Combat Astronomy's latest is a goddamn ass-kicker, the latest offensive in their ongoing assault from the far fringes of industrialized jazz-core. I've been in love with this band ever since their 2005 album The Dematerialised Passenger, and like their other more recent releases, this continues to combine their complex, progged-out math-metal and screeching fusion-jazz terror with the lovely vocals of Elaine Di Falco, who appears here on two of Kundalini's tracks. From the thunderous lurching heaviness of opener "Kundalini Dub", the band establishes a monstrous presence, carving out huge gouges in the listener's skull with their distorted bass-heavy riffage, whirling electronic effects and chirping oscillators, laying down a massive angular groove for the various instruments to cruise through. And there are a bunch: you'll hear clarinets, saxophones, and organs mixed in with the sledgehammer guitar and fretless bass riffs.

As with previous albums, you can really hear a Meshuggah-like approach to their deceptively simple jagged grooves, as the band grinds through straight 4/4 time signatures but work against the rhythm with the chunky off-time bass riffs. That crushing bass sound is carved out of big blocks of down-tuned Godflesh-style crush, the sound oppressively heavy, but then the music will shift into the eerie stretched voices and sputtering reed noise that start off "Path Finders", where waves of alien female choral voices drift high above a clattery improv backdrop, waiting for the bass guitar and drums to drop back in with another one of their ultra-heavy doom-laden anti-grooves. There are weird, ululating vocals that pop up on this track, trading off against Di Falco's sinister snarling vocals, and the crazed discordant electric organs are like something out of a psychotic jazz fusion album. The horns get all tangled in controlled blurts of violent squeal and screech as the band ascends into droning, bludgeoning riff-loops, and all throughout Kundalini, Combat Astronomy lace these heavy jazz/metal workouts with mysterious industrial rumblings and distant factory-drones. Deeper in, the riffs stutter and stumble only to re-align themselves into crushing lockstep grooves, saxophones ascend over the robotic sludgy riffs like air raid sirens, and the band occasionally melt down into waves of crushing bass-heavy Sunn-like feedback-drone. Combat Astronomy might be too "funky" for some, but if there's funk to be found here, it's steel-plated, ultra-heavy, dark and menacing, shrouded in Hawkwindian electronics and eerie synth textures that allow moments of otherworldly beauty to break through like blasts of irradiated light on tracks like "Telos Reprise".

If anything, I'd have to compare Combat Astronomy's sound to some mutant meeting between Herbie Hancock's avant-funk classic Sextant and early 90s Godflesh, but even that doesn't come close to nailing down their unique, crushing vibe. You can bet that if you're into the likes of Black Engine, Zu, Painkiller, The Mass, God and 16-17, though (and if you've got an ounce of taste, why wouldn't you be...), you'll love this album.

Comes in a four-panel digipack.