Merzbow - "Merzbuddha" CD 2005


Masami Akita's exceptionally brutal tribute to the drum n' bass genre...massively deconstructed and weaponized as violating meditation. Pulsar-heavy-pulses decompose into subsonic rhythmic loops, while neutrino bursts quadrophonically hiss ceaselessly about like flies on it's greasy black corpse. The frighteningly engulfing mix (total dimensional dislocation yo) is so intentionally midrange it literally makes me queasy......and yet...I keep listening. Not as frenetic as he's usually known for (there's a patience to the textural sculpting that heavily reminds me of his much older work "Memorial Gadgets"), but there's no pejoratives in that either, the enhanced focus is what maintains this particular release's lingering memorability and revisitation.

Intense Degree - "War In My Head" LP 1989

I've owned this LP for 28 years. D-A-M-N! Faster than Napalm Death (and maintaining more cohesion), this Britcore quintet continues to get no respect in the history of fastcore. Maybe it's the predominantly American hXc influence, the posi melody that gracefully matched energetic tempos just wasn't "brutal" enough compared to the rest of Earache's roster. The clean guitars and Skate-Rock vocals were actually a point of contention for Digby, with him hammering the band to downtune and go the cupped mic route...a style they had absolutely no interest in pursuing (and I really don't blame them, as any ensuing sound I could speculate on would probably be as forced and disappointing as the final Filthy Christians disc). They never caved, Digby cried, and here we are enjoying them for what they always were: AWESOME AS FUCKING SHIT! Japanese CD's rip. My fave song offa this is still Skate Bored.

P.S.: CD's liner and sleeve notes (in Japanese of course) by the ultragrind homie Ogita/Awesome Mosh Power Records!

Harmony As One - "No Elite" 12" 1989 & "White Darkness" 12" 1991

Pre Scalplock. England's answer to Straight Ahead (and I'm not just lazily saying that because of the Spirit Of Youth cover). Mildly chuggy, but mostly fast/thrash/core that gloriously wears Negative Approach on their sleeves (and another cover) as much as Tommy Carroll's beatdown bros. Name off most of the faster 80s East Coast bands, overlay blastbeats, and you've got two 12"s worth of solid shaved-head speedcore that'll get you goosestepping as much as pointing arthritic fingers at the aging youth crew.

Production on both releases is odd. The first 12" is noticeably over-bassy, especially in the deeper tones. Maybe they thought you would "feel" the thrash as much as hear it, but the effect is actually annoying on occasion. The 2nd 12" has a more "live" production as well as a mild stylistic change into something that nearly resembles earliest Crumbsuckers meets fuck-if-I-know experimentation (songs are still very short, if not very fast). I dug 'em, I still dig 'em, and I give no fucks if the bassist roadied for Skrewdriver (allegedly). 


Generic Death - 2010-2012 CDR

Upper mid-fi home produced solo noisecore-grind ('88-'90 throwback status) from Dopi/Machetazo/Bobybag. The genre is dead seriously arranged and played, though there are willfully retarded moments the style was always known for. It's like a perfect molecular fusion of Sore Throat, Seven Minutes Of Nausea, Anal Cunt (duh), and even the Xysma demo's pitched sewercore vibe...all disastrously unspooling at once. Complete discography, Dopi only gave a handful of these out as one massive mega-advance to all the releases...and then he "broke up"!

Halo - "Degree Zero Point of Implosion" CDR/LP 2000 & "Guattari (From The West Flows Grey Ash And Pestilence)" CD 2001

Cum my noisenheimers, let us smoke irradiated Swanflesh out of David's Head (which is wearing oldschool walkman headphones playing a hyper-tight Throbbing Gristle in one ear, and a death metal Fall Of Because in the other). Disassociative and dreary, uber-distorted bass and analog drums crushingly overlay unindulgent feedback fetishes and longer ambient segues (usually created with acoustical phenomena inherent to each instrument). The band was just so impressive across the board, from songcraft to production...all on the DIY downlow. That production is engineered in a manner very close to most of the aforementioned godheads, an astounding fact (F-A-C-T) considering the duo would capture nearly all of each session live...sometimes improv...with only a minimum of additional mixing/effects overdub. They were good enough for Relapse, and with most bands that are good in general, they vanished not too long after. They have more stuff, you'll hear it before we die, but this stuff's the best!

