TITLES: J

JAAPORTIT Uumenissa digipack CD $11.98 Firebox Records (Finnish import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Gorgeous, dreamy electronic ambient and mystical drones, really beautiful stuff. This 10 song full length is the debut full length from this Finnish artist, after releasing a few limited edition CD-rs and cassettes. Fans of later Tangerine Dream, Troum, Lustmord (and even Boards Of Canada) will love this, as gorgeous synths soar and sublime melodies shift and drone subtly without falling into lame "New Age" territory. Quite the opposite, really...each of these songs seems to follow some sort of narrative, each having it's own particular emotional resonance, like the soft, heavenly drift of "Luomaan Lunta", and the dark, twilight beauty of "Maa Pirstaleista". I'm pretty picky when it comes to this sort of nebulous electronic ambience, as so much of it is lazily written and comes off as bland New Age background music....but this album, from it's moving melodies, processed whispers, and shifts between light and dark to it's charming watercolor-adorned digipack packaging, is a fully realized collection of seemingly cinematic soundscapes.

JAMES PLOTKIN/TIM WYSKIDA 8 improvisations CD $13.98 Archive

Brilliant in-the-moment teamup from James Plotkin and Tim Wyskida from KHANATE, executing 8 freeform guitar/drums jams that move between creeping free-form post rock dirges, heavy oceanic guitar/feedback drones, tumbling avalanche drumming and noise seizure, one brief instant of skullcracking stoner rock freakout, and wandering electric free jazz mutations. When Plotkin and Wyskida touch down on a plateau of soaring guitar feedback and rolling percussion, they send streaks of blue lightning racing up to the sky. Excellent sounds that lean towards the noisier/dronier end of the improv spectrum. Presented in a nice blue or red (our choice) heavy foldout sleeve that measures 5" x 15" when completely folded out. The disc is attached to the inside of the sleeve with a locking CD hub. Very cool. Released in a one time pressing of 1000 copies.

JANKO, KRUL ALBANSKAJ kezhhm, Gyuvel Pyuganlahkh Aektspyud? CD $11.98 Some Place Else (Finnish import)

From what we can discern, JANKO, KRUL ALBANSKAJ is an alias for Heikki Huhtanen, a Finnish sound-collage/plunderphonics artist who also went by the name Henry Zalkin (we think?). Huhtanen, who also appears to have died in 1999 immediately following the completion of this album, takes a variety of gathered sound sources (key materials being a forgotten film score, field recordings from Moscow, and found techno cassettes) which he then takes apart and re-arranges into abstract, evolving collages of actual sampled music and noise. The forty-six minute long second track, "Mockba", is the centerpiece of the album, as well as being our favorite, consisting of roaring icy drones and turbulent environmental sound that has been reconfigured into a snowy, desolate soundscape under which howling orchestral samples swell up, or loop into infinity. "Mockba" makes us feel like we're listening to a radio tuned into cosmic Cthulhian groans and never-heard Soviet symphonies. The final track, "Diabolicum Kayr", is another fave, as Huhtanen blasts apocalyptic white noise over a "totally awful" (his words) techno tape/beat. It's fierce shit. All in all, this is one of the cooler plunder-noise albums we've stumbled across.

JAPANESE TORTURE COMEDY HOUR 50,000 Fans CD $9.98 Pure Series

Man, this def ranks as one of the nastiest harsh noise albums of the 90's. 50,000 Fans was the sole full length from grindcore legend Scott Hull, who is also known for his work in neo-blast outfits Pig Destroyer, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, and Anal Cunt. Released in 1997, this album merges Hull's post-Anal Cunt noisecore aggression with classic power electronic venom and crushing Japanese noise inflected circuit apocalypse. Not one moment of respite on this mother, this is explosive feedback n' jet engine vox and mind grinding low-end blower feast that torpedos your skull into an endless ocean of rippling distortion. Fucking DENSE, like having a malfunctioning clock radio rammed into your ear canal with a Boeing 747. Word has it that Relapse is unleashing more JTCH in 2006? Holy shit? Packaged in classic minimalist RRR/Pure junked-silkscreened wallet sleeve.

