Finally have this back in stock!
The debut from Black Engine Ku Klux Klowns was released over a year ago, but the labels that put it out have little distribution here in the U.S. and I've had a hell of a time trying to get enough copies of this to list. Finally just picked it up for C-Blast, though...the reason that I've been hunting this down for so long? I've got three words for you: ZU + IMPROV GRINDCORE. That's right, Black Engine features our favorite Italian hardcore jazz/prog band Zu teaming up with the established Italian sound artist and longtime Bill Laswell collaborator Eraldo Bernocchi for a monstrous set of ultra-heavy improv free jazz/death metal instrumental destruction that sounds like an even burlier version of Painkiller. I've really been getting into that early 90's Pathological/Avant sound that bands like Painkiller and Last Exit pioneered, bringing together high energy, ferocious free jazz playing with extreme metal guitars and distortion and speedfreak drumming...Execution Ground, Guts Of A Virgin and Koln have all been dominating my disc player lately, and when I finally got around to spinning Black Engine's album, it was a dream come true - finally, a band picking up where Painkiller left off, fusing crushing heaviness with fierce jazz improvisation and infiltrating the brutal scud attacks with a malevolent ambience. Don't let the punny title and track titles like "Fishtank Midget Surfer" fool you into thinking that there is anything jokey about Black Engine. The album begins with hammering "I Hate Clowns", brutal downtuned metal riffs colliding with spaced out free jazz, squealing sax blowouts drenched in echo and other effects and flying in circles around cyclic drum/bass machine rhythms, the bass guitar tuned down so low and so heavily distorted that it has an almost death metal level of low-end heaviness. The shapeless death/grind riffs slither through deconstructed blastbeats and free-drumming, black cosmic electronics and trippy dub effects. The rest of the tracks on the album are just as free and crushing, sometimes launching into high-speed blastbeat ridden grind, sometimes falling back into subdued passages of sinister urban jazz with dark Middle Eastern-tinged melodies, but mostly the band gets wound into super-tight rhythmic distorto jams with amazing alto and baritone sax blowing and subsonic freeform riffing. Absolutely recommended to fans of Painkiller, Ruins, God, and Last Exit. Comes packaged in a digipack with creepy artwork of a body fully wrapped in plastic.