���This short self-titled EP is the debut release from newer Seattle band Eye Of Nix, made up of former members of Blue Sabbath Black Cheer and avant-crusties Same-Sex Dictator; these guys share some of the same proggy qualities as the latter band, blending together a strange confluence of sounds that includes vague black metal influences, jagged noise rock, the churning atmospheric crust of Christdriver or early Neurosis, their sound smeared with No Wave-esque guitar shrapnel and fronted by the unusual vocals of singer Joy Von Spain, who veers between a fearsome blackened shriek and a powerful, blues-tinged quasi-operatic delivery that sometimes reminds me of both Jarboe and Diamanda Galas. It's an interesting sound that Eye Of Nix reveals here. Bass-heavy hardcore collides with an almost Sonic Youth-esque dissonance on the opener "Rome Burned", and from there the EP moves further into noise-addled, proggy hardcore, a definite Man Is The Bastard vibe to the churning tribal rhythms and angular, dark riffs; fans of drummer Justin Straw's previous bands (Gods Among Men, Hellgrammite, the aforementioned Same-Sex Dictator) will recognize his presence here. But singer Von Spain transforms this into something quite different with her expressive singing. On "A Curse", the band slip into a seemingly improvised free-rock workout, Von Spain's voice intertwining a creepy whisper with dramatic chant-like singing over the steadily building cacophony, violent tribal rhythms seething beneath the atonal guitar noise, until it suddenly and viciously explodes into a discordant blast of aggression, an almost black metal tinged blur of blazing tempos and scathing screams and damaged tremolo riffing. There's more of that spastic, discordant ugliness on "Shroud", which starts off as a kind of lurching blown-out blackened noise rock assault but then morphs into an eerie slowcore dirge at the end. Pretty cool stuff that takes the sort of avant-crust that Straw has been working with over the past decade in a new and more powerful direction. Available on both a professionally manufactured cassette and a CDR release in a gatefold sleeve.