Until recently, you would usually have a pretty good idea as to what to expect from a new Bastard Noise album whenever one would come out. Brutal distorted analogue noise ripped out of hand-made customized effects units would usually be the foundation for BN's unique brand of experimental noise, often evoking scenes of swarms of carnivorous interstellar insects devouring whole galaxies, or cataclysmic computerized warfare. But ever since the band released their incredible Rogue Astronaut album a few years ago, they've been mutating into something much more than just a "noise" group, bringing in new members, adding actual drums and vocals and bass guitar, forming into an actual band. And best of all to those of us who fucking love the band that BN sprouted from, Man Is The Bastard, we saw Eric Wood picking the bass guitar up again and delivering his utterly warped and crushing style of low-end battery that made the music of MITB so unique and punishing to listen to. Last year's A Culture Of Monsters blew my head apart with the way it channeled that classic Man Is The Bastard brutality into a new kind of proggy sludgecore while keeping and incorporating all of the flesh-rending electronic noise, and they head into even more metallic and crushing territory on their latest, the appropriately titled Skulldozer.

What a fuckin' monster this is. And the Skull continues to throw some surprises my way, like how the album opens up with a wash of gleaming, celestial synthesizer chords that sweep in like Tangerine Dream over the first couple of minutes, leading up to where the band caves in with a grinding, bass-heavy sludge riff. New singer Aimee Artz matches Wood's inhuman death metal-esque roars with her own assault of skin-crawling shrieks, and when they start trading off against each other, it sounds pretty goddamn vicious. While the band slogs through an angular, complicated sludge workout, the rhythm section twisting and turning through tricky fills and Wood's almost math-rock like bass lines, those space rock keys continue to drift overhead alongside other bleeping, spacey effects. This all stretches out for a while, and then trails off into a field of pure electronic hum as they drift out into a long passage of eerie deep-space ambience that begins to swarm with low buzzing tones and weird analogue oscillator noises. Warning signals pulse off in the blackness, heralding the return of the full band, but when they suddenly kick back in, it's with this quick, lurching noise rock assault that is insanely vicious sounding, with pounding double bass drumming and grinding bass riffing, surging in and out of crawling doom riffs and spastic progged-out un-grooves.

After that, the album jumps from shorter faster blasts of fucked up power violence to longer electronics-heavy wig-outs. Those shorter hardcore songs are the most ferocious tunes that Bastard Noise has ever produced, songs like "B.T.P" and �Seeing The Same Fate" blazing through rapid-fire thrash and slower sludgy breakdowns that are infested with all kinds of weird effects and stop-and-go arrangements. But they're interspersed with the terrifying, isolationist ambience of the instrumental noisescape "Fifty Million Light Years", a sprawling piece of blackened kosmiche drift with howling vocals and psychedelic noises swirling through the track, leading into more washes of corroded space rock synths and creepy creaking sounds, and the savage, jagged prog of "Earth On A Stretcher" and the labyrinthine, krautrock-infected hypnosludge of "The Final Days (Of Our Species)".

Then there is "Rachel", a shorter track of dark, gorgeous ambience, one of the most cinematic sounding pieces of music I�ve ever heard from Bastard Noise, and easily the most unexpected thing on this album. Soft fluttering drones drift out across a twilight horizon flecked with beautiful and eerie falsetto singing, the melody having this vague jazzy feel, but there's also some delicate slide guitar going on as well. It's just breathtaking. And it closes with another long ambient noise track, this one with those trademark oscillator sounds and chirping electronics slowly taking over a vast black expanse of nightmarish drift, creating a feeling of unease that's exacerbated by the air-raid like siren tones and distant wailing noises that slice through the darkness.

It's not that Skulldozer is all that different from the last album, all of the basic ingredients are the same. But the music is sleeker, the electronics and hardcore elements working together in closer harmony, never lapsing in sheer heaviness but laying out some of the most extensive electronic soundscapery I've heard from BN in a while. It's barbaric, progressive, and with the awesome misanthropic lyrics and attitude that seeps out of this record, Skulldozer has landed on my top ten list for this year. Anyone into the classic West Coast PV sound of bands like Infest, Crossed Out, Neanderthal, and especially Man Is The Bastard need to hear this, but Bastard Noise keeps mutating that sound into totally new forms. Highly recommended!