Just found a couple of copies of this now out-of-print CDr...
"The sound of worms as they bore into your head, yeearrgghhh!" That's how loveable noise wizard/turntable butcher Emil Beaulieau introduces this album of death metal/grindcore/harsh noise remixes, and it's pretty incredible shit. I've been digging the recent rash of "remix" albums from Hydra Head that feature an assortment of avant-electronics artists reshaping original music from bands like KNUT, ISIS, and AGORAPHOBIC NOSEBLEED, with the general focus being less on any sort of traditional version of the "remix", and more on the electronics-based artists shaping the raw materials of these metal bands, the riffs and distortion and heaviness, into something totally new and alien. Well, this hour long disc is the grandaddy of that avant-noise/extreme metal remix album aesthetic. Emil Beaulieau Has A Relapse was recorded back in 1997 and commissioned by Relapse Records to feature Emil Beaulieau attacking and reshaping an assortment of nine different bands on the Relapse roster. I'm not sure exactly what the story is behind this, but for whatever reason, Relapse rejected the finished album. Luckily, it's been kept in print through RRRecords though, and it's a good thing for anyone into the realm of extreme metallic heaviness fused to ear shredding noise...this album freaking kills. The general idea is pretty simple: Beaulieau shreds apart original songs from Anal Cunt, Mortician, Brutal Truth, Merzbow, Masonna, Bastard Noise, Exit-13, Deceased, and Neurosis, mutilating each band's song with his instrument of choice, the legendary Minutilo, the four-armed record player that Emil uses to create on-the-spot locked grooves that sound like concrete blocks rubbing up against your eardrums, while he chops up and reassembles segments of song and individual riffs and beats and vocals into unrecognizable blasts of glitched out mutant metal collage. None of the tracks are titled, each one is identified only by the original artist, and I dare you to figure out what songs were used. Emil turns ANAL CUNT's noisecore blast into chirpy chipmunk punk and drowns them in a sea of shrill feedback. Bands like EXIT-13 and MORTICIAN are chopped up and slathered in oceans of white noise, their chugging death/grind stretched out like razor wire. The BRUTAL TRUTH remix starts off with an almost funky industrial breakbeat before it collapses into high speed glitchy grindcore cut-up that reminds me of JESUS OF NAZARETH, or maybe a rawer, more barbaric PHANTOMSMASHER. The NEUROSIS remix is an impressively caustic, glitched-to-oblivion apocalyptic dirge that opens up in the middle to reveal a crackling funeral fugue before being swept up again in an electrified hellstorm, the result sounding almost like blurred isolationist black metal or THE ANGELIC PROCESS' dark, beautiful smears of hiss. Emil's reworking of the MERZBOW, BASTARD NOISE and MASONNA pieces pile on even more distortion and locked-groove abuse, making those tracks even more spastic and heavy than their original configuration. But the DECEASED remix on here is by far my favorite, a 10 minute epic that loops a recurring clean, melodic guitar arpeggio over manically spliced-together overmodulated death metal that somehow turns into a WHITEHOUSE-meets-Krautrock style ultra noisy, hypnotic rhythmic jam. Awesome! This is an excellent collection of industrialized metallic rethink that was way ahead of it's time, and still posesses the power to deflesh on the spot. Definitely one of my favorite Emil Beaulieau releases ever!!! Comes packaged in the RRR style xerox-mutated sealed wallet sleeve, the silver disc blank except for a small colored label affixed to the top. Highly recommended !!!!