Heart & Crossbones is back with another album of Israeli aural extremism, the debut album from D9. These guys mean business, and give us something that we haven't heard yet from the Israeli undergroud: a band that channels the extreme pissed-off fury and brutality of the West Coast powerviolence scene of the early 90's, and man, they do it really well. Everything about D9 is angry; the band takes their name from the unmanned bulldozers that Israel uses to destroy Palestinian homes in the occupied territory, and this is connected to the staunchly anti-occupation, pro-Palestine stance that figures into D9's lyrics. This

furious and controversial (at least in their homeland) message is backed up with one hell of a scathing neo-powerviolence assault that's right up there with The Endless Blockade in my opinion. Like TBE, these guys blend together equal servings of old school American hardcore, Crossed Out/Man Is the Bastard/Infest style powerviolence, duelling vocalists that trade off hysterical shrieks and monstrous death metal style roars, harsh electronic noise and chunks of skull-crushing sludge into a raging tornado of electronically-mutated ultrathrash. There are some killer oscillator/fx box freakouts on tracks like "Al Kol Yeled Shemet" that remind me of Man Is The Bastard, but the band really dives into the black circuitry with the final track, a sprawling eleven minute epic that navigates through fields of fluttering distortion and dark industrial ambience. A badass debut for sure, and one that fans of bands like The Endless Blockade, SU19B, and Iron Lung should check out pronto. Pissed, apocalyptic, relentlessly brutal.