This LP first came out in 1996 through Skuld/Profane Existence but has been out of print for years, a much sought-after album of fans of Swedish crust and progressive hardcore that still sounds fierce and fresh and apocalyptic today. Counterblast was a Swedish band that had been active during the later part of the 1990's, and which had formed out of the ashes of the cult thrash band G-Anx, who were themselves an awesome, quirky blast outfit who combined haunting proggy interludes and stoned reggae with ripping, 1,000 mile-per-hour thrashcore. In Counterblast, however, the mood was intensely solemn and dark, their music a combination of bottom-heavy crustcore and industrial trappings that outlined songs about the collapse of society and a planet enslaved by warmongering capitalists and inflamed by brutal class warfare. These kinds of themes were the stock and trade of mid-to-late 90's crust, and you'd get an earful of this sort of bleak anarcho nightmare from just about every record that Profane Existence put out. But there was something about Counterblast's approach that made them sound so much cooler than most of the other bands on the label, and which made 'em one of my favorite bands in the 90's anarcho-punk scene. The influence that Amebix had on this album is unmistakeable, with the gloomy clean guitars and almost gothic interludes in between the heavier metallic riffing, the gruff throaty vocals, the mostly mid-paced rhythms, the suffocating sense of dread and fear that permeates the lyrics and mood of the album. But Counterblast also incorporated industrial sounds into the mix, with heavy 80's Italian horror-movie synthesizers buzzing and droning underneath the choppy, crushing riffs, female vocals, cellos, and most of all, a constant battery of clanging scrap metal percussion, violent noise and electronic sampling (courtesy of Palle, who 20 Buck Spin fans might recognize from his current role in the battle-crust band Sanctum) bashed out in the background, often layered over the ferocious D-beat thrash and slow pounding doom-dirge, sometimes even forming into a hazy quasi-trip-hop beat in one instance. Eary Neurosis is one reference point, since those guys also took the gloomy crust-metal of Amebix and reshaped it into their own form, as is the nihilistic sludge of Dystopia, but Counterblast was actually more aligned with that weird European industrial-death-crust sound that was pioneered by bands like Ambush and ABC Diablo, a sound that never really became very well known over here in the States, but which is still some of the heaviest, most terrifying metallic punk music ever recorded. Balance Of Pain has long been a favorite of mine, an atmospheric, pulverising assault of industrial-tribal-thrash that is still totally unique in the hardcore realm, a 90's answer to Amebix's classic album of nuclear dread ,Monolith. From what I can tell, the CD version of this album has been out of print for years, but we just came across a limited quantity of the LP version, now available as a German import. On black vinyl, packaged in a matte finish jacket with a black and white foldout poster insert.