JAPANESE TORTURE COMEDY HOUR Recycled Music Series CASSETTE $4.98 RRRecords

Japanese Torture Comedy Hour was the harsh noise/improv/grind outfit formed by Scott Hull (of Anal Cunt/Agoraphobic Nosebleed/Pig Destroyer) and former AC guy Tim Morse in the mid 1990's. The band only released a handful of tapes and CDs, one of which is this juicy installment on RRR. The Japanese Torture Comedy Hour entry in RRRecords' notorious Recycled Music Series cassette series is a lengthy free-grind jam that has the members constructing layers of nonsensical backwards-scuttling jazz improv and tape mutation that is pierced with grotesque blasts of grindnoise blurr and harsh electronic carnage, the end result being somewhat comparable to a stumbling Borbetomagus/Anal Cunt/Merzbow orgy. This being a part of RRR's infamous Recycled Music series, JTCH's jam is dubbed over assorted commercial pre-recorded music cassettes that had been traded into the RRRecords shop in Lowell, MA. Each is one of a kind, as the nature of dubbed cassettes allow for glimmers of the original audio content to often bleed into the crushing noise assault that has been dubbed onto the tape. Comes in a handassembled case/sleeve with duct tape scrawled in black marker across the front.

JAZKAMMER Metal Music Machine CD $17.98 Smalltown Supernoise

Took us awhile, but we finally got this crushing slab o' blackdronemetal maximalism in! The rather smarmily titled Metal Music Machine from Scandinavian electronic noise duo Jazkammer is their first foray into full-blown METAL, which members Lasse Marhaug & John Hegre have always been pretty vocal in their adoration of. For this project, they enlisted members of Nordic Viking metal squad Enslaved and Manngard to deliver an awesome series of pieces that reduce the most gravitational forms of extreme metal into obsessively focused blasts. When the album opens with "Friends Of Satan" (tongues seem to be firmly in cheek here), Jazkammer rushes you with a frenzied black metal assault screaming at top speed, blazing double-bass action and blastbeats at full throttle, so fast and harsh and clipped that it sounds like the goddamn CD is skipping, while buzzsaw guitars drone on a single note mercilessly. It's savage black metal at it's most minimalist, and when the track suddenly kicks in at full force a minute and a half in, it's like a sucker punch to your forehead. Kinda like that one Nachtmystium track where they drones on a single chord/blastbeat loop endlessly, but Jazkammer take that idea to the extreme here. But after that leaves you expecting that the rest of Metal Music Machine is going to be hyperspeed minimalist black blast, "The Worms Will Get In" opens up like a black hole and sucks you into a sprawling void of negative-space, glacially paced DOOM minimalism, centering around a simple, primordial two-chord progression carried out to infinity, and as monolithic and vast as anything from Black Boned Angel. The rest of the disc explores similiar ideas, stripping down chaotic speed metal, chaotic grindcore, and doom to simple stylized strokes, and then glomming the peices together into a fractured, blackened avant-metal meltdown that alternately sounds like Rhys Chatham conducting a black/grind metal orchestra...a hundred malfunctioning guitars being ground up through the kind of laptop cut-up action we're normally used to hearing from Jazkammer, and then shot straight into the yawning toothed maw of a massive satanic mainframe computer...and Merzbowian levels of white noise annihilation. The sole exception is the middle track "Abomination", which essentially plays it straight with a savage deformed speedmetal assault that kicks major ass and kinda sounds like a blackened version of Voivod. Sweet! Overall, though, Jazkammer in this form have produced some amazing droning metal that has a lot in common with both of Campbell Kneale's projects Black Boned Angel and Birchville Cat Motel. Legendary English illustrator and out-music scribe provides the wicked album artwork.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Friends Of Satan" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "The Worms Will Get In" (excerpt)

