Australian improv math-sludge thugs Fire Witch are back with a limited edition vinyl-only release on Wantage, and it features four tracks recorded while the band was wrapping up a tour of Japan in late 2007. Featuring members of a bunch of other Australian crunch-squads (Inappropriate Tough Guy Behavior, Goat Witch, Fans Of...), Melbourne's Fire Witch is still my fave, a thunderous trio of drums and two bass players who excel at creating massive and complex free-rock jams around a boneshaking low-end assault and loads of screaming feedback, like a mathier Melvins mixed up with some Grey Daturas-style freeform amplifier blast.

Japan's a-side features a single track called "Osaka", a mighty meandering riff-feast that starts off with lots of thunderous downtuned bass guitar riffage, peals of white-hot feedback oozing out of their amps, while drummer Jem hammers out pummeling angular rhythms. The first half is all off-kilter and jagged, like a weird off-time Melvins jam with some woozy Western slide adding an element of sun-baked twang, and then the band suddenly explodes into a violent riot of free-improv drumming and thrashing shapeless bass noise, whipping their noise rock assault into a high frenzy before sliding back into another heavy hypnotic groove that finishes the song.

Three songs on the flipside, starting with "Ray Ahm"'s hypnotic drums/bass throb that evokes both Ruins and Godheadsilo for a second, before launching into a monster math-rock groove, really hooky and rocking, and at the end it almost sounds like a sludge-rock version of Urge Overkill's "Sister Havana". "U.S. Sinners" also has some crunchy stop-start riffing, this time over some martial drumming and crazed bass-skronk, and more of that wild slide-bass twanginess that explodes over a ferocious noise blowout. And "Prickly Moses" closes the side out with a short but heavy blast of dissonance and wiry, mathy riffage and low-slung rock that's just as solid.

Issued in nice silkscreened covers that have been printed on the flipside of old Oxes/Arab On Radar sleeves, each copy hand-numbered out of 355 copies with a xeroxed insert, and on colored vinyl.