FUCK YES !!! Whenever some schmuck asks me what the hell I'm talking about when I start blubbering about "brutal jazz" in one of my inebriated fugs, this is the album that I'd like to mash in his face. It's just total malevolence - the album cover with the blurry photo of a man in a bloodsoaked white t-shirt holding a handgun to his chest, the pulverising skree lasered onto the surface of this motherfucker, the sinister title.

If yer looking for thee most brutal free jazz band on the planet, look no further: Borbetomagus, a Celtic word for "City Of Worms". Three men locking saxophones and guitar noise together into a blast of monstrous improvised skree that takes the feeling behind the aggressive free playing of Ayler and Brotzmann and amplifies it into total fucking napalm. The core trio of sax players Jim Sauter and Don Dietrich and electric guitarist Donald Miller have been consistently bulldozing eardrums with their incendiary "snuff jazz" since the late 70's, and no one in the avant jazz/improv underground has ever come close to achieving the sheer cyclonic power of Borbetomagus.

The legendary, awesomely-titled Snuff Jazz first came out on vinyl in 1990, and featured two long untitled tracks that were recorded at ABC No Rio in New York City in 1988 and DC Space in Washington DC in 1989. Each of these roughly seventeen minute jams is a vicious improv blowout, recorded loud and in your face and in the red from start to finish. Two saxophones locked in bloody battle, spurting incendiary squonk and screeching brass deathbreath over a grinding subcurrent of damaged amplifier noise and scraped guitar abuse. It's the closest that jazz has ever gotten to the skull-imploding power of artists like Merzbow or early Napalm Death, pure destructive noise blasted at maximum levels of aggression and volume. Hoo man! Snuff Jazz has been out of print and highly sought after in collector circles for years, but Agaric has hooked it up with a brand new reissue that not only features the original vinyl tracks but also throws in a killer unreleased jam and the Untitled cassette that came with issue #3 of the Japanese magazine COS in 1990. All new digipack packaging with the legend "SNUFF JAZZ" embossed across the front cover in large raised lettering. Crucial!!!