Man, can ten years go by quick. Released in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the album's original release, this new vinyl edition of Deathpile's G.R. has been issued via Hospital Productions, a minor classic of murderous modern power electronics that sounds absolutely vicious on wax. I remember how punishing this album was the first time I listened to it, the nine tracks charting the various serial killing / necrophilic adventures and career-moves of the Green River Killer (aka Gary Ridgway) throughout the 80s and 90s, set to an utterly hateful electronic soundtrack. Noise-academics and beard-stroking geeks should steer clear - this is monstrous, seething violence carved into petroleum grooves.

The exploration of murder and depravity through the lens of extreme electronic noise was already old, old hat by the time that Deathpile dropped this nightmare on us, but there's something about G.R. that elevates it above the rest, a throbbing vein of primal violence that runs through each track and threatens to inflict real pain, real suffering the deeper you get into these blood-soaked visions. The relentless distorted carnage comprised of vicious piercing feedback, super-heavy rumbling bass textures, extreme synth abuse and Jonathan Canady's snarling, echoing vocal assault, laced with bits of recorded audio taken from interviews with people involved in the Green River case. The backing low-end noise is intensely heavy, massive rolling waves of distorted bass frequencies that obscure the swarming electronics, but then there are these fragments of gorgeous droning synth that occasionally break through the dense black churn, momentary traces of daylight that are quickly enough snuffed out, torn apart by Deathpile's crushing distorted synth chords and juddering blown-out rhythms that form out of the extreme bass frequencies. A few of the tracks on G.R. drift into more atmospheric territory, like the smoldering blackness of "Shrine" that makes excellent use of a sinister vocal loop circling around the nightmarish lyrics, and the twelve minute "Known Victims" features Suzanne Quincey from Sexual Assault Rifle reciting the list of names of all known victims of Ridgeway over a black ambient backdrop of rumbling ominous drones, strafed with bursts of screeching rhythmic noise that continue to build in intensity and frequency over the length of the track. It all makes up one of my favorite Power Electronics albums of the past decade, and certainly one of the heaviest of its kind. This ended up being the last album that Deathpile would release, and as far as I'm concerned was their best.

This vinyl re-issue is presented in a black and white jacket with a printed inner sleeve that keeps the original artwork intact, and is limited to five hundred copies.