TITLES: M

MAEROR TRI The Singles CD $11.98 EETapes
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This disc collects all but one of the out-of-print full singles/vinyl EP's released by German drone-industrial alchemists MAEROR TRI on Fool's Paradise (Physis EP), Ant-Zen (the Xorbitant and Pleroma EPs), and Noise Museum (Mystagogus EP) from 1993-1996. Traversing raw post-industrial noise and sublime guitar-generated dronescapes, this is essential stuff for fans of MAEROR TRI's dream-drift. and remains some of the best drone music ever made. The Physis EP opens this disc with NEUBAUTEN -esque tribal bashing on heaps of scrap metal accompanied by looping feedback, hiss and static, and ominous throbs, which points to the primitive rhythms that MAEROR TRI and their later incarnation TROUM have explored amidst their ambience and guitar drone. The Mystagogus and Exorbitant EPs dive into cavernous thrum and sinister heavy drones fronted with menacing, gravel-throated chants, a la CORRUPTED and SUNN O))). The material from the Pleroma 10" closes this with some of MAEROR TRI's (and TROUM's for that matter, as this originally came out after MAEROR TRI had disbanded) best work, a whirlpool of subterranean drone that surges forward into an apocalyptic riff whose melody cuts thru MAEROR TRI's oppressive wall of thrum. Awesome.Nicely packaged in a 7" cover in tribute to MAEROR TRI's format of choice. Limited to 496 copies!

MAGICICADA Everyone Is Everyone CD $11.98 Public Guilt

Magicicada is one Christopher White, an Atlanta musician and artist who creates mystical sound collages and evocative, organic drones from a arsenal of folk instruments, found objects,samplers, and field recordings. The nine tracks on Everyone Is Everyone range from shimmering pastoral drones to dense and hypnotic electronic tides joined by tribal clatter, vocal experimentation, skittery free improv, tape loop hallucinations, and ghostly folksy strum. All sorts of instruments and objects are at play here...the buzzing of contact mics and faulty electrical lines,melodica and pump organ, toys and bells and synths, the sounds of wind and frogs and public transit systems. The field recordings, otherworldy sounds and drones, and cinematic terrain take this into a kind of Sun City GIrls meets Sunroof! territory. Quite dreamy and beautiful. Good stuff for fans of Sunroof, Ashtray Navigations, Birchville Cat Motel, Avarus, RIchard Youngs, Burning Star Core, and all manner of free drone improv bliss. The first 500 discs contain a print of cool/mysterious treated photography by Christopher White. Packaged in an Arigato Pak style sleeve gorgeously printed by Stumptown. Another winner from our buddy JR at Public Guilt, released in tandem with the BLAZING free-rock document from The Psychic Paramount!

MAGISTRAL (Stephen O'Malley & Z'ev) CD $14.98 Southern Lord

After filling my head with the half-dozen or so new Z'ev-related discs that I've picked up over the past year since first getting into the guy's ritualistic percussion-based dronescapes, I'd been secretly dreaming that he would team up at some point with one of the major players in the avant-metal scene to take his pounding sheet metal textures into a new realm of heaviness. And once again the universe configures itself to serve my needs, as here we have a thrilling (to me, at least!) new collaboration between Z'ev and who else but Stephen O'Malley, that dark prince of abstracted metal guitar. So what's the deal? Magistral began to take shape with an 8-minute, 42-second guitar solo performed by O'Malley, recorded and captured as the source material. This solo made it's way to Z'ev, who, according to the liner notes on the back cover, took the solo and subjected it to "renderings, recodings, percussion, submixes". What comes out on the other end are five pieces of ominous percussive ambience with the original guitar solo processed into eerie bell tolls ringing across a shimmering arctic landscape, fluttering tones whirring through vast expanses of nocturnal void, while in the distance metal pipes and huge shards of sheet metal clang together in clangorous tribal rhythms. They get pretty noisy at times, but for the most part Magistral is pure blackened drone, nowhere as harsh and metallic as O'Malley's recent KTL recordings with Pita, instead leaning far more to the cavernous deathdrift of Lustmord or Yen Pox. The final track is a standout though, with Z'ev's heavy tribal rhythms coming to the forefront over a howling, distorted guitar drone. Magistral comes in a beautiful gatefold style sleeve similiar to that of the Sunn/Boris Altar album or the Oren Ambarchi disc on Southern Lord, with stunning artwork from O'Malley and photography from Seldon Hunt. Recommended.

MP3 SAMPLE: "6m 59s from last 42s left channel only - 26 track submix" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "6m 7s from 36s from 6m 53s - 7m 27s - 34 track submix" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "8m 39s from 1m 18s from 4m 55s - 6m 13s - 18 track submix" (excerpt)

MAGNETIZE Biome CD $9.98 Rimbaud

An excellent album of kosmiche electronic drones and synth pulsations from the Irish outfit Magnetize. The eight tracks on Biome summon rich ambient textures and incandescent loops that recalls a more pastoral Klaus Schulze, made from heavily treated guitar and analogue modular synth. It's an evocative, hypnotic kraut/drone/electronica mutation that by it's very nature also strokes the same lobes as Zombi's Goblin/kraut hybridizations and that crucial Escape From New York soundtrack that was recently re-issued.

MALIGNANT TUMOUR Demo/Singles Collection 1994-1998 CD $9.98 Extremist

This CD features all the bands out-of-print demo's,7"s, split 7"s,compilation appearances and a few live tracks from this legendary Belgian grindcore/mince/crust outfit. Speedy, feral noise with diseased vocals and ripping riffs. 76 songs in 79 minutes! Fans of AGATHOCLES and UNHOLY GRAVE style raw grind will particularly dig this fetid blast of highspeed scum.

MAMMAL Let Me Die LP $12.98 Animal Disguise

Much like fellow Michigan horror-electronics hounds Wolf Eyes and Universal Indians, Mammal creates a suffocating air of dread and disgust through layered punctuations of shrill static and grinding, overmodulated distortion. The nihilistic vibe is underscored by hopeless track titles like "Days Into Days", "One More Day", "Some Day", and "Grows In Me", and the sleeve promises grim action with the high-contrast hooded figure clutching a rosary on the cover. However, listening to his latest full length Let me Die, I feel like I'm listening to something more akin to a beyond-blown-out noise rock album, with sparse, monochromatic drum machine beats and blasts of what sound almost like rotten guitar riffs that are so brutally distorted and pushed so far into the red that they have become chainsaw sinewaves hacking their way through my skull. It's so relentless that it actually becomes pretty hypnotic about halfway through, although it's a restless trance drenched in night terrors and panic sweats. Each of the six songs on this LP are distinctly different jams, but the album flows along seamlessly as a single, pulsating beam of terror, culminating with the seriously heavy and rhythmic electro-dirge of "Long Way Home" that stands as one of the heaviest noise jams in my collection. This is a killer album that anyone into Prurient's more "rocking" moments, the sound of Throbbing Gristle buried in basement sludge, and the absolute most-zoned filth on the underbelly of the Midwest noise needs to explore in-depth. Issued in a limited pressing of 500 on black vinyl.

MAMMATUS Mammatus CD $15.98 Holy Mountain

Colossal psychedelic amplifier worship. Mammatus (named after the ominous-looking cloud formations that appear after a violent thunderstorm) debut here with this stateside release (the original appearing on England's Rocket Records), a massive collection of 4 epic jams that move from super psychedelic space sludge, like Hawkwind meets Sleep, to passages of drugged, droning tribal highs, perfected in the Amon Duul-esque "The Outer Rim", with it's krautrock jamming and ululating vocals. Hell yeah - this is stoner rock of the heaviest sort, loud walls of feedbacking, effects-heavy guitars swirling into gooey pools of sludgy psych mass, with huge dinosaur riffs stomping along in circular repeato-mode, layered in warm drones and drifting, stoned vocals that remind us of both YOB and Dead Meadow, weird and sorta processed, the songs bulldozing along into climactic meltdown. Features killer Bakshi/D&D style album artwork from Arik Roper that contributes beautifully to the whole blacklight poster/earthquake metal vibe this disc delivers. A freaking awesome drug metal album, highly recommended to fans of Sleep, Dead Meadow, Pharaoh Overlord, old Monster Magnet, the heaviest Acid Mothers Temple shit, Boris, Ufomammut, etc. Crushing!

MAMMATUS The Coast Explodes CD $15.98 Holy Mountain

The second full length from Santa Cruz's Mammatus and man, it rules. Ever since I was first turned onto these guys through their debut self-titled album from last year, they've registered in my mind as sort of a tie-dyed, brain glazing response to Sleep. There are a bunch of reasons as to why that is: the awesome Arik Roper-inked artwork that Mammatus employs, the frequent plunges into MASSIVE bombastic sludge jams, the terminally stoned drone-vocals, and the general mystical vibe that surrounded their debut. The fact that their name sounds like t was taken from some kind of prehistoric beast doesn't hurt either. Aside from the Sleep comparisons, though, Mammatus are equally as immersed in spacey psychedelic rock and heavy prog as they are with the mondo-sludgy riffage. Their brand new album The Coast Explodes heads out into even trippier territory this time around. The proceedings kick off with "Dragon Of The Deep Part III (Excellent Swordfight)", which picks up where the "Dragon Of The Deep" saga laft off on the last disc, opening this album with a sprawling 12 minute jam that ties sweet snakey dual guitar harmonies astride a chunky Can-like percussive groove that stretches out for half of the tracks length, eventually meeting up with trippy cosmic electronics and weird noises that begin spewing across the rhythmic propulsion until the band finally slides into a crushing, gooey crawl. It takes 9 minutes for the vocals to finally show up on the album opener , and man are they zonked; high pitched singing bathed in effects over a punishing doom crawl, like a combination of Hawkwind and Sleep with a time-tripping Jon Anderson (Yes/Tangerine Dream) on vox, backed by a devestating toner metal coda hat crushes everything flat. Freaking awesome! Then comes "Pierce the Darkness" and it's sprawling psych/kraut jam that gives way to an eternally blissed-out ending that piles rich guitar solos on top of Growing-esque drones right before another monstrous sludge riff emerges. That's followed by the opening robot blips and glistening ambient synthesizers of "The Changing Wind", which seems to be the one track on The Coast Explodes that fans tend to be polarized on. After that brief intro of electronic sounds, Mammatus burst into a skeletal hippie-folk jam that sounds like something off of the Wicker Man soundtrack with weird, childlike singing. Acoustic guitars and wind instruments and hand drums swirl together into a strange, ancient sounding folk song that fades away to sounds of the titular coastline, the barking of sea lions resonating loudly over the sound of waves crashing on an unseen beach. Personally, this is one of my favorite songs on the whole album. Then the album flows into the final rite with the title rack, another longform epic that might just be one of Mammatus' finest jams, a massive mantra of Sleep-like riffage and breathtaking twin-guitar harmonies, locking into absolutely crushing riffage over the song's 12 minutes, those elfin falsetto vocals appearing again but this time airy and drifting. Utterly amazing. If you were into their debut album, than this is a must-get, and fans of all things psychedelic and crushing, sludgy and transcendental, that mighty mind-expanding rock power that lies amongst bands like Sleep and Sabbath, Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, well, this isn't a bad place at all to start with in terms of experiencing the awesomeness that is Mammatus! Highly recommended !

