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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

TMU: I think it sounds appropriately possessed by demons.

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

TMU: Chickens?

TTBMD: Is Zorn a big hunting fanatic?

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

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

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

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

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

TTBMD: I'm finished with this review.

Brutal Truth -- NEED TO CONTROL [Earache Records]

[THE SCENE: The den of some surburban middle-class family in Anytown, USA, where the family's eldest son, a long-haired death-metal spazz (let's call him "Roy") is sitting in the den with another like-minded pal (whom we'll call "Brian"). They are listening to the latest offering from Brutal Truth, when SUDDENLY -- ]

As the CD begins to play and the hair begins to fly, the noisy afternoon of these young men is RUDELY SHATTERED by the splintering sounds of the door being taken down by a battering ram. Confused, they turn away from the stereo just in time to see a small army of cops in black t-shirts and aviator shades explode into the room like a bomb with legs and arms and VERY BIG GUNS.

Four of them grab the bantamweight Roy and slam him against the wall a few times to get his attention, while 27 of them wrestle Brian to the shag carpet, clubbing him viciously with their metal batons. Just so Roy won't feel too unloved, the four cops holding him beat him about the kidneys until he whines. Meanwhile, as the rest of the Thought Police begin to tear the room apart looking for contraband, two of them saunter over to the CD player and begin to critique the still-playing CD.

"Can you believe it?" Joe Bob picks his teeth with a matchstick as two of his pals stomp the pee out of Roy behind him during the reading of his "rights." "Listen to this, it sounds like it was recorded in a sewer."

"Pro'lly WAS," Bubba chortles. "You just don't get more sewerlike than this, my friend. Listen to that singer, he sounds like he's been eating lye soap for breakfast. Scary, ain't it?"

"It sure is, Bubba." He opens up the CD case and pulls out the insert. "Look at them longhaired scum. Bet they smoke lots of dope. Don't you think they smoke lots of dope? They're probably stoned in that picture."

"Lemme see." Considers the black and white photo, nodding. "You're just absolutely right, Joe Bob. And they pro'lly don't even send their mamas a card on Mother's Day, neither."

"You're so right. Let's see what these lyrics say.... 'burn me / burn me / burn me / burn / and i'll fucking burn you'." He turns and kicks Brian in the head a couple of times. "Hey boy, your mama know you listenin' to albums with the f-word in them?"

Brian moans, his eyes glazed, as the cops read further. "OH, here's a good one -- somethin' about a head up an ass... rest of it's just smut and anti-law politics, no surprise there. And looky there, we got us a skull in a tiny Masonic pyramid, yes sir, we're talkin' PURE EVIL here, huh?"

Joe Bob looks through the lyrics, snorts, and sets the insert on fire. He drops the flaming page on Roy's crotch, laughing as the young man roars and squirms, unable to escape with a fat-ass cop sitting on him.

Joe Bob bends down to speak with the semi-conscious Brian. "Boy, what we got here is a couple of death-metal perverts listening to this deep down satanic music -- what defense you got for yourself?"

The young man gurgles: "It ROCKS, dude. And it's, like, uh, sort of anti-authoritarian and everything. Beats hell out of listening to some old fart like Barry Manilow."

"Barry Manilow? BARRY MANILOW?" Enraged, Bubba begins whaling on him with his flashlight. "I'll have you know, boy, my sainted MAMA, God rest her long dead soul, had EVERY ONE of Mr. Manilow's albums!"

"Help, help...." Brian moans for someone to come save him, but it is no use; the lawful agents of the Thought Police beat him to death with their big flashlights and set his friend on fire, then leave the blood- spattered walls behind them as they set out for the next house in their mission to make the world safe for "respectable" music....

Cake-Like -- BRUISER QUEEN [Vapor Records]

Thick sheets of snow screamed across the frigid wasteland. Glaciers, like pale gleaming monuments to a forgotten age, rose to a sun whose warmth failed to penetrate the howling snowstorm. Lost in the tundra, miles from the nearest Antarctic outpost, Captain 4-Track and TASCAM-Girl -- freezing in their skimpy spandex crimefighting outfits -- argued about whose fault it REALLY was that the Hypercube Flandez Time Module crashed and left them stranded in this godforsaken whiteness.

"I say it's YOUR fault," she screamed, her voice barely audible above the howling wind. "It was YOUR turn to put gas in the fucker."

"MY turn? MY turn? I've stopped at the Shell station the last four times!"

"Yeah, whatever. So what the hell are we going to do now?"

"We march." He pointed into the distance; she saw nothing but a wall of blinding white. "The internal radar spectrogasmotonometer tells me that a top-secret government outpost, currently unknown to all but a few select secret agents and funded out of a CIA slush fund, is only 2.4 miles away. We'll head there and get the fuel necessary to get our ship back on the ground so we can continue in our mission to kick somebody's ass."

"Oh, okay. So whose ass are we kicking this time, anyway?"

"I forget. It's written down in the logbook...."

"Well, seeing as how we're moving about three feet per minute, i figure we'll have plenty of time to check this out." She pulled out a portable CD player and inserted a disc.

"Whose fine new album shall we be listening to, then?"

"The new one by Cake-Like. I'm not so sure I'm all that impressed with it, but I left the Swans reissue back on the ship, so we're stuck with it for the moment."

"You mean to say that it's a flaccid followup to their stunning Avant debut, DELICIOUS?"

"Well... here's the deal: Their first album was such a fluke sleeper hit that the major labels apparently glommed onto them, and so they signed with a sneaky subsidiary of Warner/Reprise. Check out this slick artwork, man. Doesn't this just scream "arty major label concept of what some A&R guys thinks is alternative" or what?"

"Mein gott, the artwork is on a YELLOW background... how... hideous."

"I like the flies fucking, though. That was a nice touch."

"So how is the MUSIC?"

"About the same as the first disc, only with all the periodic noise eruptions and brutal energy all sanded away for a more user-friendly approach. In other words, not quite so much fun. Plus the version of "mr. fireman" here is nowhere near as crazed and energetic as the version from the single. Boo hoo. It's still pretty cool, though. In fact, this whole disc is fine on its own merits; it's just that the first disc makes it look kind of weak by comparison...."

"Surely you must admit that Kerri Kenney gets a magnificent bass tone all over the place."

"Oh yeah, and the stern-mother stuff on "mr. fireman" is absolutely hysterical, along with the line where she's screaming "bring your goddamn truck and some water!" But the nasty fuzzed-out guitar has been pushed waaaaay back, and that's the formula for everything on this disc: the whole business of minimizing the dirty, chaotic stuff that made them so interesting in the first place is what bugs me."

"Hmmm... there does seem to be an overabundance of pretty and girly- girl stuff happening... wait, this song "lorraine's car" is reasonably out of control. They're doing lots of shouting and making strange noises on this one...."

"Yah, if the rest of the album were as consistently energized as this and "mr. fireman," they'd have a winner. As it is, we have to assume that something got lost in the translation due to major label diddling. And what the FUCK is she saying on "the american woman" anyhow? Dammit, i FAILED French, and i'm sure as hell not going out and buying a dictionary.... On the other hand, "truck stop hussy" manages to be pretty, heavy, nasty, and smutty all at the same time, plus she's really yelping there, so maybe things aren't so bad after all... plus it's really kind of funny...."

The disc played as they walked. Eventually she said, "So how far are we from the damn place now? I've got to pee."

"Uh... let's see... by my calculations, we'll reach the outpost in just under two hours."

"Wonderful."

"So how did we end up reviewing this disc, anyway?"

"The ubermaggot was too busy gloating over the Pere Ubu box set to do it himself, I guess."

The party was in full swing, complete with coke on the coffee table, orgies in the bathroom, and loud seventies rock of the lamest sort erupting from the stereo system when the doorbell rang. One happily inebriated teenager swayed toward the door and opened it. Before he could ask what the caller wanted, he was driven back in a hail of bullets, spraying blood and bone chips everywhere. As he took one shambling half-step backward and collapsed with blood still spraying from his shredded lungs, the crowd of wide-eyed teenyboppers watched in horror as TASCAM-Girl and Captain 8-Track sauntered through the door.

"You... you killed Bobby!" one young snub-nosed chicklet in a microscopic halter top wailed.

"Damn right," TASCAM-Girl snarled, holstering her baby Mac. "I killed him with my big fucking dick for the crime of playing Boston without a license. Don't you people know that it's in bad taste to play seventies music when you didn't even live through the decade?" She approached the stereo, considered it carefully, then whipped out the baby Mac. The gun roared; plastic stereo chunks erupted. At last the stereo gave up the ghost in a cloud of black smoke. Satisfied, she returned the gun to its holster.

"I say," Captain 8-Track noted, "don't you think that was perhaps a bit drastic?"

"Drastic crimes require drastic measures. My only regret is that I can't bring him back to life and kill him again for his shitty taste in music. I'll bet he doesn't even have any Prong records in this collection... let's see... nope, no Prong... lots of N-Sync and Hanson and Backstreet Boys and that jolly pixie slut Britney Spears... my God, is that a New Kids on the Block album? And what's this? Foghat? Don't you people know that it's illegal to own Foghat albums? Fuck, the record collection goes too."

"You know," Captain-8 Track shouted over the roar of the machine pistol, ducking to avoid being speared by hot flying shards of jagged vinyl, "it would do you a world of good to learn about tolerance --"

"Fuck tolerance," she snarled. She reached into one of the pockets of her skintight vinyl PVC dress and produced a portable CD player. Setting the disc player on top of the remains of the stereo, she pressed play and said, "All right, now you miserable little snots are going to learn about real music. If you're going to listen to cheese, dammit, it should at least be good cheese."

"Tell me," the Captain said as the Donnas began to rock, wailing about boys in skintight jeans, "how do you manage to keep anything in that dress when it's so tight I can actually count your pubic hairs? Really, I must know, it's an amazing feat."

