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CHILD ABUSE / ZS  split  7" VINYL   (Zum Audio)   5.98
split IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Zum has been dropping a bunch of cool split 7"s lately, and this one featuring Child Abuse and Zs is one of the hardest. You get two songs from Child Abuse, one from Zs, and the Zs track is the most violent thing that I've heard from them in ages.

Child Abuse deliver two new songs: a cover of Eric Dolphy's "Hat & Beard" is the longer of the two, a stuttering no wave waltz that sounds like it could have come off of their debut EP on Lovepump - lurching bass guitar lines weave around crazed jazz-fusion keys and angular carnival melodies, distorted vocals bark and howl over bubbling updrafts of double bass drumming and jagged jazz rhythms, finally staggering into a crushing bit of steroid-abusing Zeuhl worship with death metal vocals at the end. The other jam is "Beard And Coversations", a pummeling nervous system assault of scuttling bass lines over skipping drum clatter, blown out synthesizer and chittering vocals thats over in a minute. If you dug the weird mix of Magma, death metal vox and circus nightmare that their Lovepump disc spewed out, these tracks won't disappoint.

Zs "In My Dream I Shot A Monk" takes up their entire side, and it's totally different from the ultra-composed chamber prog that I heard on their last album and more in the vein of their earlier brutal prog stuff. The band unloads a volley of damaged free-form prog and percussive jazzthrash, shifting between dissonant horn and guitars clanging against one another above a raging improv drum assault that goes into full tumbling-down-stairs chaos, to screeching sax blowouts and multiple vocalists all chanting something that sounds almost like a schoolyard taunt in a furious cadence. The label mentions Beefheart and Zappa, but I'd tell ya that this is more like The Flying Luttenbachers at their most abstract. On black vinyl, limited to 500 copies and sporting cover artwork from John Dwyer (OCS/Coachwhips).