JESU self titled CD $14.98 Hydra Head Records

We've been waiting for this one for months and months, and now that I've got it in and have listened to it about a hundred times, I can say that this is hands down one of the best albums to come out in 2005. Now, I'm a huge fan of the last Godflesh album, Hymns, even though that album was somewhat reviled by critics and fans for it's more "rock" based approach...and yeah, there are a couple of weak spots on Hymns that don't really work too well, but there are also some awesome melodic moments on the album that point to where Godflesh mainman Justin Broadrick was taking his musical vision-in particular, the last, untitled track on Hymns that sounds like nothing less than Godflesh's take on Codeine style glacial post-rock/indie rock. For me, that untitled track stands as one of the single most brilliant moments in Godflesh's career, a perfect marriage of melody and heaviness and experimentation. Of course, Godflesh broke up right after the release of Hymns, which brings us to Broadrick's new outfit, JESU. Picking up exactly where Hymns left off with that godlike hidden track, this self-titled full length (the follow up to last year’s criminally under-distributed and mostly unavailable debut, Heartache) takes the repetition and heaviness of Godflesh's most legendary work, increases the crush factor by 1,000, and through dense layers of ringing, rippling harmonics, unbelievably beautiful melodies, and Broadrick's haunting clean/sung vocals (something only hinted at in prior Godflesh releases), has created an immensely heavy,devastating indie pop album. It's a masterpiece, totally flawless in my opinion, like MY BLOODY VALENTINE and CODEINE buried under a mountain of crushing distorted riffs, slow, glacial epics driven by sad, but hopeful, minor key melodies and dissonant avalanche dirges. And it's not just slowness and heaviness without purpose-these 8 songs are actually songs, unforgettable and heartbreaking and deeply personal. Absolutely, unquestionably recommended. Comes in a cool die-cut / silkscreened package.

JESU Heart Ache CD
Dry Run (UK import)
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

It took us forever, but we finally managed to get this first CD release in stock from Justin Broadrick's post-Godflesh band Jesu, although as a ridiculously expensive import. But you know by now how much we adore Jesu; 2005's self titled full length on Hydra Head is still one of our favorite albums of all time, with Broadrick's signature heaviness carried over from Godflesh married to blissed out shoegazer pop and Codiene style slowcore. Heartache was released in 2003, but has been notoriously difficult to obtain here in the US. Each of the two songs on this disc are nearly 20 minutes long, and effectively bridge the gap between the machine like precision and percussive heaviness of Godflesh and the pastoral shoegazer doom of Jesu. The album was recorded solely by Broadrick, and his use of that awesome drum machine sound is immediately identifiable. The first track "Heart Ache" is very Godfleshesque with it's mechanical rhythms and the megaheavy atonal riffs, machine like in it's repetition. As the song progresses, blocks of synthetic angelic choir and clean singing soaked in delay emerge into strains of elegiac dreampop. The second song "Ruined" has the same hymn-like vibe, starting off with a minimal, downcast piano figure before it shifts into another crushing Godflesh groove. Broadrick's singing on "Ruined" sports a genuinely poppy vocal hook, catchy and perfect, augmented by dreamy washes of processed guitar noise. We love this disc just as much as the self-titled album, and highly recommend it to anyone into Broadrick's Godflesh work and the new metallic shoegaze.