She ignored him, addressing the crowd of teens cowering in one corner of the room. "All right you little shits," she shouted, "pay attention. This is your only chance. There will be a test afterwards. Now. This music playing right now -- this godlike snotty rock and roll -- is the Donnas. Four girls from California whose only goal in life is to be the new Ramones. At this they succeed splendidly. It's taken them a couple of albums to get their shit together, true, but now they have their turds together tighter than a mosquito's asshole and if you don't believe me, I will kill you. Do we understand each other so far?" The dazed crowd responded with much vigorous head-nodding.

"What makes this so brilliant," she said, nodding with approval as the crowd began to shake in time with the music, "is that they understand fully what made the Ramones so great: they don't waste a lot of time on bullshit, they don't bother with grand displays of guitar masturbation, and they write rude but funny lyrics about pissing off your parents, smoking dope, lusting after boys in skintight jeans, and all the other jazz that defines life for teenagers. They have absolutely no redeeming social value and don't give a flying fuck about politics and for this you should probably sacrifice your firstborn children to them. They're no morose shoegazing politically obsessed turds like those tiresome grunge guys -- they're just four geeky women who intend to rock your world and not much else. First lesson: keeping your ambition simple can yield impressive results."

As "You Don't Want To Call" came on, the teenagers gave up on the last vestiges of their fear and began to get down. As the party began to resume swinging, TASCAM-Girl continued with her lecture, jumping onto the coffee table to doodle crazed air guitar while shouting. "This song is a perfect example of everything they do right," she raved. "Catchy, four-on-the-floor rock and roll with an ass-quaking bass and snide lines about being dumped by a clueless boyfriend, a sound halfway between the Ramones and the Cars. This same clever strategy of whompin' beats and bass coupled with catchy-ass guitars and snide lyrics shows up again on 'I Didn't Like You Anyway,' about -- yes -- clueless boyfriends, and 'Hotboxin',' about getting caught smoking dope. The rest of the songs are basically Ramones throwaways, but they're good throwaways, and you're not doing anything this swell, are you?"

"That's all fine and good," the Captain yelled as he stepped over a couple plonking away to the beat of "Searching the Streets," "but how do you explain their questionable taste in covering Motley Crue, of all things?"

"Oh, the song 'Too Fast For Love,' you mean? Well, it is true that there are better songs they could have covered -- hell, there are better songs by the Crue -- but that's a matter of taste. And besides, they do all right by it, so why do you care?"

"Just thought I'd bring it up." He pointed to a young man swinging naked from the chandelier. "Look! I do believe that young stud is getting behind this band!"

"As well he should," TASCAM-Girl said. "The Donnas rock like a pee dog and if you don't buy this album they'll come kick your goddamn ass. And that's way it should be."

The Captain surveyed the growing chaos around them and nodded sagely. "Well, it appears our work here is done. Now... what next?"

TASCAM-Girl reloaded her pistol, sniffing. "I hear there's a worthless shit down the street who insists on playing Liberace records real loud," she said. "And I just... happen... to have the latest Godflesh CD on my person. What do you say we go save him from that satanic bad taste?"

"By all means," he said happily, following close behind as she crashed through the plate glass window....

Neddal watches TG pacing, pacing, pacing. The gun she carries is so huge that even held at waist-level the barrel nearly drags the floor. Her black latex skirt, boots of a thousand buckles, and bullet belt are polished to a high-gloss shine; the rest of her, caving in now to the excesses of a week spent ripped on diet pills, doesn't look so hot.

TG (croaks): "My... diet pill... is a-wearin' off...."

N/A starts to sneak out the door, comic rolled up in his back pocket. He gets as far as the door, with one hand on the doorknob, when he feels a stilleto heel in his spine and a gun barrel against the back of his head.

TG: And just where the fuck do you think you're going?

N/A: Ummmmm... I heard my momma call me.

TG: REVIEW! (cocks gun) REVIEW OR DIE!

N/A (obediently): Apparently these guys are huge in the UK. That makes sense. Morrisey was huge in the UK. Oh yeah, the music: Wimpy nu-metal (can you say I.N.C.U.B.U.S.?) with the whiniest singer this side of, uh, Morrisey. [n/a]

N/A: I want to go hang out with the Moon Unit and Todd. Their reviews are more fun. I mean, they don't have a psychotic freak pointing a gun at them. Plus they'd probably let me have a beer.

TG: Who are you calling a freak, you... you... you Canadian?

N/A: Don't push your luck, bitch.

TG (pointing the gun): Review --

N/A: You can suck my cock!

TG (beating him severely with the gun): Would you say that to Tura Satana? I don't fucking think so. Give me a review RIGHT NOW or i'll rip your nuts off and mail them to Bangkok!

N/A (croaking): fiftywatthead kick out cranked-up noise rock. When I say "cranked-up," I mean that they take the basic noise-rock template set out by the AmRep bands and jack the heaviness quotient up to Cavity / eyehategod / Buzzov.en levels. The result is an ungodly racket that will put a big smile on your face. [n/a]

Gravitar -- NOW THE ROAD OF KNIVES [Charnel Music]

[OPENING SCENE: Deep in the primeval woods, with more coniferous trees than the eye can begin to reasonably grasp. Eerie green light radiates from the background. The camera focuses on a tree stump bearing a human head with a pike driven through one eye; at the end of the bloody pike is a piece of paper. Closeup reveals the paper to be a promotional sheet extolling the virtues of Gravitar, now a trio (having "misplaced" original guitarist Harold Richardson) from MIchigan. Apparently they have a new album out. It's their fifth, including the tape-only offering available directly from the band. All previous albums have been the work of dark gods with razor blades and efx boxes dialed into from another dimension... but what about THIS one?]

CUT TO: Agent Mulder's incredibly messy apartment. We're talking cyclone city here. Moldy pizza boxes rest on stacks of illicitly-copied government files, one corner is a towering stack of unlabeled videocassettes that could be classified UFO footage or Thai bondage fat porn -- one never knows with Mulder, blurry photos of what could be aliens or three-lobed kittens are tacked to every available surface, cigarette butts litter the floor, an unidentified woman's peekaboo panties hang on a doorknob, the leftovers in the fridge have grown sentient and are plotting world domination... you get the idea. Mulder sits at a table with a small stereo; Scully stands, twitching with disgust, trying to defy physics and levitate so she won't have to actually touch anything.

SCULLY: Mulder, you are a pig. Have you never heard of a vacuum cleaner?

MULDER: (engimatic smile, like the acid just kicked in) I didn't call you over here to talk about cleaning tips. Check this out. It's... interesting.

SCULLY: (picks up CD) Gravitar? NOW THE ROAD OF KNIVES? What about it?

MULDER: Listen. (turns on stereo)

The CD plays. Ugly screeching noises like a UFO tuning up its engine fade in, then are exploded into oblivion by overheated guitars being ripped apart by a mulching machine as unearthly howling, dissonant noises, mutant demi-jazz drums, jet engines combusting, Superman farting, etc., etc. roar out of the speakers all at once. The wall of fury is rarely ever full-on, meaning that periodically everything happens at once, then elements drop out to reveal space, then others surge back in, much like a tornado lasting for approximately seventy minutes. There are supposedly fifteen tracks, but since nothing ever really stops, it's obvious that the fragmentary "track listing" is present only to confuse the easily confused. (Like the reviewer for instance.) An impressive number of indescribable sounds are catalogued throughout the epic, all chopped to slivers by the cruel hands in charge of the editing razor. Flanged-out skipping CD noises, hovering UFO sounds, sheet metal wailing, and psyched-out cyclotron rotator sounds figure heavily into the mix. Vocals turn up periodically, if you want to call them that; Freud would interpret them as the seething vocal expression of an id being tortured with meat forks, actually. Periodically something vaguely resembling "songs" emerge briefly, only to be swept away by the sonic tidal wave again. Energy is the theme of the day; at almost every juncture it sounds like the speaker cones are getting ready to catch fire and explode. The ghost of Coltrane sneers at Morricone toward the end. A stuck CD impaled on a military knife signals... the end. But the end really comes with the sound of a scratchy record locked in the groove.

MULDER: What do you think?

SCULLY: (in disbelief) My God... they're... they're DERANGED. I've never heard anything like it. Where did you find it?

MULDER: In the mail. It was sent by a concerned citizen. (chuckles) Surely you know what it IS, don't you?

SCULLY: No, but I'm sure you'll tell me....

MULDER: Isn't it obvious? It's a captured transmission of a UFO landing.

SCULLY: (doesn't believe) Ah, the light is shed.

MULDER: Look, it's obvious. Somehow -- maybe it was a guy with a shortwave who just happened to have a tape recorder nearby, I don't know -- someone must have intercepted this. I mean, it's obviously not of human origin. Can you listen to this (cues up "Leelarran," on which a tranced out guitar loops as something vaguely resembling reed instruments with a lot o' gain wail over the top) and really believe this was done by HUMANS?

SCULLY: Mulder, have you ever heard of an effects box? You know, they're about the size of a Stephen King book and you plug an instrument into them and funny noises come out....

MULDER: And listen to this. (cues up the untitled fourth track) Listen... hear that cycling hum? And now these "drums" come in... now... here it comes... (big explosion of sonic fury) see? SEE? The rockets! The engines revving up, the entire mothership lifting off -- or maybe it's landing, it's hard to tell....

SCULLY: (looking at CD insert) It says here that Davin Brainard appears on that track. Hmmmm.... And I see that Warren DeFever of His Name Is Alive appears throughout the album. Obviously this a mutant jazz-noise trio, Mulder. Not a UFO.

MULDER: Then what about this? (plays "I Know," in which noises bump and collide amid a sea of weird editing, heavily gated guitar squeaking, fucked-up drums, and more, with the overall effect of objects floating in weightless space among a hall of whirling knives)

SCULLY: I must admit that's pretty unearthly. Most impressive. These boys have fiendish imaginations.

MULDER: And what does this sound like to you? (plays untitled track 12) I mean, come on, can't you tell that this is obviously the ethereal brain cries of the abductees being forced to run the ship's Spectomagnetotron Chain Drive with their mental energy?

