Hidden behind the Frank Kirby-inspired comic book cover art lies one of the Flying Luttenbachers most frenzied skronk assaults. Now available for the first time on CD, Trauma was originally released as a limited edition LP on colored vinyl in 2001 on Ugexplode, and has been out of print for years. Coming after the Luttenbachers "Satanic power trio" era, this seventy-minute album features the lineup of Michael Colligan, Kurt Johnson and Weasel Walter delivering eleven blasts of extreme, vicious, dissonant freeform screech that is "free jazz" in the same way that Borbetomagus is free jazz, taking traditional jazz instrumentation of drums, reeds, contrabass but blowing it all out at brutal levels of honk and volume and percussive chaos. Colligan emits a savage stream of death screams and gutteral squonk from his tenor sax, while Kurt Johnson smacks massive blots of distorted, amplified bass that stick to Weasel's hyper-aggressive drumming like chunks of meat and gore. His drumming is especially possessed here, a near-constant assault of blastbeats, skittery percussive textures, speed and Milford Graves-on-PCP pummel. In the liner notes for Trauma, Weasel writes about how the band was trying to create the most focused, abrasive, crushing blasts of sound that they could muster using their beat up instruments and tapping in to the feelings of frustration and nihilism that they were experiencing at this time. The unified improvised outrage on this album sounds like they achieved what they were shooting for, and it stands as one of the Flying Luttenbachers most extreme albums. Fits right in with all of my hardcore free jazz albums from ESP, Borbetomagus, and Peter Brotzmann. Recommended.