribly distorted guitars -- really cool in a shambling kind of way. Several of the songs are nothing more than short bursts of punked-out noise like the Buttholes on 78; on the longer ones, particularly "pierced eye," they display an aggressively percussive bent, which probably explains why they're on Charnel, eh? That one also ends with some impressively ugly scratch noises sure to make you wonder if your speakers shorted out.... Fair warning: Do not be misled by K.K. Null's credit as producer; this sounds absolutely NOTHING like Zeni Geva or any of Null's own side pr