JESU Silver CD $11.98 Hydra Head

Finally! Some new Jesu tunes! Last year's self-titled debut album and the elusive Heartache CD were both at the top our lists, seeing Godflesh mastermind Justin Broadrick entering a whole new realm of riff-bliss that picked up where the 'Flesh left off and took his singular sledgehammer songwriting style into the realm of noisy shoegazer pop and Codeine style post-rock. Pure gloriousness. Well, here we are with Silver, a four-song, half-hour collection of new tuneage that delivers both more of the gorgeous, noise n' distortion layered shoegazer dirge metal from the s/t album via the songs "Silver", "Wolves", and "Dead Eyes", as well as dropping the song "Star", which we think might be the catchiest industrial noise-pop-punk anthem ever, the song that we have been waiting for ever since we heard Therapy?'s "Screamager" twelve years ago. "Star" comes in with a faster pulse than anything else Jesu has done to date, with an incredible hook and heartbreaking lyrics, so anthemic and catchy and powerful that we've been humming it all week...so freaking good! The whole disc is killer though, every song as crushing and bleary-eyed and memorable as everything else Jesu has done, layering dense electronic swirls and glitches and sounds over a single, city-destroying riff that descends over and over again, an awesome concoction of MBV/Godflesh/Codeine style melancholy. Most highly recommended ! Stellar packaging scheme features three transposable cover inserts on super hi-gloss stock adorned in misty, pastoral images of the land near Broadrick's country home.

JESUS OF NAZARETH Braid of Muscle CD $12.98 R.S.R. Records (German import)

This 21 song full length delivers an earwax-blowing assault of grindtronica / extreme hardcore gabba from this ex-ENEMY SOIL / BLOWER outfit. Most of these songs feature ultra-distorted, shredded vocals screaming over impossibly fast gabba / blastbeats and washes of Merzbow-like white-noise distortion explosions, mashed up grindcore shred, and amputating eruptions of harsh noise, all mixed in the red, with some sudden (and unsettling) abrupt shifts in volume. The mix on this thing is really over the top, with quieter parts exploding loudly into flurries of hyperspeed beats and spastic electronics. Braid Of Musicle isn't all ugly violent beats, however...throughout most of the songs, shadows of pretty melodies, drones, and obliterated AM radio transmissions drift over the relentless beats, and the contrast is really quite nice, as well as a welcome reprieve from assault of blasting beats and noise. And some of the tracks at the end of the album are made up primarily of beautiful melodic drones. It's sort of like a seriously warped mixture of Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Nasenbluten, Pig Destroyer, Atari Teenage Riot, Muslimgauze, and the most brutal Japanese noise imaginable. Nicely done religious imagery adorns the full color booklet and packaging.Crank it!

JESUS OF NAZARETH The Shame Of Being A Child CD $12.98 Dotsmark (Japanese import)

The follow up to Braid Of Muscle from a few years ago finds JESUS OF NAZARETH moving more towards the extreme gabber/noise that album began to explore, and away from the grindcore of main guy Mason's older projects ENEMY SOIL and BLOWER. This is still some brutal shit, at least at the beginning, strapping punishing drill n' bass breaks and staticky electro-blastbeats to monstrous digitized vocal vomit and lots and lots of HARSH noise. As The Shame Of Being A Child progresses,however, some other forms begin to take shape. Some tunes (all are untitled) sound like familiar pop songs stretched until they are obliterated into ghostly drones, sort of similiar to Tim Hecker. Others sound like a doom metal band playing underneath an ocean of white noise. Add in some MERZBOW-meets-BOREDOMS blowout insanity, mashed up grindcore debris, heavy machine beat action underneath swirling vocal drones, gorgeous drones like something from a Troum or Final album, and a stunning, very creepy "cover" of "Willow's Song" from The Wicker Man! Also features a blazing live action from Washington DC in 2004, that sounds vaguely like a SKULLFLOWER/GRAVITAR free-distortion thunder jam getting hijacked by a couple of grindcore thugs. Total ripper. Overall, this album falls somewhere around the intersection of DISCORDANCE AXIS, MUSLIMGAUZE, hardcore Japanese noise, NASENBLUTEN, WINTERKALTE, psychedelic dream-drones, and AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED. An awesome sophomore effort. Beyond recommended to avant-grind and heavy noise fans.