MANIAC KILLER Amusing Anecdotes For The Depraved CD $11.98 No Escape

Pacific Northwest-based splattercore polymath Neil Smith (also of goremetal icons Frightmare, Lord Gore, and Whore) recorded these 43 digital crimes in his bedroom and garage over the course of 2001 under the name Maniac Killer. The recipe is simple: blazing drum-machine driven blasts, shredded death/thrash riffing, an eclectic mix of monstrous vocal utterances, and a preoccupation with classic splatter cinema of the 1970’s and 1980’s, resulting in maxed-out, distortion overloaded tongue-in-cheek one-man Grindcore that delivers the groceries...but also throws out some crazed curveballs in the shape of sweaty 70's funk breaks, horror-show pipe organs, cocked-out rock leads, ugghhhh....the end result is a collection of wildly entertaining digital blast-spasms comparable to Mortician (on acid) meets Fuck…I’m Dead and Catasexual Urge Motivation, an onslaught of extreme grinding weirdness that becomes a diseased blur of deathnoise whiteout at top speed while managing to occasionally slow into a churning midtempo riff that destroys. Splatter flick samples are abused copiously, worked into the tunes as if they were an additional instrument. Amusing Anecdotes For The Depraved is a collection of tracks excavated from extremely rare cult demos, split releases, and unreleased songs that fans of brutal grinddrill ( The Berzerker, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Wadge ) will definitely find satisfying. This jam is adorned in bitchin’ promo artwork from Kevin Connor’s 1980 cult classic Motel Hell. Another winner from No Escape, supplying us with some of the best stylized grindcore blowin’ skulls at the moment.

MAN IS THE BASTARD D.I.Y. CD $12.98 Deep Six

Finally back in print and given the remastering treatment, courtesy of Deep Six Records. The long-lost D.I.Y. CD from Man Is The Bastard was originally released on Slap A Ham Records in 1995, and contains a whopping 53 songs of megabrutal MITB destruction! D.I.Y. is actually more of a collection of splits, 7" EPs, and unreleased material than a proper album, with their tracks taken from the splits with Pink Turds in Space, Aunt Mary, UND, Bizarre Uproar, Crossed Out, Pink Flamingos, the Backward Species EP, Abundance of Guns EP, and their jams from the Anger and English comp. But this shit is absolutely essential for MITB fans that don't want to shell out the crazy dough on Ebay to get their hands on all of this nuclear tuneage. MITB's dual bass-guitar-fueled, avant-hardcore destruction is some of my favorite music ever, and it's good to have this disc available again. These jams cover the entirety of Man Is The Bastard's potent sound: primal early powerviolence and grinding extreme hardcore, weird jazzy chords and song structures, dueling vocals that switch from high-pitched death screeches to awesomely powerful deep barks a la Infest, quick blasts of catchy but brutal punk rock, brutal chirping insectile oscillator electronics, crushing caveman drumming and slow sludgy dirges, complicated technical riffing with shades of prog rock and west coast psychedelia that is all but devoured in the grim storm of MITB's blast rage, and awesome rage-filled lyrics decrying animal exploitation, consumer society, and power/class struggles. Immensely powerful and mega-heavy music. Fans of Eric Wood's post-MITB Bastard Noise project will thrill to the pure electronics tracks on here as well, which forshadow the locust electronics he would go on to evolve and explore over the course of BN's massive discography. The 20-page booklet included here includes the artwork and much of the lyrics and content from the original vinyl releases that these songs appeared on, and showcases Man Is The Bastard's killer graphic design style, which is part humorous hardcore surrealism, and part nightmarish endtime chronicle, a perfect accompaniment to their over-the-top heaviness and devestating social commentary. Essential.

MAN IS THE BASTARD Man Cruel CD $12.98 Deep Six
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Totally classic, mindblowing heaviosity from one of the most important, groundbreaking bands to roar out of the West Coast hardcore scene of the 1990's. Man Is The Bastard created a potent combination of formless electronic/oscillator noise and bass-heavy, bonecrushing hardcore/grind that was fused with zero-bullshit politics and serious animal rights/anti-vivisection values, and years later this music hasn't lost an ounce of it's pissed off power. These guys somehow combined psychedelia, classic hardcore, sludge, and avant-garde electronic noise into something completely unique and ahead of it;s time. I fucking love Man Is The Bastard, and they still rank as one of our favorite hardcore bands ever...these songs have AWESOME lyrics, total rage transmitted through savage dual vocals with fierce roaring/shrieking tradeoffs, that ridiculously heavy, downtuned double bass-guitar trademark assault that feels like the band is smashing you over the skull with rubber logs, all conveyed through Man Is the Bastard's freaked out, jazzy exploratory hardcore. Mancruel is a posthumous collection of remixed and remastered tracks from the splits with Capitalist Casualties and Bleeding Rectum, along with three previously unreleased electronics pieces (which Bastard Noise fans obviously need to hear), and a previously unreleased crusher called "Me And Hitler", all compiled by MITB's Eric Wood in 1999. Totally fucking essential for fans of true extreme hardcore. This disc is apparently out of print now, and we managed to get ahold of just a few copies, so move quick before this sells out. Packaged in a black digisleeve with xeroxed 11x17 insert sheet.

MAN IS THE BASTARD Thoughtless CD $13.98 Gravity

Man Is The Bastard's awesome 1996 album Thoughtless..., an essential blast of psychedelic hardcore extremity! Totally classic, mindblowing heaviosity from one of the most important, groundbreaking bands to roar out of the West Coast hardcore scene of the 1990's. Man Is The Bastard created a potent combination of formless electronic/oscillator noise and bass-heavy, bonecrushing hardcore/grind that was fused with total zero-bullshit politics and serious animal rights/anti-vivisection values, and years later this music hasn't lost an ounce of it's pissed off power. These guys somehow combined psychedelia, classic hardcore, sludge, and avant-garde electronic noise into something completely unique and ahead of it's time. I fucking love Man Is The Bastard, and they still rank as one of our favorite hardcore bands ever.
Thoughtless is the second face-peeling album from Man Is The Bastard. Ultra heavy, powerful hardcore/dirge/noise with fluttering oscillator noise and insane complicated basslines. The first track "Puppy Mill" batters you with sludgy dual bass guitars and manic blastbeats, with super-pissed lyrics decrying animal exploitation. Tracks like 'Unweened Infant Orphan' and 'The Great Ebola' unleash pure mind frying space electronics. The 11+ minute math-sludge epic 'Moloch' rolls over your skull like a tank tread as Man Is The Bastard pays homage to Allen Ginsberg. All of these songs have brief but AWESOME lyrics, total rage transmitted through savage dual vocals with fierce roaring/shrieking tradeoffs, that ridiculously heavy, downtuned double bass-guitar trademark assault that feels like the band is smashing you over the skull with rubber logs, all conveyed through Man Is the Bastard's freaked out, jazzy, exploratory hardcore. Thoughtless also has Andy from Crossed Out contributing vocals. Totally fucking essential for fans of true extreme hardcore. In jewel case package with poster-booklet containing all of the original artwork and lyrics. CRUCIAL.

MAN IS THE BASTARD / MUMIA ABU-JAMAL split CD $14.98 Alternative Tentacles

At first this unique split album from 1997 seems like an incongruent pairing of content: a collection of spoken word tracks from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the author, journalist, activist, and death row inmate convicted of the murder of a police officer in Philadelphia in 1981, followed by four tracks from legendary West Coast powerviolence masters Man Is The Bastard. Listening to the Mumia Abu-Jamal/Man Is The Bastard split on the other hand becomes a thought-provoking, sobering commentary on the implications of societal injustice. Obviously, what kind of opinion you may have formed (if any) on the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (which is still ongoing, with current appeals for a retrial underway) will probably determine whether or not the spoken word portion of the split has any interest for you, but we also wanted to make this available through C-Blast as we want to offer everything that is still in print from Man Is The Bastard. The spoken word half of the disc features eloquent, insightful commentary from Mumia from death row that levels reasoned critiques against an inherently racist society, and is augmented with contributions from Allen Ginsberg, Jello Biafra, Assata Shakur, and Bob Dole. I can't think of any other band besides Man Is The Bastard that would be powerful enough to follow that up, but their swirling rage is an ideal manifestation of progressive anger, their dual bass guitars, chirping oscillators and crushing, jazzy drumming unleashing a blunt blast of psychedelic thud across their four jams: "Alignment", "Infiltrator", "Fusing Skull And Anvil", and "Subterfuge". Just over 20 minutes of exclusive MITB awesomeness, some of their jazziest stuff ever recorded. The super thick booklet is loaded with transcripts and information as well as detailed liner notes from Man Is The Bastard.

MP3 SAMPLE: MUMIA ABU-JAMAL "Father Hunger" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: MAN IS THE BASTARD "Infiltrator" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: MAN IS THE BASTARD "Subterfuge" (excerpt)

MAR DE GRISES The Tatterdemalion Express CD $12.98 Firedoom

This amazing album from the Chilean ambient-prog-art-doom metal juggernaut Mar De Grises has been out since 2004, but we were just recently turned onto these guys. The Tatterdemalion Express is their debut full length, which at first appears to be monstrous, crushing death-doom in league with their labelmates Swallow The Sun, with massive downtuned guitars and pummeling double bass drumming, huge and beautiful depressive grey-sky funereal melodies, and a mix of deep, gutteral death metal vocals and clean, melancholic singing. Immensely heavy, the songs stretching out to epic 8-12 minute lengths, and with huge production and even bigger hooks. But then it becomes quickly apparent that this really isn't just another melodic doom-death outfit, as Mar De Grises prominently features classical-inspired, ultra complex and atmospheric piano-driven melodies alongside their crushing riffage, and all kinds of unexpected elements start to appear in their songs, like pretty, post-rock-ish interludes with clean guitars and lush keyboards, weird dissonant noise passages, lots of confounding twists in song structure, impossibly catchy hooks that sound like they came right out of some 80's pop anthem, blasts of chaotic metalcore, the gorgeous piano instrumental of "Self Portrait No.1", and layers of spacey electronic ambience. This album is an awesome monument of progressive psychedelic-orchestral-death-doom, like a perfect combination of crushing Finnish doom a la Skepticism and Thergothon and Swallow The Sun, mixed with epic melodic death metal, gothic pop/rock, ambient electronica, classical, progressive rock, weird atonal avant-garde music a la Kayo Dot, and huge production. The disc features seven songs in just under an hour. Really epic and amazing, highly recommended!!!

