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 projects. Still relentlessly cool, though.

What we have here is an expansion of the Melvins' INTERSTELLAR OVERDRIVE 10", released on Man's Ruin back in 1996. You get the Melvins' version of Pink Floyd's "Interstellar Overdrive" along with "Tipping the Lion" from the 10'. Expanding the set to CD-length are a noise piece called "Shit Storm," covers of the Wipers' "Youth of America" and the Cows' "Missing" along with reworked versions of the Melvins' own "Gluey Porch Treatments," "Revolve," and "Lovely Butterflies."

"Shit Storm" is not exactly a noise piece, it is a song (I'm guessing a Melvins song) backwards. I'm sure some Melvins fan has figured it out. I don't know why they bother doing shit like this; you get the impression they put it there for the sake of being annoying. Whatever. Having never heard the Wipers, I have no idea how "Youth of America" stands up next to the original, although the Melvins certainly play it well. Same deal with "Missing." "Interstellar Overdrive" is, well, trippy. They go all out with the swirly efx and delay.

Of the reworked songs, "Revolve" is probably the most interesting. They've devolved it into the main riff, some twinkly electronic noises, and mumbled vox. I'm not as familiar with "Tipping the Lion" and "Lovely Butterflies," but the reworkings stand on their own. "Gluey Porch Treatments" falls into the "why did they bother" category.

If I sound a bit ambivalent towards this disc, it's because I am. Melvins fans will probably be all over this. The people who think they're a good, if highly overrated, band will shrug their shoulders (and get yelled at by the people who think they're the most amazing band on the planet). And the people who think they suck will probably go on thinking they suck. [n/a]

Leave it to the cosmic jokers of the Northwest to confound expectations even further, just when you thought you'd just about figured them out. The Melvins have always had three sides to them -- the heavy side (think OZMA and half their catalog, basically), the experimental side (PRICK, various bits and pieces here and there), and the pure rock 'n roll side (the side that compels them to savagely reconstruct the songs of others in their own perverse style). Usually they spread all those sides out and mix them up across each new album; this time, they've partitioned their diverse styles into three distinct albums. Or so the theory goes. In practice, it's not quite so cut and dried, but that's the essential gist of it. So here comes the first of the series... and it's the heavy one. And i do mean heavy. Bulldozer riffs and cannon-drumming abound. This disc will make your speakers move. Of course, even when they're playing it straight (or about straight as the Melvins ever get, anyway), they can't resist being jokers... each song is actually two tracks. Tracks one and two are "amazon," three and four are "AMAZON," five and six are "we all love JUDY," and... well, you get the idea. Eight songs, 16 tracks. And no, i have no idea what the "logic" is behind the track divisions... buddy, if you've come to a Melvins album looking for logic, you are definitely in the wrong place. With a couple of exceptions, the songs aren't all that distinct on here -- it's mainly one series of mastadon bludgeonings after another, really -- but that's okay. That was kind of the whole point. It's all loud and thunderous and good, so why do you care where one song stops and another one ends? Having said that, "manky" is an odd one... after three songs of near-constant riff-stomp, this one opens with a chittering bass drone that gradually creeps up the scale and begins to oscillate (loudly, i might add; loud is a constant theme on this disc) before climbing back down and turning into an actual "song" (more subterranean dinosaur moves and lots of guitar squee).

They do a cover tune, too (wasn't that supposed to be on the third disc?) -- Fleetwood Mac's "The Green Manalishi (With The Three-Pronged Crown)," except here one of the Manalishi's crowns disappeared (perhaps it ran and hid before the grotesque glory that is Melvins stomp). (I'll bet you thought this was a Judas Priest tune, didn't ya? Well, it was a raving from the hands of Peter Green first....) The first part of it is pretty faithful to the original concept (just eons heavier), but midway through they toss in some crazed faux-deathjazz or something before returning to the death stomp. I approve of this version. Heaviness is good.

The rest of the album is pure heaviness incarnate, and the only quibble i have is... why is the intro to "judy" so familiar?Answer: because it sounds like they cribbed it from the intro to the Band of Susans song "The Red and the Black," that's why. Hmmmmm. The last song, "see how pretty, see how smart," is just slo-mo riff mangling with the occasional flurry of blurred notes and a lot of howling. This is what cavemen would have sounded like if they'd had guitars and amplifiers. This may be the heaviest album Melvins have ever made, and that's a fucking scary thought, isn't it?

This is the "experimental" disc of the trilogy, and probably my favorite of the set. All sorts of strangeness happening on this disc, plus a heavy dose of actual melodic content and bona-fide trance/hypno moves... i grok this immensely, mon. The opener "toy" is basically the title repeated endlessly over a bizarre bed of admittedly peculiar sound in a perverse arrangement, but things start getting really strange with "let it all be," in which Dale plays... are those steel drums? Gawd! And meanwhile the whole band is making like a weird seventies funk lounge band. There's even a talk-box solo (or something like it). I don't know how to describe "black santa," but it's most swank nevertheless and actually sort of swings, in a retarded and hypnotic sorta way. "we we" is mostly a grinding bass loop and lots of knob-twiddling sounds over which Buzzo "sings" in most disconcerting fashion (about what, you'll never know); it's brief and segues into the almost-pop of "up the dumper," which could pass for an actual radio-friendly pop song if it weren't deliberately mixed in a bizarre, distorted fashion. One of the best tracks on the disc, however, is "mary lady bobby kins," a slow and hypnotic drone mantra with pretty guitars and the occasional riff-push that meanders for a while, then abruptly shifts gears and goes into complete overdrive before ending just as abruptly, seguing into "jew boy flower head," a bizarre ditty in slo-mo complete with walking bass and slide guitar.

The final song, "prig," deserves special mention... it starts out with faux-animal sounds and a romper-stomper rhythm section, drops down into technoish bleeps and bloops, then degenerates into this all-encompassing wind roar, then snores... zzzz, zzzz, zzzz... before turning into a straight-ahead blues-based piano ballad that is without question the most beautiful thing they've ever done. You probably didn't even think they could play something pretty, did you? But apparently they can. Viva le Melvins!

This is the joker in the pack. The concept here is covers and guest vocalists; apparently King Buzzo wanted to shut up and play. So what we end up with is a series of covers with bizarre choices for guest vocalists, a series of originals with bizarre choices for guest vocalists, and a song by a totally different band with no Melvins involvement at all. See what i mean about the "concept" of splitting the many moods of the Melvins? Even when they play it straight they still run right off the road....

Now, when i say "bizarre" choice of guest vocalists, perhaps you don't understand me. So let me lay it on ya. Let's get down with "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (dead-perfect cover, too) as sung by... uh... Leif Garrett?!?! Or how about "Ramblin' Man" and "Okie From Muskogee" as sung by Hank Williams III (with steel guitar helpfully provided by Henry Bogdan, formerly of Helmet, currently of the Moonlighters)? Howzabout "Moon Pie," as lovingly "sung" by Kevin Sharp, former throat-scorcher for Brutal Truth? Okay, now you're understanding bizarre. The songs in question all sound excellent, btw. The Melvins do rock... the Melvins do country... the Melvins make undescribable noises... is there nothing they cannot do? (Besides be straightforward, that is.)

The originals are an interesting mess in their own right. For the most part they're Melvins tracks with outside singers, and this generally works well -- in the case of "mine is no disgrace," with guest vox by Foetus, it works brilliantly. I'm not usually a huge Thirwell fan (he's a tad too avant-camp for my tastes, generally), but on this song he is absolutely amazing. By far and away one of the best tracks on the album. The other big bullseye is on "the man with the laughing hand is dead," where Bliss Blood (formerly of Pain Teens, now in Moonlighters) takes an eleven-minute death march and adds bowed saw, devolved wurlitzer, and her always-ominous vox to create a brooding, slo-mo masterpiece o' sludgy fear. Their song with Mike Patton, "g.i. joe," is an amusing case of its own: they handed him a tape containing seven minutes worth o' "sound vomit" from Kevin and "special sauce" from Buzzo and Dale, and as they say in the liner notes, the "results are so amazing , we're not even sure he used the tape we gave him in the first place." David Yow, currently jobless in light of the dissolution of the Jesus Lizard, careens wildly in his usual drunken fashion through "blockbuster" and "dry drunk"; during the latter, the band just plain dropped in a chunk by Godzik Pink, a pretty crazed move even for them, if you ask me.

Obviously, even after piles of perverse albums, the Melvins still find ways to shake things up. Acquire all three parts of the trilogy and learn what it is to wade through the primal spooge and surreal juxtapositions that are the world of the Melvins.

Merzbow - ECHOBONDAGE [Distemper]

This is a re-release of an early 1987 cassette. It goes almost without saying, however, Akita-san is very prolific! For most mere mortals, the idea of just trying to keep up with all of his releases it far too daunting. This particular item, however, is something that should be added to a list of "must hear" Merzbow recordings. This is not at all a chip off the same block of distinctly harsh, sheer walls of sonic disturbance one has come to expect from the king of noise. Instead, it is a swirling, churning, collaged cacaphony of all manner of sounds. Stretching balloons, chains, dogs barking, voices, AM radio sounds, bagpipes, cruching, scraping and... pleanty of drones of all flavors and pitches. True, this not as intense a feast for the ears as the usual full-on aural attack, and yet, it still demands the same level of completely undivided attention to the details. [yol]

Merzbow -- TAUROMACHINE [???]

Masami gives us yet another offering of high-energy power electronics to add more credits to his already insanely huge discography. Everyone who's ever listened to Merzbow knows what to expect from this flavor of his opus -- noisy soundscapes that pound the eardrum with assaults of machine-generated chaos. In classic Merzbow fashion each track starts to create a potential trance loop then jumps away from that, jolts the listener out of all of that. Sometimes, a Merzbow disc just sounds like a Merzbow disc, and this is another example. [bc]

Okay, they get so many bonus points for the utterly boss back-cover pix o' some white dude in Sun Ra shades decked out like an Eskimo pimp and holding a sitar that it's almost superfluous to actually listen to the disc itself; i like them already. Said aforementioned pimp-dude may or may not be Derek Eckland, the vision behind Mesmer. I gather this is his third release, so he's had some time to hone his mad science, which mainly consists of ambient electronics and tribal rhythms. He's accompanied by others (David Blanchard on clariboo, Roger Hayes on violin, Chandler Johnson on bass, Todd Breyerton on various percussion items, and Edgar Santiago on electronic percussion), but don't be fooled -- most of these players appear only to add bit parts or counterpoint to Eckland's action, and the group rarely comes together as more than two or three people total. The disc is essentially one long piece in six distinct (and unnamed) movements, called "Parts 1-6" (keepin' it minimalist, to be sure). Most of it is droning, vaguely melodic ambient electronics, with delay pedals adding cascading notes to the drone from time to time, but on occasion the percussion comes out to play in hypnotic, repetitive fashion. The band's name is accurate -- the music is indeed hypnotic, as a steady drone combines with a steady beat to float on by like an endless rhythm. The rhythm occasionally comes to a halt briefly or mutates, and instruments come and go, adding polyrhythms and counterpoint, but as a whole it's largely a continuous pulse that just shifts in tone and context. In the fifth movement, someone -- Eckland? -- actually thinks to sing, imparting the wisdom of the heliopause (defined as "the space between two planetary systems," among other things). Rhythm is king; drone is queen. Astro-infinity disco for the thumpasaurus people, standing on the verge of getting in on -- YEAH! There are moments where the tiki-tiki drums remind me a bit of the Upland release reviewed in the last issue.... This is swell stuff, with happening beats and weird efx amid the ambient drone. Just don't expect hyperactive beats, okay? This the sound of mid-tempo groove on the go....

Metallica -- LOAD [Elektra]

Um... what's the DEAL here? For some inexplicable reason, someone seems to have suggested to the guys in Metallica that they are not a metal band, but instead an ALTERNATIVE band... and even worse, the guys apparently thought this made SENSE. That's the only thing i can think of to explain Lars suddenly sprouting eyeliner like he thinks he's the second coming of Mad Bob, or their big decision to now dress like the guitarists from Shudder to Think. I dunno, mon... i... just dunno....

And what the HELL is Lars doing wearing a fucking FUR COAT in the liner notes? JESUS. The greatest metal band in the world has apparently lost its collective mind. I... i am AFRAID now. Someone... please hold me....

At any rate, they HAVE at least succeeded in continuing their tradition of making albums that sound absolutely nothing like the ones before them. Problem is, i'm not so sure that this big change in direction suits them as well as it should. (I do approve of getting bold enough to use a Serrano print on the cover, tho, even if they pussied out and wouldn't actually name it in the liner notes (it's BLOOD AND SEMEN III, if you care about these things).) At least "Ain't My Bitch," the opening track, is pretty thunderous... good start... but then it goes downhill in a hurry, like a freight train derailing, buddy. Disasters are fun to watch until they happen to one of your favorite bands, and then it's pretty... gruesome.

For instance, what's the deal with James singing like he can't decide if he's James, or Ronnie Van Zandt, or Michael Bolton, or any of a dozen other singers? For that matter, what's going on with these incredibly lame lyrics, none of which are even close to the caliber of stuff from ...AND JUSTICE FOR ALL? And how did they manage to cut the song lengths in half yet still sound twice as long? I swear, this is the first time i've ever found myself wishing halfway through a Metallica song that it was over already -- not good. Not good at all.

To be fair, the sound is pretty intense, and it's certainly a lot less monochromatic than previous releases, which is a good thing. Unfortunately, they seem to be spinning their wheels a lot of the time. Outside of "Ain't My Bitch," "The House That Jack Built," and the really cool "Until It Sleeps," most of the songs here start out punishing and then just kind of run out of steam about halfway through. Well, "King Nothing" keeps up the momentum, except that structurally it bears an unnerving resemblance at the core to "Enter Sandman"....