SCULLY: You know, this UFO obsession of yours is taking an unhealthy turn. It just sounds like Morricone wrestling with Coltrane in a bed of snakes, that's all. Sure, it nods in the direction of jazzy Skullflower, but it's hardly... uh... what was it again?

MULDER: The mental energy of abductees.

SCULLY: Christ, I think you're due for a 50,000 mile checkup.

MULDER: What do you make of the end of the transmission?

SCULLY: Sounds like they found a really swell passage on a stuck CD and looped it for quite awhile, then dropped in pokey drums and various other kinds of guitar effluvia. I like the sound of the scratchy record stuck in the groove at the very end, although that entire device -- the analog reference on a CD -- is coming dangerously close to being a cliche these days, you know.

MULDER: No, no, no, no.... It's so OBVIOUS, can't you see? It's the sound of the engine knocking. They need a tuneup on their interstellar overdrive whatsit. I can't believe you can't recognize that.

SCULLY: You can't be serious.

MULDER: I'm going to get to the bottom of this. The FBI can't stop me! The government can't stop me! The president can't stop me! The preacher man can't stop me! I'm gonna take off my pants! I'm gonna take off my pants! Uh, wait, wrong song.... You know, there's a long file on this "group" at the headquarters. They've been doing this for a long time and it's time someone got to the bottom of this. We have to know what they're REALLY up to. And i'm just the man to do it... because... BECAUSE....

SCULLY: My God, don't you dare fucking say it --

MULDER: (eyes get all moony like a religous cultee) Because...

SCULLY: I'm SERIOUS, I have a GUN, dammit!

MULDER: ...the truth is out there.

SCULLY: (searching through her purse) Goddamn, where is it? I know it's in here somewhere... you can never find your gun when you really NEED it....

[Fade to black. Gunshots ring out over the aforementioned stuck-CD trance- groove of "+LEE+19357-039."]

TMU: "Attack of the 30-Foot Toothed Vulva" is the first song -- i like this band already. Doesn't this sound like a choir of diseased angels to you? Angels writhing in the grip of infernal ecstasy after dropping too much acid?

TTBMD: Si, senor. Very abstract, in a Severed Heads kind of way -- the early stuff. Keyboards, samples, repetition --

TMU: Repetition is good.

TTBMD: -- and a hefty dose of experimental ambiance. These Italians would be something worth seeing live, one would think.

TMU: I like the wavelike drift and hypnotic slo-mo keyboard motifs in "Aquis Submersis."

TTBMD: The soundtrack to a piece of wood drifting in and out with the tide.

TMU: Shades of Hybryds -- HEEWACK! The crashing glaciers in "Astral plane crash" are pretty nifty, too.

TTBMD: Helicopters on the hunt. The searchlight sweeps the dead night sky. There are no survivors. And Hypersexual Nymphomaniacs are blasting through the speakers in the death camps. Their forbidding sounds fall on dead, maggot-infested ears.

TMU: I like this washed-out psych sound they got goin' on in "Oni-Gomon."

TTBMD: This is good shit. They use an array of sounds to create a cosmic shelter against other bands whose attempts at the same don't sound anywhere near as good. I would think a label with good taste would be more than happy to put this out. Did I tell you how good it was yet?

TMU: They have forged their own style indeed here. I like their approach to rhythm, using the bell-tones and delays to generate their own rhythm. There is freedom in the sound waves, o my brother.

TTBMD: Sparse and expansive. "Oni-Gomon" is a highly-recommended track.

TMU: This fifth track leaves us cold, but "Unconcerned but not Indifferent" is most soothing.

TTBMD: This track goes into the same territory as Megaptera and Lustmord. Earth tones, soothing to the soul.

TMU: These droning sounds of space make me realize suddenly how small, how insignificant, how worthless we are in the eyes of the blind idiot god sleeping at the center of the burning Hell Eye. We are not even the shriveled membrane separating the clotted blood cells in the belly of a dying paramecium. This is the sound of isolation... sensory deprivation... a rest from the distraction of being alive.

TTBMD: The end of the journey. Meeting your maker. The comfort zone.

TMU: Fear not the Stark Fist of Removal!

TTBMD:  There's an organic feel on "Baron Samedi" with a weird melody -- alien, drunken, hypnotic. A drunken accordion player with a cheap tape recorder. He goes to the bathroom. Relief!

TMU: Is this a good thing? I like this song too. There's this feeling most of the time that it might, at any minute, turn into an actual song, assuming it sobers up anytime soon.

TTBMD: "Suppose They give a war and No One Comes" is repetitive, isn't it? I dunno....

TMU: Repetition is good. I like this. (sways like a snake) I can charm snakes with this. Or charm panties off girls who like to play with snakes. Whatever.

TTBMD: You could be right. But the song with the long-ass French title sounds more like a tribal rite of passage. In the jungle with the natives.

TMU: Slow. Purposeful. The shining light flickers in the distance through the fog as the natives swat away the burning spears. Destiny is coming. The white man approaches with guns and fire and Bibles. We are all fucked now. So we can only react with grace and dignity, and play our slow and sorrowful music, while around us our brothers are clubbed down and forced to pray for their killers. But we have our dignity, for we know -- o my brother, we KNOW -- that someday we shall rise, as one, with the wolves before us and beside us, and in the name of all that is UNHOLY we shall kick their fucking asses! HEEWACK!

TTBMD: These guys are from Italy, remember? I don't think they have jungles in Italy. Could you repeat what you just said?

TMU: Fuck no. Do you think this last song, "Tomorrow Never Knows," is actually a cover of the Beatles song?

TTBMD: I don't know. The original is probably better.

TMU: I like these big-ass noises and shouting and stuff. Those big-block riffs... that thunder... i'm pretty sure Hank didn't do it this way. Or Lennon. Even before that dumb-ass fuckhole filled him so full of bullets they needed a crane to lift his body. This is really repetitive, too... repetition is good....

Ice -- UNDER THE SKIN [Pathological]

[NOTE: This review is respectfully dedicated to the ass-licking dilholes who passed the CDA. Once again, DEAD ANGEL regrets that it's tragically illegal to set politicians on fire....]

THE SCENE: Some back room buried shit-deep in the bowels of the Senate
THE PLAYERS: A bunch of shit-eating maggots in expensive pin-striped suits
THE STAKES: Your fucking freedom
THE WINNERS: Not a single goddamn soul
THE LOSERS: Everybody in the whole fucking world

FNORD: All names have been changed to protect the GUILTY. (Fuckers.)

[Fade in on maggots writhing in pinstripe suits]

SENATOR DILHOLE: Aaaaah, that was GOOD! The Bill of Rights -- mmm mmm, put a li'l SALT on it and it just HITS THE SPOT!

SENATOR TINYDICK: Yes, and just in time for the election year, too! We'll look so suave SAVING THE CHILDREN FROM THEMSELVES one more time! HAHAHAHA!

SENATOR ASSMUNCH: Ah, an easy thing for us Washington insiders. Ha, carving up the First Amendment, now THERE'S a meal for you. How you do like how we did the business to the internet?

TINYDICK: Oh, that was GOOD! Right up the poop chute!

ASSMUNCH: Yes, we HAVE done a good job... and now... it's time to CELEBRATE. [drags out a briefcase and lays it on the table] Guess, my friends, what I have in here?

DILHOLE: Uhhhhh... dresses?

TINYDICK: Drugs? In massive quantities?

SENATOR DUNGBEETLE: Might it even be -- VODKA?!?!?!

ASSMUNCH: Oh, it's even better that that. [Opens briefcase and retrieves one small item] Feast your eyes upon THIS, my fellow maggots!

[Collective "oooo" as they see the Ice CD]

TINYDICK: Oooo, we'll be quakin' and writhin' on the floor NOW! Play it! Play it! PLAY IT!

[He does so. Soon the Senate chamber resounds with the throbbing, deep-dub hell of fuzzy bass guitars and fucked-up flanging noises buried in mountains of samples, noise, and assorted sonic debris.]

DUNGBEETLE: Oooo, this opener "Juggernaut Kiss," I LIKE this one! What an ass-shaking groove! I want to take this home and beat my wife to it!

TINYDICK: Forget that, I want to hear "Out of Focus" -- that's the slow burner, the one that starts with just one bass riff that stops, starts, stops, starts, and then eventually all the other shit kicks in, like a bad dust hallucination... God, those echoes swimming in and out of the mix... this is the one I always put on when I have to shoot up and tie up my wife and sodomize her, you know, just like a good Republican should! Sometimes I can even get her to scream IN TIME WITH THE BEAT!

ASSMUNCH: Hell no, we're going to settle in and get down with ".357 Magnum is a Monster," you whining little shit. The thunder of those drums at the beginning, the bass that sounds like it was excavated from the center of the earth, the shuddering wall of filth -- how can you go wrong with this one? It's named after a GUN, for God's sake! Surely the NRA would approve!

DILHOLE: Funny, don't you think, that it was written by men who live in a country where you can't even own guns... can you own a gun in England?

TINYDICK: Shut the fuck up, you moron. [Lunges for the CD player and fast- forwards to "Skyscraper"] Hell, here's another ass-shaker... imagine that stripper down at The Gentleman's Club, you know, the one with the really HUGE tits, the redhead that Senator ASSMUNCH is always sucking up to hoping she'll blow him even though he hasn't got a hope in hell... hah, imagine her doing the bump and grind to THIS! Makes the mind reel....

ASSMUNCH: Don't be dissin' my stripper, shithead. We're gonna hear "The Flood" now just for that munched-out guitar and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. Love that shouting shit, too. Reminds me of the glory days when I still had the lung capacity to shout through a 36-hour filibuster....

TINYDICK: Oh yeah? Well, maybe I'll just kick your scrawny old ass!

ASSMUNCH [laughing]: I'd like to see you try with that gimpy arm, old man!