MARE s/t CD $10.98 Hydrahead

Spellbinding, wholly unique post-metal beauty. This 25 minute CD has been out for a while now, but still hasn't gotten quite the accolades we feel it deserves. Definitely one of the best releases of 2004, hand down, and one of the greatest recordings yet from the evolving indie-metal nebula. If you haven't heard about MARE yet, imagine a band that combines the heaviness of Isis and Neurosis with somber Sigur Ros -esque ambient post-rock beauty, blips of brilliant real jazz, devestating, floor-caving extreme doom/sludge riffs, gorgeous 20th century choral music, crushing mutant metalcore, all tied up in one perfect package. You've got to hear the vocal harmonies on this, stunningly beautiful, especially when they glide seamlessly into a monstrous slo-mo doom riff that appears like a sinkhole opening up to swallow the ground you stand on...these light/dark vocal acrobatics are courtesy of former The End vocalist Tyler Semrick-Palmateer. We can't wait for the full length.

MARHAUG, LASSE The Great Silence CD $7.98 Troniks

From the somewhat serene cover photo of Mr. Marhaug sitting in front of a lake, to the titles of the three tracks contained here ('Back To Nature', 'The New Sound', 'The Great Silence'), I fooled myself for a minute expecting this to be ambient field recordings or electro-acoustic minimalism or something. Silence is definitely NOT what this is about, though...recorded in 2003 from, The Great Silence is a crushing, rhythmic orgy of Scandinavian feedback destruction from Lasse Marhaug, who is also known for being half of the legendary Norwegian noise outfit Jazkammer, here armed with brutal guitar and amplifier noise, aggressive pedal howl, microphones scraped along spinal columns, and sheets of immolating steel electronics. Sounds like Lasse is fronting an ungodly heavy feedback-fueled noise rock outfit that's had all of the beats sucked out of it, roaring lawnmower distortion and walls of static burned through with overloaded toy piano melodies, melted melodic vocals, and sweeps though alien FM pop radio frequencies. What propulsion is left is in the form of disgustingly crushing distortion-loops that pulse and probe their way through Marhaug's dense storms of smoking amplifier skree and obliterated drone riffs like steel plated tentacles. Hell yeah. This is quite the bitchin' amp-destroyer disc, limited to 1,000 copies, and packaged in a signature Troniks wallet jacket.

MARTYN BATES Imagination Feels Like A Poison CD $11.98 Hand/Eye

The first U.S issue of a full-length solo album by Martyn Bates, the stunning vocalist and founding member of Eyeless in Gaza - originally released mid 1997 to accompany the similarly titled book of lyrics , and has been unavailable commercially until this HAND / EYE release. Comprising new interpretations of songs extant 1982-1995 hitherto unheard, Imagination Feels Like Poison is primarily a collection of songs (occasionally threaded through with fleeting "illustrative atmospheric" sketches); a music brightly bittersweet, conjuring up ghostly and vivid invocations of folk / psych. Voice and, perhaps surprisingly, Banjo (an unusual choice for Martyn Bates), are the principal instruments that carry this music, a skeletal, simplistic music, deftly coloured and fleshed out by inventive use of Autoharp, Percussion, Whistles and Pump Organ. Luxuriously melodic, easily side-stepping lazy characterisations of genre, the album extends and elaborates upon Martyn Bates’ previously explored musical endeavours: quiet fire; filigree and mercurial, silvery images.

MARTYN BATES Mystery Seas (Letters Written #2) CD $11.98 Hand/Eye

Originally released in 1995, Mystery Seas (Letters Written #2) sees MARTYN BATES exploring further the seeds of ideas contained within his first solo work of some thirteen years earlier, the legendary 'Letters Written' collection. Comprising songs composed during that period (circa 1982) together with brand new songs in the idiom, this collection of highly personal ‘letters’ -organ based songs and performances - is entitled 'MYSTERY SEAS (LETTERS WRITTEN #2)’. Haunted, richly melodic, and lyrical these new recordings are most emphatically SONGS, and as such they veer away from the more avant-garde areas in which Martyn has been known for working. Recorded at AMBIVALENT SCALE in 1995 (by EYELESS IN GAZA's Peter Becker), this music is drenched in the myriad resonances of Folk , whilst simultaneouslv circumnavigating any rigid and limiting definition (folk = the 'folk soul', the ‘collective unconscious’). With voice/ lyrics lo the fore, and with a (for the most part) skeletal, simplistic instrumentation, MYSTERY SEAS evokes a music of creaking ships, echoes, of distant sea-shanty, light thru' broken stained glass windows, blighted misfortune, morning light, searching glances, of each story running thru them, of salt water, clear rhyme and reason, of each mask, of a night sky - tall wall of no more, of floods of thought / unsettling fetters, of tears or words seeming to rip the surface alerting and dumbfounding at one and the same time, songs of a beautiful secret to own... MYSTERY SEAS (LETTERS WRITTEN #2) is released on Hand/Eye via A-Scale.

MASONNA Recycled Music Series CASSETTE $4.98 RRRecords

Here is the 1999 contribution from Japanese noise legend Masonna to RRR's infamous Recycled Music Series cassette series, this one possessing some of his sickest throat exorcisms yet. If you're not yet familiar with Masonna's M.O., Maso Yamazaki runs his voice as source material through a bank of processors and effects, culminating in an extreme blast of psychedelic death distortion that's at least as immolating as the heaviest, most acidic Merzbow/Incapacitants jams. This near-half hour tape condenses brutal deathmetal utterances and Evil Dead howling into a single lacerating stream of shortwave jet-engine violence that blanks out your mind after about five minutes. Excellent!
This being a part of RRR's infamous Recycled Music series, Masonna'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.

MASS, THE City Of Dis CD $9.98 Crucial Blast

The US release of City Of Dis, the debut full length from Oakland, CA indie thrashers THE MASS delivers unto us a scalding blast of sax-assisted King Crimson-meets-Slayer art|thrash|core worship, all light-speed riffing, shrieking vox and burly singing, malevolent soft jazz,insidious tempo shifts, and bloodthirsty dynamics. Disparate elements of No Wave, damaged pop, grindcore, post-punk, thrash metal and math-rock are crafted into a blast of hyperkinetic fury, and is catchy as fuck. Pure audio dissent. THE MASS feature current and former members of FROM MONUMENTS TO MASSES and TOTIMOSHI. Recorded at Louder Studios in San Francisco with producer Tim Green (THE FUCKING CHAMPS, MELVINS, UNWOUND ). The Crucial Blast release of City Of Dis features enhanced CD-Rom video footage not available on the original European release, as well as slightly different artwork and design.

MASS, THE Perfect Picture Of Wisdom & Boldness CD $9.98 Crucial Blast

The 2nd album from Oakland California's THE MASS further refines the band's unique brand of malevolent indie-thrash, oozing a crawling heaviness not apparent on earlier releases. Crushing, epic, and melodic...moving beyond the hyperkinetic seizures of City Of Dis, here THE MASS whip out blazing, staccato riffs and multifaceted vocal attacks that knife through complex structures and sludgy, epic elegies, as wicked saxophone melodies interweave with angular crunch and creepy nocturnal post-rock. Like a stuttering, bat-winged Bay Area thrash metal outfit arming itself with Louisville/Chicago schooled math-thug asymmetry, pounding dirge-core, and fierce,evocative jazz flourishes while lobbing some whopping bonged-out grooves, THE MASS continues to evolve its cryptic heaviosity.

MASS, THE Towards Darkness CD $11.98 Great White North

First things first...nope, this isn't the Oakland indie thrash / klezmer dirge outfit with two releases on Crucial Blast. Yes, "our" THE MASS had the name first. Moniker confusion and band alligience aside, we've gotta admit that Canada's THE MASS are pretty crushing, due in no small part to the prescence of former members of the 90's Canadian crustcore / powerviolence band SEIZED, who were sort of Canada's answer to Man Is The Bastard, doing the two-bassist thing with brutal, bleak, grindy hardcore. There's a little bit of SEIZED's apocalyptic churn here, but MASS are tipped further towards the "crusty epic post-metal" sound making the rounds...think WAKE UP ON FIRE and the crop of newer crust/grind bands that have been listening to alot of later NEUROSIS, GODSPEED! YOU BLACK EMPORER, and ISIS. Mega heavy dirge metal played at a sludgy tar-crawl with monstrous vocals that breaks into subdued, haunting post-rock passages. Imagine early ISIS / early 90's NEUROSIS with a gnarlier doom/crust attack and minimalist MOGWAI-esque quiet parts. Gloomy, oppressive, and monstrously heavy.

MASSICK s/t 7"EP $5.98 Hombre Lobo
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

We've just landed a couple copies of this long outta-print, rare 1999 7" from German genre-mashers Massick, who much like weirdo-grind cohorts C.S.S.O. and Le Scrawl combine all sorts of disparate musical configurations with blazing grindcore to create an awesome, surprisingly catchy avant-blast-mess. Massick sort of get with a Mr. Bungle/Naked City vibe, throwing together polka, rock, pop, crustcore, and of course GRINDCORE together via terrific musicianship , but stitch it all together with bona fide hooks and genuinely skilled vocals. These guys are a personal fave over here. Brilliant stuff that gets bettern every time we listen to it.

MASSICK Discography CD $11.98 Human Meat For Sale

If you can believe it, it's taken us literally two years to get this CD back in stock from German punk weirdos Massick, and even then, we were only able to get 10 copies of it. The last time we had this rippin' genre-skipping grind-pop-punk disc here at Crucial Blast, we blew through them in less than a week. Their music is really hard to come by here in the US, so we're not expecting these to sit around for too long, either. Massick are a band that, much like Le Scrawl, at first glance appear to be a crusty grindcore outfit, but then they start to toss in all kinds of musical styles into their songs, one second playing goofy, super-catchy garage rock and Misfits style pop punk, the next tossing bits of ska, funk, f**ked up noise rock, surf rock, keyboard heavy Reggie And the Full Effect-esque pop, polka, trumpets, and jangly indie rock into a ferocious grindcore assault. Perplexing, sure, but these guys are so catchy and energetic that it's tough not to get swept up in their schizophrenic genre hopping. It's like a Teutonic punk band heard Naked City and tried to apply that kind of cut-and-paste songwriting style to their fast paced, goofy melodic thrash, turning into a tightly constructed schizo hybrid of Napalm Death, Samiam, Melt Banana, Mr. Bungle, and Swedish melodic avant-crusties G-ANX. Fans of genre-splicing grind and avant outfits like CSSO, Le Scrawl, Naked City, Cibo will love this disc, which includes Massick's self-titled 10", the 7", compilation tracks, and unreleased stuff, 19 tracks total which mostly date from the late 90's. Comes in a full color cardboard wallet with an insert sheet.

