Just obtained a couple of copies of the long out-of-print 7" release of the Man Is The Bastard / Aunt Mary split, released back in 1992 on MITB member Eric Wood's own DP label. This is pretty rare, and came from Wood's own stash, so when the copies I have in stock are gone, that'll be the last of 'em.
Here's my review of the recent 10" reissue of the split: A piece of extreme hardcore/noise history, the Charred Remains/Aunt Mary split was one of the only releases to come out from this pre-Man Is The Bastard band, originally released on the DP label run by MITB's Eric Wood and out of print for well over a decade. Now re-issued by Deep Six as a 10" with a printed insert and a big poster reproduction of the Ep's cover art, this slab of fucked-up heaviness and experimental chaos is ready to be rediscovered by a new generation of blastfreaks. Although all of the songs on this 10" eventually made their way onto each band's retrospective Cd collections once the original 1992 Ep went out of print and onto the wish-lists of collector scum across the globe, there's a special primal power that is unique to this particular assembly of songs, to the combination of Charred Remains/Man Is The Bastard's brutal angular blastcore and Aunt Mary's terminally filthy and abhorrent noisecore sitting side by side on wax.
Finnish band Aunt Mary might be better known as the band that would eventually morph into the notorious power electronics outfit Bizarre Uproar, but it was also responsible for some of the craziest blurr-violence that you'll ever hear. Aunt Mary's side has just one track, "Gnu", and it's one of the most barbaric noisecore recordings that I have ever heard cut to wax. The terminally low-fi, utterly fucked-up "song" is made up of small chunks of blasting blurr that have been cut apart and then pasted back together in apparently random fashion, and is a clear precursor to the musique concrete-influenced grind techniques that John Wiese and Sissy Spacek experimented with on their debut. The track moves chaotically across the record, sudden blasts of backwards grindcore erupt outing of warped feedback drones, the music seems to constantly change direction, moving forward then backwards and back again, instantly disorienting as you try to parse the bizarre patchwork assault of mutant noisecore and electronic fuckery. Total brain-melt, and a real good time.
The Man Is The Bastard side counters with nine songs of their brutal angular blastcore; twenty years later, it hasn't lost any of its teeth. Tracks like "Existence Decay", "Secret Surgery" and "Attempt To Damage" churn and spasm awkwardly, a weird coagulation of jagged obtuse riffs played on distorted bass guitars, relentless chirping electronics, and blasting, near-grindcore tempos. Raw and bestial, but also weirdly progressive, the band takes their extreme hardcore sound into a totally unique direction that sounds like little before or since. Totally essential for fans of both Bastard Noise and Man Is The Bastard, and a crucial piece of powerviolence extremism.