DILHOLE: Well, at least HE doesn't fly the flannel in the presidential election while living in a million-dollar home in a bogus attempt to get down with the blue-collar vote....

ASSMUNCH: You got a PROBLEM with that? At least I'm not having to fire campaign staffers left and right every day! Or spouting off about building goddamn chain link fences around all of Texas! Yi! Use your goddamn HEAD!

DILHOLE: You know, if it weren't for the lumbering bass vibes in this song "Stick Insect" lulling me into a hypnotized state of non-aggression, I'd have to beat the living shit out of you. Fuckhead.

[much scuffling as the senators beat themselves about the head and shoulders with their spiffy shoes that cost more than you make in a month even as they try to raise your taxes]

ASSMUNCH: [sounding wounded] Does that mean you didn't groove to "The Flood?"

DILHOLE: It was all right. This is better. But now that it's over I'm going to whip your ass, nancy-boy. [starts rolling up his sleeves, but hands the gold cufflinks to his fawning page]

DILHOLE: [to page] Don't lose those, boy. And be READY, 'cause you know fighting makes me HORNY... and dammit, don't forget the K-Y this time, they could hear you all over Pennsylvania Avenue last time.

PAGE: Yes sir.

ASSMUNCH: Shut the fuck up and fight, sissy! Your ass is MINE!

TINYDICK: Hey, I want his ass too!

DUNGBEETLE: Me too! ME TOO!

[The Senate chamber resonates with the sounds of breaking bones and ugly shtupping noises as various members of the Senate take turns beating up on ASSMUNCH and poking him in the ass while "The Swimmer" clonks and burbles in the background....]

Another fine album by this black metal mastermind. Much more furious drums and guitar than in previous releases, this is for true underground black metal fans only -- no posers. We can't even talk about individual songs because the entire album is outstanding as a whole, one riff-roaring song after another -- no sucker punches. This release is not comparable to many other current black metal bands because here we have an extremely dedicated and truly brutal musician. I can't even compare him to the greats because is so totally doing his own thing. Bloody hails to No Colours for putting out this 180-gram vinyl -- limited to 666 copies. That's 180-GRAM VINYL, MOTHERFUCKER! He has dropped out of the "scene," so good luck finding any new material he might have coming out. DEATH TO FALSE METAL! [ttbmd]

Konkhra -- SPIT OR SWALLOW [Progress Records]

Aaaaaaah, big cheesy Danish metal... how EXCITING! Full of flying hair and bad attitudes about life and lyrics so ridiculous that i cannot quote them to you, because then you'd laugh so hard that you'd pee in your pants and then you'd sue me for emotional distress and payment of dry cleaning bills, and alas, i have no $$$, so you'll just have to take my word for it that the lyrics are most cheesy, ok? The guitars, however, are big and primitive and loud and sizzling and all those good things, and since you can't tell what the "singer" is saying anyway, it's EASY to ignore the lyrics and pay attention to the other guys trying to beat you into submission with their fried-out guitars. Look, a SOLO! He's WANKING! Yow! And how about the SOUND, you ask? Oh my, i'm so glad you asked: think Metallica. With a Danish accent.

THINGS THEY GET BONUS POINTS FOR: Grotesque facial hair, brain- corroding scrape 'n chunk guitars on "Spit or Swallow" and "Subconscience," impressive death-croak, good taste in stealing liberally from pre-poofy hair era Metallica, reasonably cool samples, thunderous drummer, cool artwork and layout (they spent some $$$!), curvaceous Danish babes with puffy lips and large-caliber weapons, incredibly tasteless album cover, total lack of shame at pandering so obviously to disturbed 14-year old sociopaths who probably set animals on fire for fun.

THINGS THEY LOSE BONUS POINTS FOR: Grotesque facial hair, stunning lack of originality, lead guitarist who Plays Too Goddamn Much, overworked lyrical topics (religion, Hitler/Stalin/Ayatollah Were Bad Guys, drugs, we're all going to die, etc.), and probably other stuff i can't think of right now.

SHOULD YOU BUY IT?: Only if you have a fondness for cheesy metal or, like DEAD ANGEL, feel nostalgic for the days when you were a teenager and the only things you had to worry about in life were "When's the new Slayer album coming out, DUDE?" and avoiding being shot by your own wild-eyed, gun-toting, amphetamine-fueled friends....

(Having safely dispatched the rest of the weasels since emerging from their brief respite, the dynamic duo return to the Command Center. After spending some quality time berating the Moon Unit and threatening to pee on his head again, TG settles back in the Command Recliner and starts fiddling with dials and knobs.)

C12: What are you doing now? I'm almost afraid to ask.

TG: We've gotta get a review going for this Lamb of God disc. It must be hot shit because the Moon Unit was playing it constantly for weeks, but I haven't had time to listen to it myself and there's no way you're man enough to review this. So we've got to generate a review, which is just what I'm gonna do if I can figure out how the damn Review-O-Tron works....

C12: I thought it was out of order. (eyes pop out while looking at the latest issue of LATEX LUST, one of many such magazines scattered around the room)

TG: It just came back from the shop the other day. About time, too -- he's been winging these reviews for a while now while it was gone, it's making him sloppy. (focuses on a handful of dials and switches) Hey, I think I've found it here. Man, it looks complicated... Ah shit, i don't know beans about this stuff... uhhhh... (fumbles frantically at the Command Panel) Where the hell is that selector switch? Ah, there it is. (starts flipping switches on the Review-O-Tron)

C12 (looking nervous): Be careful with that thing! God only knows what it's been modified to do... you know there are no limits to the depths of the Moon Unit's perversity and I do see a toolbox lying in the corner....

TG: Oh relax, nelly boy. (spins dials, pushes button) Okay, here we go... this should generate a review of the Lamb of God debut that's, um, more or less consistent with the Moon Unit's, ah, what the hell do they call it, you know, style....

(tape rolls)

Imagine some mean-ass high-velocity technical metal played wid phat precision at mad volume 'n you more'n halfway there, doctor. Factor in da uberprocessed death-metal croak-of-a-thousand voices and you startin' to move like one o' mah fair-priced hos. Give it up for a cryptic sense of... man, of... shit, well, everything -- and now you gots da full picture 'n shit. They players, mothafucka! What makes 'em mo' interestin' (to ma ears, anyway) than most o' dem fancy-ass li'l death metal bands litta be they technical leanings -- man, they sound like one o' da most discplined bands around, like maybe Vinnie the Fist been providin' da motivation, uh huh. Dis da mos' spot-on tub o' precise riffage for mean bidness since maybe like, early Swans, man. Dis be partic'ly true of they drummer, who be so precise 'n intense the dude often sounds mo' like a mechanical drill press than a human being 'n shit. Da rest of da band blow mad style, heavylike, just as precise 'n every bit as forbiddin' in both sound 'n volume, know what I'm sayin'? My fave dollar-changer on da disc, 'bout as spiffy as mah main ho Angelina, woo she 'bout as slow 'n nasty as dis tune, dat be "Terror 'n Hubris in da House o' Frank Pollard." It also be da slowest, leas' initial-like, which leads me to wonda what da band would sound like if they eased off da gas pedal a tad 'n shit. Plus it do dem good, they learn to swing like them cats from Sly 'n da Family Stone, maybe. Oh yeah baby, dat be a righteous idea. (Then again, I currently be thinkin' just 'bout everything sound betta at half-speed, so dat may just be mo' me than anythin' to do wid da band.) I also mad dog all over da tricky near-fade in "Black Label" that turns into a growin' spiral of tornado drummin' before da band kicks back in to whup yo' fat ass 'n shit. They sound heavy -- like Rosa, that fat bitch on the bottom o' my string! -- pretty much everywhere, 'n they has some powerful strange (but good, in a sorta pimp-vibe kinda way, if you know what I mean) ideas about sound, partic'ly regardin' vox. Fair warning, Jones: da singer, Blythe 'n shit, has a serious death-croak goin' 'n changes gears 'bout as often as Mike Patton or maybe dat hood down da street what keeps tryin' to boost my Lexus. Dey even fuck wit' da drums now and then -- they mad stylin'! Da result be they has a mad distinct sound dat gots to also pound you' ass into da pavement like a tiny-ass ho under a jackhammer 'n shit I greatly approve of dis band 'n shit, they gots fuckin' class, brother. Ah like....

Oh yeah, mad props fo' da exceptional art -- definitely not yo' standard death-metal issue by no means -- 'n Steve Austin's engineerin' be absolutely phat an' full-on amazing, know what I'm sayin'? Da political bent of da intentionally cryptic lyrics makes me be thinkin' they gots to be mad fly on Napalm Death or Crass, but they sure don't sound like eitha of them. Know what I'm sayin'? Interesting, know what I'm sayin'? Dis be an excellent band 'n an excellent album, man. I'd let them come fuck my hos any day of the week. These be real men. With any luck these here album gonna unseat them panty-assed losers in da nu-metal fad....

(tape reel finishes)

C12: Well. I see. That was just wonderful. Don't you think so, Henriette?

TG: All right, so maybe I should have guessed that having it set on "Pimpolizer" was maybe not such a hot idea. Fuck. Look at these voice settings -- "Collector Geek," "Schizolizer," "Sheep Pimp," "Overly Technical Weenie," "Freak Fucker"... how am I supposed to know which is the one he actually uses to do reviews?

(faint sound of sardonic laughter wafts from the well)

C12: You're not helping matters here, Henriette....

TG: All right, so I fucked up here, give me a break. Look, why don't you cue up another one of Sienko's reviews while I try to figure this thing out....

C12: By all means....

TG and Neddal are seated on the couch. He desperately awaits her to grow bored and leave him alone or to fall asleep. Given her destroyed mental condition, the result of far too many diet pills, neither of these things is likely to happen. Even worse, now she appears to be growing horny: To Neddal's horror, she is suddenly playing footsies with him. Disturbed, he buries his face in the copy of DOOM PATROL.