MP3 SAMPLE: "D.O.M." (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "One Hit Wonder" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "A Second Of Life" (excerpt)

MASTIC SCUM Scar CD $9.98 Cudgel

Second full length from Austrian grind band MASTIC SCUM. 12 tracks of raging GrindRock that delivers grooving riffs and catchy, heavy mid tempo crushers with superfast punk influenced grindcore and all out crusty thrash.

MAURIZIO BIANCHI A M.B. Iehn Tale CD $13.98 Small Voices

Exquisite drone-haunt from the legendary Maurizio Bianchi. This new album is a shift away from the early experimental bionic-industrial masterpieces The Plain Truth, Armaghedon, Endometrio, and Carcinosi, instead delving into an austere drone realm that may appeal to fans of meditative drift heaviness and more kosmiche strains of dream/drone music. A M.B. Iehn Tale presents eight tracks of clustered piano melodies that are decomposed and layered into gauzy sheets of elegiac drone...th earlier tracks travel along hammered tones akin to Terry Riley, and the last two tracks engage in celestial Ur-drone of the highest order. There's a hazy, buried, twilight beauty to this album that situates it next to Tim Hecker's Mirages and Final's 3, hence getting highest recommendations from us! Slow, meditative and very very beautiful, these pieces are the sound of grey light on overcast days and of silent empty churches. Superb!

MAXMILLION s/t CD $11.98 Retribute

MAXMILLION is the reuniting of Jason and Bobby whose musical vision was responsible for years of uncompromising and pioneering sludge in -16- (of the classic 'Drop Out' album). MAXMILLION's self titled debut is the next step for these hatesludge pioneers, and sees them joined with Chris Jones (bass) to create a monstrously heavy, thick and evil fusion of sludge, metalcore, doom and thrash. Severe heaviness. Think a much slower version of EYEHATEGOD trying to play a wasted,bleary-eyed version of modern metalcore thrash a la HEAVEN SHALL BURN and YEAR OF OUR LORD. 8 tracks of total hate.

MEADS OF ASPHODEL, THE Damascus Steel CD $14.98 Supernal

This is the album that introduced us to the Meads,the UK black metal outfit known for dressing up in full medievel armor, and who are the only black metal band we can think of that's ever weirded us out as much as Japan's Sigh. Really, this is barely black metal, as this 2005 full length expands beyond any genre boundries. Damascus Steel is pure weirdness, totally unpredictable as the band's exotic, anti-christian metal dosed in Middle Eastern influence that serves as a weird contradiction to their medieval crusader appearance. And any ideas that you might have of what "metal" should sound like will be obliterated when The Meads Of Asphodel unleash their flood of brilliant what-the-fuck songwriting, combining techno and disco, ethnic music, shimmery shoegazer textures, hyperspeed crushing black metal, breakbeats, awesome poppy psychedelia, 70's prog, satanic new age music, horns, folk guitars, power metal, Middle eastern strings and field recordings, bongos, all in the same song, a glorious seamless, utterly weird metal mutation that is completely unique and AWESOME. They even do insane covers of Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" and the 80's song "Do They Know It's Christmas" that need to be heard. This is one of the greatest "metal" albums we have ever heard, sonically exciting and loaded with TONS of replay value, with some amazingly catchy songs despite their total weirdness, and a somewhat subtle, intelligent socio/political commentary. And remember when we mentioned Sigh? Sigh's keyboardist Mirai drops some guest keyboard solos on this, too. Absolutely RECOMMENDED !! One of THE most eccentric, awesome psychedelic black metal pop electronica albums we have ever heard!!!

MEADS OF ASPHODEL, THE Exhuming The Grave Of Yeshua CD $14.98 Supernal

After we listed Damascus Steel, the latest (2005) full length from UK black metal outfit The Meads Of Asphodel, a couple of months ago, we were compelled to track down and pick up their other releases for Crucial Blast. Damascus Steel was one of the most confounding, catchy what-the-fuck metal albums we had heard since Sigh's Imaginary Sonicscape, and as weird and crushing and out there as that album was, we just had to get more. So here we are with 2003's Exhuming The Grave Of Yeshua, the second full-length from The Meads, and it might be even more freaked out. The Meads Of Asphodel are most definitely tied to black metal, both through the blazing Venom-on-steroids assault of their uh, more "straightforward" heaviness, and their steadfast anti-Christian concepts. But stylistically, this album is way beyond black metal. Similiar in sheer audacity to Sigh's psychedelic take on black metal (and heavy metal, for that matter), The Meads masterfully connect punk blasts, Hawkwind-influenced space rock, orchestral pop, and drum n' bass, along with lots of other completely unexpected sounds, tie it all to their crushing metal assault, and invest every song with incredible pop hooks that will stick in your cranium for days. This is one of the catchiest black metal albums we've ever heard. And certainly one of the most fucked up and mind melting. Features guest appearances from members of Sigh and Hawkwind. Highly recommended!

MEADS OF ASPHODEL, THE The Excommunication of Christ CD $14.98 Supernal

Debut full length from the iconoclastic UK black metal outfit The Meads Of Asphodel, a cryptic, anti-Christian trio who appear only in medieval, Crusader-style garb, wielding assorted weapons on their album covers. This 12-song outburst came out in 2001, and is not as skull-fryingly psychedelic and genrefucking as their 2003 masterpiece Exhuming The Grave Of Yeshua, instead delivering the bands earlier, more straightforward Venom-influenced occult black metal that incorporates Arabian motifs, warped folksy passages, and lots of Hawkwind worship. Definitely still very weird and awesome, though, with ridiculously catchy arena-rock/power metal choruses, lots of tripped out keyboards, and weird electronica bits. Fans of the Meads later albums obviously require The Excommunication of Christ. Also features a guest appearances from Huw Lloyd Langton of Hawkwind on the Meads' cover of Hawkwind's "Assault And Battery". Recommended!

MEATJACK Days Of Fire CD $12.98 At A Loss

Despite being on hiatus for the past few years, Meatjack are one of the heaviest bands EVER from Baltimore, an enigmatic, underappreciated behemoth that had been dishing out a unique brand of percussive, electronically-enhanced metal since 1993. They produced a bunch of 7" EPs, compilation appearances, two full length CDs, a split mini-album with Damad, and even appeared on the soundtrack for the John Waters movie Cecil B. Demented. Their sound referenced everything from Slayerized thrash, Unsane, Melvins, Godflesh, Swans, Keelhaul, Skinny Puppy and Eyehategod into ultra-crushing, intricate sludge-metal that reached it's apex with 2003's Days of Fire full-length. Illustrated with strange, cryptic lyrics and artwork, Days Of Fire is an awesome psychedelic endtime vision that connects Neurosis playing through the alien machinery of Thrones ("Cold Flight"), vague Middle Eastern melodies, dissonant sludged-out death metal by way of Am Rep's grinding repetition, ominous ambient guitar drones, angular industro-doom, classic rock riffage, quieter post-rock dynamics, uptempo math-crushers like "One More" and "50 Years", and even a bluesy instrumental ("Blue") that sounds like a mutant outtake from Zeppelin's III. The last track "Crawl" is the album's zenith, a nearly 10 minute masterpiece of strangely processed sludge riffs winding around an eerie, alien electronic melody while triumphant cosmic bagpipes herald the arrival of a crushing, ridiculously catchy riff that rides the dawnfire; the last five minutes of the song dissipate into a shimmering cloud of vibrating Arabic guitar drones and ethereal electronic hum that reminds me of an even trippier Growing. It's a fucking crime that these guys haven't been heard by more extreme music fans, as they managed to create some incredibly catchy, memorable music out on the fringes of noisy, experimental metal, a crushing industrial/tech/sludge force; fans of anything from 16 to Neurosis to Mastodon should check them out.

MEATJACK / DAMAD split CD $10.98 At A Loss

Punishing double dose of mindbending deathcrust from the At A Loss vaults - first up are two tracks of psychotic dirge metal from Damad, whose dual male and female vocalists layer their truly insane sounding screams over a churning, hypnotic assault of low-end sludgecore and angular rhythms. Damad's vocals are seriously fuckd up, they sound like you have a goat-headed demon from the pits bellowing gutteral seductions in one ear, and a possessed, profanity-spewing little girl mewling in the other. Their music still fucking destroys. After that, Baltimore noise-metal heroes Meatjack show up with three blasts of electronically-enhanced metallic noise rock, passags of sparse, subdued drum and bass guitar dirge exploding into solar flashes of crushing, winding heaviness like Neurosis, Today Is The Day and Unsane fused together with a malfunctioning computer system ejaculating psychotronic fractal noise. Beautifully negatory crunch. Fuck, this split mini-album makes me long for the days when these bands ruled the eastern coast. Ultraheavy post-Am Rep damage never really came much heavier than this.

MEDIUM Blinder CD $5.98 American Line

Cuban death metal ! If you like Latin American death/grind, you'll love this. Imagine a cross between older SEPULTURA and contemporary South American death a la MORTEM or MASACRE. Violent, brilliant death! Solid production, proficiently violent execution, and relentless blast/groove. Full on machete metal.

MEERK PUFFY Nung LP $12.98 Animal Disguise
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Meerk Puffy, aka Matt Brinkman, is relatively well known in the DIY art/sound underground as one of the founders of Providence's legendary Fort Thunder collective and a member of the long-running, multi-media free-electronics collective Forcefield. Over the past several years though, Meerk has also been releasing an assortment of solo cassette-only releases which combine the lo-fi squelchtronics of Forcefield with rhythmic pulses and phased out psychedelic noise, and bridges the lysergic skronk mantras of early Boredoms with the crude splatter rituals of the noise cassette underground. Nung is Puffy's first non-tape release, and unleashes a series of twisted, neurotic waveforms wrapped around deformed rhythmic thuds and scratchy loops; it's a sort of crude techno-vomit minimalism that effectively induces a trance state onto your nervous system. Steady pulsating beats thump into eternity, slowly melting into bleeping electronic goop and slivers of metallic feedback, falling into endless locked grooves of grainy, hypnotic electronics. Released in a limited edition of 500 copies in silkscreened covers and posters printed by Meerk himself.