JESUS PHILBIN / ITHINKTHERESSOMEDAMAGE split 2x7" EP $5.98 Wolfman Records

A double 7" split featuring electronic noise from JESUS PHILBIN (the noise alter-ego of Chris Dodge of SPAZZ and EAST WEST BLAST TEST fame) and freakout noisepunk damage from I THINK THERE'S SOME DAMAGE,on two slabs of red and blue vinyl. The four JESUS PHILBIN tracks range from power drill rhythmic noise to chirping drones to extreme high frequency blasts. Theres a fair amount of rhythm built out of the electro shrapnel, making some of this sound like drill n’ bass pushed to the exploding point. Fans of harsh noise will dig. The ITHINKTHERESSOMEDAMAGE tracks, 5 in all, are a mashup of proto-hardcore riffs , freeform beats, deformed gabba beats, bass noise, deranged punk vocals buried underneath a wall of thrash noise. Weird. Like HAISHA, if Seanocide got wasted on barbiturates and started covering RHINO 39 songs...sorta. Demented shit.ON RED / BLUE VINYL.

JINMO Neo-tokyo LP PICTURE DISC $11.98 Koi Records

Wow, if you thought that Mick Barr's Octis stuff pushed the limits of over-the-top ADD avant-guitar shred abuse, wait till you get a load of Jinmo! This Tokyo based guitarist and outsider artist has been exploring the outer limits of guitar based improvisation and experimentation for awhile now - he actually released a solo CD of evocative, vaguely jazzy guitar instrumentals in the early 90's through the Knitting Factory imprint. Somewhere along the line though, he clearly began working on an entirely different plane of reality, as is evidenced by both the music on this record and his photo on the insert, which has him outfitted in some kind of metal-and-plastic bondage gear, rocking one of the most badass Fu Manchu 'staches I've ever seen; in addition, his liner notes are completely incomprehensible blats of stream of consciousness weirdness. And the music here is equally extreme, having completely blown our minds with this new domestic vinyl release. This wild-looking 12" picture disc was released in a limited edition of 500 hand-numbered copies, and features 30 tracks of what Jinmo seems to be trafficking in nowadays, skull shredding avant-speed-metal techno freakouts...each track is a hyper-caffeinated, ridiculously obsessive blast, usually only a minute or so long, of Jinmo unleashing absurdly formless and squiggly distorted neck-run shredding over all kinds of industrial synth noises and superfast, stuttering techno beats, sort of like a way more chaotic and brain-damaged Mick Barr spewing his wormy guitar figures over a never ending stream of fucked up, lo-fi gabba loops and drum machine splatter that are run through some psychedelic stereo panning. He calls his guitar style "nano-picking", and there's seriously no dynamics or variation here, it's just track after track of blazingly fast, single-minded instrumental shredding and spastic beats, with most of the tracks ending abruptly in a squeal of feedback. Seriously, if Orthrelm's minimalist shred repetition drives you up the wall, Jinmo's "nano-picking" will have you running screaming from the room. On the other hand, if you dug Orthrelm's Ov, and and groove on the avant-garde guitar sounds of Melt Banana's Agata and John Zorn's guitar-based projects, you might find this as hilariously excessive and fascinating as we do. Hands down the harshest, most ridiculous and extreme avant-shred album of the year!
MP3 SAMPLE: "Neo-Tokyo" (excerpt)

JOTUNSPOR Gleipnirs Smeder CD $13.98 Satanas Rex (UK IMPORT)

