The final disc from Autodidact, and probably the finest set of tunes that this Korperschwache alter-ego has ever produced. Yep, Autodidact is/was another one of the solo projects to sprout from the skull of Roy K. Felps, the Texan mastermind behind Korperschwache, writer for avant-noise/metal ezine Dead Angel and Skullflower archivist. Even though Autodidact moved at super slow speeds, the music stands in stark contrast to the blackened, charred electro dirge of the mighty Korper. Instead of dark and malevolent, Autodidact was always a weirder, more "airy" beast, still massive and ponderous and crushing with hammering drum machine beats and and distorted atonal guitars, but with weird melodies and raspy half-spoken, half-sung vocals that turn the music into a glacial slowcore. Hypnotic indie dirge formed from a simple palette of guitar, those detached raspy vocals, the metronomic drum machine beats and electronic noise, like Codeine and Earth's Hex turned angular and mathy, played over super slow, hypnotic but odd-metered rhythms, like Godlesh's drum machine pounding away on dying batteries. Ass Of Fire is the last release from Autodidact, five really really long tracks, and mostly instrumental. It has the weird song titles and surreal BDSM imagery that runs through so much of RKF's music, and the song title for the nine-part fifth track might be the longest, most ridiculous song title ever: 'rhys chatham, defender of eroica, armed with the metaphysical hammer made of gold and rendered unto the trinity of the ghost union, joins in battle across the northern skies against the pitiless might of sun ra, the atomic black jesus, armed with the cosmo-myth supersonic groove pusher (new! improved!), as the evil penguin of eternal crippling doom watches with morbid fascination while drawing bad pictures of leni riefenstahl on a leaking etch-a-sketch (aka the evil penguin song)... a) declaration of war: no man shall utter blasphemy against the evil penguin and live... b) first skirmish: irradiated guitars bake in the hot tejas sun... c) first counterattack: invasion of the fifty-foot women in sinister fetishwear (lucifer's cheerleaders)... d) retreat: the ghosts of nanking watch in silence as night falls and the evil penguin brings forth his terrible vengeance against those who have betrayed him... e) second skirmish: at dawn, the defender of eroica carries out an assault against the unprotected flank of the astro-infinity defenders of the space monorail

... f) third skirmish: fucking hell, my ass is on fire!... g) second counterattack: the black cosmo-myth tone scientists, wielding the funk hammer of saturn, baffle the soldiers of eroica with unyielding streams of pure inexplicable bullshit, as commanded by the (new! improved!) voice of ra... h) the final war: the evil penguin draws down the power of the great serpent and claims dominion over all souls living and dead before wasting everybody... i) doom out.'

Seriously. The disc comes in a slimline case with a full color insert.