MELT BANANA 13 Hedgehogs: MxBx Singles 1994-1999 CD $13.98 A-Zap

Crucial 56 track collection of Melt Banana singles spanning the years 1994-1999. Righteous! We are HUGE Melt Bananan fans here at Crucial Blast. HUGE. So this handy disc of their out-of-print vinyl stuff was much needed around here. You get the Hedgehog 7", the split 7"s with GOD IS MY CO-PILOT, DISCORDANCE AXIS, PENCILNECK, KILLOUT TRASH, XEROBOT, TARGET SHOPPERS, STILLUPPSTEYPA, and PLAINFIELD, the Untitled (Piano One) 7", the Eleventh 7", the Dead Spex 7", and the It's In The Pillcase 7". Whew! 56 crazed jams of Melt Banana's hyperspeed no wave / pop / grind / avant-fastcore, complete with Agata's laser beam guitar playing and that grindcore cheer-squad sugar shock assault that we LOVE SO MUCH !!! Minute-or-less bursts of avant garde composition compressed into pure glorious abandon. Essential !!!

MELT BANANA Bambi's Dilemma CD $13.98 A-Zap

A NEW MELT BANANA ALBUM !!! And has it really been four years since Cell-Scape came out? That album has become one of my favorite albums of all time, a disc that I throw on constantly, never tiring of it's hyperspeed sci-fi sugar blast. I love everything that Melt Banana has done, every single one of their albums and EPs holds a very special place in my heart, but it was Cell-Scape that saw the band reaching a whole new level of awesomeness, with massive production, crushing riffage that was 100 times heavier than anything that had come before, and the introduction of lush, cosmic electronic ambience that served as a segueway between MB's supersonic blasts of pop-encrusted psychedelic powerviolence. So here's the follow-up, the weirdly titled Bambi's Dilemma, which the band has been referring to as a more "rock" orientated release. So what's my take on this? FUCKING AWESOME. Bambi's Dilemma has the thick, powerful production and sleek blastbeat sheen of Cell-Scape, and yeah, there is more of an accessible rock element here, but only on a handful of the album's 18 songs, where Melt Banana seems to have assimiliated some garage rock and alt pop moves into their DNA; "Crow's Paint Brush", for instance, sounds like a dancey alternative rock radio hit, at leats until the band bulldozes the hook with raging fastcore splattered with digital videogame effects. "Spider Snipe" sounds like Shonen Knife fused with maxi-caffeinated hardcore. “Type: Ecco System” is kosmiche space music as performed by dolphins. "Dog Song" is one of the weirdest MxBx songs ever, a brilliant, sweetly catchy punk song with Yasuko switching between poppy singing and imitating a crazed dog? And there's lots of extreme hyperblast songs, skronky no-wave inflected noisecore, and serene cosmic ambient soundscapes, and frontwoman Yasuko O. sounds as crazed and funky as ever, accompanied by guitarist Agata and his arsenal of galactic slide guitar insanity and FX-mutated thrashcore riffs. Halfway through the album, though, the band drops the guitars and bass entirely in favor of the Theremin, and the following songs rank as some of the most mindmelting Melt Banana jams ever, a technicolor collision of heavy speedcore drumming and swooping, bubbling, screaming Theremin tones, a sound the band calls "theremin-core". It rules. The album's final five-minute closer “Last Target On The Last day” is a fusion of glitch guitars, dark ambient tones, and grinding industrial rhythms with Yasuko channeling Laurie Anderson over the stuttering noisewave, ending the album on a dark, threatening note. Absolutely awesome and addictive, as hyperfast and heavy and CRAZED as anything they have done before, but even catchier and poppier and weirder than ever. Can't recommend Bambi's Dilemma enough, for real. In a full color jewel case, with a foldout booklet containing full lyrics and illustrated with some strange paint-splattered collage of everyday household items. Crucial.

MELT BANANA Bambi's Dilemma LP $12.98 A-Zap

The new MELT BANANA ALBUM on wax !!!
And has it really been four years since Cell-Scape came out? That album has become one of my favorite albums of all time, a disc that I throw on constantly, never tiring of it's hyperspeed sci-fi sugar blast. I love everything that Melt Banana has done, every single one of their albums and EPs holds a very special place in my heart, but it was Cell-Scape that saw the band reaching a whole new level of awesomeness, with massive production, crushing riffage that was 100 times heavier than anything that had come before, and the introduction of lush, cosmic electronic ambience that served as a segueway between MB's supersonic blasts of pop-encrusted psychedelic powerviolence. So here's the follow-up, the weirdly titled Bambi's Dilemma, which the band has been referring to as a more "rock" orientated release. So what's my take on this? FUCKING AWESOME. Bambi's Dilemma has the thick, powerful production and sleek blastbeat sheen of Cell-Scape, and yeah, there is more of an accessible rock element here, but only on a handful of the album's 18 songs, where Melt Banana seems to have assimiliated some garage rock and alt pop moves into their DNA; "Crow's Paint Brush", for instance, sounds like a dancey alternative rock radio hit, at leats until the band bulldozes the hook with raging fastcore splattered with digital videogame effects. "Spider Snipe" sounds like Shonen Knife fused with maxi-caffeinated hardcore. “Type: Ecco System” is kosmiche space music as performed by dolphins. "Dog Song" is one of the weirdest MxBx songs ever, a brilliant, sweetly catchy punk song with Yasuko switching between poppy singing and imitating a crazed dog? And there's lots of extreme hyperblast songs, skronky no-wave inflected noisecore, and serene cosmic ambient soundscapes, and frontwoman Yasuko O. sounds as crazed and funky as ever, accompanied by guitarist Agata and his arsenal of galactic slide guitar insanity and FX-mutated thrashcore riffs. Halfway through the album, though, the band drops the guitars and bass entirely in favor of the Theremin, and the following songs rank as some of the most mindmelting Melt Banana jams ever, a technicolor collision of heavy speedcore drumming and swooping, bubbling, screaming Theremin tones, a sound the band calls "theremin-core". It rules. The album's final five-minute closer “Last Target On The Last day” is a fusion of glitch guitars, dark ambient tones, and grinding industrial rhythms with Yasuko channeling Laurie Anderson over the stuttering noisewave, ending the album on a dark, threatening note. Absolutely awesome and addictive, as hyperfast and heavy and CRAZED as anything they have done before, but even catchier and poppier and weirder than ever. Can't recommend Bambi's Dilemma enough, for real. Full color jacket with insert, complete with full lyrics and illustrated with some strange paint-splattered collage of everyday household items.

MELT BANANA Cactuses Come In Flocks CD $13.98 A-Zap

1999 re-issue of the original full length cassette tape that was released in 1994 on the UK based Chocolate Monk imprint. This is Melt Banana at their thrasiest, most No Wave-y, and arguable most rigidly avant-garde, exploding heads through 32 songs that mostly clock in under a minute. While this is obviously way rougher, more ragged, and nowhere near the slick grind pop awesomeness of their latest album "Cell Scape", these early songs are nevertheless totally infectious bursts of pure energy from the Banana team, with Yasuko's relentless cheer squad yells over Agata's mutant No Wave guitar outbursts and MB's onslaught of spastic, short (most songs clocking in well under a minute!), minimalist free-hardcore thrash that is spliced with cranium frying tape cut-up/mangle moves, forays into mutant dub, and interdimensional noise. The first half of this album was recorded at an improv festival at Tokyp University in 1992, and the second half consists of blazing raw 4-track recorded in 1994. Exhilerating early movements from one of the most crucial hardcore bands on the planet.

MELT BANANA Cell-Scape CD $13.98 A-Zap

The crucial 2003 album from MELT BANANA is their finest ADD-infected blast of spastic grind/pop/prog to date, wethinks. Every song on Cell-Scape is a shredder, jammed up with monster blastbeat action, cheersquad cartoon-girl yelps, crazed synthesizers, MEGA CATCHY hooks, and cosmic guitar eruptions. MELT BANANA is one of our all-time favorite bands, so we can't help but gush. They embody EVERYTHING we love about music, and then some. Imagine hyperspeed power violence as played by anime cartoon characters on crack. Cell-Scape also boasts the best production job so far for MB, and it sounds righteous. We'd have to say this is the ideal MB album for novices to check out, it's the most accessible release so far, without losing any of the craziness and off-the-wall energy that makes them one of the greates bands on the planet!

MELT BANANA Charlie CD $13.98 A-Zap

Melt Banana followed their Wedge EP on Slap A Ham with 1998's Charlie, their most conceptual album, which captures Melt Banana in transition from hyperactive no wave grind unit to a mystical, Dadaist thrashcore ensemble with insane song arrangements delivered with laser guided precision and an advanced use of electronics for increased freakout. 14 songs of amplified spazz attack with their catchiest songs and strongest production values up to this point. Lightning speed drumming, crazed, effects-heavy guitar gymnastics, and Yako's awesome cheergirl yelps all contribute to the charged energy of this album. Plus, this is album that has the blink-and-you-miss-it collaboration with Mr. Bungle that helped mark the band's entrance into the wider public eye. One of the greatest, most inventive Hardcore bands ever. Highly recommended.

MELT BANANA Charlie LP $12.98 A-Zap

The vinyl version of Melt Banana's mindblowing Charlie!
Melt Banana followed their Wedge EP on Slap A Ham with 1998's Charlie, their most conceptual album, which captures Melt Banana in transition from hyperactive no wave grind unit to a mystical, Dadaist thrashcore ensemble with insane song arrangements delivered with laser guided precision and an advanced use of electronics for increased freakout. 14 songs of amplified spazz attack with their catchiest songs and strongest production values up to this point. Lightning speed drumming, crazed, effects-heavy guitar gymnastics, and Yako's awesome cheergirl yelps all contribute to the charged energy of this album. Plus, this is album that has the blink-and-you-miss-it collaboration with Mr. Bungle that helped mark the band's entrance into the wider public eye. One of the greatest, most inventive Hardcore bands ever. Highly recommended.

MELT BANANA Snake Song/Love Song 5"EP $9.98 HG Fact
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Here's a brand new 'lil 5" EP import from our fave skronk/grind/pop demolition unit from Japan, blowing through two crucial exclusive new tunes, "Snake Song" and "Love Song" that serve as a taste of what they'll be blasting on their next album. Black vinyl 5" in a full color sleeve. Sweet! Limited quantities. Yes, it's expensive for an EP, but we're at the mercy of import prices. MELT BANANA vinylphiles take note!

