Even though I did get to see Anodyne play live a couple of times, including one absolutely pulverizing set in the basement at CBGBs back in 2001, I didn't really get into these guys and start picking up their albums and EPs until well after the band decided to throw in the towel. All of their releases reveal a punishing riffbeast who delivered some of the most creative and textural music to come out of the metal/hardcore scene, a massive dirgey heaviosity that was as schooled in brutal post-Am Rep/noise rock as it was in the cacophonous sheet-metal aggression of NYC pigfuck and Swans and the apocalyptic tribal sludge of Neurosis. Anodyne consumed all of those influences and distilled them into brutal, often experimental and improvisational slabs of endtime metalcore that ranks as some of the most pissed off, apocalyptic sounding metal I've ever heard.

Over the past year I've been picking up the rest of their older releases that I hadn't heard yet, and the latest addition to the Anodyne library is this collection of early works that was released through Black Box, the label run by Anodyne guitarist (and founding member of Tombs) Mike Hill. The disc contains their earliest demo and 7" recordings, all of which are long out of print in their original formats, so I'm stoked that this allows me to get all of that stuff without fucking around with hunting 'em down on Ebay. And as soon as the first track opens up, yer flattened by the fiery industrial improv of "Metal Years Part 3", which could actually pass for a super-heavy Ramleh track, a tangled mass of feedback and strangled guitar noise, clattering free-jazz drums and electronic squeal...a vicious five minute chunk of sludgy metallic free-noise destruction. Sweet. Then it's off to the original 1997 demo, which was later released as the bands self titled debut 7"...six tracks of burly, chugging brute metal that totally nails down their Neurosis-meets-Deadguy sound, chaotic but mathy and jagged sounding, angular riffs bending away from the crushing rhythm section, the sound almost excruciatingly bottom-heavy and filled with creative use of feedback and amplifier noise. The song "Lead By Example" from the 7" appears here for the first time in it's full un-truncated form, a sprawling experimental doomdirge with layers of menacing spoken word recordings and a feedback-blasted mass of dissonant sludge riffs and improvised guitar noise.

Later tracks include the bruising "Start With Subtraction" off of the Metal Is A Tough Business, the fearsome fx-laced powerdirge "Shape Of Things To Come" from the Self-Deconstruction compilation and "Polecat" from the So It Goes comp on Reproductive Records; another unreleased track called "Walking Small" which again combines brutal noise-damaged metallic noise rock with an extended bout of cranium scraping free-noise; the grindier Red Was Her favorite Color 7" from Happy Couple Never Last and the BLAZINGLY FAST Berkowitz 7" where it sounds like Anodyne was subsisting on a steady diet of Human Remains and Discordance Axis before they unleashed these jams in the studio...and as it happens, these tracks were actually recorded with none other than Dave Witte of DA/HR himself at the drumkit! And finally, the last track - an intensely creepy, far-too-short piece of grungy dread called "Persuasion" that melds together evil industrial drones with zombified croaks and crackling, filth-encrusted distorto-sludge ambience.

Awesomely heavy, apocalyptic stuff, and essential for anyone into Am Rep-influenced metal, experimental sludge, and general bad vibes transmitted through the most crushing math-metal imagineable. Great, grim artwork too, and liner notes that break down the source of the tracks roud out this crucial release. Now where's volume 2?