M.B. - "Inexistence" CD 2009

Disexist drone from the absolute legend, Maurizio Bianchi. Is it his best ever? No...but it's cold...heat-death of the universe cold...Michio Kaku himself freezes solid, and SHATTERS! This is the music the cosmos plays inbetween the nanoseconds of an aborted suicide. The tracks (some of which are reaaallly fucking looonnng) are somewhat interchangeable, but it's never a burden to sit through the whole thing (and once one is onboard with the theme of existence vs nonexistence, it's easier to catch the nuances of each "song" as a single chapter to the overarching narrative...or non-narrative...I dunno, this scene is Frasier shit). Before the link, PARAPHRASED KNOWLEDGE...

"Maurizio Bianchi (Born December 4th, 1955) is an Italian pioneer of Industrial music. Bianchi was inspired by the music of Tangerine Dream, Conrad Schnitzler and Throbbing Gristle. He corresponded with many of the key players in the industrial music and noise music scenes including Merzbow, SPK, Nocturnal Emissions, and Whitehouse. This exchange of letters and music lead to his first LPs being released in 1981."

Aburadako ‎– "Aburadako" '83-'84 CD (1999)


Mastered-off-the-vinyl official discography (flexi/12"/comp/live) from one of Japan's more cerebral oldcore legends. Aburadako explored the horizons of music for the sake of the zeitgeist itself, utilizing strange tempos and esoteric themes, dramatic riffage, very theatrical vocals, and warped arrangements that are the aural equivalent of a performance-art enactment (minus the narcissism). Hyper-tight, if shakily talented, they continue to remind me of Fear or Flipper's experimental tracks heavily filtered through a recurring barrage of mid-fi punk venom. Or maybe we don't try to figure them out, we just download and FEEL! 

Delta 9 - "Alpha Decay" CD 1997

Cracked the SHRINK on this for you lops! A compilation of Dave's 12" releases from various hXc-techno labels back in the day, every track is a surgically precise godhead of proto-speedcore that even caught Earache's attention. Dave's sound along with Lenny Dee's homies are what defined and partially created extreme techno, so any of the usual descriptors for the early years of that scene (belligerent humor, a particular obsession with Slayer samples, more samples of hip hop elements minced under industrialized repetition) carry a heavier weight than whatever "rave" bullshit people always assume of this form of electronic music. If you know, you're down. If you're not down, you're a bitch. S...M...H...slooowly......a biiitttccchhh!

Cthuwulf - "Gaishu Issyoku" Demo EP 2006

"THANKS: Ripcord, Gai, Mob 47...everyone else can go get fucked!"  --My (old) band

Ethnic Acid - "Power Works 1986-1988" 2xCD (2009)

B-R-U-T-A-L industrialized Power Electronics from England. Surprisingly advanced in form and performance for it's time, the noise is amazingly structured and outright memorable upon first listen. I feel a modern equivalency to Propergol's paranoid terror attacks, even a shared abrasive tension in the "softer" sections (though Ethnic Acid doesn't keep their "songs" as tightly constrained to theme). I felt like I survived a Purge or two, with a fond reminisce of the massacre whilst twirling a cane through the nuked out landscape. The entire body of work (cassettes only, mastered superbly here) is so incredibly varied, fascinatingly and sensibly layered, so relentlessly disturbing, I'm shocked I zoned on their existence for so long! You don't need to wear a condom to annihilation yo, this shit's gonna hit you R-A-W!
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