MELT BANANA Speak Squeak Creak CD $13.98 A-Zap

A crucal re-release of the 1994 full length of hyperactive and mystical hardcore from Melt Banana serves up 24 short blasts of awesome jump-cut thrash and progressive, consciousness raising noise rock collage, most of 'em whizzing by in under 2 minutes. Speak Squeak Creak was produced by legendary Zeni Geva guitarist KK Null along with engineer Steve Albini in a Chicago basement back in '94, and shows the band beginning to move beyond the parameters of freakout No wave of the Cactuses Come In Flocks material, and further into the sugar rush, futuristic grind/pop/skronk that they would conquer on later releases, combining speed metal acrobatics with spastic pop and atonal no wave and insane math/jazz forms, like Napalm Death fused to God Is My Co-Pilot. Speak Squeak Creak isn't quite as crazy catchy as their later stuff, but these songs are still freaking awesome, highly motivational blasts of Yako's cheerquad yells and Agata's astounding high-speed guitar/effects mutations over the heavy grooving rhythm section of Rika mm' and Sudoh. This album sits alongside the genius cacophony of Boredoms, Ruins, and Zeni Geva. One of the greatest hardcore bands to walk the face of this planet.

MELT BANANA Teeny Shiny CD $13.98 A-Zap

Melt Banana's third album Teeny Shiny delivers another hyperspeed onslaught of sugar-OD spazz thrash with even catchier hooks and LOTS of weird turntablist/drum n bass-isms this time around. Terminally insane, equally confrontational and cute, Melt Banana continued to evolve and streamline their sound with these 11 songs without losing an ounce of their godlike freakiness. The No Wave skronk and mutant noise eruptions of their previous albums are still in force, but have been refined into the closest the band has ever come to writing actual "pop" songs. Of course, Melt Banana's vision of pop is a 1000 mph blast of pop-punk run amok with singer Yako's manic cheergirl yelps and Agata's mind-frying shrapnel guitar playing, which alternately sound like a meth-amped DJ scratching 3 different records, a laser gun going off, and an unstoppable thrashcore riff machine. All that amidst an offensive of air raid sirens and hip-hop beats, explosions and electrocuted video game shrieks, drum'n'bass-influenced noise blasts, digital hardcore and more, a mystical hyperspeed hardcore adrenaline freakout beamed straight into your cortex. An essential album from one of our favorite bands on the planet.

MELTED MEN Abdominal Snowmen 7"EP $6.98 Dead Mind

Yet another 7" of fucked up, mutant lo-fi electronica meets free-noise from Dead Mind, this time from the Athens, GA based junk cult MELTED MEN. These 8 tunes are lumbering, undeniably funky jams cobbled together from handmade instruments, drugged vocals, looped records and primitive hip hop beats, super catchy and fun, at times reminding me of the minimal loop-driven electronica of fellow Dead Mind inhabitants DEAD HUSBANDS...and at others, channeling a retarded Afrikka Bambataa/Residents jam chopping up vinyl in a plunderphonic orgy. It's sweet stuff. The vinyl is in a full color sleeve. Throw this one on at your next hash party.

MELVINS A Senile Animal CD $17.98 Ipecac

The Melvin's first release with the dudes from Big Business in the band sure was a crusher, and we've got it in finally for latecomers to the twin-drummer assault of A Senile Animal. I remember seeing them last year when they were touring for album, and having Buzz Osborne and Dale Crover accompanied by Big Business' Jared Warren and Coady Willis was simply massive. And A Senile Album delivers it with ten tracks of pummeling sludge/riff decimation that uses the two drummers to maximum effect - see the powerful drum march breakdown on "The Talking Horse" for instance, the complex cymbal/snare patterns of "You've Never Been Right", and the avalanche of tom rolls that finishes off the mutoid arena rock of "Civilized Worm". Of course, it's all about the RIFF with the Melvin's, and this album has 'em by the truckload...tricky rhythmic prog riffs rear their head on "Blood Witch", and "The Hawk" actually invokes the spirit of King Crimson with it's complex sprawl. After the experimental inside jokes that made up alot of their early-decade output, I gotta say that it's nice to put on a new(er) Melvins album and just get bludgeoned by a nonstop battery of sludgy speaker blowing metallic rock. All hail.

MP3 SAMPLE: "A History Of Drunks" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "A Vast Filthy Prison" (excerpt)

MELVINS Bullhead CD $13.98 Boner

Another classic old-school dose of Melvins' sludge/punk heaviness, 1991's Bullhead came out on the Boner label and has become one of the harder Melvins titles to get yer hands on. Of course, we're here to keep this shit documented, so we've finally got Bullhead in stock - and if you are even a casual fan of the Melvins, then this is an essential addition to the library: packaged in a bright blue case with bizarre covert art featuring a fruit basket, this is where the songs became longer, the riffs even heavier yet catchier....fuck, the album's crawling dronecrush of an opening track is called "Boris" and I'll give you three guesses what band saw this disc as an essential influence. All of the jams here are crushing - the mathy pummel and infectious hook of "Anaconda", "Ligature"'s doomy slow motion stomp, the rocking pre-grunge of "It's Shoved", the stuttering force of "Zodiac"....ugh, this album is just fucking killer from beginning to end. This is from when Lorax was on bass, and the lineup is thunderous. In my opinion this ranks as one of Melvins' best albums, completely crucial and most highly recommended.

MELVINS Dale Crover CD $12.98 Boner

If you've been following the Melvin's for awhile, you know that those dudes love KISS. They love 'em so much that back in 1992, the Melvins issued a series of three EP's, one from each member (King Buzzo, Dale Crover, and then-bassist Koe Preston) presenting their own EP of original solo material; the discs were totally modeled after the original KISS solo albums from 1978 in both look and concept, mimicking the same cover art style and KISS-logo lettering, making this part homage, part prank. These are now pretty hard to find, but are absolutely crucial to Melvins fans as each of the EP's are like a slide-section of the member's creativity, and all are totally crushing and weird in their own manner.
For his 12-minute solo EP, Melvins' drummer Dale Crover teamed up with his then-wife Debbi Shane and served up four songs of sludgy, heavy metalpunk, catchy and hooky guitar-heavy tuneage that kinda reminds me of Dinosaur Jr. a little, but as heard through the slow fuzz weight of Melvins' Bullhead with Dale intoning his vocals Buzzo-style. Dale's entry is easily the catchiest and most accessible disc of the trilogy, the songs "Hex Me", "Dead Wipe", "Respite", and "Hurter" combining into a droney, hypnotic slab of darkened sludge pop. Always loved this disc, and I also always hoped that Dale would have pursued this catchier solo style more later on.

MELVINS Joe Preston CD $12.98 Boner

If you've been following the Melvin's for awhile, you know that those dudes love KISS. They love 'em so much that back in 1992, the Melvins issued a series of three EP's, one from each member (King Buzzo, Dale Crover, and then-bassist Koe Preston) presenting their own EP of original solo material; the discs were totally modeled after the original KISS solo albums from 1978 in both look and concept, mimicking the same cover art style and KISS-logo lettering, making this part homage, part prank. These are now pretty hard to find, but are absolutely crucial to Melvins fans as each of the EP's are like a slide-section of the member's creativity, and all are totally crushing and weird in their own manner.
The most maligned entry into the Melvins solo EPs trilogy, Joe Preston's disc is also my personal favorite of the series, and it's also the longest at almost half an hour. His solo disc was one of the only things that Preston recorded during his brief stint in the Melvins, along with the Nightgoat single and the Lysol album. If yer a regular over here, you've no doubt noticed that we are HUGE Joe Preston fans. The guy has played with some of our favorite bands ever (Earth, Sunn O))), High On Fire), and is also the force behind the mighty Thrones. The dude just bleeds heaviness. His solo Melvins EP is definitely the most fucked-up of the three, but Sunn O))) and Thrones fans are gonna be stoked to see the shape of things to come captured here; the opener "The Eagle Has Landed" is a brief bit of sound collage fusing a really fucking annoying recording of a kid throwing a temper tantrum over scratchy 70's elevator music; and "Bricklebrit" totally predates the Thrones sound with a splattery drum machine, alien feedback, and slow creepy mutant riffage - freaking crushing, and sounds like it coulda come off of the Sperm Whale album! But it's the final track, the 23 minute long "Hands First Flower" which should have all fans of Earth, Sunn O))), Black Boned Angel, and all things ultra heavy tarpit guitar dronemetal scrambling to attach their ears to this disc. Starting off with low, rumbling feedback drones and stretched out metal powerchords suspended in space, the track slooowly shifts and turns with crushing ominous sludge drone and distant, elephantine tympani strikes, sounding exactly like what Sunn O))) were doing on their 00 Void album, but with those monstrous, distorted drum explosions and Preston's weird electronic sounds making it even heavier. When this came out, man, so many people hated it, thinking it the most disposable entry in the solo series, but listening to it now proves that his disc was just way ahead of it's time!

MELVINS King Buzzo CD $12.98 Boner

If you've been following the Melvin's for awhile, you know that those dudes love KISS. They love 'em so much that back in 1992, the Melvins issued a series of three EP's, one from each member (King Buzzo, Dale Crover, and then-bassist Koe Preston) presenting their own EP of original solo material; the discs were totally modeled after the original KISS solo albums from 1978 in both look and concept, mimicking the same cover art style and KISS-logo lettering, making this part homage, part prank. These are now pretty hard to find, but are absolutely crucial to Melvins fans as each of the EP's are like a slide-section of the member's creativity, and all are totally crushing and weird in their own manner.
King Buzzo's 12 minute disc is the closest of the three to what the Melvins were doing at the time; The opener "Isabella" appears with a heavy, repeated tom-heavy drumbeat and softly buzzing feedback drone, as a crumbling ultradistorted guitar and Buzzo's veiled vocals enter. "Porg" marries a percussive Industrial loop of heavy machine clang to droning distorted guitar noise and layers of demonically possessed moans. "Annum" appropriates part of the key riff from "White Rabbit" and crafts a tense, understated pop song. The final track "Skeeter" is like a sludge-metal comedy bit, with some guy narrating a tour story over a rolling crushing guitar/heavy drums metalpunk dirge. Who's the guy? It's actually Dave Grohl from Nirvana and Foo Fighters, who also played drums on this disc, going under the name "Dale Nixon" due to legal issues with Nirvana's label, Geffen.