TG: You know, you're kind of cute... we could do other things besides reviews, you know....

N/A: No! NO! Don't even think about it!

TG (pouting): Why not?

N/A: Because I've heard the rumors! I know the score! Stay the hell away from me!

TG (looking innocent): I can't imagine what you're talking about.

N/A: I know you're a transvestite! Or a she-male! Or something! Stay away from me!

TG: Oh, you don't really believe that fairy story, do you? Look, I'll show you... (starts to wiggle out of her skirt)

N/A: No! NO! The skirt stays ON!

He is paralyzed with terror as she crawls up the couch and cuddles up in his lap, tucking her incredibly huge gun under his chin.

TG: Kiss me, pooky.

N/A: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

TG: If you're not going to kiss me, then... review me, big daddy.

N/A: THE DIRTY ONES is a bit of a departure for Lost Goat. The tight, groovy playing is still there, along with Erica Stoltz' amazing voice. They have, however, changed the focus of the music from THE RIFF to a more atmospheric, psychedelic sort of thing. This is most apparent on the instrumental "The Drifter" (featuring Amber Asylum's Kris Force and Jackie Gratz) and their cover of Buffy St. Marie's "Cod'ine." [n/a]

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.]

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.

TTBMD: This is very cool. This sounds like somebody beating up a deranged accordion.

TMU: There are an awful lot of people making funny noises here and i'm not entirely sure what they're doing. Free jazz on the wing, freestyle. Lots of oompahing and squeaking. Melodic zephyrs for an army of rocking chairs. HEEWACK!

TTBMD: This is a live recording. Would have been very nice to have been there to witness the action.

TMU: It sounds like they were meshing together well.

TTBMD: Yeah, a couple of the guys are really... they're drunk, dude. Some of the song titles are like a story about how drunk they are at this performance. But this one is called "Static Beauty."

TMU: They do sound as if they've had a few.

TTBMD: This next one is called "Fischer, the only one not inebriated, stammered in disbelief 'But I'm sober!' as the sadistic bartender cut him off early in the evening."

TMU: I guess that tells us everything we need to know, don't it? Are these seriously like, fucking bird calls in this song? Or am I just too hopped-up on go pills and paint thinner? Is that the problem? Is that, maybe, do you think, like, possibly, THE GOD DAMN SHIT POKING PROBLEM?

TTBMD: Sounds like he's searching for change on the beach. It's the sound of -- it's like a field recording of some cranky old men from the retirement center going out to the beach and hitting each other with the metal detectors. Drunk old men. Drunk old farts. Searching for buried treasure and finding only bottlecaps. Getting into fights over goddamn bottlecaps.

TMU: I don't hear anything now. Oh wait, someone's dismembering a sax or something.

TTBMD: This one is called... wait, this is still the second song. Let's try "Charles, unable to reach the right level of consumption he expected, played within the confines of sobriety." Damn catchy title. Easy to remember.

TMU: But probably more poetic than the title of that horribly obscure, cult tune by Electric Goat Felcher i've been listening to all week.

TTBMD: You mean "All Good Subatomic Particles Dipped in the Blood of the Goat Forswear the Atomic Ass Oath of Eternal Deviance While the Children of the Night Rock and Roll Over With the Great God Pan While Wearing Korn T-Shirts in Bitchin' Cameros?"

TMU: Yes, that one.

TTBMD: Dude, that song blows turds.

TMU: But it's cult. It's very fucking cult.

TTBMD: I've been possessed by someone else. What's going on?

TMU: We now return to our original programming... what's with all the hovercraft noises? Do we even know what song we're on? Are we all confused? It's that paint thinner, isn't it? You told me this wasn't the pure shit....

TTBMD: This is an excellent CD. Visit Public Eyesore's site and contemplate all the fine products they have.

TMU: A wise suggestion, o my brother. I'd like to add before we move on that this is a fine example of the ensemble playing in the free jazz realm so often favored by the stylish cats at Public Eyesore. These people know how to make the sounds of the Other World. The vibrations of the Great Snake.

TTBMD: They have great packaging on this too, and this artwork is a bit more straightforward than some of the label's stuff. This has definitely got a more ambient yet abrasive feel to it.

TMU: I detect the proton strands of Sun Ra in the cosmic goo sloppin' around here. Sun Fuckin' Ra -- He is IN the motherfuckin' HOUSE here! HEEWACK!

TTBMD: Sun Ra would be proud.

TMU: Now I am possessed by the Headless Chicken of the Seven Churches! Kculc kculc!

TTBMD: Hey, I like Church's Chicken!

TMU: Did the hovercraft land yet?

TTBMD: It will never land. It is a journey that never ends. A flight of consciousness destined for a star that doesn't exist.

TMU: Their plaintive wailing saxophone is but one of the bitter reeds in the mighty Pipe of Doom that Erich Zann built back in the day! Oooo, the sound grows hypnotic... my inner chicken swells with pride as the egg grows....

TTBMD: (stares with disbelief)

TMU: I think perhaps we should continue our question onto the next CD. Our work here is done. The egg has been properly irradiated. Soon... The Goat Spore hatches, doom childe.

TTBMD: Um.... onward....

TMU: There's only seven songs on here. He's gettin' minimalist again, dude.

TTBMD: This sounds great so far. Perfect music to smoke to.

TMU: It sounds like being underwater watching the great submarines navigate the icebergs from far below. Down with the lantern fish. Waiting for the coming... of Ragnarok.

TTBMD: Fuckin' Rangarok?

TMU: Ragnarok.

TTBMD: Anyway... this is good stuff. It's different from recent releases, as it's more...

TMU: It has a beat.

TTBMD: It has more structure, and rhythms.

TMU: I like the DVD-case packaging. This is limited to... uhhhhh... (peeks inside) well, it doesn't say, but i think it's a hundred. I got ten just in case my copy got lost or something.

TTBMD: Once again, supreme packaging from Crucial Blast. You should buy this. Support the noise.

TMU: It sounds like Null has been eating peyote or something. I thought he was kinda straightedge. Maybe he's fallen off the wagon? (listens) This one is much quieter. Maybe he's down with softer sounds lately... well, now that part was kind of loud. He's got an interesting watery tone happening here....

TTBMD: This is good, but there's not enough variety... he sounds like he's using the same pedals....

TMU: It's all about dynamics. But yah, variety has always been a squiggly issue where Null's concerned. You ever hear "Slamking"? (sardonic laughter)

TTBMD: Yes. It's on every album he puts out.

TMU: No no, that's "Autofuck." "Slamking" is the one where he beats one chord to death for about a million ice ages while screaming something like "SKUUUUULLLL!" or "FUUUUUUCK!" or something equally intimidating over and over and over and over and over until you wonder if the needle's stuck. Except you have a CD so you know it's not.

TTBMD: This is worth having, you should buy it, even though it doesn't say "skull" or "fuck" at all, anywhere.

TMU: We know he's thinking it.

TTBMD: Yeah, he's bottled up....

TMU: I like the repetitive motion happening on these songs. I like that he switched to reverb overkill instead of techy-bleep-bleep noise overkill. It sounds like alien robots harvesting dead souls at the bottom of the Marinas Trench while hammerheads gambol and joust in the muddy earth amid the seaweeds.

TTBMD: This song sounds like, like... like when i take massive hits of nitrous oxide and it fills my brain with what sounds like brain cells dying.

TMU: I shudder to think of Null in control of the Nullsonic on heavy drugs. He'd probably harness the hidden power of the sun or open a black hole or something. And then where the fuck would we be?

TTBMD: No shit, man.

TMU: Oooo, mutant bumblebees... hear their leaden wings?

TTBMD: Yes, I hear them calling.

TMU: It's making the whole room vibrate.

TTBMD: The insects are plotting against us, and K. K. Null is like the fuckin' guy from the Legion of Doom on SUPERFRIENDS using his mind to fuckin' herd these insects...

TMU: ... into the death machinery that will strip us of our very souls and feed the unholydeathmachine. Oooo, i am down with this.

TTBMD: This is actually kind of a psychedelic song -- with tones that are not often used by him. The fifth track.

TMU: The underwater theme continues here. Everything sounds like... uhhhhh... when i was wee, i had a bad-ass GI Joe submarine that i used to sink in the pool, the bathtub, the lake, the girl's shower room, anywhere that had water. I'm guessing that if he'd had a CD player in there, the GI Joe -- not that he would have, since this was years and years and years before CDs existed, 'cause i'm such an old fuckin' man -- when he was playing his CD, it would have sounded like this to the hammerheads listening outside the submarine, their inquisitive li'l snouts snuggled up against the sub.

TTBMD: You had hammerheads in your bathtub?

TMU: Uhhhhhh... maybe.

TTBMD: Well, you lost me there....

TMU: Look! More noises! Is that a fucking flute in there?

TTBMD: Sounds like Johnny Five from Short Circuit just came in the room after a three-day long crack binge.

TMU: Johnny sure is going apeshit with that flute. Big bloop bloop noises around it like it's being consumed by the Blob in a cement mixer. Null sure got some funny ways o' gettin' his kicks, brutah.

TTBMD: The songs are actually kind of short on this album.

TMU: Except for the last one, which is like thirteen minutes or something. Brevity does suit him, at least here.

TTBMD (proudly displaying new belt): What do you think of the belt, man? (surveys LORD OF THE WASTELAND across the back) My friend Cash Cooper custom-made it for me.

TMU: Your pal does bad-ass work. It's too bad I'm not cool enough to own a belt that boss. I'll bet Null has a belt even more grand with NULLSONIC stamped on the back. Just like a fuckin' wrestling champion, dude!

TTBMD: Null's too small to be a sumo wrestler, though. I think he'd get squashed.

TMU: He would outfox them with the sheer blinding power of his atomic brain. Plus hit them with the Nullsonic. I think we need to borrow the Nullsonic so we can enslave the rest of the planet and maybe, just once, you know, theoretically get laid again.

TTBMD: Can K. K. levitate? Does he have special powers and shit?