All right, i'm gonna level with you: There's nothing particularly BAD about any of these songs (well, i dunno about a couple of them toward the end, particularly the vaguely ridiculous "Ronnie" and overly long "The Outlaw Torn"), but now Metallica sounds less like Metallica than a vast conglomeration of radio-friendly bands of the moment. Sure, they're better at it than most -- regardless of what you may think of the songs here, they're no slouches in the playing department -- but still, moving toward the center and approximating the sound of other, lesser bands hardly strikes me as a good move. And there's something SCARY about the mightiest band in the universe sounding an awful lot like Bad Company on "Bleeding Me," mon... something mighty scary indeed... and how about the blatant theft of the main riff from "Spirit in the Sky" for "Poor Twisted Me"? If that isn't the most bizarre development in metal yet, i'll eat the headless sno-cone girl's boots with tabasco sauce. Never mind that it sounds good, just the fact that Metallica's having to steal left and right now bodes ill for the future of the free world. Surely all is lost now! He'p! He'p! And we're not even gonna get into the sheer goofiness of "Mama Said" (look, they think they're Lynyrd Skynyrd now!) or the hellish need to emulate bad Foghat on "Ronnie" (whoever told these guys they could swing was, ah, lying big time)....

Make sure you listen to it at the listening booth first, that's all i can say. Let's hope it grows on me... i'd hate to have to sell this CD back like i did with the previous one....

Okay, number one: this is not a metal album. I don't care what GUITAR WORLD says. Never mind that the band has the fucking word in their name, theoretically as a helpful reminder, right? No. No no no. (No.) 

No, this is not a metal album. It is an avant-garde noise album with metal leanings. Or something like that.

Somebody, anybody, please tell me why Bob Rock -- who is, as of this moment, the Antichrist and should be dragged by his foo-foo hair into a field and beaten to death with mason blocks until they shine with blood -- thought it would be a good idea to not do his job. Sure, I can buy the whole "return to the garage" concept, but... letting James constantly sing out of tune? Leaving in the guitar with the broken jack that keeps cutting out? Letting Lars get away with sloppy edits in ProTools? Making the snare drum sound like he's beating on my toilet? Like, um, what the fuck, dude? What I don't understand is how the band let him get away with this. DId nobody actually listen to this album before they sent it off to the pressing plant? Does no one understand that this is just Bob's way of weaseling his way into getting paid big bucks to fuck off in the studio? If I were the band listening to this, I'd be one pissed-off motherfucker....

If you can get past the hideous manner in which this was recorded -- and I'd understand perfectly if you couldn't, believe me -- you might find a halfway decent Metallica album buried somewhere under all the bad sound and background bullshit (Metallica have apparently dscovered "textured samples" and stuff). Granted, the songs tend to get a bit repetitive, and once again you can't tell where the bass is half the time, but that's how you know it's a Metallica album, right? On the positive side, they threw out all the solos and ratcheted up the energy level a few million volts -- they haven't sounded this energetic, like they actually meant it, since ... AND JUSTICE FOR ALL. Even more remarkable, they've managed to jettison a lot of the metal cliches they'd come to rely on like the constant palm-muting, "neo-classical" solos, and other Metallihooha, which has resulted in a reinvented sound that moves a lotta air and is actually kind of interesting, when you can hear it and you're not being distracted by grotesque recording errors. James still can't sing, though. And the DVD performance of the same material, live and minus Bob Rock's bullshit (and plus new bassist Robert Trujillo, who doesn't appear on the album), totally smokes the actual album. I'm not sure that's a good sign, but that's the way it is. Purchase at your own risk. Better yet, go buy the Ichabod album reviewed elsewhere instead.

Surely, maybe, just maybe, after this hideous abortion the guys are going to get their shit together and make a real and electrifying album that actually makes good goddamn sense. Or maybe I'm hallucinating again.

Even for an album on Load, this is strange-sounding shit. Cryptic dudes (dudettes?) M.V. Carbon and Graf (both formerly of Chicago's Bride of No No, now defunct in spite of their brilliant name) get jiggy with damaged synths and tapes, chilling out with bizarre sci-fi warbling and dissonant droning as the female "singer" intones sinister juju and sometimes warbles in operatic fashion; the effect is like a free-jazz robot jam under the rings of Saturn. These robots appear to be down with (or from the same neighborhood, at any rate) as those hoodlums in Chrome and the Scissor Girls, and on tracks like "Amethyst Dogs" they get such a cutting edge to their churning synth bleat that I have to wonder if they didn't spend their teenage years having enthusiastic robot sex to Whitehouse records. This is alien-sounding in the same way the Mammal albums are alien-sounding, only nowhere near as obsessively repetitive / annoying as those grand masters of irritation-fu. They have earlier noise-junk out on Hanson Records (home to such exsquitely damaged-sounding groups as Wolf Eyes and Panicsville) and they have some sort of diabolical alliance with Nautical Almanac that has resulted in that group's Twig Harper guesting on four tracks here (no idea which ones, though). They get really good springy, crunchy, tone-laden sounds from their sweating synths, and their ideas about everything are... um... peculiar. Plus the aforementioned female singer is really loud and spaced-out. I wouldn't be surprised to find out they perform live in spacesuits. More suavely abrasive sounds with which to annoy your roommates and neighbors.

The Mike Gunn -- ALMARON [Double Naught]

This band is one of the great lost treasures of late eighties Tejas "let's all smoke a lot of dope and pretend we're Hendrix after listening to lots of middle eastern records and write twisted songs about serial killers and stuff" quasi-psychedelic wave. Mysterious natives of Houston and friends of the Pain Teens (this album was mixed at Anomie with Scott Ayers' assistance and Bliss Blood sings on two songs), they were largely known for long and meandering drone epics like the bass-heavy, swirling "Dry Nod" (named after yet another impressive and obscure Houston band) and the creeped-out death dirge of "Ted." Essentially the more metallic answer to Pain Teens -- if you can imagine Black Sabbath at half-speed on a serious Arabic bender, you have the right idea -- in some ways they were even creepier and more odd than their more well-known contemporaries. Certainly "Ted," about Ted Bundy and his habit of picking up victims by posing as a helpless man in a cast, is more zoned-out and scary than almost anything PT ever did (with the possible exception of "Happy Razors"), and that's saying something, mon.

There are other peculiar moments on this disc -- "The Window" sounds like an almost-random freakout/accident-in-progress, Bliss Blood's guest vox buried so far down in the mix as to be almost subliminal, "Vaughn is Love" opens with tinky folk guitar and abruptly switches to flat-out fuzzdeath, "All Across AmeriKa" thinks it's some kind of mutant funk-metal tune with a hillbilly yodeler on the mike, while "Unblinking" is a droning slice of almost-pop (with more guest vox from Bliss). The rest of the album is, uh, even weirder.

It's a shame this one got overlooked. I have no idea if the band even exists anymore -- i don't think they do, but i could be wrong -- although i do know that they released two other EPs (DURBAN POISON and HEMP FOR VICTORY) that have since been collected together on one CD, and i'm pretty sure that there's at least one more album out there. While they're all deserving of your attention, this is probably the best of the bunch, a lowbrow album for lowbrow times....

Miller/Schumaker -- FLOOD [Warpodisc]

The cunning sonic immolators at work here are Donald Miller, guitarist for the legendary Borbetomagus, and Michael Schumaker, some composer guy i never heard of who is nevertheless hep enough to have LaMonte Young saying nice things about him, no mean feat since LaMonte is kind of a cranky guy most of the time. I'm not real sure what Schumaker's contribution is -- i think maybe he edited and arranged all the guitar weirdness -- but whatever the hell he's doing on this disc, it's workin'. Seriously, the duo is working some powerful mojo here. Forget the concepts of guitars just making funny noises and generally being annoying/terrifying/disruptive -- listening to this (especially at high volume) is like something on the order of having your entire magnetic field turned inside-out. That's particularly true on the first track, "Fludd," in which a mountain of dying guitars feed back and resonate in waves like they're being washed into the ocean. "The Broken Wind" is a wee bit less nifty, although much noisier -- it sounds sort of like Donald and Merzbow got into a wrestling match, both of them yanking the guitar back and forth, with impressively grating results. It's still not as eerie and powerful as the preceding track, tho -- just loud and noisy, that's all. But they make up for it in stylish fashion with the slow-building, ridiculously long "Lamentation on the Death of Thrash Metal," full of shuddering guitars, cranky noises, and unearthly howling sounds. It doesn't exactly go anywhere, true, but it sounds really ominous while standing still. The last one, "Coronath on the Suicide of Thomas Billsbie," is a mind-numbing cyclotron of buzzing bees the size of 747s and is every bit as eerie as the opening track, assuming you can listen to it all the way through without your hearing failing. A riveting disc made more impressive by one of the swankest covers i've seen in a long time (next to the irr. app. (ext.) cover, of course).

This disc is a companion piece to Milligram's HELLO MOTHERFUCKER! (which was reviewed back in # 42). You get three originals and five covers. Two of the originals, "Not OK" and "Burntout Technics" pick up where HELLO MOTHERFUCKER! left off. They're essentially amped-up punk songs played through stoner gear. Kind of like Kyuss doing early Black Flag. The six-minute-plus "My Own Private Altamont" is a bit of a surprise as Jonah and co. dive into Acid King-style drone/sludge. This style really suits them; I hope they investigate it further. The covers, Black Flag's "Nervous Breakdown" and "Jealous Again," the Misfits' "She" and "We Are 138," along with Fear's "Gimme Some Action," are all really well done. They really suit the Milligram sound. A quick note: This disc is available from Tortuga Recordings for $4.00 ppd in the U.S., but is limited to 1000 copies. If you miss out, seven of the eight songs are available for free from the Milligram website. [n/a]

A short review for a short cd: Seven tracks, seventeen minutes and eighteen seconds of pure rawk satistfaction. It doesn?t get much better than this. [-NVH]

[Moon Unit yells something. Strange. He's all the hell the way down in Texas. I really shouldn't be able to hear him.... What's that? You want me to elaborate? Godammit! Two-line reviews won't cut it for DEAD ANGEL? Oh, I see. I have to keep up with CyberLieutenant 12-Track and TASCAM-Girl?? Fuck them. What? You'll what? Ok, fine, I'll elaborate if it'll shut you the fuck up.]

*sigh*

Milligram is a quartet based in the fine city of Boston, MA. HELLO MOTHERFUCKER! is their second release, the first was a split 7" with Quintaine America. Their singer, Jonah, used to be in a hardcore band called Only Living Witness. The guitar player, Darryl, played with stoner heroes Roadsaw. The drummer, Zeph, was is Stompbox and appears on one of Juliana Hatfield?s new records, the "rock" one. The bass player, Bob, um, dunno much about him but I'm sure he played with some other bands at some point. As you can see the have a bit of a pedigree. Does it matter? Not unless you're impressed by that sort of thing. What does matter is that they rock. Hard. They take the stoner sound (fuzz drenched guitars, geez-o-rama bass, ass-stomping drums) that's been all the rage of late and marry it to a fierce punk rock sensibility. What this means is that you get your fuzz fix compressed into two minute songs. No wonky guitar solos, no extended instrumental wankfests, no one playing with delay pedals trying to be "trippy." All rock, no filler. On top of all this, they have a song titled "Nipplemountain Clampdown." What more do I need to say?

[What? That STILL isn't enough? Well, then. Here's the jive translation, courtesy The Jive Server ....]

Some short review 4 some short cd, dig dis: Seven trax, seventeen minutes an' eighteen seconds o' pure rawk satistfacshun. It doesn't git much betta' dan dis.

Whut's dat? Yo' ass want me t'elaborate? What a ripoff. Godammit! Deuce line reviews won't cut it 4 Wo'm food Angel? Oh, I spot. I got'ta keep down wit' CyberLieutenant Twelve Track an' T-A-S-C-A-fuckin'-M Goat??? Fuck them. I... Whut? Yo' ass'll whut? Ok, propa', I'll elaborate if it'll shut yo' ass da fuck down. *sigh* Milligram be some quartet based in da propa' hood o' Boston, Ma. Wha's down Motherfucka'! be deir second relaise, da fust wuz some split 7" wit' Quintaine America. Deir singa', Jonah, 'esploited t' be in some hardco' band called Only Livin' Witness. Da guitah' playa', Darryl, played wit' stona' heroes Roadsaw. Da drumma', Zeph, wuz be Stompbox an' appears on one o' Juliana Hatfield?s fresh vinyls, da "rock" one. Da bass playa', Bob, um... dunno much about him but I'm shaw he played wit' some kinda' otha' bands at some kinda' point. As yo' ass kin spot da damn have some bit o' some pedigree. Duz it matta'? Not unless yo' ass're impressed by dat radical shit. Whut duz matta' be dat they rock. Rock. They snatch da damn stona' sound (down low, fuzz drenched guitars, geez-o-rama bass, ass-stompin' drums) dat's been all da rage o' late an' marry it t' some fierce punk rock sensibility. Whut dis mains be dat yo' ass git yo' fuzz fix compressed into deuce minute songs. No wonky guitah' solos, no 'estended instrumental wankfests, no one playin' wit' delay pedals tryin' t' be "trippy." All rock, no filla'. On top o' all dis, they have some song titled "Nipplemountain Clampdown" Whut mo' do I need t' say? [-N-V-fuckin'-H ]

Mike Min -- POPOLLUTION [CoverBear Records]

Now, this is something i don't hear too often these days -- a real live actual honest-to-God pop album. Lo-fi perhaps, lo-budget almost certainly, but high on listenability. And he's from Seattle! How did he escape the nefarious clutches of the Angst Police? See, Virginia, miracles do still occur.... Even better: he has a sense of humor. (And he used to be in the Army! How did this happen? Truly i am made speechless with awe at this enigma, this hidden titan walking among the masses with sardonically raised eyebrows. How did he slip through the dragnets of the Grunge Police when they were busy rendering all of the Seattle music scene into pointy- headed grunge laments in Decibel Major on how tough it is to have big hair and bigger balls and how we should all just go fetal and die horrible slow painful deaths? I can see him now, accosted in the rain-drenched streets of Seattle, beating down the Gloom Cops with his bulging songbook, executing high-stepping chorus line kicks with visions of Beach Boys parodies in his head as the bad guys go down in slow motion just like that immortal scene in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE....)