Members of Gorgoroth were commissioned by the new black metal sub-label offshoot of Cold Spring Records, Satanas Rex, to create a debut album that would blend together elements of electronic noise and Norwegian black metal, and the resulting Gleipnirs Smeder disc delivers a harrowing collection of epic, disorientating industro-blackness. Cold Spring's legendary catalog has produced some of the coldest, most atmospheric noise and power electronics of the post-industrial underground, and the influence of that legacy of grim ambience is heavy on Jotunspor; Gleipnirs Smeder's combination of dire atavistic black metal and blackened militaristic dirges with it's meditative ambient fields and grinding, clanking industrial intermezzos certainly makes for a haunting ride through the dank pine forests of Jotunspor's heathen visions. Drum machines gallop like heavy hooves on cracked and frozen earth, the band frequently slows down into passages of crawling hypnotic doom, and the vocals veer from menacing chanting to vicious charred rasps to ethereal singing. The purely electronic material on the album is nicely unsettling, as murky cave-drip drones and festering rumbling swirl around the sounds of distant bells and deep black ambient that's at times reminiscent of artists like Lustmord and early Endura, and when Jotunspor mixes in the electronic elements over their passages of speedy, hypnotically repetitive black metal, it's awesomely freaky sounding. The murky album art featuring images of prowling wolves and runic signs further adding to their Nordic mystery.
MP3 SAMPLE: "Ginnungagalder" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Gleipnirs Smeder" (excerpt)

JUDAH Cool Crap CD $9.98 Small Voices (Italian import)

Italian electroclash + art-damaged synth dronebuzz pop that summons the spirit of early SUICIDE. Minimalist analogue electronics and utterly stoned vocals recalls SUICIDE like noone else out there right now, but theres also a definite old school industrial influence at work on the 8 songs that make up Cool Crap, with shades of early Cabaret Voltaire, Haus Arafna, and November Novelet, and we're also hearing some later SWANS in this too, especially in the sublime organ-driven "Hitler Fucks Jesus". Nocturnal electro soaked in 3am urban unlight.

JUDAS ISCARIOT Harrison Bergeron Bound 7" EP $4.98 Mountain Records

Innovative chaotic hardcore thrash with abstract structures from NY. Spastic drumming into slow, doomy parts, with scraggly, choking vocals and off time beats and full on improvisation.Think Citizen's Arrest goes hyperjazzcore. Clever packaging.

JUDAS ISCARIOT / SEEIN RED split LP $9.98 Mountain Records

12 tracks of lightning fast,politically furious Dutch HC speedthrash from SEEIN RED, featuring ex-members of LARM. New York's JUDAS ISCARIOT offer up eight songs of highly intelligent avant-hardcore that delivers both screaming blast and angular free-jazz influenced abstractions (including horns!). Think Citizen's Arrest goes hyperjazzcore.

JUHYO Mesothesis CD-R $8.98 Housepig

Juhyo is the collaborative effort of Bill Henson, a.k.a. Oblong Box (and Housepig boss), and Brian Kopish (a.k.a. Surrounded). Together, the duo sculpt three massive, heavy electronic dronescapes that range in length from 9 to 35 minutes in length; the first track, 'Anemonie', layers claustrophobic drones and high pitched feedback tones with looped circuit squelches and a deep sense of menace. Reminds me of the tripped-out electronic film scores of the early 70's infected with a sense of hopeless doom. The second track is the half-hour plus centerpiece 'Gallery 79', and begins in silence before the banging of a drum sounds in the distance, signalling the appearance of swarms of smoldering distortion and malevolent manipulated feedback that coalesces into a lumbering rhythmic pulse, heavy and suffocating, with clattery, dub-like percussive hits drowning in the hiss. The swirling distortion and insectile electronics gradually fade out, leaving a far-off wooshing drone like the sound of wind blowing over a frozen waste in pitch blackness, shot through with delayed metal scraping and frightening ripping sounds. By halfway through the piece, the duo allow the heavier distorted drone textures and dense effects-heavy tones to amass once again into a climactic, glacially shifting fog, before ending with the lone snare hits that opened the track. The atmosphere for that piece is one of total dread. The final track on Mesothesis is 'Studio Cloudy', another heavy, oppressive dronescape of frozen ambient textures and icy electronic winds flowing through deep cavernous ruins and across ice-encrusted formations. This album is an incredible frozen dronescape, haunting and often nightmarish, and is comparable to a minimalist version of the ritual cavedrones found on the Aural Hypnox label, mixed with looser, hallucinogenic electronic manipulations. Desolate and heavily textured; make sure you experience this one with headphones. Terrific minimalist package design for this one, too: Mesothesis comes as a hand-inked CD-R in a black digipack with glacial cover art with three insert cards, and is limited to 100 copies.