TMU: Fuck, Null can create new suns just by thinking about them. Which is why you should buy everything with his name on it, because do you want him pissed at you? This last song is really kind of hep, by the way -- slowly building, like an O'Rourke composition but with more grit, more verve, more... um... help me out here....

TTBMD: Sounds like it was recorded at the Navidson House. This is a very deep, dark, and haunting melody.

TMU: Endless flights of stairs in endless empty hallways. This is the sound of the wind that blows in those empty halls, rumbling from the black river of the dead running far below. Just audible, but never visible. A million miles away. The clarion call of the dead.

TTBMD: Hallways and doorways disappearing, sounds appearing and disappearing out of nowhere... and there is a sense of impending doom.

TMU: Null's decided to do the doom, we are all helpless sucklings of the GOAT now!

TTBMD: I'm just going to enjoy this very cool song....

TMU: I think what we have here -- and bear in mind, the cassette's insert is largely in Japanese and incredibly inscrutable, even by their standards -- is a split cassette with OCM on one side and Youmaakago on the other. That is the sum total of my knowledge on this situation. With this in mind, let's drop science with them, shall we? Here's OCM....

TTBMD: Hard to describe. Lo-fi snap, crackle, pop and ethereal sounds, raw sounds.... Very interesting.

TMU: Like an accidental field recording, perhaps on malfunctioning equipment, of the comings and goings of various interstellar aircraft. While music from the cocktail lounge leaks into the mike and PA announcements occasionally overwhelm everything. This is the real "industrial music" right here, boyee -- the sounds of work rendered into noise.

TTBMD: I agree. I feel like I'm in an airport, but it's really a dream. And there's bubbles around me, and I'm confused about which flight to get on, and when I try to get help, everybody blows me off. So what the hell do I do? Because they speak Japanese. I don't know what the hell they're saying.

TMU: It's times like this that you really need someone like Miki Sawaguchi around to comfort you with her great bosom. Plus she knows Japanese and probably understands what the hell is going on here. Do you suppose that unannounced field recordings of the workings of a government office or union assembly line, marketed as noise, might sound exotic to other countries? I lie awake at night thinking about these things, you know.

TTBMD: Miki Sawaguchi would be the ultimate tour guide. This is a good fucking tape. It's got a lot happening. A lot of ins and outs, you know?

TMU: I really think this is exotica as interpreted by a noise band.

TTBMD: Yes, yes.

TMU: We must remember this, o my brother -- this must be among the music we stockpile for the day, not soon in coming but soon enough, that we will have to repel the monstrous advances of the Evil Penguin as it attempts to take over the earth. Unless he pays us enough in gold bars to escape to Switzerland first, in which case he can have the goddamn waste dump if he wants it.

TTBMD: The guy was playing guitar just a minute ago -- and now he's got all these scary sounds going on... this material should be properly released by a label or something.

TMU: Yes, i agree, but what can be done? We are goddamn fucking poor and no one listens to our wisdom, o my brother. If they did, we would be millionaires already and living in giant houses built back when Mies Van der Rohe was a real man, surrounded by groupies with huge fucking tits and a permanent case of laryngitis. But is this true, o my brother? IT IS NOT! NO, it is not, and you know why? Because we are the sworn ememies of the Evil Penguin. He's fucking with us, but we are strong... we care not... we're saving up all our strength to come stick our collective foot up his ass and he knows it. We will prevail, like the northern sons! HAIL! FUCK THE EVIL PENGUIN!

TTBMD: Once again you've lost me. These guys really know how to use their equipment. They never stay in one place, it's always growing and changing.

TMU: Yes, they achieve a nice flow. They have a good mojo going on here. It's not quite funk of the mothership, but it's got a lineage somewhere from the ocean of drone, and that's good enough. Okay, for comparison now, let's check out the other side and see what Youmaakago sound like. (they both listen for a while) They remind me of Onna-Kodomo, which is kind of interesting. Minimalism and vast canyons of reverb and delay are a good combination.

TTBMD: It's like ritual music, isn't it? A warrior, preparing for battle. Leaving his homeland. His future uncertain. Eh? Eh?

TMU: I'll buy that. I was going to suggest the grim soundtrack to the scene of the natives cleaning up after the great burning of the wicker man, but i can go with that.

TTBMD: It's also like the moment... like the freedom that suicide gives you, like the decision has been made....

TMU: The relaxing joy of the inevitable, the point where there can be no turning back. The stone has been lifted, for better or for worse.

TTBMD: Like you're in the bathtub, man, slowly sinking into the water, going under... knowing you're never going to return to the reality you've always known.

TMU: This is what we'll play when we've slain the Evil Penguin and are butchering his ravaged corpse for our feeding frenzy. Mein gott in der himmel, this sudden and radical jump in volume is a bit excessive....

TTBMD: Yeah, they laid it on a little thick. I can deal with where they're coming from.

TMU: Is someone screaming periodically or is that just my constant paranoia voicing itself through these alien chord progressions? 

TTBMD: I think this is regression. They're going back into the black hole from which they came, man. A rebirth. A painful, hideous rebirth.

TMU: This is sound of celestial cell death, one fading star at a time.

TTBMD: Infinite pain.... embracing the pain.

TMU: Joined in fucking darkness is what this band is. Motherfucking avant black metal. The long pauses between songs are kind of annoying, though. (song plays, finally) Look! See how you shake when i hit you with my cattle prod of destiny!

TTBMD: Reminds me of some Haters-type stuff. Harsh, noise for the sake of noise. No shape, no form....

TMU: There's tons o' form here, man. He's just wiggling notes at an obscene volume, but there's a pattern to it somewhere... kind of... okay, this bit at the end is pretty goddamn devolved.

TTBMD: Just run-of-the-mill noise here. Still good, but....

TMU: Not powerful enough to jolt the Evil Penguin, true. Just normal mortals. Perhaps he'll start to seriously hang fire here in a minute, i know he's got it in him if he just starts to swing....

TTBMD: A nice effort by Youmaakago.

TMU: Yes, these are fine sounds, although the editing between tracks could use some work. Worth investigating if you can find this truly obscure item.

TMU: Okay, let's see... the poop sheet says it's documentation of Rollerball and OvO live on tour in the States and Italy. Rollerball like playing improv sets with other musicians, including Bill Horist, and OvO are apparently avant noise or something. So we're expecting... what are we expecting as we prepare to press the PLAY button, o my brother?

TTBMD: Anything with Bill Horist is good, so my hopes are high.

TMU: Yes. Mind you, he only appears on one track, "hiperspasm." Shall we begin?

TTBMD: Yes. I am betting that the Bill Horist track is the best one on the cd.

TMU (presses play): This is "demon paw," by OvO. I hear a tortured wind instrument and... is that a xylophone? Such tinkling notes amid the tortured wailing....

TTBMD: Sounds like the Boredoms. And I think that's a piano behind that crazed voice.

TMU: On "hiperspasm" we have a nifty delayed rhythm going... I'm guessing that's Horist at work....

TTBMD: Pretty damn cool. Some acoustic guitars amongst Omide Hatoba-style weirdness. Are these guys from Japan or what?

TMU: This is Rollerball, and I think both bands are from the U.S. I greatly approve of this -- cryptic rhythms, percussion from the "wrong" instruments, clouds o' melody and harmony amid chaos and cacaphony... this guys swing a big billy stick and I approve.

TTBMD: Very soothing sounds from Rollerball.

TMU: I wonder if they have anything to do with the brilliant movie of the same name with James Caan. Not the horrible remake, that hideous piece of shit.

TTBMD: No shit, my brother. This has to be the best track on the cd.

TMU: Okay, now we're back to OvO and already I'm grokkin' the drummer on "walker." He's got a hip beat going behind the squirrels chattering.

TTBMD: I like it, but it's nothing that original. I think I would rather hear a different band doing that style of music. Nevertheless, this is interesting.

TMU: You are a difficult man to please, o my brother.... Let us hear the next Rollerball track, perhaps your ears shall be soothed.

TTBMD (listening): Freaky!

TMU: What the hell are they doing down in that tar pit? This is "hagakure," by the way.

TTBMD: Intense noise freejazz with great vocals.

TMU (studying track listing): I think this is OvO. This business of scattering the band's tracks across the disc is most confusing, and I am sure, entirely deliberate. There's some intensely weird shit going on with the flute or the sax or whatever that tortured wailing thing is.

TTBMD: This is pretty cool. Better than the earlier OvO track.

TMU: Look, now it's Rollerball again with "brighton," which I'm guessing is a reference to the suburb of Boston.

TTBMD: You can't go wrong with Rollerball. This is a dark, fluid, psychedelic drone from a distant planet. Or from a suburb of Boston. What's the difference?

TMU: Not much, o my brother. I greatly dig this. The sound of boats in the distance on the harbor... fuck, that sure ended all of a sudden, didn't it? I am jolted from my reverie. But "until yesterday" continues in the same vein as the band expands the idea, sort of.

TTBMD: This is good.

TMU: Foghorns in the distance....

TTBMD: There's a little more action going on here.

TMU: The boats are moving out. The lighthouse flickers like a dead and sleeping god as the dark clouds close in. The soothing sound of the apocalypse, arriving to set us all free and to liberate our very souls. HEEWACK!

TTBMD: I like the stuff this label puts out. They should put out a Rollerball full-length, if they haven't already.

TMU: It would be a wise idea indeed.

TTBMD: There's some sexy chick singing now....

TMU: Not to me, she isn't.

TTBMD: ... some kind of pseudo-folk song.

TMU: An ambient pseudo-folk song. Drifting allow in billowing clouds of dark sonic fluffiness. The orchestral moves of... of... fuck, i forget where i was going with this. What the hell, we're on to the next track... i'm betting this is OvO. Yes, this is "midnight playboy" by OvO. Dangerous moves with an atomic bullhorn. And reverb. A lot of reverb.

TTBMD: Not bad -- a great title for the song.