MELVINS Ozma / Gluey Porch Treatments CD $14.98 Boner

Almost 20 years later, this is still some of the heaviest shit you'll ever hear. 1989's Ozma is the second album from the Melvins, following up the landmark sludgepit revelations of Gluey Porch Treatments, and featured the King Buzzo/Dale Crover/ Lori "Lorax" Black (who was allegedly Shirley Temple’s daughter) lineup now relocated to San Francisco from Seattle. Totally classic angular/abstract sludgerock, like Flipper, KISS, and My War-era Black Flag dragged through molasses, with spastic, complex riffs and crushing stop/start drum pummel that's so fucking flattening that the album generates immediate whiplash every time you toss it in. A bunch of Buzzo's lyrics are printed in the booklet, and it's drunken, demented lyricism at it's best. A bunch of covers on here, too: the Melvin's run through stomping versions of KISS' "Love Theme", the song "Creepy Smell" works in the intro to the song "Living In Sin" from Gene Simmons' solo album, "Candy-O" is a Cars tune that becomes absolutely crushing here, and "Leeech" is a Green River cover. And there's the flirtations with feedback drones and guitar noise that the Melvins would explore in more depth with later albums.
In addition to the Ozma album, this Boner CD also tacked on the band's first full length, 1987's Gluey Porch Treatments, for maximum Melvinsage. Gluey was just re-issued through Ipecac in the past few years with a beefier remastering and presentation along with some added unreleased demos from the same era, but hell, if yer a Melvins fan and don't have Ozma, then you can't go wrong with this overflowing disc. Ultra heavy weirdo sludge punk, with a pre-Mudhoney Matt Lukin on bass. Crushing!

MELVINS with JELLO BIAFRA Sieg Howdy! LP + 7" $13.98 Alternative Tentacles

Picking up right where 2004's awesome Never Breathe What You Can't See left off, Sieg Howdy is an even burlier and more pissed off album from the unstoppable team of Jello and The Melvins, while being more of an essential companion peice than a standalone album. Bottom line is, if you dug the first one, you'll love this. The six studio tracks were recorded during the same sessions that birthed Never Breathe..., starting off with a cover of the classic Alice Cooper jam "Halo Of Flies" before moving into a redux of "The Lighter Side Of Global Terrorism (extended space-melt version)", which originally appeared on the first album but is contorted here into a psychedelic, Hawkwind-gone-crossover-thrash spazzout. The rest of the originals are similiarly pulverizing, perfectly mixing the classic DK sound and Jello's scathing, visceral lyrics and pointed political humour with Melvin's exploratory riffcrush; King Buzzo even channels some killer East Bay Ray style surf/western guitar lines throughout the album. This is Melvins at their punkiest and fastest, and it freaking rips HARD. One of my favorite new songs here is "Those Dumb Punk Kids (Will Buy Anything)", which has Jello ripping into the commodification of punk, including jabs at the reformed Dead Kennedys. The album also features an updated version of "California Über Alles" with Biafra delivering new lyrics about the recall campaign that placed Arnold Schwarzenegger in the California governor's office, and additional remixes of four songs from the 1st album courtesy of dalek, Dale Crover, and Al Jourgensen of Ministry (whose appearance here marks his first collaboration with Jello since LARD!). And Adam Jones from TOOL shows up on a bunch of these tracks with atmospheric guitar noise. We need more from this matchup, I can't get enough of this stuff and it's by far the best shit that Jello has been involved with for ages. Awesome, thought-provoking heaviosity! And to top it off, the album jacket feature original illustrations from the awesome dark cartoonist Camille Rose Garcia, whose weird, creepy artwork is a perfect accompaniment to the music. The LP has the same songs as the CD, although it's spread out over a 12"LP and a 7". Highly recommended!

MEMBRANE A Story Of Blood And Violence CD $12.98 Basement Apes Industries

The French noise rock underground has been crushin' me for years now, particularly the output of the Amanita, Radar Swarm, and Basement Apes imprints, all of which receive alot of regular love around C-Blast. Basement Apes in particular has given us some of thee heaviest post-Am Rep riff damage of the 21st century, and one of the heaviest, grimmest outfits they've turned us onto is the trio Membrane from Vesoul, France. These dudes flattened me a couple of years back with their Utility Of Useless Things album (also on Basement Apes and still available from C-Blast), which combined brutal noisy rock sprung from the seed of Am Rep's heaviest with an apocalyptic metallic mightiness. They've gotten even heavier with their new album A Story Of Blood And Violence, their first new disc in 3 years, still centered around a crushing battery of eerie endtime dirges and slithering dissonant riffage. And Membrane still remind me of a steel-plated amalgam of Unsane, late-90's Neurosis, and a little bit of Novelty era Jawbox, raising spectral visions of doomed urban landscapes painted red by nuclear skies, heavy vibes of paranoia, violence and dread seeping into your bloodstream. I freaking love singer Nico's vocals for Membrane, too, a gruff, warbly throaty scream that at times almost sounds like a cross between Tom Araya from Slayer and freakin' Tom Waites. Another killer disc from these guys - and they finish the album off with a concrete-heavy rendition of Unsane's "Sick", which rules. Recommended.

MEMBRANE Utility Of Useless Things CD $12.98 Basement Apes Industries

Holy shit, do we love French noise rock! Especially when it's delivered with total fucking bone-crushing power, as is the case with this six song sucker punch from French three-piece Membrane. Membrane take the noisy, blown, spittle-drooling-from-the-chin pigfuck of noise rock's heydey, mix in some earthshaking dirge metal a la Neurosis, and strap it to the back of a muscular post-hardcore assault that's similiar to the metallic attitude Jawbox copped after they toured with Helmet way back when. Seriously, we fucking love it when bands take that Amphetimine Reptile sound and hop it up on steroids like this. Best jam on the album is the last track, "Magic Hours", which sums up the whole vibe of Utility Of Useless Things with a catchy as hell hook that sounds straight up like a combination of Neurosis, Novelty era Jawbox, and Helmet. Excellent! Comes in digipack packaging.

MERCA Chup Amela CD $11.98 Psychedoomelic

Rising from the ashes of cult underground doom legends Shylock, this Dutch outfit debuts with a solid slab of classic, traditional 80's style doom that channels The Obsessed so perfectly that Obsessed fans might do a double take, if it weren't for the odd Dutch accent on the singer's total Wino-style vocals. Heavy bluesy riffage, gloomy downtrodden tempos, and excellent stoned post-Pentagram/Vitus style axework situate this firmly in the old school. Definitely a band that diehard fans of the Maryland blues-doom vibe should look into while we wait for Internal Void to drop another hammer on us. Yet another solid dose of psychedelic doom from Psychedoomelic, with some sweet drug-trip tantric cover art.

MERZBOW Batztoutai With Material Gadgets: De-composed Works 1985-1986/Loop Panic Limited 2xCD $11.98 RRRecords

Classic late 80's works from Merzbow! New packaging in paper sleeve with xerox cover. Sub-titled: De-Composed Works 1985-86. Disk 1 is a remix of the long out of print RRR double LP (with this new retrospective note: "Fake electro acoustic music dedicated to GRM/INA, Wergo, DG, Phillips & Erato recording artists"). Disk 2 is called "Loop Panic Limited," and is a recording of loud/dense cut ups from various records; recorded 1985-86. One of the classic Merzbow recordings. The first disc is a reissue of arguably one of the best merzbow records ever, as released in 1986 on rrr.Looped up noise assaults, and brain shredding electro acoustic works. The legendary double disc of early-style Merzbow material, probably one of the best of the entire Akita output in this style. Early-style meaning that it's not full-blast walls of extreme noise. There are parts like that but rather it is an altogether minimal placement of sounds and patterns and pieces that changes every few minutes, sparse, varied and memorable. Wanging metal strikes, shimmering radio frequencies, rumbles and screams and drilling and radio bytes. This is highly recommended to the noise listener who only knows the excruciating material or the novice listener unaware of Merzbow's versatility within his own discipline. This is CRUCIAL Merzbow!!!

MERZBOW Collapse 12 Floors CD $14.98 Ohm
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

Released in 2000 on Norway's Ohm Records the same year that the legendary "Merzbox" was unleashed on Japanoise and underground electronic cultists worldwide, this hard to find album from Masami Akita seemed to have become lost in the shuffle. That's a crime, as this features some of MERZBOW's first forays into digital, and it's exciting, earbending stuff. Constructed using a Mac along with theremin and "noise electronics", Collapse 12 Floors is comparatively laid back, with it's glitchy bursts of energy and liquid fractal tendrils whipping out from slabs of quasi-techno powernoise rhythms and warp speed cassette garble. Frozen ancient jazz murmurs are blasted out of a wah-wah cannon straight into the sun. There are some brutally loud and abrasive moments on here for sure, but compared to most of MERZBOW's other turn-of-the-decade work, these three tracks of computer based sound manipulation are more psychedelic and fluid. The CD jewel case itself is assembled nicely,too, with a weird, eyecatching red/green color scheme for the insert and disc tray.

MERZBOW Frog+ 2xCD $14.98 Misanthropic Agenda

Opening with the rumbly croak of a single frog, Masami Akita's epic Frog morphs into a series of ultra grooving loops of grinding distortion that borders on crushing Industrial, reminding me alot of the Batztoutai album but much heavier, thick crunchy maelstroms of digital distortion destruction, pummeling white noise, and buzzing metallic insect chirps swirling together with processed recordings of frog croaks. It's both brutally heavy and intensely hypnotic, with the noise loops cascading over each other and subtly evolving and changing. This double CD version of Frog contains the entire original LP, as well as a bonus disc loaded with 58 minutes of additional material, including a remix and enhanced CD-ROM video and screensaver content. Nicely packaged in a gatefold double-disc digipack with colorful frog images and a rad spot-varnish symbol designed by Akita. A killer digital release from Merzbow! Note: for some reason, the digipack's obi strip was taped to the cover, so be careful when you remove it!

VARIOUS ARTISTS Merzbow - Frog - Remixed And Revisited 2xCD $14.98 Misanthropic Agenda

This mammoth remix release pulls out all of the stops: it's presented in a two-disc edition with an incredible lineup, with Boris, When, Ulver, Fennesz, Sunn O))), Hrvatski, Pita, House Of Low Culture, Tim Hecker, Russell Haswell, John Wiese, Terror Organ, Gerrit, Never Presence Forever, and even Merzbow himself all reconfiguring elements of the excellent Frog album (which we also just now got in stock and is reviewed elsewhere in this weeks update). All of the remixes on here are pretty rad, and my favorite tracks include the epic 20-minute long "Froggie Bee-Baa" from Boris with it's oceanic waves of rumbling guitar drones surging over layers of shortwave noise, the pastoral noise-bliss of both Tim Hecker's "Cloned Frog Language" and Fennesz's "Frog Remix", the beautiful dronescape of distant groaning guitars of Sunn O)))'s "Catch 22(Surrender Or Die)", and Ulver's minimalist horror movie score conjured from cut up slices of Merzbow noise and disorientating minor key melody. This is an excellent companion piece to Merzbow's Frog, which in my opinion is one of the best post-analogue releases from Masami Akita, but Frog - Remixed And Revisited just as easily stands on it's own as a high-quality collection of big names in the avant-heavy underground scrawling their own manifestos with the spewings of the master of Japanese noise. Comes in a beautiful glossy foldout package covered in awesome psychedelic artwork by Aaron Turner from Hydra Head/Isis.

