One of the few non-Sub Pop releases from Earth that came out before their resurrection around the turn of the century, Sunn Amps And Smashed Guitars documents a live set from Earth recorded in May 1995 at Disobey Club in London which was originally released by Blast First in an edition of 500 copies, which went out of print ages ago. This live set features the Earth duo lineup of Dylan Carlson and Ian Dickson performing "Ripped On Fascist Ideas", a 30 minute odyssey of melodic sludgy guitar riffage, Earth 2 era amplifier rumble, and disembodied Lynyrd Skynyrd "Freebird" motifs filling the air with leaden distortion, which becomes more and more abstract and deconstructed as it grinds on, becoming a massive blur of glacial roar. A holy grail of epic dronemetal.

As havy as that live jam is, though, it's the addition of the four previously unreleased demo tracks from 1990 that make this No Quarter re-issue totally essential to Earth fans. These early demos ("Geometry Of Murder", "German Dental Work", "Divine And Bright", and "Dissolution 1") are from the Carlson/Dave Harwell/Joe Preston (of Thrones/Melvins/Harvey Milk/High On Fire fame!) lineup, and "Divine And Bright" features stoney vocals from Nirvana's Kurt Cobain and wicked shrieks from Kelly Canary. We're HUGE fans of the really early Earth stuff, when they were still really melodic and almost poppy at times, yet freaking incredibly sludgy and heavy and Melvins-like, all super distorted, droning and dirgey, with huge booming slowmo drumming and formless melodic riffage spreading out in all directions, guitars and bass bathed in fuzz, all instrumental except for the aforementioned "Divine And Bright". And like the might Extra Capsular Extraction, these early demo recordings rank as some of our fave Earth recordings ever.