TMU: They're being most loud now. It's pretty devolved-sounding here... the natives in the jungle are getting restless. You know, i have this question i'm wondering about here -- are we more like the Siskel and Eibert of metal reviews, or the Wayne and Garth of metal reviews? I really gotta know this.

TTBMD: We're like the Barnum and Bailey of music reviews. And this isn't heavy metal.

TMU: You mean this stuff we're listening to isn't heavy metal? Well, fuck.

TTBMD: It's more sound collage. And I like it. Who is on this track?

TMU: It's OvO. See, they're comin' on in the third round here... the body blows are coming fast 'n furious.... Now they're gonna tell us all about "my first cowboy." I like this pounding business, the drummer is swinging his big fat mojo stick and it's not gonna be pretty....

TTBMD: this is like some industrial type of thing. I am unaffected.

TMU: Fucking hell, who can fucking think with that goddamn howling racket going on over and over and over like endless loops of a pig being butchered? This is gruesome, man. I am afraid of these people. They have bad intentions and are probably rude at afternoon tea socials.

TTBMD: This is stupid, this new song.

TMU: This is supposedly Rollerball, but it sounds more like OvO. Called "fallout" and features a lot of people saying dirty words over and over. I am bored. I am a bored fucking cheese. But then they stop fucking around and "pig fucker" not only has a way better title, but also sounds much cooler. The drummer is back. This is a good development.

TTBMD: (grooves)

TMU: He has the funk! The Mothership is IN THE HOUSE! What the fuck is with the wailing stuff?

TTBMD: An interesting direction for Rollerball.

TMU: I think their amps go to eleven.

TTBMD: This OvO song that follows -- I like it. This is good. So far.

TMU: It's called "bear 13" for absolutely no reason that i can see. There's some odd vocalizing going on here and lots of loops and tapes and effluvia.

TTBMD: Interesting construction of sounds. I like how they put the girl's vocals on top....

TMU: And now they're hitting shit.

TTBMD: Hey, who's playing the banjo on "jacopoism"?

TMU: Damned if i know. They have sketchy liner notes. I like this, though. Experimental banjo. A new genre, ripe for commercialization and strip-mining.

TTBMD: I could do without this song.

TMU: I like it, it reminds me of... of... (stretching) Henry Mancini.

TTBMD: That's just a damned insult!

TMU: To Rollerball or Mancini? Don't answer that....

TTBMD: This song, "estrogen," is more like Henry Mancini. Is that crazy or what?

TMU: I don't know, I'm lost in mystic clouds of melody. This is still OvO, for anybody who's keeping score.

TTBMD: This is okay, this song "castle everyday."

TMU: I cannot hear you, I'm still in the cloud... oh wait, i like the intro to "white elefant." Rollerball have returned to freak their cocktail jazz out for a spin. They gonna get down! Like James the Soul Man Brown! HEEWACK!

TTBMD: This is a song to be taken very seriously. This is a great, great song.

TMU: It's got the same drone mojo going as Worms on PELICAN SONGS.

TTBMD: Don't get me started on Worms. Worms are great.

TMU: This song meets with my approval. It is most mellow and jazzlike, but after-dinner jazz. This is the music you listen to when you're hanging out with gangsters after a hard day of shooting people. Relieves tension....

TTBMD: I love their seventies-style throwback on "peter piper's brother." They do all this crazy noise shit also and it's good. They are a very diverse band.

TMU: This is like Tangerine Dream during their "dark" period. Evil keyboard drone. I much like. They have peculiar ideas about beats. Now comes the last one, "il doppio (sex maniac)" -- OvO makes their final stand in a big bucket o' racket.

TTBMD: Not bad. (gives thumbs up) This might be one of the best tracks on the cd.

TMU: Great clouds of carcinogenic smoke rise to the sky as the wicker man burns. Yes. And yet, so suddenly, it ends. It is the end of time... time out of mind... and time to move on to the next cd.

TTBMD: That song should have been like twenty minutes long.

TMU: Perhaps thirty, even.

Skullflower / MTT -- "Evil Twin / Come In" [Minus Habens]

It burns like the bloated night. Night falls into the ripened ocean. Ocean of sound, waves of fury. Fury is the word for the scraping guitars. Guitars that stun, roar, and burn. "Burn!" screamed the galloping drums as they shattered the windows. Windows into the dripping soul of black filth. Filth and decadence writ large in the hands of a prophet made of stone. Stone walls cannot contain this thundering wall of sound. Sound is a weapon and the flower is buried deep inside Matthew Bower's skull. Skull and bones and flesh and meat, rotting in the unblinking eye of the sun. Sun rises, sun falls, guitars cascade in jagged waves, overdriven guitars explode like overheated shrapnel, calling the blood to come forth, calling the blood to come forth, i set out to ride the horse into hell and came back with a gnawed femur ripped from the socket of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Kennedy would shit her pants in front of God and everybody right in the middle of ALTERNATIVE NATION if someone played this for her. Her head would explode like a melon beneath a hammer. Hammer of the gods called forth by the drums, sheets of metal bent into action by wailing guitars, furious wild scribbling like twins bathed in the scent of evil. Evil twin. Twin evil. Evil twin. Twin evil. Evil Twin.

[pause]

"Um... mon, have you started smoking dope again, or did you just find some leftover pills rattling in a bottle somewhere around the house?"

Cut. CUT! That's a wrap.... (fade to black)

Total -- GLASSY WARHEAD [Pure]

Twittering, cheeping, droning stuff buried in a big wall o' noise. Insert of dubious value (folded sheet of toner-death graphics, mostly of the word "PURE" and a portion of a letter to RRRon that appears to be of somewhat racist import, the catalog on the other... minimalist or cheap? you decide), the cover looks exactly like all the other Pure releases (for the budget conscious!). Then again, the Skullflower/Ramleh camp have never been real fixated on stunning graphics anyway -- hell, you're generally doing good if they list the personnel, which they didn't on this album (it's Matt Bower, if you were wondering). Um... let's see, what else... um... this is a lot like the last Total release, BLUE SKY VOID. The "songs" sort of settle into a churning groove of unearthly hurricane-in-slow-motion sounds and just pretty much stay there. This is not BAD, mind you, but it's also not breaking any new ground for Bower, either. Somebody needs to sit down with these guys and discuss the concept of quality control and persuade them not to just release everything that pops out of their mixer.... Or maybe i'm just being a cranky li'l bastard today. You'll never know unless you shell the $$$ to check it out yourself, will you? I'd personally recommend BEYOND THE RIM myself, but my tastes are notoriously erratic... i'm rambling again... and i don't even smoke dope, how scary....

Okay, the songs, gotta get back to the music, right (digs frantically for book of overused review cliches). Oh GOD i can't find that book! Oh no! Truly i am doomed! Life is so damned unfair! Look at me, i'm weepin' now! [THS-CG: It's true. He looks pretty damn stupid doing it too.] Anyway, uh, the music, the music... it's okay. Like ambient music along the lines of Aphex Twin after being bound in duct tape and savagely beaten and daisy-chained to many, many weird EFX pedals and shoved face-first into a front- loading dryer. Look ma, the guitar is turning over in big circles! Wonk, wonk, wonk! Weeeeeooooooo wonk wonk wonk! WeeeeeooooOOOOSKKSIKKXJKLSEE wonk wonk wonk SSSSKKKKKRREEEEEEE wonk wonk SSSKKKKKKEEEEE wonk wonk wonk wonk wonk! Actually, this CD sort of reminds me of when i was in college and it turned out that a serial rapist terrorizing the city (Arlington, Tejas, for the geography majors out there) was living in the apartment across from me and my (then) girlfriend. Through a series of bad-ass police moves (ie., he kidnapped a convenience store clerk and conveniently left his car so they could trace the plates; obviously he was studying to be a particle physicist, hmmmm?), they busted a move on him while he was raping said store clerk in the shower at knifepoint, and in the ensuing melee, he shoved his head through the front of the TV set while it was still on. (I've often wanted to do the same thing during OPRAH.) Amazingly enough he lived, and was in fact sent to Huntsville for several years (but is probably back on the streets now, doesn't that make you feel all warm and secure inside?), but for the few moments his head was stuck in that TV with the tubes frying in his ears and piles o' volts running through his dumb-assed body, i'll bet... yes, i'll STAKE MY LIFE ON IT... that what he was hearing sounded EXACTLY LIKE THIS CD. I'm sure of it. A rabid, foaming crow told me so in a dream after eating too much wall paste. God, i've got to stop reviewing these things late at night....

TMU: What the fuck is this, mon?

TTBMD: This is some pretty abrasive power electronics, not too far removed from Intrinsic Action or Whitehouse, but without the vocals.

TMU: If there's no vocals, what the fuck is all that ungodly shouting about, then, mate?

TTBMD: Those are samples, some kind of comedy samples....

TMU: This sounds very devolved.

TTBMD: I like this. It's got some nice sounds going on. There's only two long songs, and it will be interesting to hear what he does in the next one.

TMU: This song is called "Sinatra Exploited," by the way. I'm not sure what this has to do with Ol' Blue Eyes, though. Or even less with Shirley MacLaine.

TTBMD: I think this is Sinata telling jokes in the background... probably in Vegas.

TMU: Viva Las Vegas! There was this big fat whore I met there once, she sat on me and wouldn't get up until I gave her all my cash....

TTBMD: It's actually a roast in the background. A Dean Martin roast. You know, the fryers?

TMU: Ahhhhhhh, the serrated edges of the masterplan begin to fiendishly dovetail.... Do you think they know about the MASTERPLAN? Tollbridge Snakediddle or whatever they're called, I mean?

TTBMD: Yes, I think they're tuned in.

TMU: That's fucking good, 'cause when the MASTERPLAN -- the goddamn snake-humping god-fucking MASTERPLAN -- goes down, we're going to need all the hands and guns and limitless rivers of ammo we can absolutely motherfucking get.

TTBMD: It sounds like he's fast-forwarding a bunch of shit.