MERZBOW Bariken CD $13.98 Blossoming Noise

Now this is how I like my Merzbow. Another release that seems to be influenced by Masami Akita's animal rights activism (it's sponsored by PETA and is named after his Taiwanese duck, the disc immediately opens with an ultra-crushing distorted raga-pulse that sounds like the first few seconds of a Sunn O))) powerchord trapped in an eternal loop. Bariken starts fierce and stays seriously heavy, working it's way through five epic tracks that climb up to 30 minutes in length. Much of Bariken is similiar to what Akita-san was doing on his seminal Pulse Demon album, but here his harsh noise is way heavier, anchored by minimalist, heavily distorted "riffs" that could easily pass for the kind of ambient black/sludge metal floating around currently (Nordvargr, Noisegate, etc), kinda like an extension of his collaboration with Sunn O))) on their Flight Of The Behemoth album. Take "Minka Part 2", for example: the two-note dirge riff that surges through the dense electronic storm on that track has got to be one of the heaviest things Merzbow has ever done. He follows that with "Minka Part 3", which is more of a percussion/harsh noise collage, but then it's back to the super distorted dirge with the 30 minute closing track "Bariken (reprise - Mother Of Mirrors)", which sounds like a blackened sludge metal band stuck in a perpetual 5-second loop and overloaded with som much distortion that they've become a monstrous smear of indistinct crunch.
The CD is limited to 1000 copies and is close to going out of print, and is HIGHLY recommended to anyone into the marriage of crushing blownout/distorted heaviness and extreme electronic noise.

MERZBOW Music For Bondage Performance CD $15.98 Extreme

One of the calmer, more meditative entries into the formidible Merzbow catalog, 1991's Music For Bondage Performance was the first in a series of recordings that featured material created by Merzbow's Masami Akita specifically for video sessions for a group of extreme fetishists who called themselves Right Brain, which explored the extreme realms of hardcore S&M, rope bondage, rubber and gas mask fetishism, etc.; heavy stuff, and the liner notes written by Masami Akita further illustrate the longstanding connection his musical work has had with extreme sexuality and bondage art. The recordings themselves are almost ritualistic in nature, pools of subdued black ambience floating over metallic surfaces, the ringing of prayer bowls and gongs whisper through empty chambers, crushing industrial rhythms throbbing far off in the distance, haunted drones and mesmeric loops drifting softly - it's all very evocative and forbidding sounding, mystical even, giving the acts of bondage picture tastefully in the extensive booklet that comes with this disc an austere, near-religious air. This is also one of the most "ambient" recordings I've heard from the master, yet it's dark weight and stygian hues put this on par with the finiest in floating darkness from Lustmord, Yen Pox, SPK, and Maeror Tri. Comes with a 16-page booklet with extensive images, photographs, liner notes and more.

MERZBOW Senmaida CD $14.98 Blossoming Noise

Consisting of three lengthy numbered "tracts" of pulsating rhythmic noise, Senmaida surprised us with it's sheer amount of "groove", reminiscent of Masami Akita's Merzbeat album. Senmaida is more of a brutal beast though, beginning with Val Denham's album cover art depicting a huge cartoon bunny performing sadistic medical tests on a suffering human subject. Merzbow's passionate support for animal-rights serves as a muse for this album, but the focus here is, of course, on crushing noise. Things start off with a grinding drum machine breakbeat that underscores Akita-sans seething feedback and distorted electronic hiss, giving his molten electronic noise a brutal counterpoint and turning the 20 minute track into a crushing techno-industrial jam splattered with fucked up vocals jammed through a wall of FX and alien percussion sounds. The rest of Senmaida explores this juxtaposition of blasts of brutal harsh noise and psychedelic insectoid feedback chop with those awesome relentlessly looped breakbeats, as well as chaotic pinball machine grooves, blunt Neubauten style sheet metal bash, and some crazed, abstracted gabba rhythms that spin wildly out of control. Towards the end, Masami Akita begins to incorporate livestock sounds to chilling effect. Hypnotically heavy noise groove that completely engulfs you; pretty amazing! Comes in a full color digipack.

MP3 SAMPLE: "Tract 1" (excerpt)
MP3 SAMPLE: "Tract 2" (excerpt)

MERZBOW Puroland CD $14.98 Ohm
THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE AT THIS TIME. PLEASE DO NOT ORDER.

This has been sold out for awhile, finally got some back in on the shelf. We half-assed the writeup on this excellent album from MERZBOW when we had it in stock before, so here's our new assesment. This relatively recent (2001) full length from the ever-prolific Masami Akita comes from his "laptop era", and sees him mutating rock riffs and songs into storms of repetitious melody and loops of swarming locust electronics. Definitely one of Merzbow's more listenable and musical releases. Melancholy guitar rings out and loops into eternity, accompanied by a heavy drone and processed guitar noise. Trancey bass thuds cycle ad infinitely. "Celebration Day" is inspired by the Led Zeppelin song of the same name (from their album 3), and "Pleasant Valley Monday" is apparently inspired by the song "Pleasant Valley Sunday" from The Monkees (from their album "Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones LTD"). "War Frog" leans towards the noisy whiteouts Merzbow is known for, but is anchored by a springy bass loop. Primarily a fusion of hypnotic loops, cascading patterns, and digital noise, Puroland (named after the Sanrio amusement park in the suburbs of Tokyo that is dedicated to Hello Kitty ) is all about rhythmic, surging blasts of localized power, much like old Skullflower or Holland Skin Tunnel, and much more rooted in the bludgeoning trance guitar noise of those outfits than the apocalypse electronics of Japanese harsh noise. Definitely our favorite album from Merzbow's laptop era. Packaged in a beautiful digipack covered with butterflys and frogs.

MERZBOW & WIESE, JOHN Multiplication CD $12.98 Misanthropic Agenda

An old-style mail collaboration between two of the electronic noise scene's heaviest fists, Multiplication is the product of a back-and-forth assembly job by Japanese noise god Masami Akita (aka Merzbow) and Cali speedblaster John Wiese during the Spring of 2004. Not counting Wiese's contributions to two previously released Merzbow remix albums, this hour-long offensive is the pair's first collaboration, with six tracks of skull drilling fast paced distortion/glitch/cut-up violence of the most psychedelic/lobotomizing kind. The first five tracks here were produced by Wiese, while the final 27 minute epic title track was shaped by Merzbow. Each one is an intensely detailed maelstrom of exploding feedback squibs, whirring static drones, colliding sacs of gritty distortion, slow-churning whirlpools of squiggly electronic squeal and howling half-realized melodies screaming out of wild filter sweeps. Sitting back and listening to this, it's easy to forget that this is a collaboration at all, as I can hear all of the strongest elements of both artists recent work rising to the surface here. So, it's pretty seemless, and definitely enjoyable if you're a fan of either of these guys' work, particularly the hard crunch of Harshhead/Bazoutai-era Merzbow. This is the American version, in a full color jewel case.

MERZBOW / ATM (AURAL TORTURE MECHANISM) split CD $7.98 Balefire

We just found 3 copies of this early pre-Crucial Blast release that has been out of print for a couple of years now, so when these are gone, they're gone. This split CD pairs up a single 30 minute Merzbow piece entitled "Unknown Tape" with five early jams of freeform junk/noise/skree from Baltimore's A)Torture Mechanism. The Merzbow track is pretty abrasive analogue material recorded in 1994, and bathes you in whooshing electronic textures and screaming feedback that morphs about halfway through into a brutal, almost funky rhythmic loop that sounds like it was cobbled out of snippets of death metal riffage and thudding drumbeats...it's definitely an awesome, heavy track from the master! The ATM stuff predates the completely stoned psych/improv informed experiments those guys are doing now, with rowdy rumbling low-frequency harsh noise bulldozing over deformed folk guitar strum and metal-on-metal percussive clatter. Packaged in a B&W wallet sleeve with xeroxed inserts.

MERZBOW / EMIL BEAULIEAU Merzbow Loves Emil Beaulieau CD $9.98 RRRecords

Playful 1996 release chronicles a collaborative effort between Japanese electro hell visionary Merzbow and "Americas greatest living noise artist" Emil Beaulieau. Created from using two Beaulieau recordings as the source material (taken from the Merzbow/Beaulieau collaboration LP that was included in a RRR 5-LP boxset), Merzbow Loves Emil Beaulieau finds Merzbow's Masami Akita creating extreme analogue tension from extremely unpredictable volume bursts of nuclear distortion screech situated between moments of uneasy calm. A shitstorm of fiery feedback cannonblasts,ultra harsh musique-concrete tape noise, and sputtering chopper tronic war-whoops. Somehow, Merzbow takes Emil Beaulieau's sugar rush loop-noise and converts into something akin to getting skullfucked by a theremin on steroids, a contact-mic'd scrap metal headbanging Merzbow blowout. Fuckin' A. Released as part of the Pure series. Hand packaged in a silkcreened/xeroxed/junked black wallet sleeve.

MESON The Flooding Of Desolate Canyons CD $9.98 NCC

Meson's debut album, packaged in a jewel box with a sleeve made out of sandpaper, presents 8 noisy tracks ranging from gritty drones to more rhythmic and percussive power noise pieces. Mostly atonal and monochromatic, this album is full of very long soundscapes and drones that reverberate dimly. The album is quite on the ambient side, and beats are rare, even though the atmosphere is constantly filled with a distant, rumbling noise. Cold and unfriendly, this sound never gets really aggressive or harsh. The tempo is really slow, and the track build up slowly, made of long layers. Some scarce samples, echoed and distorted, are used from time to time, bringing back a bit of life to the empty spaces depicted by the music. The two most rhythmic track, "Cold machine" and "Succession" stand out with their heavy and denser approach. If the first one contains a nice set of percussions that could remind of a stripped down Tarmvred, the second is noisier and has a sound that reminds of Aural Blasphemy or of Zymosyz. Desolate, cold and unfriendly.