What he's up to is reclaiming pop for the indie masses by welding catchiness with an element of unpredictabilty and a decidedly quirky sense of humor. The disc in question eschews slickness for off-the-cuff homebrew mechanics and favors a sardonic, arch lyrical sensibility over the grim pretentiousness so endemic to a lot of indie bands these days. What he's doing here reminds me a lot of Tris McCall musically (although Min is all over the map and nowhere near as rooted in a single sound)... actually, he sounds like what Stephen Merritt would sound like if he weren't so cranky. He somehow manages to fuse everything from Beach Boys surf and rock with bossa nova, polka, faux grunge (he is from Seattle, after all), and garage rock into a catchy but unclassifiable whole, then shovels on sardonic lyrics about everything from zookeepers, being seventeen, trees, Nirvana, education, and more. Some of the moments are really amusing, such as with the exquisitely tasteless "Will You Be My Whore?," a musical throwaway with really obnoxious lyrics that is rendered ironic by the framing device of Min appearing to be one "Lance Kitsch," being questioned by a hostile radio show host and accosted by an even more hostile caller over his obvious misogyny. Most of the songs, though, are more straightforward pop moments, like "Madison Avenue" and "Solitaire Again." The lush "Seventeen" is one of the dreamier moments of the album, filled with keyboard washes and yearning vox just like pop bands used to do before everybody decided they wanted to be fucking Puff Daddy or something ("Yo! I am down! I am stealing this riff now! I'm makin' more dead presidents than you! Don't you wish you were bad like me! And I'm LAUGHIN' at you 'cuz none o' mah shit is worth cat piss! That's right! And you're BUYING IT ANYWAY! Hahahahahahahaha! Pardon me while i wipe my tears of laughter away with a Kleenex from my gold-plated dispenser in the back of my seventh Rolls Royce!"). A lot of the songs are framed by or sprinkled with various noises, TVs in the background, and other effluvia, none of which distracts from the songs themselves, although they do an excellent job of drawing attention to the fact that these songs are not being created in a "professional" studio by well-trained but boring studio seals. One such example is "Deciduous Trees," which opens with the sound of a TV droning in the background, an element that doesn't actually fade away until the song is already underway.

Some of the songs are kind of bizarre -- "I Miss Nirvana," for instance, is a fairly loopy tribute (???) to the now-defunct band in question, complete with Grohlesque drums and incoherently ranted lyrics. This is so oblique that it's hard to tell if it's meant to be a sincere tribute or an evil parody, but either way it rocks sufficiently to make the question sort of moot. (The dead-on Cobain-minimalist-solo is screamingly funny, tho.) And i have no idea what to make of "Education," which is introduced by a lot of mumbling, then turns into a deranged Greek-chorus round-robin chant about some big-boned teacher and her enlarged heart or something along those lines. "Chambers," which is considerably more "normal" but borrows some of the same lines, may be a continuation... or maybe not. With Min it's hard to tell. Is he the Korean Jokerman? Stranger things have happened....

The slo-mo weeper "F.O.B.," a pop song with a weird country-gospel influence that makes judicious use of the xylophone (at least i think that's what it is), is much closer to traditional pop, although it appears to be about eating Chinese food. It's, uh, hard to tell. The album's closing track, "Never Sing Again," is a bombastic pop thing that almost (but not quite) rocks out, and it's hard to tell what to compare it to -- seventies anthem rock on a low budget, maybe? Whatever, like nearly everything else on the album, it's undeniably catchy and the work of someone who knows what's he's doing. I don't know how this kind of semi- traditional pop will go over these days, but this is certainly more interesting, more amusing, and more human than anything being churned out by the major label hit factories today. Check him out live if you get the chance and otherwise, spin this disc....

Forget heavy metal, this is the devil's music -- deliberately irritating glitch electronics and fucked-up robot beats, space-age music of a future where everybody does their karaoke moves to the beat of skipping cds. This particular release is the remastered reissue of an obscure album they recorded for Ooo Mau Mau back in 2001, but it still sounds current in its hyperkinetic fast-forward futurevision. It's also very, very polarizing in its sound, meaning you'll either grok it totally as a destructive musical force of grating rhythms or you'll think it's the most unlistenable shit since you last heard something by Mammal. Brian C. of Lightning Bolt and Meerk Puffy (Forcefield, Mystery Brinkman) do battle against the ass-robots of Pluto with death-ray oscillator-fu and damaged gabberish beats. 21 times, they abuse their instruments in such a manner as to hypnotize the faithful and simultaneously repel all invaders, leaving in their wake a trail of destruction and titles like "A Worm Is Coming," "5 Minutes of Sporadic Beats," "Legiomnomein and G Furry (Legos)," "The Psychic Fields of Animal Town," "Zorinthians Grazel Time," "Zorinthians Finished," and "Carry On My Wayward Crawler." Chaos! Destruction! Beats! Be sure to bring your own death ray -- there may not enough to go around, okay?

More bouncy frivolity from Japan's current queen of skewed techno. Actually, a third of the tracks here are with the help of Cornelius, and a quarter of them are with DJ Me DJ You, so maybe this is really a sneaky attempt at a collaborative album. Whatever, the results are pretty solid, assuming you grok Minekawa's peculiar affinity for loping beats and obsessive need to pepper everything with quirky synth bleats and odd noises. Amid her usual servings of breathy, bouncy fluff 'n beats, she occasionally serves up jungle breakbeats, which adds a new element to her growing palette of technoise sounds. The sounds are a bit more chopped up this time around, too, which is kind of interesting. Some, like "fantastic voyage" (complete with lengthy dialogue sampling from a sinister movie), actually approach being outright funky; "tiger" incorporates a revolving drone, which is sort of new for her (this is one of the best tracks on the album, in fact). The rockin' techno-pop (thanks, Cornelius!) of "spin spider spin" gets a boost from sounds that circle from speaker to speaker, while "soft grafitti" is... uh, just bizarre, and full of her patented bubble-machine sounds. The bonus track "etoufee..." is actually a remix of "spin spider spin" and i'm not sure i can tell the difference. Hmmm. Final analysis: worthy of your attention if you're already hep to Minekawa's quirky charms, a good place to start if you aren't, but ultimately not the second coming or anything. Just more fun, that's all. To ask for more would be greedy, wouldn't it?

I find it deeply strange that Minekawa's remix albums are often better than her actual albums -- but hell, she's an electronic dance artist (or whatever they call it this week), so maybe that's not so surprising. And for a remix EP, this sure is long -- nearly fifty minutes; in fact, it may be longer than the actual album. A bizarre turn o' events indeed. So anyway, what we got here is a handful of tunes from CLOUDY CLOUD CALCULATOR ( a fairly uneven album) being sliced 'n diced to perfection by various swell dudes like Cornelius, Oval, and Kid Loco. The best stuff is that which takes the original song and merely spins it off in a different direction, rather than radically rebuilding it; such is the case with Cornelius' remix of "Milk Rock," which is anchored by a "wee-oo wee-ooo" synth blip looped and repeated frequently throughout the song. The bouncy Kid Loco remix of "Black Forest" is pretty swank too, although it sounds disconcertingly like an outtake from the new Cibo Matto album. Nobukazu Takemura's remix of "Phonoballoon Song" isn't all that removed from the original intent of the song as i remember it from the album (which, admittedly, i haven't heard in the past month, so i might be missing something), and the Junior Varsity remix of "Black Forest" is actually quite cool and very different from the Kid Loco remix, all ambient seashore sounds fading out as an ascending piano riff fades in, with the beats only coming in about halfway through the song. Mondo cool, mon.

Of course, radical reinterpretations sometimes have interesting results. Witness the string-driven remix of her cover of "Telstar," courtesy of Mark Borthwick and Trevor Holland (whoever the hell they are), complete with clanky noises and drony synth washes and other exotic stuff, but largely minus the, uh, original tune itself. Ha! But then the noises-and-not-much-else remix of "International Velvet," by weirdo noisemakers Oval, is... um... well, it's different. Very different. The final statement is the quirky (bizarre, even) sonic mutilation of "Cat House" by Sweet Trip, which has some definitely tubby beats happenin' among the scrunched noises.

As a bonus treat, we get a pretty acoustic version of "Cloud Cuckoo Land" that is, oddly enough, one of the best songs on the album. (Of course, i'm a sucker for a good-sounding acoustic guitar, so it may just be me.) All in all, it's a pretty nifty disc, certainly far more focused than the full-length album. For those unfamiliar with TM, i'd suggest this as a good starting point, actually. Move yer can-can to the bleeps and bloops, mon....

I haven't decided what to make of this one. Her first album (the first US one, anyway) was a brilliant synthesis of bent techno and noise, and the remix ep was interesting as wel, but this one... i dunno, it seems a tad half-baked. Which is not the same as saying it blows or anything -- on the contrary, there's some swank stuff here like the swaggering quasi-hip-hop of "milk rock" (whose choruses really crank) and the bouncy "cloud chips," but on other songs like "phonoballoon song" there's a quality of sameness that gets a bit unnerving after a while. On the other hand, "kraftpark (micro trip edit)" is much closer to the spirit of ROOMIC CUBE -- weird noises swirl around hyperkinetic beats while her heavily processed vox burble all through the tune, sounding sort of like Kraftwerk on helium. And while it's most hep that she covers "Telstar," her version doesn't really add much to the vastly superior original. Then again, "cloud cuckoo land" is really cool -- dense, percolating, full of Minekawa's loopy take on harmony girl group vox (imagine the Shirelles from Saturn with Moogs, woo hah). So... i dunno. The flaky noises are most righteous; maybe it's just that the whole thing seems like it would have worked better as an ep. Or maybe i need to listen to it more and let it grow on me. Your guess is as good as mine....

Takao Minekawa -- RECUBED ep [Emperor Norton Records]

If you're already hep to Takao's fine, surreal semi-noise techno album ROOMIC CUBE, then you'll want to pick up this short collection of remixes from that disc. Six different artists (Pulsars, one DJ from Sukia, Buffalo Daughter, Land of the Loops, Trans Am, and Portastatic) take six tracks from the full-length disc and bend them to their perverse will here, with generally interesting results. The immediate favorite would be Pulsars' remix of "fantastic cat," a blooping grid of bass loops and cheesy whistling noises that's agreeably catchy. DJ ME DJ YOU of Sukia does some mighty peculiar things to "1.66666," setting it to a quasi-jazzlike beat and mixing in lots of jazz and lounge riffs to bizarre effect, along with phaser sounds for that sci-fi sound. Buffalo Daughter turn "klaxon! (a new type)" into something approximating loop-driven heavy metal, while the slow grace of Land of the Loops' remix of "dessert song" makes it the sleeper of the EP (and in fact, it might be an improvement on the original song, which was pretty swell to begin with). The Trans Am remix of "t.t.t. (turn table tennis)" is mostly lots of wonked out rhythmic noises, and i haven't decided if that's a good thing or not... but the low-key mix of "sleep song," with all the racing sequencer parts buried in the background, is plenty agreeable enough. It's not the most earth-shattering album ever made, but if you're following Minekawa's charting through the waters o' weird techno, you probably at least want to give it a listen.

I'm beginning to think that Takako is essentially making the same record over and over again with minimal variations, which still doesn't explain why i keep buying them, eh? I have a hard time even figuring out what the hell she is -- is she pop or techno or something else? Who the hell knows? She sure has a fondness for quirky keyboard sounds, though. With the exception of "Picnic at Loose Rock," nothing just jumps out and grabs my attention the way some of the stuff on her first few releases did, but none of it's particularly bad, either... it's just... uh... there. Most of the time the exotic sounds are far more interesting than the actual songs. That might be a byproduct of the vaguely technoish leanings on display -- i've never really warmed up to techno as a genre, and can usually only hang with it in limited doses. Hmmm. The basic gist of things here is pretty much in line with the new GYBE! -- i.e., if you're really hep to Takako's fractured take on techno/pop, you'll want to check this out. If you're not even familiar with her, this definitely isn't the place to start (that would be XIMER or FUN 9).

Miranda Sex Garden -- FAIRYTALES OF SLAVERY [Mute]

Anchored by celestial voices and successfully mixing medieval instruments with more modern musical technology, Miranda Sex Garden essentially sounds like a symphonic hurricane moving steadily across the land, uprooting everything in its path. There's more of a Teutonic feel to the drumming this time around -- possibly due to the involvement of F.M. Einheit of Einsteurzende Neubaten, who contributes drill sounds on "Transit" and stones on "Fly" -- but otherwise, his isn't sonically much different from their previous album SUSPIRA. Which is disappointing in a way, since part of the band's appeal is their usual flair for the unpredictable. Still, MSG at their tamest are considerably more eccentric than most bands ever hope to be, and amidst the beat-heavy thunder of songs like "Cut" and "Peep Show," there's plenty of odd things going on in the mix. And as always, the voices dip and soar with an effect unlike that of any other band. "Transit" marches along, buoyed by a nifty trumpet part and loping drums, while "Freezing" is slower and more eerie, weighed down by subterranean piano chording and strange noises. Strange noises form the rhythm of "The Monk Song," which captures the feel of a Gregorian chant, culminating in a series of overlapping vocals like a chorus wailing from a well that gives way to mysterious chanting and chirping. All in all, while possibly not as adventurous as one might hope in light of their earlier trailblazing efforts, this is certainly nothing to be ashamed of. And those voices... beauty, fire and ice.