TMU: If i was having to suffer through motherfucking Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra telling bad jokes i'd be fucking fast-forwarding too.

TTBMD: That's for sure. They're all a bunch of scumbags.

TMU: Dead scumbags.

TTBMD: Drunk, wealthy, dead scumbags.

TMU: Just like Elvis. Except he had better pipes and worse taste in clothes.

TTBMD: This other song is "Bluesdoctorwitchmaster."

TMU: Do you think it has anything to do with big-boned girls in bondage?

TTBMD: Hell no!

TMU: What the hell was that? (jumps at evil sounds emanating from speakers)

TTBMD: I don't know, but this is pretty damn original. I like this. Freak out, man!

TMU: I wonder what James Elroy would make of this.

TTBMD: I wonder what Judy Blume would make of it.

TMU: I think she'd be fuckin' paralyzed with a great and shining fear, her eyes filling with water as she huddles up and goes fetal on the floor sobbing "It's not real, it's not real, IT'S NOT FUCKING REAL...."

TTBMD: O my brother, it is all too real! This is worth checking out if you're a diehard fan of powerscapes.

TMU: They sound like they're all being slaughtered like fucking pigs with dull machetes. Blood everywhere. Tiny bits of the skull grinding beneath their boots. NOT ONE GOD DAMN FUCKING PART OF THE ANIMAL MUST BE WASTED!

TTBMD: This song is better than the last one.

TMU: Yes, there are no references to dead Italian and Jewish drunks.

TTBMD: Damn! That's too bad....

TG: So now that you know I'm all woman and waiting for you, big guy, when are you going to do me?

N/A: Never! I have a girlfriend already, thank you. A sane one.

TG: Sanity is really overrated.

N/A: I don't like guns, okay? You freak me out. Forget it! We're not going there!

TG (pouting): Then drum up another review for me, big boy. Or I'll blow a hole in your tummy.

N/A: Extra pissed-off non-thug hardcore from Sweden. Musically, they?re similar to label mates True North and Planes Mistaken for Stars. Similar, but not clones. Where Planes bring about a sense of melancholy and True North deal in frustration, Trapdoor Fucking Exit bring about a sense of pressure?like something extremely heavy pushing down from above. [n/a]

TMU: I just want to go on record, straight up doom childe, that BEYOND THE FUCKLESS is maybe the greatest title ever in the history of western civilization, and that Ultra Fuckers is almost, almost, as cool a name as UNHOLYDEATHMACHINE.

TTBMD (wincing as cd plays): Pretty rough sound quality...

TMU: They're called the god damn motherfucking ULTRA FUCKERS, they don't need fucking sound quality. Hey, when he shouts like that he sounds like he's having a cattle prod rammed up his ass real hard. I like this record already.

TTBMD: I thought it sounded more like he was on fire.

TMU: Can we tell what language he's singing in? This sounds like what the jungle natives would come up with after eating the missionaries and abusing their recording equipment while drunk on blowfish juice and magic mushrooms.

TTBMD: This could have been done better.. the material's there, but it's lacking something....

TMU: Think of this as a document capturing a moment in time, okay? Imagine... you're in the rec room or basement at someone's house... everybody's shirtless and getting mondo fried... the vibe is there... a certain... yes... recklessness in the air....

TTBMD: They recorded this on a fuckin' boombox! How reckless is that shit?

TMU: ... and then... then... two drunk fucking apes crawl up to the untuned guitar and ramshackle drums in one corner of the room and start whacking away at stuff, possessed by their inner demons, and the results are so startling that you reach for something, anything, to record it for posterity. Like... like recording it on the back of your little sister's beat-up Shaun Cassidy cassette that she left sitting in the hot sun at the beach and now it's, like, not so good, but you're gonna use it anyway and record this amazing fucking event and you don't even care how it sounds, right? Right? See, that's what's happening here. It's a document.

TTBMD: Song number five is pretty rockin'....

TMU: "German Rock Radio II."

TTBMD: Sounds like a really lo-fi version of Six Finger Satellite.

TMU: Sounds to me like the funny noises the bus makes in the morning. Look, the blues!

TTBMD: Still, all in all, the best thing about this band is their name. And they have cool artwork. And song titles.

TMU: It's a concept thing. I'm grokkin' their concept. I wish i were cool enough to be an Ultra Fucker. These guys are even sleazier than the Oblivians.

TTBMD: You are an Ultra Fucker. And no way are they as good as the Oblivians. I wish this had been recorded better....

TMU: Well, perhaps they will use this as a revelation, one in which the dark angel of splattergrunt tells them to hie their well-baked buns off to a real recording studio and capture the madness with a tad more fidelity....

The weeping woman opens the door to admit Joe Friday. After a brief discussion, he follows her to the back of the house and into a small, crowded office. The office is lined with shelves crammed full of cds, books, and videos. Frank is already back there, carefully taking notes and inspecting the remains of a man seated in front a blown television. The man's head has exploded; the walls are painted with blood and gore.

JOE: What kind of situation do we have here, Frank? And remember -- just the facts, sir.

FRANK: It appears this man was reviewing this DVD, a music compilation of some sort, when his head exploded. (Holds up a much-too-bright DVD case entitled PICK A WINNER.) I've already checked out the documentation -- nothing but a bunch of cards, like playing cards, only printed with pure gibberish.

JOE: Have you checked out the video?

FRANK: No, the television exploded. Much like the man's head. I have recovered his notes. See here, he made notes while watching. As far as I can tell, the accompanying CD is nothing more than the audio recordings of the music used in the films on the DVD. Seventeen songs on both discs.

JOE (taking copious notes): I see. Let's look at those notes, Frank.

The notes, they discover, are nearly illegible; even when translated, they don't make a hell of a lot of sense. The two detectives read, puzzled:

Thorn Pronged Fawn -- Opening title / Pick a Winner / Intro. Root menu offers these choices over video of diabolical puppet-fu with cheap efx. Bottle rockets! Satan smile! O how I fear the vile puppet!

My Favorite Homepage -- Overactive computer graphics, beating heart. Cookie monster die! Wolves got lips? WTF? I am destroying my astro-mind. Where's my lighter! Where's my lighter! Where's my lighter! These colors are fucking my eyes. OW!

Lightning Bolt -- Oooo, pretty colors! Hideous music but in a humorous way, more pretty colors. Bassman, drummer man, squee squee! Blang blang blang!

Neon Hunk -- Clouds with skulls! Breasts and phallocentric hooliganism, way mondo flashing, I think I just had a seizure. Mama, where's my baby mama?

Pixellan -- Hey, cool animation. Violent stuff too! Homo cops! Head go bye-bye! BALLS! Teeth acid pyramids! Breasts and camel testes! Evil gum-fu! Demon toothpaste! My inner pig is free! Stab the Earth, bleed for me....

La Machine -- Buh? So many squares go flashy flashy oh the horror! Eyes and balls and melty melty. Suitcase for mantis, Samsonite? I don't know. War of the satellites while penis cucumber fidgets!

Black Elf Speaks -- Whoa, trippy psych and trilobytes. Live on stage with nature and leaves. Crowd praises trilobytes. Yog-Sothoth wears a headband! Blair Witch Cymbal! I have big headache now. Foot (bare) of fuzz! Taco taco taco croons Ed Asner. WTF? Bugs! I fear them! Blair Witch Leaf make me vomit and go shitty poo in my diapers!

Wolf Eyes -- See first page you goddamn roach huffin' fuck pole! I'm pooing on your foot now! Digging white bunny out of the snow, then shaky camera hell following dog through woods. Weird computer animation over the top. Oh my, headache time.

White Mice -- Satan's mouse bites my pee-pee as band plays live. Frankenmouse will have his revenge! Pentagram Cthulhu-fu. Who knows what it all means?

Pink and Brown -- 4H gymnastics. Uh-oh. Look at those tiny buns and blue outfits. Them big hills, baby. Pre-fab homes in the desert. Music no relation to picture. My neck is crawling with fanged horseflies.

Monstrously Brinkman -- More computer graphics and techno. The world is a low-res video game. Aliens of future shock. Peace zone. Ghost castles in the sky.

Gerty Farish -- More of the same but basketball and cheerleaders. Color overload! Color overload!

Thee Hydrogen Terrors -- Spirograph on pep pills. Acid. Brown! Screaming! My weiner fell off!

Andy Puls (Neon Hunk) -- MC Escher sniffs glue. Leaves are hands. Hands are heaving. Horn of destiny. More unnatural colors. Eyeballs twitch. Claw and gnaw! Eyes leave sockets and take a rest. Chattering jaws!

Pleasurehorse -- Now this is hip shit but disorienting. Everything dissolves and jump cuts. Like TV bent out of shape! I may heave soon. In fact, I know I'm going to heave soon. This should be illegal. Damn those evil princes of diabolical eye-death at Load!

Forcefield -- Geometric shapes. B / W. Colors! Oh God my eyes! Stop! STOP! Shit my eyes exploded and my head feels real funny this could (text ends).

Joe looks at Frank, sniffing the air as Frank throws the CD into a nearby stereo.

JOE: Smell that, Frank? A hophead for sure.

FRANK: Think it had anything to do with his head exploding?

JOE: Could be. What is that unspeakable noise coming out of the speakers, Frank?

FRANK: This is the audio minus the video. These are the bands he was listening to while watching whatever it was that made his head explode. This is what the cool kids, the hipsters, the beatniks call music these days.

JOE: Are you sure this is music? It sounds like drug addicts beating randomly on things. And shouting a lot.

FRANK: Trust me Joe, this is -- how does my niece put it? -- totally the shit. Especially that Lightning Bolt thing.

JOE: I greatly disapprove of all of this. I'm taking this whole room down to the lab. Those crazy kids hopped up on go-pills! What will they think of next?

Joe and Frank leave the room as the ME and his assistant continue to take photographs. The lurid, hyperkinetic music, like bottled lightning blowing out the speakers, goes on and on and on.