JUGGERNAUT/BBUGG The Cato Street Conspiracy CD $9.98 Basement Apes Industries (French import)

This full length matchup pairs up French indie-heavies Juggernaut and Bbugg on 6 songs that may or may not have some sort of conceptual connection to the British historical even that this album is titled after. It definitely feels like a concept album though, with the band's tracks alternating with each other, and the tail end of Juggernaut's songs being stretched out and fucked with by Bbugg as they start their own songs. Musically, this is a weird but strangely effective matchup, at least in the way the album flows from beginning to end. Juggernaut come from the whole post-Neurosis, art-metal-dirge that seems to be dominating France lately, and we're not complaining...their 3 songs are crushing instrumental post-rock dirgescapes, monstrously heavy and downtuned with slowly undulating melodies, huge hulking riffs climbing skyward, equal parts Godflesh/Jesu industrialized shoegazer doom, Boris' blown out sludge melodies, and Neurosis with wah-drenched acid guitar freakout. Pretty fucking massive. Bbugg, on the other hand, is like a weird, slightly fucked up French version of mid-90's Faith No More, I mean they really sound like Faith No More, the singer even uncannily channeling Mike Patton's croon. But then Bbugg break out with noisy stoner rock riffs and more manic song structures and weird loops of what sounds like a fly buzzing, but really loud and up front in the mix, along with all sorts of other strange electronic noises, and huge dirgey, metallic sludginess. Pretty rad and weird, definitely like a heavier, noisier, more fucked up, avant-garde and art-damaged version of King For A Day era Faith No More. Then, the last track is a collaboration between both bands, a hallucinogenic alt-metal / carnivalesque electro pop / dirge metal epic, like a Mr. Bungle song getting hijacked by Isis. Pretty hard to imagine, but these guys cook up an awesome, freaked out avant-dirge-metal epic that fades out into a psychedelic swirl of chiming melodies and robotic voices. Recommended.

JUMBOS KILLCRANE The Slow Decay CD $5.98 Crucial Blast

The 4th album from Kansan doom-prog / dirge juggernauts JUMBO'S KILLCRANE. Leaner, darker, and far more crushing than their previous releases, The Slow Decay finds the Killcrane in an altogether apocalyptic frame of mind, unleashing subsonic frequencies that resonate with the decay of ages. Their monstrous riffs are more angular than ever, but this new manifesto also delivers soaring, stygian melodies that earlier releases only hinted at. Haunting and heartbreakingly heavy, the trio wind together barbed-wire hooks that snarl themselves around snail's pace rhythms and tarpit riffs.

JUMBOS KILLCRANE Carnaval De Carne CD $5.98 Crucial Blast

Six tracks of angular barbarism from these Lawrence, KS cavemen with calculators. Awesome post-AM REP sludge rock, sorta like early NIRVANA on a pill bender jamming with US MAPLE. Think drunken prog rock cruising on gargantuan slabs of hammering distorto riffage and possessed wailing/crooning. This trio of grizzled Midwestern thugrockers deliver a squall of threatening runble and stutter. Cerebral and violent, subtle and thunderous,Carnaval De Carne sledgehammers the math-rock aesthetic into a twisted, towering monument of huge greasy riffs and defiant melodies. The latest evolution of pigfuck.

JUMBO'S KILLCRANE / RUMPLESTILTSKIN GRINDER split 7" EP $4.98 Red Candle Records

JUMBO's KILLCRANE bludgeon you with some new heavy sludge rock and hangover howls via Brown-Slight return, a full-on drunken crusher. Philly thrashgrinders RUMPLESTILTSKIN GRINDER feature ex-members of DIVINE RAPTURE and EVIL DIVINE, and force feed you blistering criminal thrash / blast. Damaging, psychotic shit. Comes with vinyl stickers. Limited / numbered edition of 500.