Tanks roll across the blasted land of the war pigs like mechanical ghosts, mud-spattered treads grinding beneath a marble sky, and the soldiers peering through the turret holes can be heard: "Where, o where," their lament goes, "is TASCAM-Girl?"

Columns of black mud roar through the trenches as bombs and grendades explode in brilliant fireworks while blinded soldiers cringe in the foxholes, all of them screaming, "Where, o where, is TASCAM-Girl?"

A screaming comes across the sky as the missles from the East rise up to kiss the missiles from the West, and in an underground bunker far beneath the White House, a grim-faced general hands a TELEX to the President while Secret Service agents force his howling wife to gulp down a vanilla milk Thorazine frostee, and the cable says, "Where the HELL is TASCAM-Girl?"

Carnage blossoms across the nations like drippings from the soiled tampon of the carcinoma angel, and the word goes out, but only one man knows... one man... yes... the evil Dr. Blowfly, who stands gloating in the bowels of his subterranean fortress, laughing and gloating with mad glee, like he just heard the punchline to the joke about the blind tap-dancer and the three coconuts.

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" he screams. "HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! The whole world craves to know that which only I, the mad genius Dr. Blowfly, knows! TASCAM-Girl -- the one they seek -- is MINE! Yes! MINE! MINE! AAAAAAAALL MIIIIIIIIIIINE!"

He bends over the nude TASCAM-Girl, tied (in strict Japanese rope-bondage fashion) to a steel table, and deftly removes the plastic ball-gag from her mouth. "There, my little fire-breathing dragon," he coos. "Now what do you have to say?"

"Christ, what do you clean that ball-gag with, Clorox? You're an evil motherfucker, Dr. Blowfly."

"HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAAAA--"

"Don't start that shit with me," she warns him. "I'm pissed off enough already, don't make it even worse."

"Is that right," he sneers. "Ah, but what can you do? I have tied you down so tightly you can't even wiggle one pert little nipple, I have taken away all your deadly little toys, I have turned off your electronic paging devices... ha ha, I have even taken the liberty of ordering a Ronco Torture-O-Matic 57-Function Buttock Peeling Device with your credit card, they're shipping it to me right now, and there's nothing you can do about it hahahahahahaha!"

"Die, maggot. That's all I have to say to you."

He scuttles away briefly, still cackling, and returns with a CD in hand. "Now," he gloats, "you shall tell me everything... everything... about this!" He shoves the disc in her face; it turns out to be the new release by Miranda Sex Garden, CARNIVAL OF SOULS.

"Hey, the people on that cover are naked."

"How observant of you! Fool! I can see that -- what I want to know is about this band and this release!"

"Oh, that's nothing. Let's see, Miranda Sex Garden... we're talking about the band who started out as a couple of chicks releasing an all-vocal single of madrigal tunes that turned into an improbable club hit in the UK back in the 80s. Those wacky British clubbers, they'll listen to anything. So that led to even more perverse experiments like covering the Radiator Girl's song from ERASERHEAD and songs about muff-diving size queens and lots of cross-dressing and live shows that were more like orgies and then they released a concept album about B & D and then they just floated right off the map for a couple of years. But now they've resurfaced, I see. So how's the album sound?"

"You haven't heard it yet?"

"How the fuck would I have heard it? You kidnapped me, remember?"

"Oh yes. Well then, my little pet, let us hear it then." [He plays the CD]

"So what do you think?"

"That's the best thing they've done since SUSPIRIA. This may be their best album yet, in fact. They've set aside most of the flakiness that made them occasionally suspect and recorded an album of actual songs instead of just lots of mysterious floaty bits. This is good. I approve of this album, Dr. Blowfly. You may be a vile, racist, misogynist bastard who likes to fuck sheep, but you have good taste in music. So how come Katharine Blake is back but Donna whatsherface isn't?"

"You got me."

"So now what?"

He cackles madly and reaches into his jacket, bringing out a copy of the N'Sync Christmas album. "Now," he tells her, "now... now the real torture begins, HAHAHAHAHAHAHA --"

He never even has time to shout in surprise when TASCAM-Girl breaks free of the ropes like they were so much cooked macaroni and snaps his neck like a dry twig. "Nobody threatens me with N'Sync," she growls....

Miss -- A PRETTY MESS [demo]

This is kind of throwback -- it's dance oriented (meaning you can "get down and shake your booty" to it, as the parlance used to be a few years ago), but it has nothing to do with the current dance-floor philosophy of revving everything up and tossing in piles of samples / noise / postmodern ironic philosophy. This music is not a slave to the beat, okay? What it IS actually, is the kind of slow, pulsing groove that harks back to the electronic/synth music being made in the early eighties, at the edge of new wave, right before everybody started turning their synths into dissonance engines. In other words, it has less to do with current favorites like Nine Inch Nails, Front 242, and the techno stylists and falls more in line with bands like the Human League and early Eurhythmics. (There is some sonic ugliness on "Sick," but it's the one exception, and serves well as a variation in contrast to the rest of the material.)

I like this a lot. I listen to it often at work, where it's nice to have the occasional respite from the noise-terror I usually use to punish my ears. The songs boast a full sound that uses everything from synths and piano to strings and the occasional poppy guitar; the arrangements are sophisticated and well-thought out, growing stronger and more interested with each listening. My one complaint is that for some reason, singer Lara Vecchiarello's voice is often buried in the mix, sometimes when I would have preferred it more upfront. Beyond that, however, the album as a whole is a strong one. Highly recommended. I can hardly wait until it actually comes out on CD (the band recently signed to Statue Records).

Miss -- [demo]

Those of you can remember aaaaaaall the way back to the very first issue of DEAD ANGEL may remember Miss, the quasi-dance band interviewed right around the time they signed to Statue Records. Well, the deal with Statue turned into a nightmare and they album that was to appear never DID, but the band is still together -- with the same personnel, even (Lara on vox, Chris and Steve in charge of the studio weirdness). They were kind of different to begin with, and since then they've only gotten WEIRDER -- hence this new four-song tape, which comes across kind of like... uh... like... maybe like Madonna (with more talent) after being produced by Nine Inch Nails. On "White," they bully the beat around until it's hard to pin down, like a fish flopping across the floor -- just when you've figured out where it's going, it wiggles again and you fall flat on your face, most unnerving.... Even better is "Hole" (represented on the tape by a black dot instead of an actual title), where a pulsing bass is just about the only anchor in a mix with drums that fade in and out, weird noises blipping at the edges, drums whose EQ keeps shifting, squidgy and edgy vocals that get squeakier and squeakier before smoothing out again; it keeps shifting and weaving, mon! They'll never be able to fully reproduce it LIVE, of course (i don't think, anyway), but it sounds GREAT in the studio....

"Fun" is about the closest thing here to a "conventional" song, with a beat that stays put, droning synths, and heavily reverbed chanteuse vocals. The slowdown fadeout (in which the tempo slowly but surely cuts in half by increments) is most cool. The last song, "Twice in One Month," is just plain bizarre -- lots of looped weirdness over a quirky beat and the chorus from "Hole" ("I can feel it, I can feel it, I can feel the bottom falling out")... is it a remix or a new song? I can't tell, but it's pretty damn interesting nonetheless. Let another year roll by and everybody will sound like this (the trickle-down NIN effect, no doubt), but for now, MISS are considerably ahead of the curve....

MISS -- CIVIL WAR [J-Bird Records]

The ever-stylish MISS have returned once again, with more new tricks up their sleeves. Evidence of a willingness to move in new directions is the first track, "What Is," a slow, dreamy, and beatless (!) track supplanted only by gentle piano and keyboards (even cello, maybe?) hovering in the background. This is followed by a totally wordless solo piano piece, "S.O.S." Just about the time i start to wonder if maybe they sent me the wrong thing, the heavily-reverbed drums of "Fun" kick in along with Lara's ghostlike voice and i'm back in familiar territory. Sounds like they've listening to lots of old-time jazz or something while sitting around tormenting their drum setup into burping out new sounds. "Spit" continues with the big, danceable beat, alternating slow, lush synth parts with strange scratchy noises while Lara sings (as usual, i have no idea what she's saying, but she sounds good saying it).

Their impressive command of studio gadgetry comes to the fore on "Gravity" where a break beat gets overridden by sudden guitar riffs that move around in the stereo picture, occasional ping-pong sounds, even weirder stuff, all popping up when you least expect it. Similar technical wizardry abounds in "Head Not Found" and "White," along with the big sound and beats, until everything cools down again with the piano and ambient dirge keyboards of the instrumental "no fault." The big moment, though, is the long epic "Civil War," an ominous slab of brooding keyboards and a complex, carefully-orchestrated song structure that gradually builds in complexity and texture. They don't even introduce a drum beat until after the piano interlude about a third of the way through, but it hardly comes as a shock when it does arrive because the tempo is so airtight. All throughout Lara's voice floats high above like she's singing from the clouds. MISS have always been exceptionally good at what they do, but on this song they move into the arena of actual greatness.

After that awe-inspiring piece of otherworldliness, the short closer "Mono" sounds almost like it was beamed from another planet. For their last piece, they return to a considerably less symphonic vibe and the dance beats and squeaky noises. Cool, but it probably should have been sequenced before "Civil War" (well, that's what i would have done, anyway). The final verdict: They still sound pretty unique -- even more so than ever -- and "Civil War" must be heard. Now to see if you can actually find it in the stores... that remains to be seen....

Miss High Heel -- SPLIT WAX CYLINDER, To Live and Shave in LA -- TONAL HARMONY

Think Masonna in English, with more people involved. Yelling, noisy chaos (as opposed to quiet chaos!), the sounds of radio samples floating in here and there. Since Miss High Heel does include members of TLASILA it's relatively easy to lump the two discs together. The sound is similar. At times the yelling can be understood as some kind of demented monologue, leading down some bizarre backstreet of LA past the winos and weirdos to . . . . [bc]

Mission of Burma -- THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT BURMA [Rykodisc]

[THE SCENE: A windowless room deep in the bowels of the Hellfortress Beneath the Ice, where everything save for a table and an upright fan has been boxed up for the impending relocation to Boston. Captain 4-Track and TASCAM-Girl are seated at opposite sides of the table in various stages of undress. They are engaged in an unusual take on strip poker -- a game played not with cards, but with adjectives. The rules are simple; at the end of every song from the album chosen for this game, the new Ryko reissue of the live Mission of Burma classic THE AWFUL TRUTH ABOUT BURMA, they must offer their own ridiculously superlative opinions of said song. Whoever comes up with the most ridiculous and adjective-puffed description, as determined by the Headless Sno-Cone Girl, wins; the loser loses an article of clothing. Come with us, Dear Reader, as the festivities begin....]

TG: I can't believe you've talked me into this. This is the most idiotic thing I've ever agreed to do since I signed on with this goofy outfit.

C4T: Even more ridiculous, love, than hanging upside down during the Swans review last issue?

TG: Well, I'd have to think about that. So are we gonna do shit or what?

[THS-CG plays the opening track, "That's When I Reach For My Revolver."]

TG: Ah fuck, this is a live album, isn't it? I never know what to say about live albums....

C4T: Just be still and LISTEN.

[The song ends; THS-CG points to the Captain.]

C4T (clearing his throat): Ah, a brilliantly textured and layered sonic juggernaut of churning proto-pop-punk aggression, rendered in nearly crystalline sound for its era and gracefully adorned with yearning vocals of an almost haunting quality. How thrilling to hear the statement of a nascent generation weaned on ennui and desperation declared with such forceful intent, transforming the song's zygomorphic zeitgeist into a psychodrama of almost Ginsbergian proportion (is it not true that this slice of pop verite could be seen as an audio footnote to the "best minds of my generation destroyed by madness"?), the waiting lines of a hungry public crying for attention riven in the steel tones of that ringing cyclone of sound!

TG (in disbelief): What the FUCK are you talking about?

[TG is forced to remove shoes and socks; "Tremelo" plays]

C4T: The power of this track lies in its dextrous juxtaposition of loping, strategically-placed drumming against a bed of decayed tremelo guitar. As the judicious reverb of the tremelo guitar, constantly in motion like a hurricane, like the force of life that rages against the will of a cold and uncaring universe, adds overlaid overtones with every repeated downstroke, the drums gradually pick up speed and force, until the song is transformed into a swirling miasma of harsh sound, a veritable tsunami of spent energy.

TG: Dig that crazy tremelo stun guitar... Christ, this is stupid. It's just a fucking song with a lotta tremelo, that's all!

[TG is forced to remove her shimmering black pantyhose; "Peking Spring" plays all the way through]

C4T: In this song, surely a vintage distillation of the true essence of the punk spirit of entropic energy and chaos theory, the Mission of Burma display a remarkable grasp of weather-vane dynamics and the opportunities of chance missteps of fretboard direction without ever sacrificing the potential for energy and forward motion. The second law of thermodynamics states that for every action there must be an equal and opposite reaction, and it is absolutely clear that they understand this completely, as witnessed by the windmill action of the overloaded guitars so desperately competing with kamikaze drumming and hoarse, shouted vocals of a cryptic nature; is it merely a reflection of their times that they play with such loose and joyous abandon, or is it a sly but surely intentional homage to the original spirit of the punk ethos?

