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BASTARD NOISE / ENDLESS BLOCKADE, THE  The Red List  LP   (Deep Six)   12.98


It's probably safe to say that if you are a fan of Canada's The Endless Blockade, you're also probably a big fan of Man Is The Bastard, who had a big hand in the evolution of the extreme brand of hardcore that would come to be known as "power violence". That makes this split album pretty essential for followers of this sort of hyper-violent hardcore, for not only does this feature an experimental grind/hardcore epic and some surprising tracks from Endless Blockade, The Red List has the first tracks from a new version of Bastard Noise that now sees the long running caveman electronics project becoming a full-on band, complete with bandleader Eric Wood picking up the bass guitar for the first time since the disbanding of Man Is The Bastard!

I was in now way ready for the new shape of Bastard Noise that I'm hearing here. With a new lineup that has BN's Eric Wood and W.T. Nelson joined by drummer Danny Walker (Phobia/Intronaut), the band opens the disc with five tracks of brutal proggy bass-heavy hardcore and extreme electronic FX that sounds almost exactly like Man Is The Bastard, but with an extra dose of the unique oscillator mayhem that has defined Bastard Noise's sound. The first track "Fallen Species" is total MITB, crushing angular bass and drums and electronics, but way more prog than MITB ever was, the bass winding through complex riffing and weird melodies, the pummeling drums way more jazzy, the deep guttural grunts and high pitched vokills, laser-gun blasts and squealing synth noise sculpted into a massive doomed dirge. This is fucking awesome, and anyone who was a MITB fanatic will flip out when they hear this.

The other four tracks are a mix of the proggy power violence and locust electronics; the instrumental "Movement Two" is shorter and more to the point, but still has that bludgeoning MITB assault, mixing fast thrashing hardcore with cosmic electronic chaos and brain-shredding oscillator/fx violence, then turns into a jagged jazzy noise rock workout later on; "USA Today" is more like the Bastard Noise of yore, with screamed vocals floating across a malevolent soundscape of rumbling drones and electronic flutter; the two-part "Mutant World Of Shame / Underworld" returns to the bizarre Magmoid-MITB heaviness with massive bone-rattling bass riffs winding and uncoiling, lurching into surprisingly melodic shapes, then dropping sledgehammer low-end heaviness while always surrounded by swarms of squealing and chirping synths; and the last BN track "Manphibian" starts off as dark clanking subterranean drones and sewer ambience, then erupts into more pummeling bass-heavy sludge.

The Endless Blockade are one of the only bands that could possibly follow that up, but they do so with extreme power, kicking their triptych of tracks off with the sprawling fourteen minute "Deuteronomy", a blastcore epic that winds through bursts of 500 mph thrash, crushing slow motion dirge, barbed-wire gargling screams, and punishing mutant doom strafed with industrial clatter and mechanical noise, bits of Neubaten/SPK-like clang grinding through slabs of black sludge, lots of BN-esque space FX, the guitars and bass dropping out completely at times, leaving just the industrial noise and drums to carry on as a plodding psychedelic dirge for several minutes, lurching into more up-tempo crushing riffage and slipping into long stretches of howling harsh noise a la Knurl, then blasting back into the hyper fast powerviolence at the very end. Fucking scathing. The other two tracks are actually remixes/reworked material. "Advanced Directive" is a chopped-up collage of music from their Primitive album reconfigured by NY electro-acoustic artist Noah Creshevsky; the result is a chaotic, rabid assault of skipping glitched thrash that sounds a bit like Shitmat remixing Infest. The last track "Model 49 Rebreather" is a reworking of Primitive material by Canadian harsh noise wall artist The Rita, who erects a punishing fifteen minute static lava flow of molten distortion, totally hypnotic and 100% unrecognizable.

From what I've read, this was originally supposed to be collaboration between the two bands, but it turned into a traditional split album after Bastard Noise morphed into the version of the band that appears here. As amazing as I'm betting that would have sounded, this is still a decimating team-up, with both bands delivering a CRUSHING set of extreme brutality. Highest recommendation.


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