��� Beginning in 2012, Irish label Hell Comes Home began to unleash a subscription club series of 7"s that featured pairings of some of the best bands in the noise-rock/sludge/doom underground (and beyond); featuring the likes of Thou, Fistula, Burning Love, Dead Elephants, and Coffinworm, this series delivered all-new material from the artists involved, each 7" featuring one song from each band along with a digital download code for the music. In addition, each 7" is presented in a cream-colored jacket with striking original artwork from Polish designer Kuba Sok�lski, who illustrated each of these singles with a different mutant insect-like monstrosity, rendered in the sort of detail that you would expect from an entomological text. The look and feel of these records got my collector's vein pulsating in a big way, and we've managed to snag a selection of these 7"s for the C-Blast shop; numbers are limited, of course, and several of the entries in the Hell Comes Home series are already out of print...

� � � The reigning masters of sinister, metallic noise rock and experimental pigfuck in Italy, Dead Elephants kick off the twelfth entry in this series with the infectious dark noise rock of "Carne De Perro", a long nearly nine minute blast of angular sludgy metallic heaviness, Am Rep-tinged crunch and downtuned crush merging together over the band's surging, fast-paced assault, the constantly shifting riffage wrapped around lurching bass-driven grooves and frantic time signatures, like an ADD-addled Unsane but with that distinct melodic streak that makes so much of Dead Elephant's music some of the catchiest modern noise rock out there; half through though, and the song suddenly shifts into a minimal cardiac pulse, a hushed whirring dronescape that takes over the track, slowly leading into fragmented drumming and spurts of oscillator whir, the second half shifting into darker, more frayed, abstract territory.

� � � That's followed by "War, Oh My" from Portland sludge-punks Rabbits, who put out that crushing album of lagamorphic lurch Lower Forms on Relapse back in 2011; their side is more of their bludgeoning, Melvins-esque heaviness, ugly angular guitar sludge and caveman drumming colliding with the singer's wretched yowl, smashing through this gluey riffcrush before suddenly transforming into an almost Neubauten-like industrial stomp at the very end. Great stuff.