Michael Contreras (a.k.a. Michael Nine) and his Death Squad project had it's share of notoriety throughout the 1990's, which seemed to culminate with the

release of the Intent video and it's documentation of a live performance where Contreras appeared to shoot heroin, cut himself with razorblades, and

then stalk the audience with a gun, aiming it in people's faces while a brutal harsh noise soundtrack rages behind him. His fusion of grim, violent

industrial noise, horrific video and audio footage, and transgressive theatre is still a deeply disturbing experience, following in the wake of bad vibes

begun by artists like Whitehouse and Con-Dom. Last Stand is a disc that came out a couple of years ago on Nihilist, the label run by Panicsville's

Andy Ortmann, and it features a single 23 minute track of a Death Squad performance in Leeds in 2000. The set begins with a haunting spoken word recording of

a young woman, as menacing analogue synthesizer noise and heavy fluttering drones enter into view; as the set continues, the electronic drone-noise and

oscillating frequencies become more agressive while police radio transmissions take form, and then it sounds like Contreras begins verbally assaulting

members of the audience, at one point screaming so violently at one young woman that she's driven to tears. Eventually everything builds into a fierce,

scorching noisescape a la Whitehouse, as Contreras processes his vocals into a demonic howl and screams "Christ is dead...God is dead...you are dead" over

and over, and then shuts down suddenly. Extremely heavy, both on a psychic as well as a visceral level - this piece for me at least became genuinely

difficult to listen to. But there's no denying Death Squad's power. For those of you looking for the most confrontational, nihilistic audio violence out

there, Death Squad belongs on your radar. In addition to the audio track, this disc also contains a Quicktime movie titled Fratricide that consists

of genuine military footage of a friendly-fire mishap where an Apache helicopter attacked and destroyed fellow US forces, set to a boiling synth-noise

soundtrack that ratchets up the horror of the footage tenfold.

Note: this is NOT the original release of Last Stand that came in an opaque jewel case, that version is out of print. This version of

Last Stand that we now carry is the simple cardstock wallet version with black and white covers pasted to the front and back, with a simple two-

sided insert card included with the disc.