Back in stock, but this time as just the regular single-disc version.

The first new recording from the Full Blast trio since their opening salvo from 2006 on the German label Jazzwerkstatt, Black Hole brings the legendary reedsman Peter Brotzmann back together with electric bassist Marino Pliakas and drummer Michael Wertmueller for another intense, seriously HEAVY free-jazz blowout, and boy does it smoke. Recorded over the course of two days in 2008, this new set features eleven fiery blasts delivered in just under an hour, each one properly titled and running anywhere from two to six minutes as the trio blazes forward in short, powerful eruptions of high velocity energy. One of the things that makes Full Blast such a potent force is that all three voices have a powerful presence, and Brotzmann never overshadows the other two musicians with his own presence or playing. The three lock in tightly whenever they achieve full speed, Brotzmann dropping his frenzied upper register bleats and seemingly endless blasts of fiery breath into the immense speed-thrash that the rhythm section lays down. Pliakas ties the sound together with a combination of muscular free playing and blitzkrieg riffing, and there's a couple of parts where he whips up thick walls of brutally distorted low-end roar; Wertmueller's aggro playing adds just as much heft to these jams, spitting out his hyperfast rim shots and thunderous double bass with regularity. Michael Wertmueller is no doubt one of the hardest playing drummers I've heard in avant-jazz, and his peformance with Full Blast rivals that of most extreme metal drummers. There are points on Black Hole where he plays straight blastbeats and even some amazingly fast double bass kickdrum blasts that recall Slayer's Dave Lombardo, fer chrissakes. And of course, Br�tzmann's blowing is amazing, especially when he contorts his sax into insane upper register yelps that sound like some kind of small animal engaging in conversation with the rhythm section's rapid fire bursts. The combination of furious post-Ayler blowing and the rhythm section's aggressive speed-improv playing has alot in common with the speedthrash/free jazz extremism of Br�tzmann's work with Last Exit - this sure is as heavy and punishing as anything that Last Exit did. But Full Blast has a more restrained side that it reveals occasionally as well, offsetting the brutal shockwaves of skronk on tracks like "Higgs" and the title track with the haunting clarinet and abstract funk of "Suzy" and the alien percussive ambience of "Protoneparcel". Essential hardcore free-jazz!