TG: This song rocks like a motherfucker. Too bad I was too young to even appreciate the subtleties of SPEED RACER when they did this last tour.

[TG is forced to remove her studded leather skirt as they listen to "1970"]

C4T: Few bands could take this Stooges classic and make it their own, but these men -- these manly, sweaty, cantankerous men of virile punk -- have done so. The freewheel burning of their excitable nature, coupled with the introspective intelligence they instinctively possess that was always so resolutely denied to James Osterberg when he perpetuated this sonic napalm upon unsuspecting audiences at the rotting end of the summer of love, make it inevitable that they would attempt to cradle this song and embrace it in the diffuse nature of their artistry. That they succeed in uncovering new and glittering facets of this much-heralded punk jewel is an altruistic testament to their much-championed integrity and vision.

TG: Are you sure they weren't just plain drunk when they played this?

[TG is forced to remove her "FUCK ART, LET'S KILL" t-shirt, revealing a studded leather bra. "Red" plays as she does so.]

C4T: There are many layers of meaning to this song, but they have wisely chosen to keep the majority of them hidden, allowing them only to peek out from the crevices of this densely textured work of illuminated reasoning. We may study its egg-shaped pebbled texture for signs of wisdom, we may peel back its layers as if it were a finely-sliced onion, but it reveals only what they choose for it to reveal. Note the bird-call hooting, so carefully orchestrated in grand guignol fashion so as to closely resemble the hooting of owls in the distant night; might this be a subtle reference to the Native American belief that the hooting of an owl heralds the coming of one's imminent death? Might the title, then, be interpreted as an oblique strategy of hinting at the blood that was shed during Mao's bleak Cultural Revolution? The possibilities are infinite.

TG: Did you go to school to learn how to make this shit up? It's just a sloppy punk tune and not even one of their best at that....

[TG is forced to remove her bra as "Heart of Darkness" plays.]

C4T: May I note, darling, that your breasts -- your ripe, succulent, plentiful breasts, like gently rounded champagne glasses -- are a work of naturalistic art?

TG: For fuck's sake, what do YOU care about my breasts? You're a homosexual for God's sake, how can my breasts mean ANYTHING to you?

C4T: One can always admire great art....

TG: Just shut up and do your thing, all right?

C4T: Certainly. Here, in their brilliant and explosive cover of Pere Ubu's pessimistic diatribe on the human condition, they reinterpret the song with such inventive energy that they very nearly make it their own, almost eclipsing the original. Heed the incoherent ranting in the midsection, where they emulate the war-cries of the young boys in Goldman's LORD OF THE FLIES, hinting at the primitive nature of all mankind so inherent to the song's title. The song's length, at over nine minutes, gives them plenty of room to stretch out and explore the dynamics....

TG: You are so full of shit. I may have to kill you. Even if this is a really boss cover of Pere Ubu, your reviwer-babble is really getting on my nerves! Die, die, die! And take your thesaurus with you!

[Fight ensues as the rest of the album plays on; THS-CG takes advantage of the change spilling from the Captain's pants during the melee to stock up on beer money.]

M'lumbo is a very strange band. Outside of their hard-to-peg sound -- they essentially hopscotch wildly from genres as disparate as jazz, world beat, swing, music concrete, psychedelic, and electronica (sort of) -- they have a peculiar sense of humor, as evidenced by the fact that apparently this is actually just M'lumbo (if there really is a Kobalt 6, it's not made evident in the press thingy or the liner notes, although mention is made of a forthcoming video with the same title as the album). The first track, "Science Headquarters," makes their mission fairly explicit: to slice and dice as many genres as possible into a seamless stew of sound. Against a backdrop of distorted dialogue and found sound, they move from jazz to to swing to world beat and back, occasionally dropping into jungle mode while playing cocktail jazz over the top. Strange, disorienting stuff with a holistic approach to songwriting (in other words, if it has notes they play it, regardless of what genre the notes actually came from). That it works at all is a minor miracle -- crosshatching genres is tougher than it looks -- and the fact that it works well is a testament to their formidable instrumental skills. This same tack of style-hopping continues, in a slower and more subdued vein, in "The Soul Exchange," sounding mainly like a world-beat track overlaid with music concrete. By the time "The Secret of Fear" and "Playing at Random" have played through, with much the same strategy, it becomes obvious that this is all intended to evoke a mood rather an a specific response -- it all sounds like the soundtrack to an imaginary (or, if the liner notes are to be believed, maybe not so imaginary after all) film. Found sounds are far more predominant than actual music in "Call This Number Now and Change Your Life Forever" -- the music is there, but it's clearly subordinate to the other material, which is an interesting approach. Noisy music concrete continues to be the norm for the first few minutes of "Sprawling Masoleums," until an erratic technobeat begins to crop up, augmented by world beat and the occasional jazzy noodling. The effect is much like wandering through a crowded city street where different forms of music play on every block, soaking up conversations and snatches of music while constantly on the move.They incorporate new elements of drone into the final track, "All You Have To Do Is Relax and Listen (and Let Your Subconscious Do the Rest)" -- a retreat into minimalism of sorts (or at least more minimal, anyway); the drone gives way to heartbeat sounds and eventually the drone returns, along with occasional beats, while the dialogue and found sound mutter on constantly in the background. All of this imaginary soundtrack stuff makes me wonder what the actual film looks like. Recommended for those who have always tried to imagine what ambient and music concrete would sound like together.

One man making trouble with a tinny drum machine and an ass-quakin', overamped fuzz guitar. Minimalist, primal, loud, fuzzy, fast, and over in a hurry -- the formula is a winning one, allowing Mr. California to blaze nonstop through 51 songs like "No Soda Pop," "Curse of the Zombie," "The Violation of Burt Ward," "Kill Dr. Phil," "Moronican Chant," "Things That Hurt," "Lung Dung Silver," and my favorite title, "One More Good Idea" (appropriately, the album closer). Devo's sense of the absurd and monochromatic sensibility grafted onto primal fuzzdeath cribbed from the Stooges, all recorded in nose-thumbing, eye-popping lo-fi-o-rama by a lunatic who likes to play really loud. This is great stuff. It's got a beat and I can shake my Lincoln Log to it, baby, but that screeching and pounding and banging going on has immense neighbor-annoyance potential. Mr. California has this deep, burning urge to take his unnerving act to the people as often as possible -- see for yourself what the fuss is about if he pops up in your area. Check out this in the meantime for a surreal experience in hyperactive behavior in the musical playpen. If you're familiar with the kind of artists hanging around the Load offices, well, this man and his fuzzboxes would be at home on the bill with any of them. One can only hope he's got the good sense to play live in a highway patrol uniform.

Mnortham/Jgriznich -- THE STOMACH OF THE SKY [Staalplaat]

Steel boots clatter down the marble hallway of a nameless underground bunker as Number 415, one of the many minions of the Order of the Overman, scrambles through the endless maze of hallways. He runs, pale beneath the humming flourescent lights, clutching a small package, occasionally daring to glance behind him. The sound of steel continues to ring out as his pursuers draw closer... closer... CLOSER....

He slams through door after door, drenched in sweat, hoping to lose them long enough to double back to the secret elevator, but it is no use. As he pushes his way through a door marked FNORD ACHTUNG DANGER RADIOACTIVE STAY THE FUCK OUT OF HERE THIS MEANS YOU, a hand reaches out and pulls him back. He shrieks as his assailants pummel him viciously, beating him about the head and shoulders, punching him in the kidneys, stepping on his face, and finally smashing his battered body against the floor.

Panting, TASCAM-Girl loosens her grip and pries the package from his hands. "Geez, I thought he'd NEVER give it up."

"Ah, was it truly necessary to use so much force, sweetcheeks?"

"Sure. All's fair in love and war." She rips the package open and pulls out a CD. "Now what the hell is this?"

Captain 4-Track takes it from her to inspect it carefully. "Ah," he says, "it's yet another Staalplaat transmission. Let's play it and see what it has to offer, shall we?"

As the disc player rotates, the sounds of "eluvium -- separate material accumuulations, or at least only shifted by the wind" (aka "valley") begin to fill the room. Odd, almost random noises far in the background gives way to wire music of a peculiar sort, only the wire is apparently sitting in a wind tunnel; eventully the sound of wind overtakes everything. The track is quite long, over twenty minutes, and while the Captain finds it nirvana, TASCAM-Girl is predictably more impatient.

"Gah, are they ever going to actually DO anything?"

"Hush, sweetcheeks. This is ART. They don't HAVE to do anything."

"Uh, right." She hits the skip button. "Let me hear the next one."

He rolls his eyes but indulges her. The second track, "remanent magnetism -- the memory of c. kelvin physically manifested in the structure of a leaf" (aka "pass") begins with eerie noises and wind, then gradually dies away to the rumble of wire music in the distance. The sound varies over the length of the 26-plus minute track, but only by increments. Its structure depends heavily on subtle dynamics of increasing and decreasing volume; occasionally found sounds are integrated into the mix.

"Interesting," the Captain says, obviously entranced. "It's almost like Alan Lamb with incidental found sound mixed in. An intriguing approach. They've augmented the austerity of the primal wire sound with sounds of a more industrial tradition. A bold move, I must say."

"It sounds like they just plunked a tape machine down in a field and had a picnic while it picked up the rumbling of telephone wires."

"That's the POINT, dammit."

The last song -- "geochronologic formation -- this eye can only be seen by a change of perception" (aka "lake") emphasizes the higher frequencies of the wire music. The sound gradually spirals up in volume, then recedes; over time, it incrementally creeps upward again, with other unidentifiable sounds mixed in. Toward the end the wire frequencies become shrill, almost bell-like; then there is a thump and the wire sound recedes into a slow fade, descending into nothingness.

"Isn't this magnificent?"

"It sounds like the 60-cycle hum from a washing machine or something."

"It's meant to be almost ambient, foolish child. You're just too dim to appreciate anything that doesn't have a dozen guitars blazing."

"I dunno, art gives me the hives."

"Just take my word that it's brilliant, okay? Followers of Alan Lamb and Alvin Lucier should definitely investigate the power of this disc. As for us, we must safeguard it... we must insure that it doesn't fall into the wrong hands... God only knows what the Overmen were planning to do with it...."

"Put the whole world to sleep?"

Captain 4-Track sighs. "You know, some days you are just impossible."

More droning ching-ching guitar and stuff from the Glasgow boys. I like this better than the latest album, even though it makes me kind of sleepy. It's an insomniac's wet dream -- all droning bass, droning guitars, droning everything, played in supreme slo-mo. There are four new ones plus two tracks from the import EP released last year (FUCK THE CURFEW); of the new ones, "Stanley Kubrick" is probably my favorite, going through the swells and drones with their usual elastic sense of "dynamics" before peaking in a warbling wash o' fuzz that goes round and round as it dies. "Christmas Song" is one of the prettiest songs they've done yet, all piano-like guitars and chiming sounds bobbing over a droning bottom; eventually an almost military beat crops up and then, just as it seems the song is about to kick into a higher gear, it... ends. Uh! The closest they come to their already-established sound is on "Burn Girl Prom Queen" (where do they come up with these titles?), although they appear to have discovered the nifty pleasures of octaves (a craving that also shows up in the introduction of "Rage: Man"). The last new tune, "Rage: Man" is the only one with any kind of serious noise quotient, and even then it's pretty subdued. The other two songs, "Rollerball" and "Small Children in the Background," come from the aforementioned import EP; neither of them really "rock" in the classic sense, although the latter song does build up to a fairly respectable wall of sonic mung in places. Both are worth checking out if you haven't heard the import EP. Incidentally, please note that the import EP includes one more song ("xmas steps") not included here, even though the new EP's total running time clocks in at 31:54, meaning that they could have tacked it on had they felt like it, but they didn't so you'd have to buy the other EP just to get that one song. Naughty, naughty....

The boys from Glasgow have become hip/successful enough to warrant being picked up in the US by Matador, but while this is by no means a bad record, i'm not sure it's a step forward, either; it seems like they're in a holding pattern. YOUNG TEAM was brilliant, the remix albums KICKING A DEAD PIG and MOGWAI FEAR SATAN were outstanding reconstructions, and the FUCK THE CURFEW ep turned out to be pretty swell in its own right... but this doesn't really advance beyond any of those. In fact, it's largely static; outside of the opening surprise "punk rock:" (in which they do their twink-twink guitar thing behind a long sample of Iggy Pop, on some stage in England, explaining punk rock, more or less), most of the album settles into a mid-temp groove early on and never really changes much. The apparent "single" (or at least, the song currently being foisted onto radio), "cody," is hep enough with its layered guitars and bass pulses, but doesn't really go anywhere and lacks the startling dynamic buildups they've become known for. Maybe that was the idea -- to avoid what they've done before -- but i'm not sure it's completely working. On the other hand, "year 2000 non-compliant cardia" does have the rise-and-fall guitar motion happening, in addition to some swell tortured-whammy skronk waffling away in the background, and they get bonus points for the piano in "oh! how the days stack up." A lot of this, however, sounds like outtakes or leftovers from YOUNG TEAM, particularly on tracks like "ex-cowboy." Stylistic unity is a good thing, yes, but there's a fine line, you know? They do build up to a fine wall o' noise on "chocky," and "christmas steps" eventually works up some hep riffs toward the end, but by and large the vast bulk of the material here comes across as a bit of a retread. Hence my suggestion: if you have yet to be seduced by the quirky charms o' Mogwai, skip this for the time being in favor of YOUNG TEAM and come back to it later. Of course, If you have everything else already (like moi), it certainly won't hurt to have this one. Just be aware that you've already heard a lot of it before.

