Zyanose - Insane Noise Raid

14 minutes of meticulous clattering noise. Not quite as harsh as D-Clone, but harsher than almost everything else. Drawing from Confuse's heaviest moments, or a less rigidly structured Contrast Attitude, three-piece Zyanose (drums, bass and noise-bass) construct a clanky crunching rumble of crasher-crust noise-punk vice blast. Framed mainly around songs devoted to the seven deadly sins, this album apparently took three years to record and was rerecorded several times. Albums like this, music devoted in its aesthetic to ripping apart all conventional musical pursuits in its tumble and grunt, so often gets dismissed on the basis that anyone can make a fucking racket, and it's true, anyone can, and that's part of the glory of punk and noise and all those simple genres beholden more to attitude than to virtuosity, but information like that, about the construction of the music, shows the artistry behind a piece of raging crust dissonance. They wanted it like this. EXACTLY like this. From the thick bassline that dominates Gluttony, holding fast against the noise and screams, to the way Envy swirls with ghost-feedback before thrashing into a blast of demented anger and then fading back down into that murk, to the end of the album when all this cacophony runs itself down into a soft simple buzz-bass-riff that drifts awaylike a beast into the night with the noise still chirruping about it, this album could not be done any other way. The red and white messy chaotic liner notes, bustling with about five differnt logos and a load of skulls, give the lyrics, seven of the nine tracks focusing on a particular sin, laying it down to its bare bones in each crashing blast. Greed: Debriseaaghrr!!!!/End of polution by side of you/Parasite! Wrath: Government control/Keep myself/Answer in chaos. Those are those songs in their entirety, and that's all you need to rip the human mess to shreds, with the noise of the noise-bass, the blaring of the... INSANE! INSANE NOISE RAID!

Träctor - Macheta

Retching scratchpuke vocals over thin spiky garage hardcore. This was recorded live at a fest somewhere in Spain. It starts slow and builds. An intro instrumental that rolls up into a midtempo number that trucks about for a bit before exploding for the last 15 seconds. The bass is barely anywhere, highlighted by those dropouts on Matanza Nuclear II and that can add to the snatch and sharpness of it but sometimes you really want a huge thunderous crustbass assault to kick in. Those goddamn vocals though. It's like a throat run through a mangle with each strained yelp. Promising. And nothing to do with the Wurzels.

The Legs - AAAA the New Memphis Legs

Recorded in 2000 but unreleased until now, The Legs were a brief garage-punk project from Eric Friedl of the eternal Oblivians, Forrest Hewes of Neckbones and James Arthur. It's frighteningly basic stuff. Drunk incompetence, needle-poppin'-and-a-shiverin'-out-of-the-red blown-out recordings, songs as subtle as a prison riot, simple as a faceplant. Degenerate swagger and Suttree noise, fighting and loving and shaking something, wasted and worthless in a dive-bar where the walls are held together by the filth and the floor is stained with mud and bodily excretions, with no fucks given for a heat beyond this sticky hole. The animal bends of Been Kinda Lost, the bluesy dumbass stomp of Bill Dakota Knows, the solo on Doin' It Too Hard which flails about nastily and then locks back into the main riff before shaking itself loose again, this record is just good-time idiot rock-and-roll, loud and half-cut, wandering lost in the backwoods and then distorted into a crunching death-kick and ready to tear itself, and any nearby onlookers, dancers or foolish admirers apart with its dirty barfight energy.

Slang - Glory Outshines Doom

Slang do not do small. Their last studio-album emerging denominated with the hard-faced confrontation of a title that was LIFE MADE ME HARDCORE, daring a disagreement on that particular point, their live album they released since then was called WORLD PEACE QUESTION NOW!?, and now the awesomely declarative GLORY OUTSHINES DOOM, a huge crashing metalpunk crust attack with a shining skeletal angel emblazoned on its cover, living up to every inch of its bluster and pose with the brutality and exacting power of the sound. This is a big fucking record, the only thing that gets close this year is the new Tragedy. It's full of colossal chugging riffs, gravel-ripped vocals and chastening burning-spirit solos.

There's not much let up, a few seconds of bass-murmur at the end of 十二月ノ業~Happy Birthday to You~, the minute long sludge-kicker of 白昼夢 where the guitar-wail builds over the slime before throwing you straight back into another bloodfuck kick-to-the-back-of-the-head that is 焼却炉, the short acoustic interlude of もの言わぬ本 that shivers with threat because you know what's coming is just going to open up holes in the ground like mighty fucking earthworks. The gargantuan rolling sound plunges onwards, screaming upwards almost into noise on the peaks of 黒煙の輪郭, this album is a crushing salt-the-earth screed of leviathan bombast and colossal sonic spaces, Unicron-hunger and godless exaltation. It will stomp you down like and raise you up on its hardcore-punk thrash-monster wings. GLORY OUTSHINES DOOM, motherfucker. It's glorious.

Pusrad - Akta Dig/Smarttrams

Koro's 700 Club EP is one of the truly great 80s hardcore releases, however it does seem that it was sped-up in post-production, tarnishing the myth of this insane teenage-speed hardcore just a little bit. Pusrad are just as fast as Koro and even more intensely brief, releasing Smarttrams, which cuts through 7 tracks in 2:41, and Akta Dig, which is even more monomaniacal in its pursuit of brevity and pace, taking 75 seconds to blow through its 5 songs.

Just as D-Clone are pushing the noise of hardcore as far as they can take it, Pusrad are taking the second element of the genre's twin-gods in speed and attacking it with furious fucking insolence. These songs are buzzy mosquito pops, decurtate fastpunk finger-snaps, more melodic than powerviolence but just as furious. Now I just hope this doesn't come out that someone sped it up in the studio. These wounds don't need reopening.