Hey now, this is an interesting one. Guitarist Jim Goodspeed joins forces with Matthew Johnson (keyboard, laptop, guitar processing) and Lars Fischer (laptop) to create sonic landscapes of improvised sound. One of the more intriguing methods they employ is to feed the guitar through the keyboard, where Johnson can mutate it on the fly. The result is a complex mix of acoustic and electronic sounds, in structures that continually evolve as the band members feed off each other. Percussive samples and loops feature heavily in the mix as well, and once the three of them get really worked up, it tends to sound like a lot more than three musicians at work. Remarkably -- partially because of the nature of the instruments, and I suspect partly due to judicious mixing and editing -- the sound is far more cohesive and balanced than you would normally associate with improvised sound. Part of the appeal in these ten soundscapes is the band's talent for juxtaposing dirty and clean sounds, and for improvising increasingly agitated sheets of melody and noise over the machine-like loops and drones. The beats (implied and explicit) are what keep the droning sheets of sound from drifting off into pure isolationism, although it's the unusual guitar processing that holds your attention more often than not. Time and motion are both more than adequately represented on this album. It's nice, too, when they slow down and drift. Geological forces are at work here, occasionally converging in the movement of tectonic plates. You should bear witness.

Monde Bruits -- SELECTED NOISE WORKS '93-'94 [Endorphine Factory/Charnel Music]

This should REALLY be called "Oh GOD, my EARS!!!" Talk about upping the ante in the eardrum-crushing, synanpse-shattering noise sweepstakes, this is like playing with four aces in the deck... pretty damned impressive. I can't even turn this up very loud without ending up writhing on the floor convinced the Apocalypse has arrived. We're talking sixty continuous minutes of hissing, beeping, chugging, churning, windshear falling-down-the-elevator-while-sizzling oscillators-explode cutupscrunchedtogethertotallytweaked NOISE. Ack! This is even more intense than Masonna or Merzbow, scary as that thought may be; if you've ever heard any version of "Swallowing Scrap Metal" from Controlled Bleeding/Skin Chamber albums, well, cube that and you're getting close to this. Needless to say, there's plenty of sonic textures here to groove on, assuming you're into the noise thing and have a high tolerance for pain. Beyond that, the package artwork is abstract and real cool, plus it includes a mini-essay about the "band" and the fact that this is the last CD debut of all the bands on the original NOISE FOREST compilation, written by Toshiji Mikawa of the highly-regarded Incapacitants. And have I mentioned that this is INSANELY harsh and extreme? Like having your eyes peeled back with a straight razor layer by layer like an onion?

And yes, i KNOW that those of you out there who aren't into the noise thing will find the entire concept of this CD utterly mystifying... hell, i'm not sure i completely understand the attraction myself and i LIKE the stuff. It's a strange, strange world, isn't it? But for those of you who DO appreciate the joy of earhurt, this should quickly become LEGENDARY....

This is one of the more interesting artifacts this time around, the latest sonic emission from former Pain Teens singer Bliss Blood, and it couldn't be more different --

TG: BANZAI! (lands on the Moon Unit's back and starts digging her stiletto heels in his ass) GIDDYAP! Go horsey GO! Yippie ti yi yi get up and GO!

TMU: Evil witch! I curse the day i ever hired you! (swipes blindly at her head and misses)

[The entourage watches with amusement as TMU lurches around the room trying to dislodge his unwanted rider, dropping the Moonlighters CD in the process. As he tries to knock her off by running into walls, Pym picks up the CD.]

Pym: While they're, uh, otherwise occupied (flinches at sound of breaking furniture), I suppose I might as well fill you in on what's up with the Moonlighters. As you may know, the Moonlighters are devotees of Hawaiian music and old-time flapper tunes; the only thing strange about this is that the band includes former members of Pain Teens and Helmet, unlikely candidates for ukelele worship, don't you think? The scary part is not that they're serious, but that they're really good. With Bliss Blood on lead vocals, ukelele, and singing saw, Henry Bogdan on steel guitar and harp, Andrew Hall on bass, and Daria Klotz on backing vocals and baritone ukelele, you'd never guess this was even a modern band. (howling, crashing in the background) Every once in a while they'll make some passing reference to something relatively modern in the lyrics, but otherwise the music could be lifted directly from old 78s. Pretty amazing, all right. Who would have guessed during his tenure in Helmet that Henry was such a fine dobro player? If you have a yen for old-time sounds, you should check this out. The album is a big mishmash of covers, medleys, and brand-new songs, and I'm betting you can't guess which is which, that's how authentic their sound is. Pym says check it out. (sound of breaking glass as TG leaps through a window and runs down the hallway with the Moon Unit fast in pursuit)

Morcheeba -- WHO CAN YOU TRUST? [Discovery Records]

This is... peculiar. Not in a bad way, mind you, just... peculiar. Imagine Lauro Nyro backed by Neil Young in a Delta-blooz mood with a 90s mania for sampling, Moog noodling, hip-hop beats, and ambient sound sweeping the bandwith at the edges. Got that? Like i said... peculiar. "Trigger Hippie" manages to sound like a stoner cross between Nyro and Stereolab, a fusion so deeply weird (just for the mere IDEA) that it earns bonus points for that alone. Most of the album sounds simultaneously retro and modern at the same time, which is a pretty neat trick. Paul Godfrey (the beatmaster) cranks out some mighty swell disc-scratching to offset the easy-listening vibe, an interesting approach in itself, particularly on "Tape Loop." Singer Skye Edwards brings a smoky R&B soul to the sound, while guitarist Ross Godfrey chips in with understated, hocus-pocus guitar and lap steel in the most unobtrusive manner possible. After an onslaught of bands in the past few years who seem to prefer the pile-it-on/sledgehammer approach, this is actually pretty refreshing. This is one of the few bands around at the moment who appear to grasp that the spaces between what you play are often more important than what you're actually playing....

Groovy sounds abound all across the disc, but especially on the short interlude "Enjoy the Wait" and the long, almost-all-instrumental "Who Can You Trust?" (featuring a spiky piano drenched in reverb and lots of strange yet oddly natural noises weaving in and out of the mix). An interesting mix of sounds and styles that by all rights shouldn't really work, but in reality works well indeed. Suave. Mondo suave....

Mother Savage -- KRYPTOPYRROLE [Mother Savage Noise Productions]

More raw, crumbling sheets of noise, this time augmented by percussion courtesy of found objects such as thick sheets of metal, big-ass oil drums, metal boxes, etc., anything that nets you some appropriately ugly clanking noises when you beat on it with much gusto. It's hard to tell whether the rumbling waves of sandstorm noise form a backdrop to the percussive mayhem or vice-versa; don't suppose it makes much difference -- either way, it won't be mistaken for pop music anytime soon. This is another Macronympha side-project thing, courtesy of the noise titans at MSNP, and it's concerned less with four-on-the-floor sonic obliteration than with exploring metallic sounds -- which means that it's not as insanely destructive-sounding as, say, Anal Drill, but only in the sense that a hideous auto accident in which you only lose two legs and an eye is "less painful" than an accident that leaves you a twitching wet smear on the pavement. There's lot of nice metal-on-metal punishment here, and the twitching loops of feedback in the background are pretty uncompromising in themselves. The cryptic stain artwork is a nice touch, too.

Interesting, the Mother's Anger are from Israel. I think I've heard exactly two other bands from Israel, the goth-doom band Orphaned Land (who aren't bad if you're into stuff like My Dying Bride and early Paradise Lost) and some black metal band whose name escapes me.

But yeah, back to The Mother's Anger, the record was produced by Michael Davis, formerly of the MC5, so you could be forgiven for thinking that TMA sound like the MC5. Not the case. TMA are very much in the QOTSA, Nirvana, Foo Fighters school of modern album-oriented rock. In fact, had this disc been released at any time between 1996 and 1999, it's possible that TMA would have turned up on the radio sandwiched between Local H and Bush. In 2004 the disc sounds more than a little dated, but will appeal to those who miss the glory days of 1997. [N/A]

Do you miss that period from 1987 - 1991 when bands like Circus of Power, L.A. Guns, and Faster Pussycat were the state of the art in cock rock (now simply known as "rawk")? Then do I have a compact disc for YOU! I probably shouldn't admit this, but I owned and enjoyed stuff by the above-mentioned bands and I kind of like this. Fuck. (Insert smart-ass comment from TMU) [TMU: Anyone who still listens regularly to SHOUT AT THE DEVIL has no business commenting on the listening habits of others....] [n/a]

Oh wow... like, who lit a fire under the band's ass and threw away the fire extinguisher, and why didn't they do it sooner? This is the heaviest, most consistently obnoxious Motorhead album since... since... hell, maybe since ORGASMATRON, which was one long fucking time ago. Mickey Dee sounds like he's beating his drums to death with hammers, Phil's guitar is cranked up louder than a Concorde, and Lemmy has never been more Lemmylike. True, there's nothing original happening here, but you don't listen to Motorhead for originality, do ya? (Well, there is a spoken-word thingy at the end called "Serial Killer" where Lemmy gets all grim and forbidding about wanting to waste people while scary sounding noises roar 'n belch in the background like scary bad juju....) It's also true that some songs sound like remakes or pastiches ("Red Raw" in particular sounds like a rewrite of "Mean Machine" with chunks o' lyrics lifted from "The Claw"), but given how ferocious the album is as a whole, i'm inclined to forgive them for any errant self-plagarism. Best songs this time around: "Walk A Crooked Mile," "Down the Line," "Mine All Mine," "Shut Your Mouth," "No Remorse," and "Red Raw" -- and the other half of the album is just about as good. Like i say, this is the most consistent (and unrelenting) thing they've done in ages and you should be all over this like kitties on a steaming pile o' grits or something equally evocative, eh? Bonus points for the tuff Motorhead-as-military-medal cover, maybe their best album cover since OVERKILL. I can't believe Lemmy's old as my mother and still makes everybody in the current school o' heavy rock look like a bunch of pussies weaned on Kool-Aid. If you don't like this album, there's something horribly wrong with you that probably can't be fixed. [pym imitating rkf]

You should already have this, you know. Yes, I know, I already hear you whining about the cost -- it's a five-cd box set, goddamit, why does everybody expect now that the best things in life are free? Yes, I know you believe Motorhead "lost it" after ORGASMATRON, but this is a filthy fucking lie. In fact, the bleatings of the clueless sheep leave me with no choice but to explain things to you in Q & A format. Sharpen your pencils, there will be a test afterwards....

"Doesn't the band already have about seventeen box sets out? Why the fuck do I need another one?" Ah, my troubled li'l sheep, it is true that a great many compilations and box sets and repackaged double-album sets have been issued with the band's name on them. And yes, there are too many of them and most of them are, to put it politely, indifferently-assembled pieces of shit. But this is no ordinary Motorhead box set. This is the first one done with the band's complete knowledge and cooperation, and it makes a hell of a difference. In addition to the five cds (99 tracks, 19 previously unreleased, and quite a few of them obscure) -- the last of which is completely live, 21 tracks from a wide variety of odd (some of them very odd) places, including an amazing bootleg recording of the band roaring through Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" -- you get a fat-ass sixty-page full-color booklet crammed (and I do mean crammed; they should have included a magnifying glass with the logo on the handle, it would have been really swell and a tremendous aid to my already-declining eyesight, HA!) with rare photos, actual record reviews, commentary from the band, and the usual discography poop you see in these kind of collections. Unlike most box sets, however, here they have gone to fanatical lengths to clarify their discography, resulting in my discovery of several legitimate (well...) albums I'd never even known existed (and I've been a Motorfan since 1980, when I bought their new album ACE OF SPADES on the recommendation of a pal with good taste). Seriously, I own more box sets than some people own actual albums, and I've rarely seen such attention to detail. The lengthy history, written by Mick Wall and liberally salted with directly commentary from the current band (and even, occasionally, Eddie Clarke -- Philthy was apparently "unvailable for comment," one assumes, and if anybody had wanted to hear from Brian "Foo-Foo Boy" Robertson, they'd be buying his goddamn records, wouldn't they?) is brilliant, not to mention filled with all sorts of entertaining revelations that go a long way toward clearing up some long-standing mysteries (like, for instance, what the fuck ever made Philthy think leaving the band was a good idea).

"But their songs all sound alike. Isn't 99 of them in a row kind of a scary idea?" Well, that never stopped half the planet from buying seventeen copies apiece of BACK IN BLACK or NEVERMIND, did it? It certainly hasn't hurt Ozzy, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, Kiss, the Ramones, or Rob "Let's See How Many Times I Can Get Away With Rewriting This Song" Zombie, all of whom outsell Motorhead by a big margin, even though none of them have ever been as consistently good. (Well, maybe Judas Priest... but Motorhead never looked or sounded as ridiculous as the Priest did during that horrible, horrible, horrible post-DEFENDERS OF THE FAITH period where they were apparently more concerned with snorting coke and buying fancy clothes to actually write real songs. And then Rob left to pretend he was Metallica or Trent Reznor or whoever was hot that particular moment, and the band soldiered on with a ringer, and if you even think of insinuating that this stuff measures up to Motorhead, I'm going to laugh at you.) Besides, they're supposed to sound alike -- Motorhead has always been about the sound, the Big Roar. Everything else is secondary, dig? So they recycle riffs from time to time (when they're not outright stealing them); so what? At least they're good riffs, which is more than I can say about any nu-metal (or anything passing for "modern" metal, really)  I've heard in the last couple of years. As far as recycling song subjects (is there a band rule that every album must contain at least one song about war?), hey, you try filling up twenty or so albums, most of them recorded under utterly satanic time / budget constraints and surrounded by chaos roughly akin to the slaughter at Nanking. Besides, why not keep doing what you do best? The subjects they visit again and again always end up being the best songs anyway, so why do you care?

"But then I'll be stuck with a lot of the later stuff that sucks." Excuse me? Are you smoking crack? Those who claim Motorhead's propensity for recording albums in a hell of a hurry between endless tours has resulted in lots of half-baked albums might have a point here, but most of these albums are better than the critics would have you believe. (And let's be honest here -- the critics rarely know what they're talking about, and especially when they're talking about Motorhead. I can clearly remember hearing ridiculous bullshit and bad reviews from some of the same critics who now slobber all over the band's every sonic fart. For years the band couldn't get arrested in print in the U.S. and now everybody's falling over themselves to coronate Lemmy -- and all I can say is, where the fuck were you when ANOTHER PERFECT DAY came out near-universal panning, even though it's one of the band's most underrated albums?) Lots of people seem absolutely convinced that "the early years were best," which is fucking bizarre. Sure, the "classic" lineup got lucky enough to get all the attention, but the later stuff is way heavier, and the current lineup with Mikkey Dee on drums and Phil Campell on guitar is louder, faster, heavier, and way more ferocious than any other lineup in the band's history. The band got a second wind when Mikkey joined, and if you can't appreciate songs like "Burner," "I Am The Sword," "Devils," "Out of the Sun," "I Don't Believe A Word," "Overnight Sensation," "Broken," "Snakebite Love," "Stay Out Of Jail," "Walk A Crooked Mile," and "Voices From The War," then you, sir or madam, have no business listening to Motorhead in the first place and should go listen to Ani DiFranco or something less likely to offend your tender ears.

"So you're saying, like, the later stuff doesn't suck?" I'm telling you that discs Three and Four -- all post-ORGASMATRON material -- are the best of the entire collection. I'm serious. "Joy of Labour" alone is one of the best songs they've ever done, and heavy as fuck besides. The current lineup's remake of "Orgasmatron" totally smokes the original (which is pretty impressive if you ask me, since I'd argue that should be the song they're known for, not "Ace of Spades"). "Just Cos You Got The Power," originally available only on the b-side of the UK 12" version of the "Eat the Rich" single, is one of the most amazing things they've ever done. I'd seriously argue that the box set is worth buying for these three songs alone, so isn't it good that the rest of the tracks around them are just about as good? In fact, I'm gonna stake my claim right now: The current three-piece configuration (together for almost a decade now) is so totally bone-crushing and fine-tuned, and on such a roll, that I think there's a very good chance the next Motorhead album is going to be the one that finally makes everybody shut the fuck up about ACE OF SPADES. Finally. Talk about beating a dead horse....

"But what about the live and rare stuff?" Oh, there's plenty of that on here: in addition to the nineteen previously unreleased tracks (mainly BBC sessions and obscure compilation tracks, including both versions of "Under The Knife," the song they covered for some shitty Twisted Sister tribute album), the fifth disc is nothing but 21 tracks of live favorites and the odd surprise. It's not pretty, mind you -- the sound on some of these louder-than-loud offerings is every bit as rough and lo-fi as you'd expect -- but the performances will burn your eyebrows off, especially on a blinding cover of Chuck Berry's "Nadine" and a revved-up and out-of-control version of Hawkwind's "Silver Machine" that makes me wish the current version of Hawkwind would just pay Motorhead to tour in their place and be done with it. As an added bonus, the track selection largely avoids stuff from the rest of the box set in favor of scorched-earth versions of lesser-known songs like "Dogs" and "Traitor," along with "Acropolis (Metropolis)," originally available only a Greece tour giveway single. Most (if not all) of the legendary live albums are sampled, making for a nice mix of old and new material played by the classic lineup, the twin-guitar model, and the current incarnation. It's also all very, very loud.

Of course, it doesn't even matter what's on the set; you should get this just because the band deserves it. Lemmy has been doing it longer, faster, and louder than anybody else, and unlike most of the bands who've butchered (excuse me, covered) all those Motortunes, he has yet to start sucking, unlike some of his devotees who could stand to spend more time revisiting the garage and less in therapy sessions. Phil has been doing double-duty on guitars since Wurzel left without appearing to even break a sweat, and Mikkey is flatly the best (and heaviest) drummer the band's ever had. The only other band of their longevity that has any integrity left and still breathes fire is Slayer. (You should buy their box set too, actually.) If you're willing to spend this much $$$ to go to Ozzfest every year and waste your time on bands who aren't even fit to carry Phil's guitar case, surely you can afford to reward these guys for their hard work, eh? 

Bob Mould -- s/t [Rykodisc]

A man once said (in the AUSTIN CHRONICLE, as it happens) that this is Mould's finest work, but that man... was full of shit. Not that it's bad, but it's certainly not even close to the consistency and quality of WORKBOOK or BLACK SHEETS OF RAIN. It starts off strong, though, with "Anymore Time Between," which might actually BE the single best thing he's done (although even then there's room for debate), with chiming guitars that build to thick, beautiful sheets of wall-to-wall distortion like the best parts of Sugar's "Man in the Moon." But then the genuinely driving "I Hate Alternative Rock" gets hamstrung by whiny lyrics that border on the stupid, and everything starts to fall apart.

Understand, mind you, that judged purely on the sound alone, most of this is top-notch stuff -- it's just a shame he started blathering over the top of it with lyrics like "and i don't give a fuck about it / i don't give a fuck what you do" and "monkeys made of brass / fly out your ass" and "but i am not the others / you are just a bastard." Jeez, Bob, take a CHILL PILL, okay? This whiny gig has gotten OLD. Not to mention inarticulate. The rest of the lyrics are marginally better, but none of them are going to cause Dylan to lose any sleep, and frankly, Mould sounded more genuinely dispossessed on BLACK SHEETS OF RAIN, the album that he (and apparently all the Bob-devoted critics) always tries to pretend has never existed for some bizarre reason. (Really, of all the reviews i've read so far for this album, all but one have called this the second solo Mould disc -- talk about sloppy journalism....) He almost makes up for it all with the truly fearsome "Deep Karma Canyon," but not quite.

Ironically, one of the album's best songs also contains the lyric that hits the bullseye concerning this whole mess: "I'm a child, I'm a baby / I can change my mind like any other genius / This is genius, this is genuine, this is bullshit." Hey, you said it Bob, not me....

Bob Mould -- THE LAST DOG AND PONY SHOW [Rykodisc]

Good news -- Bob's nowhere near as morose and whiny this time out as he was on the previous album. It also doesn't hurt that some of his best songs in quite a while are on this disc. This marks a turning point of sorts -- as the title implies, it's the end of an era, since the current tour is the last one Mould intends to do with a full band. Apparently the hassles of assembling bands and touring endlessly have burned him out on the concept, and in the future it's just going to be him and his lonesome (acoustic) guitar. So if you haven't seen the live and electrified Mould, now will probably be your last chance....

"New # 1" opens with jangly acoustic guitars that are slowly but surely augmented by a mammoth layer of electric and acoustic guitars that form a huge wash of sound with melodic elements going in different directions, and is probably the strongest song on the album. "Moving Trucks" is a bit more familiar, like something that could have come from one of the earlier albums -- it opens up with acoustic guitar that quickly gives way to overamped guitars drenched in stinging feedback. The familiarity continues through "Taking Everything," which could have been (and in fact, may have been) an outtake from the previous album, with a thunderous rhythm section and turbocharged guitars exploding out of the starting block, a frenzy that never lets up. But then things start getting weird with "First Drag of the Day," with hip-hop (!!!) drums lumbering along behind a minimalist crunch riff set on loop 'n stun. Most of the rest of the album is pretty much in line with his previous output, but it's worth noting that the closing track "Along the Way" is one of the geuinely prettiest things he's ever done (at least in places).

While these songs aren't quite as morose as previous offerings, Bob's thoughts have not turned completely away from the dark side of things, as evidenced by "Skin Trade," a grim meditation on drug abuse and hustling that would have fit in well on COPPER BLUE. "Vaporub" is almost as bleak, opening with the lines "Kept my heart far away / Kept it far away from me / Found a place by the river where nobody goes / Buried far beneath the levee," although fortunately not whiny like everything from the previous album. As you've probably guessed by now, Bob's not really breaking much new ground on this album -- most of it is sonically similar to stuff he's done solo and in Sugar -- but the songwriting quality this time around is top-notch, and he's taken to burying all sorts of interesting throwaway melodies in the background of all the raging guitars (check out the crunchy-as-fuck "Sweet Serene," which has all sorts of interesting stuff happening in the background, if you're inclined to listen for it). Probably the most bizarre track, and maybe a pointer to the future -- who knows -- is the hip-hop, sample-heavy "Megamanic," a supremely deranged move away from his punk/popcore roots that's actually kind of catchy. My God, has Bob started learning how to lighten up? Now THERE'S a frightening thought....

Oh, there's also a second disc in the early run of the CD that consists of a long, semi-rambling interview of Bob by Jack Rabid of THE BIG TAKEOVER, in which Bob elaborates on the title, the last full-blown tour, etc., etc. If you missed it, don't worry -- you didn't miss that much, and it'll end up in the magazine anyway sooner or later....

This is certainly deranged enough -- "sand on sand" is the sound of someone bound and gagged in a suitcase while angry devils beat on it with sticks as bombs rain in the background, and the other six tracks aren't far off. The diabolical fun mostly centers around some guy (Mr. Mouthus!) whacking out spirited but minimalist patterns on drums, tables, cheerleaders, whatever, as demonoid hypnorhythms hover and and float like an angry cloud of bees. Outside of lots o' bizarre grunting, what little vocals exist are mainly an excuse to yell incoherent stuff while flailing away at something. The efx-generated loops / riffs / whatever the kids call 'em these days are noisy, crunchy, loud, and most obnoxious. Everything about this is kind of obnoxious, actually; I'm pretty sure that was the point. The poop sheet mentions Jandek and Harry Pussy, but I'm pretty sure Jandek never used distortion pedals (or that Harry Pussy were actually good for more than their name); I'd be more inclined to file this with stuff from Load or Mandragora. More proof of the inherent potential in using your atomic-powered brain to abuse gadgets in the name of antimusic. Mouthus gets bonus points for all the reverb and subliminal drone in his grunting noisefests. Consume, especially if you've already bought all the Load discs and are jonesing for more mutant antimusic-fu.

The Muffs are basically a one-trick pony... but it's a really GOOD trick. The name of the game here is Mersybeat-style songs buried in crazed guitar overkill and rendered completely incoherent by a woman who learned to sing while in the Pandoras, one of the worst and most obnoxious bands ever to walk this planet. The Muffs are much better than the Pandoras could ever have hoped to be, but they're still the kind of band that puts out basically two songs (one slow, one fast) over and over again -- not that is necessarily bad (hey, it worked for the Ramones, didn't it?), but it does mean that you really only need to own one album by them....

Hard to say if this should be the one to have over their self-titled debut, since they're so much alike -- too much so in places, actually. "Red Eyed Troll" is pretty much a complete rewrite of the first album's "Another Day," and "Ethyl My Love" is essentially "I Need You" with different lyrics. There's a lot of cool stuff in between though, especially the insanely catchy "Oh Nina" and the irrepressibly snotty "Won't Come Out To Play," so it all kind of evens out, i guess. And Kim Shattuck still screams better than practically anyone in the universe... she can probably be heard on Neptune ("Xquiptl dear, what IS that horrible noise?" "It's just Kim Shattuck again, my little squid, she'll be done in a moment").

The really weird part about the immense similarity between this album and their first is that in-between, they had a severe lineup change -- drummer Criss Crass got sacked for being an obnoxious asshole and Roy McDonald floated over from Red Kross, plus destructo-rhythm guitarist Melanie Vannen left for all sorts of reasons (i'll tell you if you really want to know, but they're the usual boring "personal/musical differences" stuff, zzzz, plus i don't know how reliable my "sources" are)-- but you'd never know it from listening to the two albums. So what I want to know is, how'd they pull THAT off? What was Melanie DOING in the background all this time? Given her penchant for appearing in public in ripped pantyhose and microminis, it's probably best not to dwell on that question for too long....

Kim's guitar playing has never sounded better, by the way. DEAD ANGEL is still unworthy to even carry her guitar pick. We're not worthy! We're not worthy! (Etc., etc., etc.)

Garage rock from Sweden. Grimy-looking guys playing ass-shakin' scruff rock. Way too much treble. The singer is not exactly "trained" but he sounds like he means it, man. Lots of thunder and hopped-up riffing. They boogie real good. You'd think they were raised in sweaty cattle joints or something. You may not like it, but they're the real thing. Like Coke, only with more caffeine. They pour on the rock, dude. They have a piano player sometimes and he sounds like a man of style. Tinny recordings cannot do justice to their true nature. They belong on stage, sweating and shaking. The little girls will line up to shake their ta-tas to the big beat. They have titles like "Danger buzz," "Do it good," and "Baby you control me." They come up with as few lyrics as they can get away with. This is good, because this ain't physics class. Burning amps up like this ain't rocket science, but can you do it? Didn't think so. But the Mugwumps? They do it good. Look, it even says so in the title. More proof that Freebird artists truly rock with their cocks out. But they really need to discover what low end is all about. All that high end will not help your hangover. [pym]

Chie Mukai -- KOKYU IMPROVISATION [PSF]

And now, for something completely different.... What we have here is a Japanese (?) woman improvising in her home studio and on stage with a Chinese violin (the kokyu, hence the title), augmented by lots of random, erratic noises of a percussive variety. Minimalist and EDGY, in other words. A taped soundscape of muted rumbling provides the background as she saws away at the truly evil-sounding kokyu periodically, bashing on things in-between (random pieces of metal, a mirror, cymbals, rings, probably other stuff too arcane to fathom). The kokyu produces an EXTREMELY unsettling sound -- like the looped sound of a screaming rhino in heat -- so this is definitely not for the WEAK. Nevertheless, interesting for aficianados of minimalism and scary noises....

Sleazy-sounding butt rock. Tinny-sounding amps with a sound right out of late sixties Stones and Blue Cheer, but with everything turned up real, real loud. Wah-wah pedals in effects. You'll forget punk ever happened. The kind of band that plays at biker parties. Deliver the goods or be down on the floor in the blood and the beer. They rock with their cocks out. That's on the early ones, anyway. Songs like "Back to G.13" and "White Horse Trail." Later on around "Helm's Deep" they start mining Neil Young and Lynyrd Skynyrd territory. Not bad. The piano player can play. Maybe even some Allman Brothers in there. The singer is still overdoing it. Butt-rock moves return on "Rock Bottom." They sound very drug-addled on "El Pharmacisto." This is probably intentional, but you never know what they have been smoking, do you? "Hudson County Probation Blues" is a really good title, and the song has lots of grunting amps and big drums, but then the ending is all guitar twaddle and irritating bullshit from a telephone message. All of it sounds like they should have beat the shit out of the engineer immediately after hearing the playback of the master tapes. Plus the graphics are really, seriously, unspeakably hideous. This band is okay but not earth-shaking. If you're not into the whole seventies-rock with raunchy attitude thing then you won't like this. Approach with caution. [pym]

[The scene: A recording studio somewhere in Seattle, Washington. The studio is a granite block with tinted one-way windows. The parking lot is empty except for seven black limousines parked in a haphazard semicircle next to a fire hydrant. The doors to the studio are guarded by a couple of beefy mofos in suits with conspicuous bulges beneath their jackets. They're wearing shades, looking in different directions, watching for rude intruders who might interrupt the proceedings... every direction but up, unfortunately for them.]

GUARD # 1: Hey Vinnie, do you hear somethin'?

GUARD # 2: Huh? Like, uh, tiny pebbles rattling?

GUARD # 1: Yeah. Like that.

GUARD # 2: Naw, i don't hear nothin'.

A stone falls through the air between them and lands at their feet. It bounces off Vinnie's shoe. They look at the stone... at each other... and up. Just in time to see CyberLieutenant 12-Track and TASCAM-Girl airborne and bearing down on them like grand pianos dropped from the 20th floor of a building. TASCAM-Girl is wearing a tight blue rubber miniskirt and top so microscopic that she might as well be naked; her feet and calves are sheathed in black vinyl boots with approximately a million buckles. She's carrying a nuclear-powered Rotating Fusetron Hammergun, her eyes wild.

T-G: AAAAAAAAAHHHH! YIPPIE TI YI MOTHERFUCKERS! [Fires gun while swinging it back and forth almost at random]

GUARDS: AAAAARGH! AH FUCK OUR KIDNEYS JUST EXITED OUR SPINAL COLUMNS AAAIAIIEEEE!

The guards are dead, stinking piles of bloody meat before they can even reach for their guns. The CyberLieutenant and TASCAM-Girl land on them forcefully; their fat bodies cushion the dynamic duo's fall. TASCAM-Girl manages to put one of her stiletto heels right through Vinnie's left eye.

T-G (looking crazed): Aaaaah, how sweet it is! The smell of burning bodies in the sun... exploded bricks... fire like the glory of the settting sun... Christ, i'm getting wet already. I'm going to enjoy this job.

CL: Explain to me again, please, why we're here?

T-G: Look, it's simple, all right? There's this band in this here recording studio, the Murder City Devils, the new big thing on SubPop. That's the label that gave you Nirvana and Fastbacks, okay? Now they're pimping for this band, the Murder City Devils. Look at this CD, dammit, it'll tell you everything you need to know. (Hands him the CD)

CL (looking inside): How interesting. They're presenting the band in the form of crime-scene photos... there's certainly quite a bit of blood here. Why do they have so many people in this band? How can they afford to keep all these people fed on the road?

T-G (using the gun to destroy the front door): Yeah, whatever. Come on, follow me.

CL (following her into the lobby): So what exactly is our purpose in interacting with this band? (Inserts the CD into the cybersuit's disc player) Hmmm... interesting... they seem to rock reasonably well... we can't be going to kill them, then....

T-G: No no no, that's not the problem. They have two problems, but they're small problems, all right? We're just coming to warn them, that's all. Normally we would kill them, but they do rock, so we're going to let them live. We're just going to set them straight on these two ... minor... problems. (Sticks gigantic barrel of Hammergun in the receptionist's terrified face) ALL RIGHT, WHERE'S THE GODDAMN MURDER CITY DEVILS, BITCH?!!?

The reception blurts out crazed directions; T-G fires randomly at the walls as a warning -- or just to be firing her gun, possibly -- and darts into the maze of corridors with CL right behind.

CL (listening intently as the run through the halls while T-G shoots anything that moves): You know, this is actually a fine band, I think. They rock in a more "classic" mode, and for such a large ensemble they play together quite well. The drummer is certainly forceful enough... their guitars are cranked up and loud and bone-crushing... their drummer crashes about like a wild animal... I can't imagine why The Powers That Be would have anything against this band. Oh, wait, i see they cover Neil Diamond's "I'll Come Running"....

T-G (over the roar of the Hammergun as she wipes out the entire entourage of a famous superstar who has been unlucky enough to pick this studio in which to record her latest cheesy single): Exactly, goddamit! Don't these people know that covering Neil Diamond is like a fucking felony or something? Jesus Christ, i was just getting into their death kick and their swinging rock vibe and they had to ruin it with this cheesy Neil Diamond bullshit. I swear, that alone would be enough reason to castrate them all with a rusty potato peeler if it weren't for the fact that they are a pretty happening band. So I'll forgive 'em. This time.

CL: Then what's the other problem, the one that forced us to give up watching WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE to come to this town full of heroin addicts just to pay a visit to this band?

T-G (obliterating the door to the recording room): I can't believe you haven't figured it out -- HEY! There they are! BASTARDS! NOW YOU'LL FUCKING PAY!

The band scatters in terror like rats fleeing from a sinking ship. T-G aims her gun at the keyboard rack, steadies the giant killing device, and throws the switch set to MAXIMUM OVERKILL. Soon the room is filled the roar of bullets as the keyboard disintegrates.

T-G: Hahahahahahahahaha! Yes! YES! The keyboard, the goddamn cheesy keyboard, IS NO MORE! Don't you people KNOW that REAL rock bands don't NEED keyboards?!?! (snatches terrified female keyboardist up by the hair) LISTEN, girl -- my but you're cute, you can come be my boot slave anytime -- FIND ANOTHER INSTRUMENT, okay? Either that or start mixing the damn thing LOWER into the mix! Rock and roll should NEVER be defiled with bleating organs... what do you think you are, Emerson Lake and Palmer? HEED MY WORDS... don't force me to come BACK....

And then the dynamic duo are gone, leaving fire, death, and terror in their wake....

Ok, before I even start this review, I should warn you that there are at LEAST three versions of this album floating around. There?s the domestic (U.S.) version on Sub Pop which I believe is an enhanced CD, the Canadian version on Scratch/Sub Pop which has the multimedia junk and a bonus track (a cover of Burt Bachrach?s "Little Red Book"), and the vinyl version which has no multimedia junk, but does come with a stencil [tmu: what the fuck for?] and a bonus track (a cover of the Misfits? "Hybrid Moments") that isn?t on either of the CDs.

I should also tell you that, sucker that I am, I have the Canadian version (which makes sense actually, I live in Canada) and I?m gonna get this on vinyl as well. Why? Because the Murder City Devils are easily one of the top, if not the top punk rock band going at the moment. Why? ?Cause I said so. That?s why. "Ah," you're saying to yourself, "that's all well and good for you. For all I know you're some crazed fanboy dork. What?s so great about IN NAME AND BLOOD that I should lay down my hard earned cash on this record?"

So you want some proof do you? All right. Here we go. Number one: The M.C.D's sound like some crazed mix of the New York Dolls, The Supersuckers, and early Alice Cooper. Number two: The opening lines of the song "Press Gang" "PECKED BY THE SEAGULLS, HANGING FROM THE GALLOWS, SWINGING IN THE BREEZE, DRIPPING SOMETHING ON THE STREET" set the mood for the rest of the record. These guys (and gal) write about exactly four things, murder; the sea; loss; and drinking. Number three: How many other "rock" bands would have the balls to cover Neil Diamond (and make it sound good, like someone plugged the Pogues into a big-assed Marshall stack) and Burt Bachrach on the same record? How many bands could pull it off? How many of them could then turn around and pull off a Misfits cover? Number four: They are a punk band with an ORGAN player ferchrissakes!!!!! [tmu: And a cute one she is; she can come play my organ anytime.] Number five: They have their very own murder ballad, "Rum to Whiskey" that doesn?t sound forced or heavy handed. (You think it's easy to pull off an original murder ballad? Just try it. I dare you.) Number six: They name check Virginia Woolfe, Kenneth Anger, and Eddie Spaghetti in "Leumuria Rising." Number seven: The sleeve features gory pics of the band members as homicide victims. Number eight: Awwww, fuck it... you've either decided that you're gonna get the damn record or have lost interest by now.... [-NVH]

It must be pissed off stoner month. First the Orange Goblin disc and now this. Where Orange Goblin were pissed off and decided to get all punked up, it seems The Mushroom River Band got pissed and decided get down with the metal. Maybe it's 'cause they're from Sweden and have homies like Entombed and The Haunted. Maybe it's 'cause lead singer Spice left his gig with The Spiritual Beggars and is devoting 100% of his energy to TMRB.

Whatever the reason, Spice and co. have upped the aggression level and it's done wonders. SINSALABIM is one of the few "stoner" records that has been able to bridge the stoner-metal divide without sounding like Metallica playing through Big Muffs -- or worse, like Black Sabbath with that fucking horrible scooped-mid metal sound. (You indie types can stop smirking. There is a difference. And no, stoner *ahem* rockers aren't just lazy metal heads. Besides didn't I see you fronting a Slayer shirt at a Strokes show? Oh, wait that was IRONY. I see. Fuck you. Metal as irony is, like, so over man.)

"So yeah," you may be saying to yourself, "It's all well and good for you to say that they've jacked up the aggression level, but I haven't heard their debut. What do they sound like maaaaannnn? You're a reviewer. Your job is to give me a comparison so I can decide whether the bands you name check are hip enough for me to go drop my cash on the disc." TO RIDE, SHOOT STRAIGHT, AND SPEAK THE TRUTH-era Entombed would be where you want to put your head, although TMRB aren't quite as extreme as Entombed. Another jumping off point would be bands like Roachpowder (without the Down fixation) or Blind Dog. (Yet another side note - the hidden track frightened the shit out of me the first time I heard it.) [n/a]

I'll give you three guesses who's involved with this project.... yup! It's Tatsuya Yoshida (Ruins) teaming up with Asahito Nanjo (High Rise) and Makoto Kawabata (Toho Sara). Intensely fuzzy, dirty, lo-fi, improvised basement psyche-core music. Most of it sounds like outtakes or just toying around in the studio. With the exception of one or two sort of funky, dirty dub-wise tracks, these guys don't beat around the bush. It's just like having a large screw slammed directly into your forehead and then violently jerked about for a few minutes at a time. The pain is short, but the after-buzz is wonderful. [yol]

Mustard Bernard -- THE LIVING ARTS [Spilling Audio]

I like this a lot. Even the no-frills graphics, which remind me a lot of the ROIR cassettes in the Eighties.... Basically two guys with guitars and a drum machine, and plenty happening. "No Freedom/The Law" gallops along in a quasi- metallic fashion until it finally slows down and turns almost jazzy; "Tony O." is pretty menacing in its own right. "Tons of Drugs" mixes heavily reverbed vocals with winding guitars, and it swings in an appropriately stoned kind of way. "Shake It Off" combines a thumping beat and grooving guitars with what I think is an exquisitely lo-fi Casio keyboard that goes on and on before it ever bothers to get around to actual lyrics. Like most of the others, the closer "The Living Arts" is fairly long -- they all tend to clock in around six minutes or so--but still a swinging groovefest. Now if I could just figure out the cryptic, hidden meaning in the band's name....

Mythic -- MOURNING IN THE WINTER SOLSTICE [Relapse Records]

Three sloooooooooooow songs of death/doom grindcrush from three scary- soundin' women. Not as fearsomely heavy and blunt as 13, the obvious point of comparison (aside from being female crush-units, they share a few stylistic similarities, particularly in the vocal department... Alicia Morgan is still the scariest-sounding woman in the world, though), but they've got plenty of rumble, enough to keep ME satisfied. "Winter Solstice" is a total lurchfest, plodding along even slower than Bill Clinto jogs, and while "Lament Configuration" picks up the pace a bit, it will never be mistaken for a dance tune. "The Spawn of Absu" opens with tolling bells and wind effects before descending into the tarpit again, this time even "faster" than the previous song (fast being a VERY, uh, relative term here). Throughout the disc, Dana Duffey employs one of the most grottolike voices you'll ever hear, along with what sounds like a guitar tuned down about twenty steps... add a thundering, subterranean bass and plodding drums into the mix and presto! A masterpiece! Too bad the band broke up in 1992, though.... (They're playing now under another name, but it's a satanic band and satanic bands are silly and bore me so I don't remember the name, so sorry.)